Communist Official Advocates Cessation of Falun Gong Persecution

High level communist official and well known industrialist writes an open letter to China's leaders

By Wang Zhen The Epoch Times

Oct 30, 2007

Wang Zhaojun, standing member of the Anhui Province Political Consultative Commission, recently wrote an open letter to Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao stating that Falun Gong is the most urgent issue for China.

Wang pointed out in the letter that the most urgent issue is to stop the persecution against Falun Gong and provide state compensation for the victims. After Jia Jia, a Shanxi provincial technology official, Wang is the second high level CCP official to call for the stop of the persecution against Falun Gong.

In his 400,000 word open letter, Wang talked about various "bombs" that exist in Chinese society— the damage to the environment and natural resources behind the over-heating economy; the bubble in the real estate market, reform of state enterprises and social injustice; governmental media suppression and the media's breach of duty; the Taiwan issue and China's political reform; policies of political reforms, etc.

Wang thinks political reform is inevitable. He calls on Hu and Wen to implement political reform, allow freedom of speech, free all political prisoners, open the gate to the return of overseas democratic activists to build a democratic China together, "I hope there will be a Gorbachev or Yeltsin in China!"

Stop the Persecution of Falun Gong Immediately

In his open letter, Wang says, "Freedom of belief is a universal value and is regulated in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and China's Constitution. However, after the Tiananmen Massacre, in order to continue the one party dictatorship, Deng Xiaoping's successors listed all non-communist organizations as 'unstable elements' that needed to be 'eliminated before budding.'

"They made an example of Falun Gong, a popular qigong practice at the time. Those [practitioners] who tried to explain themselves were regarded by the government as highly disrespectful of the authority and would be suppressed using all means." "The suppression against Falun Gong is in fact suppression against all people. It needs to be stopped immediately and victims should be given state compensation," said Wang. Wang suggested that the authority "send out a representative to talk to Falun Gong and claim criminal liability against the decision maker of the suppression.

"I am only suggesting, and the purpose of my suggestion is to end the persecution against Falun Gong as quickly as possible, so China's progression in democracy can move forward quickly."

Emergence of a Chinese Gorbachev or Yeltsin

Wang points out in his letter that China's society blocks human rights and the ideas of human rights. This is why things like child slave workers in brick factories can happen.

The Chinese government is short of support and supervision from the people and a counteracting force from society. "The current system and regime do not represent the people. If the leader who imposes and exists under this system and regime cannot lead his people to reform, it will be the biggest misfortune of the country," said Wang.

In the end, Wang said that this is a historical time to create great people, "I hope there will be a Gorbachev or Yeltsin in China!"

Wang Zhaojun's Background

According to Xinhua News, Wang graduated from the Beijing Electric Power College (currently the North China Electric Power University) in 1982. In 1983, he founded the Zhaojun Food Company that made bread in Anhui Province.

Later he founded Zhaojun Light Industry Research Institute to produce yogurt and Zhaojun Cola. The company also made the first ever "all purpose blown plastic molding machine" in China, which was exported to over thirty countries in the world.

In 1988, Zhaojun Cola won the gold medal at the first China Food Expo. The Zhaojun Light Industry Research Institute later became the Anhui Guobao Group Co. Wang, chairman of the company, was elected the standing member of the Anhui Province Political Consultative Commission.

In 2002, Wang was chosen the outstanding private technology entrepreneur in China by the National Industrial and Commercial Federation.

Click here to read the original article in Chinese

Florida city proposes ban on goods from China

By Tom Leonard in New York

Telegraph UK: Last Updated: 2:24am GMT 30/10/2007

A Florida city may become the first in America to ban Chinese products amid mounting national concern about the Asian giant's effect on the US economy.

	Made in China: In 2006 the US imported goods worth $288 billion from China

John Mazziotti, the mayor of Palm Bay, proposed the ban after the latest spate of safety-related recalls of Chinese-made toys and pet food.

He not only cited the goods' questionable quality and safety but also China's human rights abuses, its pollution record and the loss of US manufacturing jobs due to cheap Chinese imports.

If approved by the city council, the ban would stop the city from buying Chinese-made products costing more than $50 (£25) or those which have more than half of their parts made in China.

A product could be bought if it were not available from any other country or if an alternative would cost 150 per cent or more of the Chinese version's price.

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The ban would not affect residents and private firms, which could still buy whatever they wanted.

Mr Mazziotti said: "I don't think people have the slightest idea how much is from China. I remind people every day. Pick up that label and see where it's made. You might surprise yourself.

"Palm Bay is not going to change the world but this raises public awareness.

"We are losing out on this war of economics. It's free trade for them but not for us."

His idea had received considerable support from Palm Bay's largely blue collar, 107,000-strong population, said Mr Mazziotti.

His hope that other parts of America will follow suit may be fulfilled.

His sentiments are widely shared in a country that increasingly likes to blame China for its economic woes.

After millions of Chinese-made toys containing lead paint were recalled in August, 65 per cent of Americans said they were trying to avoid buying products made in China, a Gallup poll found.

Sara Bongiorni has just written a book about how her family boycotted all Chinese-made products for an entire year. She reported having great difficulty finding many items, including electronics goods, coffee makers, birthday candles and cheap sunglasses, not made in China.

China exported goods worth $288 billion to the US in 2006, including $65 billion in televisions and other electronics, $21 billion in toys, games and sports equipment, and $20 billion of clothes.

But although Chinese goods account for 16 per cent of foreign imports into the US, America's biggest trading partner is Canada.

Opponents of any move against Chinese imports point out their cheapness has saved American consumers more than $600 billion in the past decade, according to a Morgan Stanley report.

Protesters Accuse China of Abusing Human Rights

By Mandy Clark London - VOA: 29 October 2007

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Human rights campaigners have created their own Olympic flame relay. The goal of the Human Rights Torch Relay is to shine a spotlight on alleged human rights abuses in China. The flame left Athens in August and, after running through 17 countries, it came to London for the final European leg. Protesters say they want China to free all prisoners of conscience before the Olympics in August 2008. VOA's Mandy Clark reports from London.

Protestors are evoking the Olympic ritual of carrying a torch in an international relay

It had all the fanfare and symbolism associated with the Olympics. But this ceremony was far from a celebration of Beijing's upcoming games. Instead, protesters set-up a global torch relay to highlight China's alleged human rights abuses.

They claim China is cracking down on religious organizations and torturing prisoners of conscience.

Brian Coleman is a politician in the London Assembly. He says if the games were to go ahead in China, it would be a mockery of the Olympic spirit. "I call on all those politicians that are invited to all those expensive free trips next year, to send the tickets back to the Chinese Embassy with a note that they will only step foot in China when it is an open, democratic and free society."

Annie Yang says she was sent to a labor camp in China because she is a follower of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. She says she was denied sufficient food and water and was forced to sit rigidly for 20 hours a day. "They took all our basic human rights away. Last month, one practitioner I met in the labor camp, she died there. Even last week, the people went to my parents home and (are) still searching (for) me."

Chinese government officials were not available to comment on these accusations. China banned Falun Gong in 1999.

Protesters say the human rights flame was inspired by the Olympic games themselves. The Olympic Charter states it wants to encourage "the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with preservation of human dignity."

The protesters say if they can shine a spotlight on China's alleged abuses, Beijing might make human dignity the priority of the 2008 Olympics.

The march ended with a candle-lit vigil outside the Chinese Embassy. The flame now heads to Australia, South and North America, before ending in Asia by August 2008, right before the Beijing Olympic games are due to start.

Confucius say: Do not close eyes

IOL: October 30 2007 at 07:47AM

When I heard that a Chinese bank had invested R36-billion in Standard Bank, my heart swelled with pride. They had chosen my bank. Not one of the others. Mine.

I shouted and laughed and turn-ed up the music and danced with the cat. Then I began drinking hard and fast so I could reach the place that one must be in if one is to properly celebrate an occasion of great importance.

I was less than three beers short of the place when the repellent fruit of my loins walked in. Right away, he started sobbing like a girl. He said that when he saw me laughing and dancing he thought something terrible had happened to his mother.

Reassuring him that Brenda was out foraging for victuals, I invited him to join me in a toast. I tossed him a beer and he caught it awkwardly against the side of his head.

To cheer him up, I showed him how to open a beer with his teeth. It's a rite of passage for all boy-children. Spitting out bits of enamel, Clive asked what we were celebrating. I struck a noble pose and raised my bottle. "To China!" I shouted. The brat reacted as if I had rammed a cattle prod down his trousers.

Of course. I had forgotten. Something went terribly wrong during the early years of Clive's education. Instead of growing up to hate black people, he turned on the Chinese. None of his therapists have been able to explain how this happened.

I encouraged him to calm down through the judicious application of an inverted Indian deathlock, but, slippery with spilled beer, he wriggled from my grasp and took the moral high ground.

"China is taking over your bank and you're happy because why?"

I told him the benefits will be manifold. "For a start," I said, "with so much extra money, there will be no more bogus fees and trumped-up charges."

Clive snorted and called me an idealistic fool. I let it slide because modern parenting requires that verbal and physical abuse works both ways. Grabbing a piece of paper and a pen, he drew a picture of a dragon with a gaping mouth about to swallow what looked like a ping-pong ball.

"That's the earth," said Clive, giving me a withering look. "Funny you should say ping-pong. Want to know who the world table tennis champion is? Wang Liqin, that's who."

Spittle flying from his angry teenage mouth, he shouted: "Don't you see? First ping-pong, then the world!"

I was speechless, mainly because I had never heard the runt string so much as a coherent sentence together.

"They invented rockets and cannons and matches and gunpowder! Can't you see what's happening?"

I sucked on my beer and nodded wisely. "Yes," I said, "but they also invented stirfried broccoli with oyster sauce. That's damn good stuff."

Clive said I should read Sun Tzu's The Art Of War.

The closest I have come to reading anything by a Chinese writer is the menu at Tong Lok in Kloof Street and I intend keeping it that way.

"What about the gulags?" wailed Clive.

"Chicken, beef, gulags, I don't care. If it comes with noodles, I'll eat it."

He broke another tooth trying to open a beer. "Here. Take mine," I said, giving him my empty bottle.

"Don't you see, father? There are 1.3 billion Chinese. All they want to do is get their hands on Africa's natural resources. Buying into the bank is their way of..."

"Nonsense!" I shouted. "You watch. By Friday, that surly cow at my branch is going to cash my cheque with a smile and tell me there are no fees. She will say 'Thank you and enjoy your day'."

"No, she won't," said Clive. "But if she did, she'd say it in Mandarin."

The kid may have a point. It's common knowledge that Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was recently summoned to Beijing. Not long after she got back, it was announced that Mandarin would be introduced at high schools around the country.

She also said that people of Chinese origin born in South Africa should regard themselves as Africans. Since we whiteys are having a devil of a job convincing the government that we are Africans, it might be easier for us to apply to the Department of Home Affairs to be reclassified as Chinese.

The Hon Dep Pres said agreements had been reached in several areas, including agriculture.

This is wonderful news, even if it means having to fly to Shanghai to sink my choppers into a couple of meaty Durban mangoes and maybe a paw-paw.

She also said South African farmers were already in China teaching the peasants how to cultivate apples. Oh, please.

When anthropologists uncovered the remains of Peking Man near Zhoukoudian, they found he had died half a million years ago while cooking some sort of duck casserole in an early version of the convection oven. Now we're teaching them to grow apples?

Are they teaching us how to harvest the organs of political dissidents?

Let's trade. One fresh Falun Gong liver for two Granny Smiths.

How much for Tokyo Sexwale's kidneys?

It's all starting to make sense. Ten years ago, the British gave Hong Kong back. The British don't return anything unless they are threatened with physical or financial retribution.

After meeting with the Dalai Lama the other day, American President George Bush said he was disappointed not to have been given "one of them free Tibet gizmos that everyone's talkin' about".

You think that's worrying? Check this out. China's boy-heavy birth rate means that by 2020 there will be 40 million frustrated bachelors on the streets. They can't all become monks.

What you can expect, then, is the stealthy appearance of inscrutably inspired, motivated and involved gay bank tellers at a branch near you. Welcome to the world's biggest Chinese takeaway.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika???????????

bentrovato@mweb.co.za

Human Rights Torch Relay Appeals to Tournament of Roses Association over Beijing Olympic Float

Newswire Services - October 29, 2007 - A coalition of human rights groups held a news conference on Thursday in front of the Tournament of Roses headquarters asking the association to deny China's presentation of an Olympic float in the forthcoming Tournament of Roses Parade. In the letter, the coalition recommends the Tournament of Roses include the Human Rights Torch relay (humanrightstorch.org) in the Rose Parade and emphasized their position that Beijing should not be allowed to present an Olympic float in the Rose Parade. Such a float will legitimize Beijing’s wanton disregard of the Olympic spirit and ethical values, they said, and will divert attention from its unfulfilled promise to the International Olympics Committee that it will improve human rights conditions in China before the 2008 Olympics Games. The following letter was delivered to the chairman of Tournament of Roses Association by a Pasadena police officer:

Dear Chairman C.L. Keedy and Board of the Tournament of Roses Association:

We, a coalition of human rights groups, re-emphasize our position that Beijing should not be allowed to present an Olympic float in the Rose Parade. Such a float will legitimize Beijing’s wanton disregard of the Olympic spirit and ethical values, and will divert attention from its unfulfilled promise to the International Olympics Committee that it will improve human rights conditions in China before the 2008 Olympics Games.

The Beijing Olympic Games is the only Olympics awarded to a host based on that host’s promise of human rights improvement. Since the Chinese regime made that promise in 2001, China’s human rights condition has deteriorated to the point that it permits the harvesting vital organs from live victims. Furthermore, China has supported repressive regimes such as Sudan, North Korea, and Burma, plunging people there to horrendous human rights conditions.

The Olympic Charter proclaims that the "goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity," and that any "form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement." The Beijing Olympics Games, however, represents just the opposite of those principles, and like the 1936 Nazi Olympics, is an Olympics of Shame. The 2008 Olympics will be not a celebration of but rather a mockery of the Olympics spirit.

As a true celebration of humanity, we recommend that the Human Rights Torch be included in the Rose Parade. Starting from Athens, the Human Rights Torch relay has now been carried by citizens through 30 European countries. Presently, the torch is in Great Britain and it is expected that the torch will arrive in Pasadena in time for the 2008 Rose Parade.

Former president of the Czech Republic, Mr. Vaclav Havel, stated on Sept. 5, 2007 that "I support the human rights torch activity, I think this is the hope of our world. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) put huge investments and prepared lots of Olympics projects to cover its persecution of human rights. CCP didn't fulfill the commitment made in the process of Olympic application, that is to improve China's human rights. Hence, it is extremely necessary to make the CCP obey with this promise now."

Torch carrier Pelle Pettersson, Swedish Olympic medalist in sailing, 1964 and 1972, stated, "When one hears about how serious the situation is in China, and there is a possibility to influence the Chinese authorities through activities like this so that the lives of the people can improve, I will definitely support it."

If the Tournament of Roses is to permit the Beijing Olympics float, we urge you to include the Human Rights Torch as a reminder that the PRC government has yet to keep the promises it made to the IOC.

Thank you.

Beijing pollution still major Olympic concern

In a perfect world, one would think that Human Rights would matter more to the Olympic boss and Beijing's dictator than the filthy smog.

Telegraph UK: By Richard Spencer in Beijing

Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 26/10/2007

For Beijing's Olympics chiefs, the view from the bedroom window this morning could not have been worse.

	A man crosses a bridge in Beijing (top) and the city's Olympic Stadium (bottom)

The day after a special "Environment Forum" dedicated to reassuring the athletics world that it had its air pollution under control, the city awoke to find itself engulfed by a thick pea-souper.

Visibility was reduced to less than 50 yards, flights were delayed, major roads into the city closed and, most importantly, the smog was so serious that children and the elderly were told to stay indoors by the city's weather bureau.

"Wear a face mask if you go out," its head, Sun Jisong, said. His office's report said the air was "heavy with particulate matter".

His warning came amid increasing signs of tension between the city authorities and the International Olympic Committee over whether the air quality will be safe enough for all Olympic events to take place as scheduled this summer.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, warned in the summer that some endurance events, like the marathon, might have to be moved if the days on which they are set to take place turn out to be too polluted. (more)

Video: China's Olympic Lie

Unreported World: China's Olympic Lie" Produced by documentary maker Adian Hartly

A British journalist looks into Beijing's so called 'Black Jails' and makes this very impressive program. Look here to watch the video.

HRW-China: Take Concrete Action on Burma Now

08/08/08: Celebrating the Chinese Olympics or Commemorating a Burmese Massacre?

HRW: (Washington, DC, October 17, 2007) – The Chinese government should immediately take concrete steps to help end state repression in Burma, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to President Hu Jintao. China is one of Burma’s largest investors and suppliers of weaponry.

" Chinese officials have publicly called for ‘cooperation’ and ‘dialogue’ between the Burmese generals and their critics, but said nothing when these critics were arrested, ‘disappeared’ or killed. Even worse, the Chinese government has blocked most of the international efforts to effectively address the crisis. "

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.

“Chinese officials have publicly called for ‘cooperation’ and ‘dialogue’ between the Burmese generals and their critics, but said nothing when these critics were arrested, ‘disappeared’ or killed,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. “Even worse, the Chinese government has blocked most of the international efforts to effectively address the crisis.”

Human Rights Watch noted that August 8, 2008 will not only be the opening date of the Beijing Olympics, but will also mark the 20th anniversary of the 1988 pro-democracy protests in Burma, during which an estimated 3,000 people were killed. Although the Chinese government chose 08/08/08 for symbolic reasons, recent events in Burma, and China’s ties to the military government, mean that the spotlight on that date will also be on the continued suffering of the Burmese people.

Human Rights Watch urged President Hu to take seven steps:

* Immediately place an embargo on all weapons transfers from China to Burma and suspend all military training, transport, assistance, and cooperation.

* Support or abstain from vetoing UN Security Council resolutions calling for sanctions or other collective action to address the crisis in Burma.

* In the absence of Security Council-imposed sanctions, China (along with other countries) should act to impose targeted sanctions to encourage the steps outlined above.

* Uphold the 1951 Refugee Convention and customary international law and allow anyone fleeing persecution in Burma to cross the border into China.

* Suspend involvement by state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinopec, both official Olympic partners, in proposed Burma-China oil and natural gas pipelines until the conditions specified above in relation to multilateral sanctions are met.

* Instruct Chinese firms, including stated-owned firms, with business ties to Burma to publicly and fully disclose all payments made to the Burmese military, directly or through the entities it controls.

* Continue to urge the Burmese military government to engage in dialogue with its critics, and end its repression of them. The Seven Step Road Map to Democracy, which is merely a cover for continued military rule, must be scrapped and replaced with a plan that has the genuine support of Burma’s political parties and ethnic groups.

* Urge the Burmese government to reconvene a truly representative and participatory national convention that operates through an open and transparent consultative process that could lead to a new constitutional settlement that genuinely reflects the views of all parties and leads to the creation of a civilian government.

“If China takes a strong stand on Burma now, it will be credited rather than criticized on 08-08-08,” said Richardson. “Doing so isn’t just right; it’s also in China’s self-interest.”

Related Material

Beijing 2008: China’s Olympian Human Rights Challenges
Thematic Page

Letter to President Hu Jintao on Burma
Letter, October 17, 2007

More on human rights in Burma
Country Page

BEIJING GAMES, HUMAN RIGHTS TORCH RELAY AND DEMOCRACY

Address by Hon. David Kilgour

Dublin, Ireland

17 Oct. 2ÖÖ7

The human rights torch relay is already having an impact on the Government of China because of its concerns about the success of its Beijing Games next summer.

All of us involved with the relay are asking the party-state to:

· End the persecution of Falun Gong immediately and release all practitioners,

· Stop harassing the friends, supporters and lawyers for Falun Gong victims, such as Gao Zhisheng, Li Hong and Li Heping, and

· Hold discussions to open up forced labour camps, prisons, hospitals and related facilities for inspection by independent organizations.

David Matas and I of Canada have done an independent report into allegations of organ pillaging from Falun Gong practitioners. We looked at 33 avenues of proof and disproof. For example, we interviewed the ex-wife of a surgeon, who told us he removed the corneas from about 2ÖÖÖ anaestesthetized Falun Gong prisoners in Shenyang city during a two-year period before October, 2ÓÓ3. Her testimony was credible to us.

It's easy to take each piece of evidence and say that this or that one does establish the case conclusively, but it was the combination of all of them, each pointing in the same direction, that led to our chilling conclusion that over six years “the government of China and its agents killed a large number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience and sold their vitals organs for high prices often to organ tourists.” Virtually no independent reader of our report we know has not been been convinced of the validity of our conclusion, which can be accessed in 18 languages at organharvestinvestigation.net.

This new crime against humanity is incompatible with the Olympic Charter and Olympic movement. It also violates the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international instruments dealing with human dignity.

If the role of the government in organ pillaging had been known by the International Olympics Committee when it awarded the 2öö8 Games to Beijing, I choose to believe that no such choice would have occurred. Similarly, the activities of the same government since both domestically and abroad, particularly in Sudan/Darfur, Burma and Zimbabwe, and in its ongoing abuses of China's natural environment, should also disqualify it.

If anyone is not persuaded that the efforts by many across the world on the particular issue that brings us here today are not paying off, consider some recent media reports. One of them in the Sydney Morning Herald on Oct. 1Öth was headed, ''Olympic jitters behind China's organ pledge." The first part of the article reads: ''China has conceded that international pressure before the 2ÖÖ8 Olympic Games is behind its latest pledge to crack down on illegal organ transplant."

The vice-chair of the Chinese Medical Association, Chen Honshu, is quoted in the article saying that ''huge international pressure'' led to the latest commitment. He added to the South China Morning Post,’ China is worried that if it doesn't take a stand on this, some countries may use this issue as a pretext to boycott the Games''. In short, the torch relay is taking China's government in a human rights direction.

This verbal undertaking by the Chinese Medical Association must now be followed by deeds because there have been similar promises in the past. When will it take effect? Does it apply to military surgeons, who are now doing so many of the transplant operations in both civilian and military hospitals? Matas and I are told they are not included.

Governance Reform Needed

Permit me to add some thoughts about related issues of governance in China. Why does the Hu-Wen regime not allow open political competition? Why not respect basic liberties for all the people of China? Why does it still imprison more journalists than any other government on earth? Why does the rich-poor gap continue to widen across the country? What kind of 'harmonious society' has a penal code which prescribes capital punishment for 65 offences, including 'undermining national unity'? Why does the legal system regularly use torture to induce confessions? Why is there no such thing as independent judges and the rule of law in China?

Tibetan Buddhists, Muslims and Christians face frequent harassment and sometimes much worse. Thousands of North Koreans refugees who manage to enter China are sent back to face arrest, torture and sometimes death.

Over the past weekend, the new figure on the EU trade deficit with China was released: 185 billion US dollars for only the first nine months of 2OO7. If this trend continues, will any European have a good job with good wages twenty years from now? We have, of course, a similar challenge in Canada. For example, Goodyear Tire put 85O employees out of work near Montreal about five months in order to move production to China. We've since seen our neighbor recall large numbers of tires made in China for safety reasons.

Natural Environment

Last week, the Nobel Peace Prize went to former US vice-president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Is anyone in the Hu-Wen government thinking seriously about what three decades of virtually 'anything goes' capitalism is doing to the natural environment of the people of China, their neighbors and the world as a whole?

Consider:

· Nearly half a billion Chinese citizens now lack access to safe drinking water, yet many factories continue to dump waste into surface into surface water with impunity.

· Last spring, a World Bank study done with China's environmental agency concluded that outdoor pollution is causing 35O, OOO-4OO,OOO preventable deaths a year across the country, Indoor pollution contributed to those of another 35O,OOO persons for a total in the range of 75O,OOO a year.

· Coal now provides about two thirds of China's energy and it already burns more of it than Europe, Japan and the US combined. Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal plants in China are now reaching South Korea.

· Some multinational companies from Europe, North America and elsewhere are full partners in degrading China's natural condition by dumping waste into its rivers and dumping smoke into its sky. Have such businesses not heard of corporate social responsibility (CSR)?

· The Hu-Wen government in office since 2OO3 has failed to achieve anything substantive concerning water, air and soil. Many experts have concluded that China cannot go green without political change.

Why doesn't the government introduce surcharges on coal and electricity to reflect the true cost to the environment? Why does it subsidize the cost of driving cars by controlling the price of fuel oil below market levels? Why does the regime treat advocates for clean water and air as larger threats than the degradation that causes such patriots to speak out?

Lake Tai

Let me illustrate this last key point with the case of Lake Tai, which has been much in the news about China lately. The large lake, located inland from Shanghai, was for centuries one of the Middle Kingdom's most beautiful natural endowments. Here's what the International Herald Tribune said about it in a front page story on Oct. 15th under the heading, ''In China, a lake's champion imperils himself,'' Writer Joseph Kahn makes a number of points, including:

The lake succumbed this year to industrial and agricultural waste by turning fluorescent green. At least two million people who live among the rice paddies and chemical factories on its shores must stop drinking or cooking with their main source of water.

Local farmer Wu Lion had protested for more than a decade that the chemical industry and its friends in the local government were destroying one of China's ecological treasures.

In 2OO1, for example, when then vice-premier (now prime minister) Wen came to inspect a typical dye plant located near Lake Tai, word of his visit was predictably leaked. The canal beside the factory was quickly drained, dredged and refilled with fresh water. Shortly before Wen’s motorcade arrived, thousands of carp were placed in the canal and farmers with fishing rods were positioned along the banks. Wu courageously wrote to Wen that he had been “deceived”.

Shortly before the pond scum erupted on Lake Tai this year, Wu was sentenced to three years in prison on what Kahn describes as ''an alchemy of charges that smacked of official retribution". At trial, Wu testified that his confession had been coerced by deprivation of food and being forced to stay awake for five days and nights by police. The judges, however, ruled that since Wu could not prove that he'd been tortured his confession remained valid.

In contrast, consider some of the points carried by the China Daily, the party-state English paper, about the same Lake Tai on Oct. 16th:

''To curb the problem, some 3OOO small- and medium-sized chemical plants, many located on the banks of the lake, are to be closed down by the end of 2OO9. 17OO of the plants…have been shut down.''

''(The) province will require all companies to pay in advance for any waste or sewage they discharge into (Tai) lake from next year."

Li Yuanchao, party secretary of the province, is quoted as saying, ''with this series of measures, we are confident of being able to return (Tai) lake to its beautiful natural state within 2O years".

Which dailies' version of the lake's past, present and future do you take as more realistic? The larger tragedy, of course, is that Lake Tai is only one instance of what unregulated capitalism since 1978 has done to much of China's water, air and soil. The party-state punishes the heroic Wus and promotes the Lis. All of us on the planet are victims of the environmental abuses going on in China and everywhere else.

Conclusion

In conclusion, please go on your computers and send emails to MPs, editors, friends and blogs. 'Naming and shaming' the government of China in this pre-Olympics period is working. We must all do even more to support the Global Human Rights Torch relay as it visits an expected 1OO cities in 35 countries in the cause of human dignity for all and the Olympic movement.

Thank you.

AI - China: Reform of abusive detention law vital to Beijing Olympics human rights commitments

Amnesty International: Posted: 18 October 2007

'Re-education Through Labour' - detention without charge, trial or judicial review for up to four years - should be abolished, said Amnesty International today in an open letter to the Chinese National People's Congress.

Beijing police have used China's hosting of the Olympic Games as a pretext to extend abusive detention practices such as 'Re-education Through Labour' (RTL) and 'Enforced Drug Rehabilitation', in the name of 'cleaning up' the city in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

'Locking people up without charge or trial in the name of 're-education' may 'clean up' Beijing's streets ahead of the Olympics, but it will also dirty China's reputation.

'Chinese officials have publicly committed to improving human rights in the run-up to Beijing 2008. If they are serious about this promise, they have a real opportunity to improve human rights by abolishing 're-education through labour'.

'We all want a positive Olympics, with a positive legacy for China and its people. There is still time to make this a reality.'

Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be held in RTL facilities, many in harsh conditions. RTL is used against people considered by the Chinese police to have committed offences not serious enough to be punished under the Criminal Law. These include petty criminals, critics of the government and followers of banned beliefs.

According to official Chinese media, the Standing Committee of China's legislature, the National People's Congress is due to discuss a new law, the 'Illegal Behaviour Correction Law', to replace RTL this month. The reform of RTL, and the discussion on the new law, has been stalled for more than two years.

The proposed reform of RTL has been on China's legislative agenda for more than two years. Amnesty International has long raised concerns about the use of RTL, and urges the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in the lead-up to the Olympics to ensure that any legislation adopted to replace RTL complies fully with international human rights standards, including the right to fair trial.

* Find out more about our human rights work on China

Related article: China Uses Detention Law to Clean Up for Olympics, Amnesty Says

Beijing’s Demonstration Sports

NRO: Olympics preview.

By John Derbyshire

[Our president has announced that he will attend the Beijing Olympics next year as an honored guest of China’s Communist government. The president is keen to go because, said a spokesman, “he loves sports.”

The president may not be aware that under Olympic procedures, the host nation may stage as “demonstration sports” some events not usually represented in the Games. These items are typically sports characteristic of the host country’s folkways and culture.

From a contact in China’s Olympic Committee, I have been able to obtain a list of demonstration sports the Chinese may stage for the entertainment of their distinguished visitors. Because the Games schedule is not yet finalized, I can’t guarantee that all the events listed below will appear on the program. I can, however, assure the president that all of them have been practiced in the People’s Republic, and most are still played today.]

Tibetan Snow Shooting. In their bid for a future Winter Olympics, the Communists will demonstrate their skills at picking off Tibetan refugees attempting to cross snow-covered Himalayan passes into Nepal. (This event may be scrapped because of a dispute with the Olympic authorities over the use of telescopic sights and snow goggles.)

Synchronized Slimming. Competitors here have to devise an agricultural policy so irrational that 30 million peasants starve to death simultaneously. Traditionally the winning contestant has his portrait hung in a prominent position overlooking Tiananmen Square, but for Olympic purposes a medal award will be substituted.

Organ Extraction. A test of speed and skill in wielding surgical instruments. A succession of convicted criminals, or members of obstreperous religious sects, are strapped to operating tables and their organs are removed without anesthetic, to be sold to intermediaries for transplant into wealthy foreigners. Points are awarded based on the total market value of the removed organs.

Indignathon. Competitors have to bluster continuously for six hours, maintaining an attitude of sustained righteous indignation about the Opium Wars, the burning of the Summer Palace, the Siege of Peking, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, and other wrongs inflicted on the long-suffering and ever-righteous Chinese people by cruel, dastardly foreigners. (Some other traditional events — the 10,000 meters Self-Pity, the Triple Emotional Blackmail — have been folded into this one for Olympic purposes.)

Buddha Tossing. Infant children declared by the Dalai Lama to be incarnate Buddhas must be seized and tossed into a barbed-wire enclosure, where they will spend the rest of their lives eating rice gruel and sewing export-quality gunny sacks. Extra points for family members of the living Buddha rounded up and incarcerated. (Half points for those dead on delivery to the enclosure.)

Korean herding. Competitors operating in groups of four must surround parties of North Korean refugees and hustle them back across the Korean border to the warm embrace of the Dear Leader.

Chest thumping. In this rather advanced event, competitors attempt to intimidate each other by shooting down satellites, threatening to nuke major cities, asserting ancient claims to other people’s countries, and setting up missile installations aimed at long-independent provinces.

Student Crushing. Yet another attempt to introduce motorized sports into the Summer Olympics. Competitors driving tanks are let loose among crowds of student protestors with the aim of crushing as many students as possible beneath the tank tracks.

Toy Painting. In a test of manual speed and dexterity, competitors try to load as much lead-based paint as possible onto small children’s toys.

Currency Manipulating. In this financial-trading sport, competitors struggle to keep their currency undervalued and nonconvertible against pressures from foreign bankers and trading partners. The competitor who, beginning from a fixed stock of currency, amasses the largest amount of foreign reserves, gets the gold.

Fingernail Pulling. Developed by the Communists’ superbly trained security police, competitors in the fingernail-pulling event race against the clock, equipped only with pliers, to remove as many fingernails as possible from Falun Gong practitioners in a fixed time period.

Land Seizing. A modern Chinese team sport in which teams must drive peasants off their land to make way for commercial or industrial development. Points are lost for dead peasants and residential structures left intact after the designated period.

Electric Hurdles. Middle-aged women who have been seen practicing meditation are driven over a 110-meter hurdles course with the aid of electric cattle prods, the hurdles wrapped with electrified barbed wire.

400-Fetus Relay. Teams of competitors administer forced abortions to women who have violated the one-child policy. A complicated scoring system awards points to each termination based on age and sex of fetus.

Internet Blocking. In this completely new event appropriate to the computer age, hackers must try to block access to all websites containing a long list of key words and phrases: “democracy,” “liberty,” “rule of law,” “East Turkestan,” “Dalai Lama,” “Taiwan independence,” and so on.

Petfood Doping. A popular sport that has emerged quite recently from China’s crowded factories, petfood doping involves trying to kill off as many domestic pets as possible with a single can of contaminated pet food. (The variant form, practiced in south and southwest China, in which the winner of the event is determined by aggregate body weight of dead pets, is not favored by the Olympic monitoring committee.)

WSJ - China's Olympic Opportunity

By MARTIN LEE
October 17, 2007; Page A18

WSJ - Hong Kong: When President George W. Bush accepted President Hu Jintao's invitation to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Mr. Bush's press secretary said that he was going to the Games as "a sports fan, not to make any political statement." I too am a great sports fan -- especially of the Soccer World Cup -- but I would encourage President Bush to take a broader vision of the possibilities for the Beijing Games. He should use the next 10 months to press for a significant improvement of basic human rights in my country, including press, assembly and religious freedoms.

This should be possible, since Chinese leaders have promised to make these improvements anyway. In their pledges to the International Olympic Committee while bidding for the Games and since, China's leaders at all levels repeatedly assured the world that they would use the Games to go beyond improving the country's physical infrastructure.

"By applying for the Olympics, we want to promote not just the city's development, but the development of society, including democracy and human rights," one of China's key Olympic figures, Deputy Mayor Liu Jingmin, told the Washington Post in 2001. Then, Mr. Liu said, "If people have a target like the Olympics to strive for, it will help us establish a more just and harmonious society, a more democratic society, and help integrate China into the world."

I couldn't agree more. But instead of the hoped-for reforms, the Chinese government appears to be backsliding on its promises, including in Hong Kong where we have near total political paralysis, not the promised road to full
democracy. That is no reason to give up on the prospects for reform in China. But it is reason to step up the direct engagement on these pressing issues.

In accepting the invitation to attend China's Games, President Bush said this would be "a moment where China's leaders can use the opportunity to show confidence by demonstrating a commitment to greater openness and
tolerance." Instead of a "moment" of change, China needs structural and long-term reforms: placing the Communist Party under the rule of law, unshackling the media and Internet, allowing religious adherents to freely
practice their faiths, ceasing harassment of civil-society groups that work on AIDS and the environment, and addressing modest calls for accountability in the political system. Mr. Bush and other world leaders planning to attend the Olympics should not wait for the opening ceremony, but must start now with sustained efforts to achieve this agenda.

One reason for optimism about the possibilities for progress in China is recent Olympic history. When South Korea bid for the 1988 Games, the country was a military dictatorship. Due in good part to the prospects for
embarrassment and international engagement, the Olympics helped kick off an overdue peaceful political transformation in South Korea just six months before the launch of the Seoul Games. Since then, South Korea has endured as one of Asia's most stable and vital democracies. The parallels between South Korea and China are not exact, but the lesson is that the Olympics certainly present an opening to raise these issues in the context of the Chinese government's own promises.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, there are campaigns to boycott the Beijing Games over the Chinese government's trade with and support for regimes in Sudan and Burma. As a Chinese person, I would encourage backers of these efforts to consider the positive effects Olympic exposure could still have in China, including scrutiny by the world's journalists. This is certainly the time for Chinese leaders to step up and constructively use their clout in Asia and Africa. In so doing, Beijing should open a new chapter of responsible foreign policy and convince the world it is not oblivious to these issues.

Chinese people around the world are proud that China will host the Games. China has the world's fastest growing economy, and may indeed put on history's most impressive Olympic Games next August. But how does it profit
our nation if it wins gold medals but suffers from the continued absence of democracy, human rights and the rule of law?

It is my hope that the Games could have a catalytic effect on the domestic and foreign policies of the Chinese government, and that the Chinese people will remember the Games long after they are held -- not merely for medals won, but also because they were a turning point for human rights and the rule of law in China. That would be something worth cheering.

Mr. Lee is a democratically elected legislator and the founding chairman of Hong Kong's Democratic Party.

Behold the power and glory that is China!

Statesman: Earlier the salesman pitch used to be: “You cannot afford not to be in China.” But now corporate CEOs are so eager to apologise to China for its own egregious behaviour.

Last month Mattel’s executive vice-president Thomas A Debrowski delivered a well-structured diplomatic apology: “Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologises to you, the Chinese people, and all our customers who received the toys.”

It is just like a rape victim apologising to the rapist: Pardon me for tempting you, sir.

Cleverly staged mass media propaganda and lobbying by people in high places, including some of the top CEOs of major US corporations and university professors, has helped the Chinese authorities in blurring facts with fiction, creating the perception of China’s relentless and inevitable rise as a global superpower. China fascinates corporate America with its myth of bountifulness but more so with its ruling party’s collective mind that controls the obedient masses that produce cheap goods for American markets and whose 1.3 billion worker-consumers would one day buy every branded product made in the United States.

You have heard the drumbeat, repeated ad nauseam, which China has come to believe that since Americans cannot do without its cheap goods, so why to worry about intellectual property thefts, currency manipulation to fuel exports, humongous trade surplus, defective toys, and tainted food products.

Consider, for example, 2008 Olympics, which the **Wall Street Journal** childishly put it as an event “to refashion the Olympics from a sports and merchandising extravaganza to an engine of political and social change.” That’s expecting too much from an organisation like the IOC that has been paying little attention to its own widespread problems, bribery scandals and drugs, for example.

If human rights were the deciding factor in determining the choice of the host city for the Games, Moscow under the Soviet Union and Berlin under the Nazis would not have been selected to host the Olympics.

China will be showcasing the Games in spite of its abominable record of suppression of human rights of the people of Tibet, the followers of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, political dissidents and scholars rotting in its jails without recourse to a fair trial.

In an Op-Ed piece in **The New York Times**, Slavoj Zizek wrote last week that in Tibet, the Chinese authorities “in addition to military coercion, they increasingly rely on ethnic and economic colonisation. Lhasa is transforming into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like Buddhist theme parks... in a decade or two, Tibetans will be reduced to the status of the Native Americans in the United States.” He forgot to mention gambling casinos, drugs, booze, and obesity.

Doing business with China is more important than human rights, though Americans along with rest of the world go on paying lip service to the problem. Trade and the Olympics had no civilising effect upon the Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union; therefore, to expect a miracle to happen in China because of the Olympics in 2008 or increasing international trade is puerile and silly. Rising prosperity would not force China’s Communist Party to give up its monopoly over power and become democratic. Since Deng Xiaoping took the road to capitalism, replacing communist brutality with capitalist brutality, about three decades ago, China’s economy has been opening up and growing rapidly with its gross national product (GNP) rising to more than two trillion dollars.

The rate of annual economic growth has remained above 9-10 per cent. Made-in-China goods, apple juice, toys, shoes, electronics, and even golf clubs and handguns are found in every shopping mall of the world. Huge economic benefits are expected from the 2008 Games because it has necessitated an investment of billions in infrastructure and information technology to modernise and showcase Beijing for the events. Millions of tourists who would pour into China, perhaps take a train to Lhasa and visit the Three Gorges super-dam, nonetheless, are expected to remain silent observers.

The Deng Xiaoping market economy revolution unleashed China’s vicious capitalist energies, but not without the help from the outside world, especially the United States, which magnanimously opened its markets to China. Today China is a healthier, better-fed and better-educated nation than most other developing countries but it remains a closed society ensconced in pollution. Who needs freedom? That’s why George W Bush never preaches freedom to China though he repeatedly asks that it should let its currency rise.

China feels that it can compete with the best, but can it tolerate the noise and chaos of an open society like the multicultural and multiracial United States, where the people demand accountability from their political leaders?

Beijing with the help of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Cisco has been trying to expand its control into the digital domain and expects to have the same control over cyberspace as it has over Tibet. The Internet might bring about tremendous political upheavals in China, so be warned: Don’t move my cheese.

Large centralised political systems break down due to internal pressures triggered by communications technology, unless they have built-in capabilities for adjustment, which China does not have at present. And so it is difficult to say what might happen in China in the age of the Internet, satellites, cell phones and hosts of other wireless, digital, and interconnected sensing devices that are becoming available. China wants to control the uncontrollable, the digital generation swapping billions of text messages on cell phones, the generation that could self-organise itself into a smart mob. Look at Myanmar’s recent Buddhist monk uprising, which must be giving the Chinese rulers sleepless nights.

The authoritarian regime is getting ready to open its doors, skies, and cyberspace to a worldwide audience during the 2008 Olympics. But will it be able to close the skydome once the crowd is gone? Yes, of course, with the help form corporate America, which one day might become a dancing bear for China, if others follow Mattel’s obsequious behaviour?

(Dr ND Batra is working on a new book, This is the American Way)

Take Action Enviro Day: China

Not only overseas athletes will feel the impact of the environment at the 2008 Olympics, but the quality of life of China's citizens is directly affected every day by this astronomical filthy brown smog--created by the Communist Party's greed for money--which has become an unforgivable silent killer along with widespread torture and forced organ harvesting of dissidents and political prisoners destroying many more lives. How long can Beijing continue to shamelessly destroy the environment and its people under the guise of harmony and stability without blinking? They definitely deserve the top award for the worst environment possible all across the board. Below are just a few examples illustrating how this negative environment affect peoples' health and struggle for survival. This is hardly the place to hold the prestigious Olympic Games ... paging Jacques Rogge!

Excerpt from David Kilgour's Speech:

Permit me therefore to start with some indicators about the overall state of human health across China today. The major source is a long article by Joseph Hahn and Jim Yardley carried in The New York Times on August, 26, 2007 under the heading, "As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes".

Among their important observations:

Nearly half a billion Chinese lack access to safe drinking water. Their country has only one fifth as much water per capita as, for example, the US, but many factories and farms dump waste into surface water with few legal or other consequences.

The Ministry of Health in China itself admits that ambiant air pollution alone causes hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly. Only one per cent of the nation's city dwellers, add the jounalists, are breathing air considered safe by the European Union. Rapidly expanding car ownership and low grade gasoline have now made vehicles the leading source of air pollution in major cities across China.

One coastline of China is so polluted that a section of it no longer sustains life.

Much of the world outside China has become pre-occupied with global warming just as China has begun the most robust phase of its industrial revolution, which inevitably means that air and water pollution there will become significantly worse.

China's environmental problems are becoming those of the world. Japan and South Korea, for example, are now hit by sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal-fired plants in China. Coal provides about two-thirds of China's energy and it already burns more of it than Europe, Japan and the US combined.

Leaders in Beijing note that multinational companies building manufacturing facilities in their country are partners in degrading the natural environment there by dumping waste in rivers and pumping smoke into the sky.

Last spring, a World Bank study done with China's environmental agency concluded that outdoor air pollution was already causing 350,000-400,000 preventable deaths a year, with indoor air pollution contributing to the deaths of another 350,000 persons, for a total in the 750,000 range a year. You'll recall that this part of the report was removed from the published version of the study, but received wide coverage outside China regardless.

Since the Hu-Wen government was formed in 2003 and the commitments then from them as president and prime minister both have clearly failed in this policy area. Many experts, the piece continues, have concluded that "China cannot go green in other words without political change."

Hahn-Yardley conclude their piece:"The government rarely uses market-oriented incentives to reduce pollution. Officials have rejected proposals to introduce surcharges on electricity and coal to reflect the true cost to the environment. The state still controls the price of fuel oil, including gasoline, subsidizing the cost of driving...at least two leading environmental organizers have been prosecuted in recent weeks, and several others have received sharp warnings to tone down their criticism of local officials..." One reason given was the need for social stability before the Olympic Games.

In short, unregulated capitalism has run amok across China for almost three decades and is doing terrible harm to the health and living conditions of its hard-working and long-suffering people.What is the present condition of health care systems in their country to help them in their time of great need? (more)

China to Move 4 Million from Three Gorges

Reuters via Epoch Times

Oct 11, 2007

A cleaner collects floating rubbish from a boat on the Huning River, a branch in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. (China Photos/Getty Images)

BEIJING—China is to relocate at least 4 million more people from the Three Gorges Dam reservoir area in the next 10 to 15 years to protect its "ecological safety", state news agencies said on Thursday.

The $25 billion dam near Chongqing, in southwest China, is the world's largest hydropower project, but even senior officials who have defended the project as an engineering wonder now warn that areas around the dam are paying a heavy environmental cost.

They cite erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam, conflicts over land shortages and "ecological deterioration caused by irrational development".

The dam, whose construction flooded 116 towns and hundreds of cultural sites and displaced 1.4 million people, is a work in progress, but state media have said it could be completed by the end of 2008, just after the Beijing Olympic Games.

"More than 4 million people currently living in northeast and southwest Chongqing, where the Three Gorges Reservoir extends for 600 km (360 miles), would be encouraged to resettle on the urban outskirts about an hour's bus ride from downtown Chongqing," said a report on the sina.com news site.

No details about the relocation were available, but Yu Yuanmu, vice mayor of Chongqing, was quoted as saying the ecological safety of the area was at risk from the growing population.

Environmentalists have long criticised the project, saying silt trapped behind the dam is causing erosion and warning that the dam's reservoir will turn into a cesspool of raw sewage and industrial chemicals backing onto Chongqing.

The State Council had approved a plan which was of "great importance to the environmental protection" of the area, Jiang Yong, director of the Chongqing development plan bureau, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.

"One of the key elements in Chongqing's new development plan is to further our efforts to protect the environment of the reservoir area since the environment here has changed greatly due to the Three Gorges project and massive population relocation."

Relocation has also been a flashpoint for unrest over the dam. Many object to being moved away from their communities and livelihoods, and petitioners have accused local governments of pocketing much of their compensation.

Chinese Communists Pursue 'Openness' and 'Harmony'

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
October 15, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Chinese President Hu Jintao opened a key communist party gathering Monday with references to reform, openness and social harmony, but reports of rights violations persist and a spokesman reiterated that the rulers of the world's most populous country have no intention of following Western models of democracy.

Addressing a twice-a-decade national congress that establishes policy direction for the next five years, Hu called on the 73 million members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to hold up the banner of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and strive to build "a moderately prosperous society."

Ahead of the opening of the 17th CPC Congress, spokesman Li Dongsheng told a press conference in Beijing the objective was to reform institutions and improve "socialist democracy."

"But we will never copy the Western political system model," he said.

Party congresses, which typically run for a week, are largely scripted affairs: Hu's keynote address Monday, for instance, had been distributed beforehand to thousands of leading figures for their comments before delivery on Monday, Li said.

Nonetheless, the meetings give China-watchers important clues as to CPC priorities, possible future leaders and the balance of power between factions. The 2,230-strong gathering elects a Central Committee of some 200 members and, the day after the congress ends, that body appoints a new top leadership for the next five years.

The congress is also expected to endorse a pre-approved amendment to the party's constitution, to include Hu's slogans of "scientific development" and a "harmonious society."

A recent CPC document explained that this refers to "people-centered" development being coordinated between China's urban and rural areas, among different regions, between man and nature, and between domestic development and opening up to the outside world.

The concepts will be added to others already in the constitution, including Marxism-Leninism and key theories introduced by party stalwarts Mao Tse-tung, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.

Chinese media have been previewing the congress for weeks, and the People's Daily in an editorial Monday also highlighted the issues of "reform, opening up and building of a moderately prosperous society," saying great progress had been achieved in those areas in the past five years.

In the run-up to the congress, however, authorities carried out a clampdown on dissent in a bid to prevent disturbances from taking attention of the solemn event, according to human rights monitoring groups.

Among those detained are longtime democracy campaigners, human rights lawyers and other activists - as well as numerous "petitioners" who head for the capital from across the country during significant gatherings to lobby officials directly about grievances.

The group Human Rights in China (HRIC) reported on a number of typical cases, including that of a family who has clashed with authorities before over housing demolitions, and which has been forcibly removed from their home to another area. HRIC said police told the family to remain there for a month, and linked the order to the party congress.

In another recent case, a Beijing-based lawyer who has defended human rights campaigners, dissidents, church leaders and Falun Gong practitioners was abducted and assaulted for several hours by unidentified assailants who warned him to leave the capital with his family or face the consequences.

HRIC has organized an open letter to top security officials about the assault on Li Heping, signed by more than 110 lawyers and rights campaigners, urging an end to kidnapping and assault of lawyers and others, and calling for a safe environment in which lawyers can work.

HRIC executive director Sharon Hom said the harassment of rights campaigners and petitions undermined China's promises of greater openness and respect for citizens' rights ahead of next summer's Beijing Olympics.

Bob Fu, president of the Texas-based China Aid Association and a friend of Li's, earlier expressed concern about the incident.

"If China can't tolerate a moderate lawyer like Mr. Li, who should have any confidence in the Chinese leaders' other international commitments?" he asked.

Li visited Washington in 2005, when he met with lawmakers, State Department officials and others concerned about religious freedom in China.

Meanwhile in Brussels last week, critics of China in the European Parliament organized a press conference involving dissidents who spoke by phone from China. One of them, prominent activist Hu Jia, said through an interpreter that many thousands of dissidents had been removed from Beijing in advance of the congress.

As the congress begins Monday, a China-European Union human rights dialogue also gets underway in Beijing.

European Parliament vice-president Edward McMillan-Scott, a British Conservative euro-lawmaker who organized the press conference, said if the repression continues, the E.U. should press for the Olympics to be moved to a different host city.

The press conference discussed the case of Gao Zhisheng, a Christian human rights attorney under house arrest who disappeared from his home last month, shortly after he wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress reporting rights abuses and saying that the CPC was using the hosting of the Olympics to gain legitimacy.

Willy Fautre, director of the Brussels-based group Human Rights Without Frontiers, told the event that world leaders should not accept invitations to visit for the Olympics while violations are continuing.

"The world should focus on the real China, in which hundreds of thousands are being repressed because of their religious faith or belief," he said.

Boycotts for Beijing 2008 Possible

By Charlotte Cuthbertson Epoch Times Wellington staff

Oct 15, 2007

Illegal arrests, forced labour camps, brainwashing centres, organ harvesting, torture, murder, forced abortions, child labour, no freedom of press, internet blockades, widespread corruption and nepotism. This is Beijing 2007.

Beijing appears light-years away from the Olympic Charter, which talks of "the harmonious development of man" and "promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."

Last year Olympic Watch, Reporters Without Borders, International Society for Human Rights, Solidarité Chine and Laogai Research Foundation -- an international coalition of human rights organisations -- wrote a letter to the president of the International Olympic Committee, asking him to "focus on the continuing human rights abuses" in China before Beijing 2008 because they "threaten to damage the Olympic ideals forever."

Rights groups are insinuating the international sporting fraternity are being wooed so successfully by the Chinese regime that they are choosing to ignore glaring violations and international standards.

The coalition are painting Beijing 2008 as a "tool for domestic and international political propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party."

"In 2008, the international sporting movement must refuse to tolerate one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships," they said in a 2006 statement.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Beijing the Olympics in 2001 under the obligation of cleaning up their dismal human rights record they also said the IOC would act if human rights commitments by China were not upheld in practice.

Every group monitoring human rights in China has reported a worsening state of human treatment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 2001.

The CCP continues to execute more people every year than the rest of the world combined; they arbitrarily imprison and torture people who peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression and association; they torture and persecute Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, Chinese Christians and Falun Gong practitioners; and they have tightened media control and censorship of foreign and native journalists.

Some 1.5 million Chinese have been forced from their homes during preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a rights group said last week. Most residents are evicted without compensation and those who dare to protest are often persecuted.

According to a Reporters Without Borders report Vice-Prime minister Li Lanqing stated, four days after the IOC's vote, that "China's Olympic victory" should incite the country to preserve its "healthy life", especially by fighting against the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

In May this year a leaked document from China's Public Security Bureau detailed a list of 43 categories of people under 11 groups to be barred from going anywhere near the Olympics – including Falun Gong practitioners, those linked to the Dalai Lama, and any "threat to social stability".

The international voice calling for a boycott of the 2008 Games is growing louder as events in Sudan and Burma play out.

European Union vice-President Edward McMillan-Scott has opened the debate with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the European Parliament.

"If China does nothing and the persecution [in Burma] continues, the civilized world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable. It is the one lever the world can use."

In a speech to the US House of Representatives last week Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said, "We are giving the Chinese the ability to hold the Olympics, to cover up, to put a good face on this type of monstrous regime."

Paul McCartney, Mia Farrow, and George Clooney have all expressed concern over the inability of communist regime in China to meet basic human rights standards.

Former Canadian MP and champion of the Human Rights Torch Relay, the Hon David Kilgour said if the regime expects people to sponsor and attend the Games they have to realise that people all over the world are getting "more and more concerned that this could be a repetition of the Berlin Games in 1936".

"Hitler lightened up the persecution of different groups in Germany while the Games were coming up and during the Games - but as soon as the foreigners left town the persecution got even worse. And that, of course, is a worry all of us have for the Falun Gong community and many other groups within China."

Former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Dr Sev Ozdowski said if the international community had boycotted the Berlin Olympics in 1936 it was likely the Holocaust could have been averted.

"It is time to act now," he warned about the Beijing Games in 2008.

Pasadena: Don't sell out principles

Pasadena Star: Article Launched: 10/11/2007 07:28:39 PM PDT

Letters by Joe Brown, President, Pasadena NAACP and Kenneth C. Hardy, Chair, City of Pasadena Human Relations Commission

Don't sell out principles

In spite of the "human and civil rights violations," for the past year, I have wrestled with this matter of granting Communist China a platform for its political maneuver and propaganda. I cannot be outraged about the lead-coated toys and remain numb to Beijing's propaganda float.

As it currently stands, on Jan. 1, 2008, a Beijing-authorized float is to be paraded down Colorado Boulevard in the internationally famous Rose Parade, glorifying the Chinese communist regime in the name of the Olympics to an estimated 400 million television audience.

It is against what I believe the founding principles of our nation are, what I stand for as president of the Pasadena NAACP and what I served my country for - as a U.S. Army sergeant.

Some have defended the Beijing float citing previous floats celebrating Olympic Games in Athens, Mexico City and Los Angeles in the Rose Parade. It has been said by one elected officials that he supported the Beijing Olympic float because of "values represented by this long-standing, global tradition of athletic competition. The Olympics Games represent the finest value of human nature."

I believe by allowing this communist country a float in the Rose Parade,

Pasadena is also giving China an opportunity to exploit the Olympics for its politics. Some people may argue differently. Our Tournament of Roses president (Mr. Keedy) has stated that, "The Olympics is the issue, not the politics, that sports are merely sports and we should stay clear of other concerns."

In my opinion, the float and Beijing games, however, represent just the opposite of humanity, and is only comparable to the 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin. The Beijing Olympics owns the conspicuous mark of being the only Olympics given to a host country based on a promise of improving human rights conditions. Since that promise in 2001, I have yet to read, hear about or see the human rights condition in China improved.

A Rose Parade float cynically used as a propaganda tool for the Republic of China would become a float of shame that would forever taint not only the image of the Rose Parade but the image of the city of Pasadena as well.

Some have embellished the float as a cultural exchange. Alan Lamson, chair of the China Subcommittee of the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee, has said, "Our position is that it's much better to get to know someone, even if you disagree with them."

Elected Pasadena and TofR officials, are we simply following the money and forgetting how this will gravely weaken our moral stand and principles? I hope this doesn't allow us to sell our principles, just to receive another cheap product, lead-coated toys and toxic food.

Many continue to inform me that the U.S. is not perfect when it comes to human and civil rights. This, I agree with. But there is a vast difference between imperfections in a democracy and deliberate crimes in a dictatorship. Others have tried to find a good thing or two to say about the Beijing Olympics. They have argued that the 1936 Olympics are best remembered for the heroics of Jesse Owens instead of Hitler's exploitation of the Olympics. That is the same as finding a bright spot in the Holocaust in the heroics of Schindler. It is unconscionable to use the heroics of others to excuse our own inaction.

Some have also tried to justify their support of the Beijing float by citing their good intention toward China. Just remember, support to oppressors, in any form, is a cruelty to the victims.

For Pasadena's honor, for the Olympic spirit, for the men and women who have served in this country and most importantly, for our own conscience, there is a choice: Re-visit our position on this communist country and its propaganda float. I thought (and many other veterans agree) I was serving my country to defend against this type of tyranny.

As late as the hour is, there can be no excuse to not act; it is time to add our voice to the international outcry. Many people have already taken actions. Congressional representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Maxine Waters have independently introduced resolutions calling for boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Mia Farrow's letter opposing a "Genocide Olympics" has already slowed the Chinese regime's aggression in Darfur. Steven Spielberg is reconsidering his role as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu is considering boycotting the Beijing Olympics over China's support of Burmese despots.

The words of Dr. King still ring loudly in my ear, "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

Joe Brown
President, Pasadena NAACP
Pasadena

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Talk about human rights

The city of Pasadena Human Relations Commission recently issued a report regarding the controversy over the issue of human rights in China and the presence of a float commemorating the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the upcoming Rose Parade. The Commission recommended that the City Council: 1. Issue a statement promoting human rights improvements in China and 2. Talk with float opponents and supporters to discuss the furtherance of human rights.

The recommendations have upset some people. We review the commission's rationale here so the public may understand it.

We disagreed that the matter was outside the city's jurisdiction or competence. The city has previously reacted to issues beyond its borders. It adopted a purchasing policy boycotting businesses tied to apartheid South Africa. Last year it passed a resolution against a federal bill proposing harsh amendments to immigration law. And by entering into a sister-city relationship with the Xicheng District of Beijing, the city has already stepped outside its borders and within those of the nation whose human rights record is questioned. And China has stepped within ours via the officially approved float.

Now to the heart of the matter. There was no serious challenge to the fact of serious human rights violations in China. We received statements from protestors and float supporters and reviewed reports issued by Amnesty International, the U.S. State Department and other credible entities. The reports document illegal imprisonments, torture, repression of religious and press freedom and other injustices.

What particularly troubled us, however, was the lack of concern with these issues - intentional or unintentional - exhibited by most Chinese supporters of the float. Most of them dismissed the complaints as the "political opinion" of protesters and not appropriate for discussion. Others simply reported good experiences in China.

Certain fundraisers stated that the protesters represent small dissent groups and not the majority of Chinese who are "very happy for China." The chair of Pasadena's Sister Cities Committee stated that our recommendation was "foolish" and that "if we were lily-clean, we might have the right to take a stand. All it does is stir up a tempest in a teapot."

These statements are troubling. We acknowledged the importance of cultural and national pride and its place in the hosting of the Olympics. We recognized the economic strides China has made and the difficulty of analyzing human rights issues, especially in other nations. But none of these prior statements or the aforementioned complexities justify refusal to even broach the subject of human rights.

To equate expressed concerns over illegal imprisonment and torture as mere political opinions - even if one believes the Olympics has nothing to do with politics - suggests a profound insensitivity to the plight of fellow Chinese.

To say the Olympics has nothing to do with human rights is incorrect. The Olympic Charter proclaims that the "goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity," and that any "form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement." These values are the very ones enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

We did not understand why one's own good experience in China should logically preclude concern for others who suffer. And since when did the measure of morality and justice merely depend on majority view? If only we could ask the 10 percent of the population enslaved in early America.

Although the desire for justice often burns brightest in the hearts and minds of victims of injustice, the true test of progressive development is whether such desire attaches to the hearts and minds of those who are not victims.

Finally, to justify inaction due to the unclean hands of the U.S. exhibits a seemingly false and self-serving humility that flips moral responsibility on its head. China's human rights issues are very much worse than ours. And rather than be silent, we must be vigilant about human rights issues at home and, when necessary, abroad. To equate the false imprisonment and torture of human beings as a "tempest in a teapot" is appalling.

The commission did not ask the City Council to seek rejection of the float or the discontinuation of its sister-city relationship. It asked the City Council to voice concerns and take some action over principles that we are supposed to cherish.

Kenneth C. Hardy
Chair, City of Pasadena Human Relations Commission
Pasadena

Report: China Repression Worsening

Time Magazine: Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007 By MICHAEL WEISSKOPF

Next summer's Olympics will showcase a China of glittering skyscrapers and overstuffed store shelves. But the government responsible for this economic miracle continues to imprison political activists, restrict religious freedom, tightly control the media and Internet, and protect its citizens only haphazardly from pollution and unsafe food and consumer products, a congressional panel reported Friday.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China credited Communist Party leaders with increasing legal protections for those who abstain from unauthorized political and religious activities, but noted the safeguards are selectively enforced. "Against persons the Party deems to pose a threat to its supremacy, officials wield the legal system as a harsh and deliberately unpredictable weapon," the panel concluded in its annual report on the state of human rights and rule of law in China.

With the Games seen as a mark of its arrival, Beijing is under pressure from foreign activists to comply with international standards from the workplace to air quality. Friday�s report added leverage for human rights reforms because of the official U.S. imprimatur: the CECC consists of nine senators, nine House members and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President.

The commission veered from its central focus to such recent issues as food and product safety, which also affects foreign consumers of Chinese exports. The report praised Beijing for reforms, but complained of "inadequate and inconsistent implementation, corruption and a lack of regulatory incentives." Worse, the government discouraged consumer organizations and harassed people for reporting problems with consumer products. Likewise, environmental reforms have been hampered by uncooperative local authorities and official suppression of green activists and the free flow of information, the report said.

Human rights came in for the toughest criticism. Despite a 2005 pledge to "provide relief" for its political prisoners, Beijing continued to detain and imprison democracy activists as well as those attempting to organize workers in labor unions not approved by the government. Police routinely detain people for days without formal charge or more justification than to avoid protests or "social unrest," it said.

A database set up by the commission to monitor political and religious prisoners numbered 4,060 cases as of September.

The past year saw a tightening of the screws on religion, the report said, with Beijing continuing its "campaign of persecution" against the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Protestant church gatherings that didn't register with the government were shut down, and Catholics blocked from contact with the Vatican. Independent clergy were detained and coerced.

Tibetan Buddhists faced greater repression in recent months, said the report, as authorities continued to detain and imprison Tibetans for peaceful expression and nonviolent action — at least 100 such cases were identified.

The commission underlined the importance of free expression in an ever-shrinking world beset by contagious diseases and globalized trade. In China, however, the media are muzzled by officials seeking to protect themselves, the report said. Even though foreign reporters were granted greater freedoms to host the Olympics, Beijing has increased government restrictions on domestic journalists in the interest of preserving order and control before a party congress this month. "Developments during 2007 suggests that the prospects for a free press in China remain dim," it said.

The Internet has threatened the Party�s monopoly of information, a threat it has blunted with requirements for all websites to be licensed, curbs on politically sensitive data and arrests of online government critics. Beijing continues to impose prior restraints on publishing, banning certain books and publications prior to the party congress.

Senator Byron L. Dorgan, the commission�s chairman, said the 360-page study was "sober reading," a sign that repression was getting worse in China, despite promises of reform. He called the report a "wake-up call" to Washington decision-makers. The Chinese Embassy in Washington was called for a comment, but officials did not respond to it.

China and the Olympic Games: David Matas

Speech to a public rally Dam Square ,Amsterdam, Netherlands

By David Matas, October 4, 2007

David Kilgour and I have written a report which came to the conclusion that there is widespread organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioner in China. Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their organs which are sold for large sums to foreign transplant tourists. Our report is on the internet for anyone to see. All our sources of evidence are set out in the report and our independently verifiable.

The Falun Gong are a group of innocents. Falun Gong is an exercise regime with a spiritual dimension. Yet, China is afraid of anyone who believes in anything besides the absolute rule of the Communist Party. China has unleashed the full force of state brutality against these innocents.

Whatever you may think of our report, it is incontestable that there is systematic persecution of the Falun Gong. The Falun Gong have been arbitrarily detained in the hundreds of thousands, brutalized, tortured, and killed in the tens of thousands. They are by far the biggest victim group in China.

China has prohibited the participation of the Falun Gong and many other groups in the Olympic games. China has even prohibited the attendance at the Games of Falun Gong practitioners and many others.

The Fundamental Principles of the Olympic Charter state:

“1 ... Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on ... respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.

2 The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

4 The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind ...

5 Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement."

Jacques Rogge, the Belgian head of the International Olympic Committee asked people not to politicize the Olympic games. Politics is a matter of opinion about which people can reasonably differ. Respect for human rights is not a matter of opinion. There is no reasonable voice which can justify violations of human rights.

Demanding Chinese respect for human rights does not amount to politicizing the Olympic games. It amounts only to asking for respect for the Fundamental Principles of the Olympic Charter.

The Communist Party of China has used the awarding of the Olympic games to justify its own hold on power in China. Now, that is a politicization of the Olympic Games.

Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, in a letter to the United States Congress dated September 12, called on the Government of China not to use the Olympic games to legitimize its own hold on power. For this letter, Gao was arrested and has since disappeared.

I call on China, the International Olympic Committee and the Dutch Olympic Committee to respect the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter. The way China is behaving now is incompatible with the Olympic movement. I say that the International Olympic Committee should insist, if the Games are to continue to be held in China, that:

1. China should allow every person to compete in the Olympic games regardless of their spiritual or religious beliefs.
   
   
2. China should allow every person to attend the Olympic games regardless of their spiritual or religious beliefs.
   
   
3. Organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China must stop.
   
   
4. The persecution of Falun Gong in China must stop.
   
   
5. Gao Zhisheng must be released.

I say to the International Olympic Committee to respect your own Charter and tell China: no human rights in China, no Olympic games in China.

---

David Matas is a lawyer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Chinese corruption 'astonishing'

Senior official Zheng Xiaoyu was executed for corruption in July

BBC: Oct. 12, 2007 - Corruption is one of the most serious threats to China's political stability, a US-based think-tank has warned.

REPORT: Corruption threatens China's future

A report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says it costs the Chinese economy $86bn (£42bn) a year.

The report says bribery and theft by officials are rising and cost China more than its annual education budget.

And it says the problems will continue because the ruling Communist Party, due to begin its five-yearly congress next week, is unlikely to reform the system.

The Washington-based think-tank concedes that party bosses have taken many measures to tackle the problem.

In the worst instance, collusion has transformed entire jurisdictions into local mafia states Carnegie report

But the report says the leaders have not gone far enough because they fear losing their grip on power.

"Corruption has not yet derailed China's economic rise, sparked a social revolution or deterred Western investors," the report states.

"But it would be foolish to conclude that the Chinese system has an infinite capacity to absorb the mounting costs of corruption."

Vast scale

The report's author, Minxin Pei, estimated that 10% of the government's procurement budget and administrative spending was used as illicit payments or bribes or was simply stolen.

This amounted to 0.65% of gross domestic product (GDP).

"Even after adjusting for inflation, the sums of money looted by government officials today are astonishing," the report claims.

Mr Pei said the vast scale of corruption was possible because of extensive state involvement in the economy, and the party's reluctance to adopt necessary reforms.

Citing the city of Fuyang, the report states: "In the worst instance, collusion has transformed entire jurisdictions into local mafia states."

Communist Party leaders have repeatedly warned that corruption threatens social stability.

Earlier this year, the party's watchdog announced that almost 1,800 officials had confessed to corruption in June alone.

Zheng Xiaoyu, a former food official, was executed for corruption in July.

China’s Olympic Blacklist is many

China’s Olympic Blacklist is many

HRIC via Phayul.com [Friday, October 12, 2007 11:59]

Following is the full text of a translation of an edited excerpt of a purported official Olympics blacklist of China published by Human Rights in China

“NOTIFICATION ON CARRYING OUT STRINGENT BACKGROUND INVESTIGATIONS ON INDIVIDUALS APPLYING TO PARTICIPATE IN THE OLYMPICS AND PERFORMING A PRE SELECTION”

Following is a translation of an edited excerpt of a purported official Olympics blacklist posted on Web sites affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement. To date there has been no independent confirmation of the veracity of the document. However, the China-based SinaWeb portal posted a news item in May stating, “China’s Ministry of Public Security issued an internal secret directive that lists 43 categories of people who will be investigated and barred from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Some examples of the groups included are overseas hostile forces, counterrevolutionary figures, the Dalai Lama and associates, Falun Gong practitioners, religious groups and individuals who incite discontent toward the Chinese Communist Party through the Internet.”1

To public security organs in each province, autonomous region and municipality directly under the Central Government:

I. Background Investigation on Targeted Individuals:

1. International Olympic Committee (IOC) family members, including:

(1) IOC members and guests of the IOC;

(2) Officials of the International Sports Federation, referees and their guests;

(3) National and regional IOC members, including athletes, leaders of delegations and officials attending the Olympics;

(4) Officials of the executive committee of the organizing committee of the host country, host city mayor, host country government leaders and their VIP guests;

(5) Representatives from the host city for the next Olympics, and representatives from other cities bidding to host future Olympic Games;

(6) Sponsors who have signed contracts with the IOC;

(7) Athletes and delegations.

2. Media: Media who purchased broadcasting rights and institutions who purchased broadcasting rights.

3. All Olympics staff members, including IOC employees, volunteers, contractors, security and temporary staff, and all others falling into this category.

II. Guidelines for Background Investigation/Criteria of Background Investigation:

Anyone who falls into the following 11 categories, subdivided further into 43 subcategories, must be excluded from the Olympics Games and competitions:

Translated by T.R. (The original edited Chinese document is posted at:http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/5/21/155261.html.)

1. China’s enemies:

(1) Members of overseas hostile forces and hostile organizations;

(2) Key individuals in ideological fields;

(3) Individuals who actively participated in activities that are illegal or contribute to social instability (liangfei liangluan)2;

(4) Hostile individuals in mainland China;

(5) Individuals who were handicapped and family members of people, who were killed during riots, who could possibly endanger society;

(6) Individuals who have at any time been sentenced for counter-revolutionary or other crimes of endangering state security, close relatives of such individuals, and individuals who have close ties to them;

(7) Individuals who escaped overseas and any suspected associates.

2. Members of Falun Gong and other evil cults, and members of other harmful qigong organizations:

(1) Falun Gong and other evil cults, organizers of associated organizations and their practitioners;

(2) Members of 14 organizations identified by relevant state agencies as evil cults in the guise of religions, and members of seven affiliated evil cults identified by relevant state agencies;

(3) Members of 14 suspect qigong associations identified by relevant state agencies.

3. Religious extremists and members of evangelical religions:

(1) Members of illegal religious organizations based locally or abroad;

(2) Individuals who have been arrested or sentenced for engaging in unlawful religious activities;

(3) Individuals who participate in illegally preaching religion;

(4) Individuals who illegally distribute religious books and audio-video products;

(5) Individuals who unlawfully establish religious organizations, institutions, schools or other religious venues, or other religious entities domestically and abroad.

4. Separatists:

(1) Members of the “Three Forces” in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and individuals supporting them locally and abroad3;

(2) The Dalai Lama’s Government of Tibet in Exile andmembers of its affiliated organizations;

(3) Individuals who take part in parades, demonstrations and protest activities with the goal of splitting up nations;

(4) People who offer financial support to national separatist groups or activities locally and abroad.

5. Media workers who pose a threat to the Olympic Games:

(1) Staff of any foreign entities or foreign media hostile to the People’s Republic of China;

(2) Staff of media organizations with a long-standing anti-communist slant or that viciously slanders the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government.

6. Non-governmental organizations involved in activities that pose a threat to the Olympic Games:

(1) Foreign non-governmental organizations that are supported by foreign governments and that are known to be engaged in infiltrating, overthrowing and destroying the CPC and the Chinese government;

(2) All members of various non-governmental organizations that are likely to jeopardize the Beijing Olympic Games.

7. Dangerous elements, persistent petitioners and other individuals known to be strongly dissatisfied with the CPC:

(1) Individuals who show strong discontent with the CPC and the Chinese government;

(2) Individuals who persistently file troublesome lawsuits or petition the higher authorities for support;

(3) Individuals who cooperate with overseas forces to draw foreign attention.

8. Individuals with files for investigation and prosecution by judicial authorities or, those under criminal and administrative orders:

(1) Individuals with files currently under investigation by public security authorities;

(2) Individuals who are under residential surveillance or out on bail while awaiting trial, and those with restricted liberty;

(3) Individuals who have been detained or arrested as criminal suspects and were released without being fully cleared;

(4) All criminal fugitives;

(5) Individuals with warrants against them and individuals under investigation;

(6) Criminal suspects subject to border control.

9. Criminal elements who are on parole or probationary supervision, who are awaiting sentencing, who have been released on parole or on bail for medical treatment, who are deprived of political rights, or others who have been sentenced to house arrest or to commuted sentences of rehabilitation or re-education through labor (RTL):

(1) Criminals sentenced to house arrest, those who are under supervision, who have been deprived of their political rights or who have been given a suspended sentence;

(2) Criminals sentenced and released on parole, or whose sentence was commuted to temporary house arrest but who remain under surveillance, and who are serving criminal detention outside a detention center;

(3) Individuals sentenced to serve re-education through labor outside of an RTL center;

(4) Individuals released on bail for medical treatment, and those who applied for release under such a program.

10. Violent terrorists:

(1) Members of terrorist organizations;

(2) Individuals who offer support and assistance to terrorist organizations or their members;

(3) Relatives of members of terrorist organizations or individuals who have close relationships with such members.

11. Members of illegal organizations:

(1) Members of political organizations that are not legally registered;

(2) Individuals who carry out activities in the name of organizations that are not lawfully registered;

(3) Members of illegal organizations serving in any capacity to incite discontent toward the CPC through the Internet.

This notification requires Public Security Agencies and Bureaus in all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the auspices of the central government to give priority to this directive and assign it top priority status. Group leaders are to be established at all levels. Deputy leaders responsible for public security inside mainland China must assume full responsibility. All related departments must cooperate. It is vital to keep this order and all associated activities secret and not to assign it to others. It is of utmost importance to give the appearance of a relaxed environment to the outside, while at the same time keeping a firmgrip on all activities.Members of liangfei liangluan organizations, Falun Gong practitioners and petitioners should all bemonitored closely and kept on a tight leash.No public explanation will be given for excluding anyone from the event. Everything must be kept confidential.

_______________

Notes

1. “Zhuce renyuan xu yange zige shencha Beijing Aoyun jiang ju qian keyi duiyuan [Registration officials must strictly check qualifications; Beijing Olympics Will Bar Participation by Suspicious Individuals],”http://sports.sina.com.cn/o/2007-05-16/09492924196.shtm. This Web page is no longer available. Other articles mentioning a ban on “suspicious individuals, ”without further details, have also been posted on Sina.com and other China-based Web sites:

http://2008.sina.com.cn/dt/other/2007-05-16/094912776.shtml , http://sports.gansudaily.com.cn/system/2007/05/16/010348207.shtml , http://www.2008oz.cn/2008olympics/dt/other/2007-05-16/094912776.shtml .

2. It was not possible to determine what specific type of individuals this termrefers to. The term seems to be an internal official reference that has not been used in public documents, and seems to refer to individuals engaged in two types of illegal activities and two types of activities that contribute to social instability.

3. The “three forces” are defined as separatists, extremists and terrorists. See “Xinjiang sangu shili jiangmianlin sixing [Xinjiang Three ForcesWill Face Death Penalty],” Phoenix Television,March 12, 2007,

http://blog.phoenixtv.com/index.php/uid_623142_action_viewspace_itemid_715858 .

China’s Olympian Challenge: CPJ

China’s Olympian Challenge:
Can Beijing Deliver on its Promises?

Bob Dietz
Asia Program Coordinator
Committee to Protect Journalists

A special conference organized by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036

Thursday, October 11, 2007

---

Thank you for this opportunity to speak today. It is good news for CPJ that others see the link between China’s hosting of the 2008 Games and its threat to foreign and local journalists in China.Let me get right to the point: As of this morning, with less than one year to go before the 2008 Olympic Games, China is holding at least 29 reporters and editors behind bars because of their work. That number is down from 31 last year. Most are being held on vague security-related charges such as revealing state secrets or inciting subversion of state power. By using such catch-all accusations, China has the dubious honor of leading the world in the number of jailed journalists since 1999.

Despite this record, in 2001 the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games to China. The agreement between China and the IOC has not been made public, but both sides assured skeptics that all journalists would have unrestricted freedom to cover the Games. The scenario put forward by the IOC and the Chinese government was that, buoyed by Olympic ideals, China would grow away from government control of the flow of information, and stop jailing those who fall afoul of that system. The message was that the media, unfettered for the Games, would continue to be free after the world’s attention moved on.That opening has not happened, although China did lift some restrictions on foreign journalists in January 2007.

In fact, since the Games were awarded, media restrictions have grown — and in recent weeks they have even accelerated. In advance of the 17th Communist Party Congress on October 15 authorities have intensified efforts to control the media, in particular online news and discussion forums. Public security officers have closed entire Internet Data Centers (IDCs). IDCs physically house servers, often several at a time, which in turn host hundreds and sometimes thousands of websites each. This assault on the technical infrastructure of the Internet makes it clear that the government has not been able to stay on top of the challenge of controlling the flow of information.

Censors still issue a flood of day-to-day “guidance” on exactly what can be reported in print, on air, and on the Internet in all its manifestations—Web sites, blogs, message boards, discussion groups, and even instant messaging and telephone texting. Despite these tactics, information flows at an ever increasing rate in China. That’s a quick overview of the control system in place, but let me try to put a human face on some of its most harshly treated victims: As I have said, more than half of those journalists in jail are there because of Internet-related activity.

Many posted articles on overseas Web sites, notably Boxun News and Epoch Times, which works closely with the Falun Gong. Many jailed journalists straddle the line between political activism and journalism—for an analogy, think of Thomas Paine and the impact of the pamphlet he called Common Sense. Making the distinction between journalist and activist becomes even harder in the Internet Age, when everyone has the digital equivalent of a Colonial-era printing press on their computer desktop.

Typical of those straddling that line are Chen Renjie and Lin Youping, jailed in 1983 for writing and publishing 300 copies of a pamphlet entitled Ziyou Bao (Freedom Report). By CPJ’s count, they are the world’s longest serving journalists. Chen was sentenced to life in prison, Lin was sentenced to death with reprieve. A third colleague, Chen Biling was executed. Those arrests, in 1982, came at the very beginning of the liberalized economic growth that has transformed China today.

Let’s fast forward to a time in which China has come to enjoy the fruit of that economic growth. In 2005, Li Changqing was the deputy director of Fuzhou Ribao (Fuzhou Daily) was jailed in February 2005. He had investigated the arrest of a whistleblower, Huang Jingao Li was initially accused of subversion, tortured, repeatedly questioned, and then not charged. Unable to convict on the subversion charge, prosecutors came up with a new one: “deliberately fabricating and spreading alarmist information.”

The new charge was related to an article Li had written for Boxun about the spread of dengue fever, an annual warm-weather event in Fujian. Li found there were at least 100 cases that year, the official tally was 20 cases. Li is due out in February 2008.Shi Tao, the former editorial director at the Changsha-based newspaper Dangdai Shang Bao was formally arrested in November 2004 after he “provided state secrets to foreigners” when he sent an e-mail on his Yahoo account to friends in the U.S. He had transcribed his notes from the local propaganda department’s instructions on how to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. He was given a 10-year term in April 2005, after Yahoo cooperated with investigators and gave them the information needed to track him down.

Zhao Yan is free now, released on September 15 this year. He was a Chinese researcher who worked for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times. He was imprisoned for three years in September 2004, on charges of fraud, after originally being arrested for revealing state secrets. He had been accused of releasing state secrets after an article in the Times correctly predicted the retirement of Jiang Zemin as the head of the military commission. The prosecutors could not make the state-secrets charge stick, so they tried Zhao on a most likely trumped-up charge of fraud instead. He is the first person to be charged with, but acquitted of, revealing state secrets in China.

Not so lucky is Ching Cheong, a reporter for the Singapore-based Straits Times. He was arrested in Guangzhou when he tried to meet with a source to get an interview with ousted leader Zhao Ziyang. Accused of gathering information for Taiwan, court records that later appeared online showed that he had written and researched openly for the Foundation of International and Cross Straits Studies, a Taiwan think tank but not an intelligence gathering organization. He is set to be released in April 2010.

The imprisonment of journalists who work for foreign media like Zhao and Ching, chilling as they are, are far outnumbered by the cases of local journalists who have few allies once they are caught in the government’s legal snare. China uses the law as a tool to punish the press for reporting on issues that might embarrass the government or challenge its public officials. The list is long, so I’ll stop here.

Full information on all those journalists in jail, in China and around the world, is available at www.cpj.org . These are serious cases, incidents of people jailed for running afoul of the authorities while pursuing their work as journalists. But their situation needs a fuller explanation.The reality is that the overwhelmingly vast majority of journalists do not go to jail in China and manage to fill the country’s newspapers and Web sites and broadcast media with information that increasingly tests the government’s controls.

In China’s expanding media universe there are many hard-working journalists. They know that they must adhere to strict guidelines when reporting, and if they don’t their editors will trim their copy to fit the government’s restrictions. Editors, in turn are closely watched and running tally sheets are kept of their errors. Too many and an unwary editor can find him- or herself demoted, or reassigned to a less prestigious publication far away from home. But many still push the limits of the restrictions, trying to break news stories before the censors can weigh in.

Directives from the propaganda arm of the government come in a steady flow, and are quite specific. The flow is daily, unrelenting, and covers every conceivable topic, from the serious to the banal. It reaches to each and every publication, official or otherwise.For foreign journalists, conditions have gotten slightly better.

In December Premier Wen Jiabao announced that some restrictions on foreign journalists conducting interviews with Chinese sources would be lifted, and that foreign correspondents would be allowed to travel around the country more freely. The new regulations last only until October 2008, and apply only to foreign journalists working in China—not to their local counterparts.

Foreign journalists in China do report fewer hassles and restrictions since the new regulations were handed down, although many local officials and powerful businessmen have yet to get the message. But most journalists still operate under the assumption that their phones are tapped and their e-mail is monitored.

Local Chinese journalists say that the conditions under which they work have not changed. Many are wary of working too closely with their foreign colleagues and many tell CPJ they are cautious about taking advantage of the freedoms that might open up during the Games.

What will happen to them once the spotlight has moved on from the Games, and foreign media have packed up and gone home?This is the atmosphere into which some 20,000 to 30,000 foreign journalists and technicians will find themselves in August 2008.

What can we do to change it before then?CPJ sees the coming months before the Games as a window of opportunity to pressure China by using our traditional forms of advocacy—letter and alert writing, seeking meetings with government officials—as well as making use of some potential allies. The agreement to award the Games to China in 2001 was made by the International Olympic Committee, and, while the IOC is a conservative organization, resistant to change, we do see them as still vulnerable to international pressure—though the fact that they declined to send a representative to meet with us today does not bode well.

It is time for the international community to start pressuring the IOC to follow through on the commitments it said were made when they awarded the games to Beijing in 2001. We should keep the IOC at the front of our minds when looking for those responsible for improving the conditions for journalists in China.

Likewise, the Games’ corporate sponsors—Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Atos Origin, General Electric, Kodak, Lenovo, Manulife, McDonalds, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung, and Visa—should be pressured to argue for the release of jailed journalists in China. CPJ is discussing how best to use our journalistic connections to bring our concerns to sponsors’ attention. And we are using our close contacts within NBC to make sure that message is delivered through the news-gathering side of the NBC operation.

We know NBC News will not trim its coverage of the Games just because other NBC divisions have the broadcast rights to the Games. And there is another place where those journalistic connections are already at work: The report we released in August, in Beijing—Falling Short, As the 2008 Olympics Approach, China Falters on Press Freedom—has been widely distributed to the media. We wrote it so that journalists and the media organizations sending them to cover the Games could be fully aware that their Chinese colleagues do not enjoy the same freedom they ostensibly do to roam the country, asking questions. They might well find themselves the target of an irate government once the Games’ intense media coverage has moved on. That reality is an appropriate subject for news coverage, before during and after the Games, and we have repeatedly encouraged journalists to cover the story. We expect it to be a large part of the Olympics coverage.

What do we want from China? We think it is realistic to call on the government of China to release the 29 journalists in prison for their work by October 2008. Six of those prisoners are due to be released sometime before the Games begin—they should be released immediately, definitely before January 1st of the Olympic year. Another, Fan Yingshang, is due to be released sometime before October 16, 2008, though the exact date is not clear. Two others, Chen Renjie and Lin Youping, the journalists jailed since 1983 and held with no release date, should also be released at the same time.

Further, China should use the relaxation of rules for foreign journalists as a baseline from which to start dismantling its elaborate system of media controls. The current system is archaic and counter-productive and at odds with the advanced economic state China has become. China has invested in infrastructure like roads and ports, communications systems, increasingly open and transparent markets, and it is moving toward a reliable legal system. It must realize that open media also play an integral part in a modern economy, and its approach harkens back to the harsher authoritarian tactics it has abandoned in so many other areas. And, also, as China seeks to improve its legal system, it must work to end the climate of impunity surrounding the violent retribution meted out by local officials and others angered by critical media coverage.

Having awarded the Games to China, we call on the IOC to insist that the government fully meet its promises of press freedom for the Games. The IOC represented all of us when it negotiated the terms of the Games in 2001. At the time it sent out placating messages, assuring us that our widespread concerns about media freedom were being addressed. Now it has a responsibility to make sure that those reassurances it gave back in 2001 are fulfilled.

Finally, as an organization of journalists working for the benefit of our colleagues in China and around the world, CPJ calls on media organizations covering the Games to pressure China to honor the pledges it made to the IOC and ensure that their Chinese journalists enjoy the same freedoms visiting journalists enjoy—and report fully on the adverse conditions under which their colleagues must work in China.

Thank you.

World Leaders support arms embargo for Burma

20 Former World Leaders Call on China to
Change Position on Burma, Support Arms Embargo

www.USCampaignforBurma.org - Pressure is beginning to build up on China to stop its complete support for Burma's military regime. In a letter to China signed by 20 former Presidents and Prime Ministers from many countries (in PDF format), the leaders call on China. The leaders call on China to change its position by supporting the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and national reconciliation in Burma and also supporting a global arms embargo on Burma.

This is a major breakthrough -- it may be the first time in history that this many prominent leaders have called for China to support a weapons ban on Burma.

This follows a similar call by Desmond Tutu, in which he said he would boycott the Olympics if China continues its all-out support for the military regime.

When one reads the Olympic slogan "One World, One Dream" it may seem hypocritical to some that China would block a UN initiative to ban arms shipments to a miltary regime that only uses them on their own people. Yet, it is true.

In fact, the UN Security Council is right now working on a non-binding statement to criticize the slaughter of innocent monks and civilians in Burma, and China is even trying to "water down" the language so it is as weak as possible. Shameful.

We are only just beginning to fight, and China is going to be hearing from a lot more people in the very near future. As long as China refuses to do anything meaningful on Burma, we will support an Olympic boycott. As of now the Olympic games are a shameful tribute to the worst kind of behavior. Take a minute today to send an email to the Olympic organizers letting them know where you stand. We want millions of people to email them and let them know you plan to boycott the Olympics: ticketsupport@beijing2008.cn

China is greatly concerned about the possibility of a boycott -- that is why last week they called an emergency press conference in Washington, DC to defend themselves -- but at the press conference, they announced no changes in their policy on Burma. It was just a sham.

Let's take action today -- let them hear you loud and clear.

Aung Din, Jeremy Woodrum, Jennifer Quigley, and Thelma Young

Support 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma. Become a member of the United States Campaign for Burma today.

Say NO to Communist Float in Rose Parade, Pasadena (USA)

Pasadena Star: Letter - Time for shouting

Re Tim Kelly's recent article, "Time for dialogue with China:"

The suggestion made by Kelly - to conduct an open dialogue with China - is a decent idea, but it will probably never happen. What has happened historically, especially after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, is China's willingness to hold only a closed-door dialogue about human rights rather than an open dialogue. It's unfortunate that Western countries have cooperated with China in this regard.

The closed-door dialogue has gone nowhere. Professor Charles Burton of Brock University in Ontario, Canada, produced a widely publicized report last year for the Canadian government concluding that the China-Canada bilateral human rights dialogue has been completely ineffective. He stated that the current Chinese government is not willing to comply with universal norms for human rights because it would undermine its power.

A genuine, open dialogue with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) about human rights will probably never happen because it quite possibly would mean the end of the CCP. Why? In an open dialogue, the CCP would be pressured to admit to its wrongdoings and take corrective actions. If hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, religious believers and dissidents were released from prisons and their stories were disseminated worldwide, the CCP would be facing worldwide public condemnation.

Kelly's message is quite hopeful. I would like to clarify, however, a couple important points. It appeared from his article that both sides, the Chinese government and human rights organizations, are obstinate and unwilling to listen to each other. Kelly states, "Instead of civil public discourse and dialogue, we have polarization, vilification and threats that accomplish little." Perhaps he is unaware that for the past eight years in China, 70 to 100 million non-violent Falun Gong practitioners have been slandered, and many have been fired, expelled, tortured or even killed - all the while trying to appeal to the government and create a dialogue.

Furthermore, for the past several years, almost on a daily basis, a handful of elderly women have gone to the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate and attempted to open a dialogue with its officials about human rights, but they have been ignored. There are countless more examples in this regard. I dare say that one side is willing to talk openly.

As for both sides "vilifying" each other, I also do not see it that way. Several human rights organizations attended a recent Pasadena City Council meeting to offer facts about the lack of freedom in Communist China. Five women shared their experiences of being tortured in labor camps or prisons because of their beliefs. This is called exposing, not vilifying.

Some might contend that pressuring China to end its human rights abuses by threatening to ban its float in the Rose Parade is mixing politics with a non-political event. Kelly asserts, "Human rights groups are intent on using the 2008 Olympics as a platform for advancing the cause of dissidents in China and victims in Darfur." The truth is that once the Chinese government is associated in any way to the float, then the float in the parade becomes a political affair in which the CCP can showcase its influence and legitimize its power; it is, therefore, certainly appropriate to take the opportunity to pressure China to disengage in its direct and indirect involvement in killing innocent lives.

It's also important to put China's human rights condition into perspective. In an urgent situation, it is reasonable to shout. When we see that innocent people are being killed, we should shout at the criminal,

"Stop!"

Now millions of innocent Chinese people are being persecuted by their government; the first priority should be to stop it as soon as possible. Why are we trying to be friends with the killer?

Albert Roman
Hermosa Beach


Letter: Poll says no to float


I want to thank your newspapers for the online poll on whether to have the Beijing Olympic float in the Rose Parade.

As of Oct. 10, there is an overwhelming and resounding opinion to not have the float in the parade. Your readers understand that giving any publicity of this kind to the Chinese Olympics legitimizes the human rights violations that the CCP has perpetrated not only on the citizens of China, but all over the world and specifically Darfur and wherever Falun Gong practitioners reside.

I hope that parade organizers not only disallow the float but that they replace the float with a Chinese non-Communist marching band such as the Tianguo Marching Band. Then people could really see the true nature of Chinese people without the influence of Chinese communism.

Lorraine Kabacinski
Huntington Station, New York

A Dangerous Petition

China: Petitions and the Party Congress
Stratfor: October 10, 2007

China: Petitions and the Party Congress
October 10, 2007 22 25 GMT

Summary

Two petitions calling for political reform, each with more than 10,000 signatories, were sent to the Beijing government Oct. 8. Beijing's response to the petitions, which came just a week before the Communist Party of China convenes for its 17th Party Congress, was subdued because it was not caught by surprise. However, the overall petition system can be expected to fall in the spotlight at next week's Party Congress.

Analysis

Two petitions, each signed by more than 10,000 Chinese, were sent to the Beijing government Oct. 8, just a week before the Communist Party of China convenes for its 17th Party Congress. One petition demanded political reform, the other a political spring-cleaning to address government corruption.

Pockets of social unrest exist across China in disparate regions. Beijing's nightmare scenario involves these pockets linking up across provinces and towns, forming a critical mass that could directly undermine central government authority. A petition from multiple townships and provinces targeting the central government seems like it should have been cause for alarm. Beijing's subdued response indicates the petitions did not catch it by surprise; in fact, the Chinese government is fully aware of such petition drives, which will come under scrutiny at the upcoming Party Congress.

The Chinese administrative petition system for addressing public grievances is centuries-old. The modern version has evolved into one in which taking complaints straight to the top (i.e., Beijing) is seen as the most effective option. Thus, groups of disaffected Chinese scattered across the country, both rural and urban dwellers, send their complaints and petitions via representatives to Beijing on a daily basis. One prominent grassroots activist entity supports 10 to 15 petitions involving tens of thousands of signatories and close to 1,000 smaller ones involving thousands of signatories each year.

In the years following China's economic takeoff, Beijing increasingly has struggled to cope with the swelling number of incoming petition couriers and to keep tabs on where in the country unrest is fermenting. In recent years, Beijing has attempted to use local media to harness and direct public anger over perceived social injustices toward local officials. But that method is only effective for tackling scattered pockets of social unrest in which the potential for a protest to escalate into a nationwide movement is minimal, such as a protest over an illegal landgrab by a local official. For petitions reaching across dozens of provinces, addressing the problem is much harder and the stakes are much higher.

To address this larger problem, Beijing is learning to use the activists to control and monitor the masses. Grassroots organizations in China essentially act as portals, disseminating information to and collecting information from millions of disaffected Chinese citizens -- first via their Web sites and second by touching base with representatives sent by various provinces or citizens to Beijing as petition couriers. While these entities do not directly coordinate such petitions, their implicit support and provision of a virtual meeting point, such as their Web site, offer an invaluable tool for activists seeking to coordinate nationwide petitions. Organizers of large petitions generate broader support by making contact with people who traveled from around the country to Beijing with their separate petitions. The organizers then disseminate news of the latest nationwide petition through the visitors.

These organizations operate overtly, welcoming attention from any quarter. The more attention they get for their cause, the better. Significantly, the grassroots groups offer a sort of portal to petition action not only for activists but for Beijing as well. According to one grassroots activist source, the groups grant interviews freely, with the state-run Xinhua news agency being the most active interviewer of all.

Engaging with these grassroots organizations on a near-daily basis, Beijing acquires intelligence on how and where unrest is brewing. Theoretically, this allows it to remain a step ahead of petitions before they arrive on the government's doorstep. Allowing these organizations to remain open also lets off steam from China's pressure cooker of social unrest, giving Chinese citizens a sense of empowerment thanks to their ability to leapfrog over the heads of corrupt local government officials.

As long as these petitions do not go beyond angry citizens signing a document, Beijing can tolerate these organizations and use them as a tool for monitoring and managing public grievances and for keeping the lid on the social unrest pressure cooker. The risk for Beijing lies in the possibility that these organizations may one day evolve into cross-national portals for coordinating protesters -- as opposed to petitions -- across cities and provinces, directly challenging the government's authority and control.

To forestall this possibility, Beijing tries to keep these organizations in line by selectively imprisoning volunteers for a couple of years every so often, prompting most volunteers to maintain a low profile. But information technology is hard to control. Beijing also faces the risk that another interest group opposed to the Chinese government, like Falun Gong, could tap into these networks of disparate activists.

Allowing grassroots activist portals to be strong enough to serve as a tool for Beijing, but not so strong that they become a threat, constitutes a fine line for Beijing to walk. The portals themselves, for the most part, toe the line today in the hope of pushing the boundaries tomorrow. Many of them believe the Chinese public is finally coming to grips with the concept of human rights. But if their numbers grow along with flare-ups of social unrest, so will the social momentum for change.

Beijing's options for dealing with such social unrest are severely limited. But seeking to create a safe outlet for social unrest by not eliminating grassroots activist organizations that do not push too far is a high-risk strategy. Expect this strategy and the wider administrative petition system to be under the spotlight at next week's Party Congress.

Related Headlines
China: The 2008 Olympics as a Major Activist Inroad
May 17, 2007

Monks and China Rising

NY Times: Op-Ed Columnist by ROGER COHEN

Published: October 11, 2007

Seldom has a country’s rise been as smooth as China’s in recent years. Bush-bashing has left the world with scant surplus indignation to devote to Beijing’s backing for many of the planet’s ugliest regimes, including those in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran and Cuba.

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Roger Cohen

Talk of “harmony” — the buzzword favored by President Hu Jintao — and “no strings attached” assistance has been the camouflage for China’s readiness to get in bed with thugs from central casting who can provide the oil, gas and raw materials that fuel the furious growth critical to preserving one-party rule.

Hu’s harmony is mostly hogwash. But who cares? The global thirst for China’s business, and for alternative power centers to Washington, has given the slogan a free ride.

China is not in the business of exporting war, development models or moral and political blueprints. It wants stability for its upward glide. Democracy comes in a distant second to growth, if at all. The tarnishing of the “D-word” in Iraq has suited China fine.

What suits China less is saffron-robed Buddhist monks in neighboring Myanmar — the former Burma — confronting the guns of a military junta that began its rule in 1988 with the massacre of 3,000 protesters and has not wavered in its corrupt brutality since.

The Burmese troubles are troubling to China for several reasons. They are on its doorstep. They come in a country transformed in recent years into a virtual client state, where the Chinese are building roads, burning forests, backing gas projects and dreaming of long-coveted access to the Indian Ocean.

Worst of all for Beijing, the unrest presents about as clear a picture of good versus evil as exists outside fairy tales. There’s little to debate in young monks being gunned down and everything to deplore. For a Buddhist, killing monks is like killing kin. Nine months from the Beijing Olympics, that’s bad.

So the Chinese have been writhing. Not to the point of supporting United Nations Security Council action against Burmese barbarity — the official view is that “pressure would not serve any purpose” — but to the point of gestures suggestive of some discomfort.

These have included facilitating the work of the U.N. special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari. He’s been instrumental in opening new avenues between the military and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader who has long been under house arrest.

China has also offered guarded statements about supporting “stability, reconciliation, democracy and development of Myanmar.”

Democracy? Well, up to a point. View all this as the minimum China thinks it can get away with on the last pre-Olympic lap. Stability, as ever, is the key word; “democracy” is a sop. Still, the Chinese may be ready to hedge their Burmese bets.

The junta’s leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, is 74; nobody’s immortal. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is part, is reviewing a new charter that obliges member countries to “strengthen democracy.”

The Burmese military is increasingly isolated in a region where the Indonesian transition from military rule has given the lie to generals who say their rule is indivisible from national survival.

That said, Myanmar is a weak state where the danger of fragmentation is real. Insurgencies and drug warlord militias could easily fill a vacuum. “The country presents a democracy challenge, but also a failed state challenge,” says Thant Myint-U, a historian.

In North Korea, another Asian country that reeks of failure, China and the United States have united to push Pyongyang out the nuclear business. But it was precisely the nukes that concentrated Chinese minds: nobody in Beijing wanted the militarist wing in Japan emboldened by Kim Jong-il’s folly.

Burmese folly lacks such a galvanizing threat. It does, however, present a unique opportunity for a great power, the United States, and two emergent great powers, India and China, to press for a rapid end to the junta’s rule.

Myanmar is a buffer state between India and China; both have major economic interests there and fear turmoil. India has already called for “political reform.”

I don’t think Olympic boycotts work; nor do I think a breakdown in Chinese-American relations serves anyone. But fierce criticism by Mia Farrow of Chinese complicity in Darfur atrocities through support for Sudan produced modest movement. The nine months to the Olympics present a unique opportunity to shame China into shepherding Burmese reform, beginning with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

It’s time to call “harmony” to task. Monk-murder in a client state is no advertisement for China rising. India and China need political ideas to frame the economic rise of Asia: the sanctity of monk power is not a bad place to start.

Chinese Regime Fundamentally Opposed to Rule of Law, Says Canadian Lawyer

'The law only means what the communist government says it means on any particular day.'

The Epoch Times

Oct 09, 2007

Clive M. Ansley, an international human rights attorney and a professor of Chinese law. (Lori Har-El/The Epoch Times)

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- Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting Thursday, February 01, 2007

Want to know how the Chinese legal system works? Ask an expert.

The first foreign lawyer to establish a legal practice in China, Clive Ansley is a foremost authority on the Chinese legal system. As a professor of Chinese law both in Canada and China, and with more than 40 years experience in Sino-Canadian relationships, he has been called to testify on the Chinese legal system by various countries including Canada, the United States, and several European nations.

An outspoken critic of human rights violations in China, Ansley is the China country monitor for Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada. Following allegations that China is harvesting organs from living prisoners of conscience—Falun Gong practitioners in particular— Ansley joined the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) as co-chair of the organization's U.S.- Canada Chapter.

In an interview with The Epoch Times' Cathy Liu, Ansley comments on the Chinese legal system, the allegations of illicit organ harvesting , and the Global Human Rights Torch Relay, launched by CIPFG in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. CIPFG's goal is to pressure China to end its human rights abuses, especially the persecution of Falun Gong.

Epoch Times: The International Olympic Committee awarded Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games in 2001 with the expectation that the Chinese Communist Party would improve its human rights record. Has kept its promise?

Clive Ansley: It is blatantly obvious that not only have they not kept any promise to improve the situation, but that the human rights abuses are worse today than they have even been in the past. My position is that you haven't even spoken to the issue of human rights if people do not have freedom of speech. If you do not have freedom of speech, if you cannot oppose the government of the day, if you don't have freedom of assembly, if you don't have freedom of religion, then you don't really have any fundamental human rights.

My point in talking about the organ trade is that if you have something that is as blatantly bestial and uncivilized as this, how can you even discuss the improvement in human rights? David Matas and David Kilgour in their report said this is "a new kind of evil." Even the Nazis in Germany didn't come up with this.

ET: Do you think there is any way to improve human rights under communism?

CA: As long as this government's in power, you're never going to have any real respect for fundamental human rights. That is an important thing to recognize. However, by embarrassing them, by maybe threatening to take away the Olympics, by trade measures in the future, basically by pressure we may force them to at least abandon the most vicious, the most diabolical, the most bestial of their practices, such as this killing of innocent human beings in order to steal their organs. If we expose it and we horrify enough people with our conscious around the world, we may be able to put enough pressure on the Chinese government so they say "we can't do that any more."

It's not that they're going to go out and improve human rights generally, this government is opposed to due process, fundamentally opposed the rule of law, fundamentally opposed to implementing the rule of law, or to implementing any system which really recognizes any human rights. Just as the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany, for example, we were not ever going to turn Hitler into a democrat, we were not ever going to turn Adolph Hitler into a crusader for human rights. But had we done the right and moral thing and had we known about what was happening at the time, we may well had been able to stop Adolph Hitler from killing six million Jews.

ET: When people are more fully aware of what is happening in China, they are going to have to make a difficult decision between conscience and money.

CA: I'm optimistic, I tend to think the basic nature of man is good, and to do the right thing. The issue today is information; most ordinary people in the West don't have the information. Ordinary Canadians never heard about these kinds of things, they have a very favourable image of the Beijing government, because the Liberal government, the biggest corporations in Canada, and the mainstream media all have a wonderful, glorified image of Beijing, of China, and the tremendous progress made on every front. They even have the impression that human rights is being improved. I don't think it's true that ordinary people have a hard time choosing between conscience and money. They've never had the choice, they've never received the information.

ET: One of the requests put forward by CFPIG is to release the lawyers who have defended Falun Gong. If a lawyer is prosecuted for choosing his own client, if a lawyer cannot make the decision of who to represent, what kind legal system is it?

CA: It's not a legal system at all. The law only means what the communist government says it means on any particular day. When we look now at the so-called judicial system, and lawyers defending clients of their choice, or being able to take on a case when a client chooses them, there is absolutely no improvement. I'm the country monitor for China for Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, and we figure there's somewhere between 100 and 200 Chinese lawyers in jail today, just for speaking out against the government or taking on unpopular causes.

ET: What is the significance of boycotting the 2008 Olympics 2008?

CA: In general, the key thing is information. People around the world have to know, they have to have information and understand it before they can act on it. Anything that can expose what Beijing has been doing is worthwhile pursuing. On the issue of the Olympics itself, there is something particularly shameful and disgusting about the participation of the International Olympic Committee in all of this.

The parallels with Nazi Germany in 1936 are quite eerie. In 1936, the Nazis were without a doubt the worst violators of human rights upon the planet. So the International Olympics Committee awarded them the games, in Berlin, in 1936. Later people said, well, we didn't really know. We knew he said a lot of bad things about the Jews, we know he was suppressing free speech in Germany, but we had no idea he was going to put all these Jews in ovens and in crematoriums and so forth.

Now the knowledge is out there, not everybody knows yet, and we have to keep working on spreading it. But basically the outside world cannot say today about Beijing that when we gave them the Olympics, we didn't know what they were doing, we didn't know what was going on, we didn't know about the organ theft. The information is out there, I think the only moral thing to do, on the part of the Olympic Committee, even at this late stage would be to move the Olympics.

ET: Tell us more about the Global Human Rights Torch Relay.

The Human Rights Torch Relay is the protest against the "Bloody Harvest Olympics," which is the name now being attributed to the games in Beijing in 2008. Having that parallel is a great way to get people to start comparing these two things that should not be together. We should not have the regular Olympics together with the slaughter of human beings for the theft of their organs.

Bloody Harvest is the title of a report by human rights lawyer David Matas and former Parliamentarian David Kilgour, both Canadians, on the illicit organ trade in China.

China labels Dalai Lama a supporter of "cults"

This is another example of how the Communist regime undermines freedom of religion while they are boosting in Xinhua that they are very supportive of religion so that they can fool the people of the world ahead of the Olympics. Renovating a few temples, putting bibles in chic hotels and publishing books on Confucianism only serves to mask the sad reality.

Canada.com: Tuesday, October 09, 2007

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, in its latest tirade against Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, on Tuesday accused the exiled Nobel peace prize laureate of supporting "evil cults" like Falun Gong and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo.

China has ruled the mountainous Himalayan region of Tibet with an iron fist since Chinese troops marched in there in 1950.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India after a failed uprising against communist rule in 1959 and is branded by China as a "separatist." He says he only wants greater autonomy for the region.

View Larger Image

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama salutes the crowd after his speech at the open-air museum Hessenpark in Neu-Anspach some 30 kilometres north of Frankfurt September 22, 2007. China, in its latest tirade against the Dalai Lama, on Tuesday accused the exiled Nobel peace prize laureate of supporting "evil cults" like Falun Gong and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo. REUTERS/Alex Grimm

In a lengthy signed commentary in English carried by the official Xinhua news agency, the piece said the Dalai Lama "not only has no hatred toward evil cults but instead shows a great deal of compassion for them."

The Dalai Lama supported Shoko Asahara and his Aum Shinrikyo cult, who carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 which killed 12 and made thousands sick, Xinhua said, in a piece signed by somebody calling themselves Shi Shan.

"It was the support and connivance of the 14th Dalai Lama who took the foe for his friend that made Asahara feel secure in the knowledge that he had strong backing," Xinhua said, in typically strong language.

"It is the 14th Dalai Lama's own deeds that have step by step betrayed his real intentions and political ambitions put under the guise of Buddhism and peace," it added.

The Dalai Lama also provided succor to the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by China as an "evil cult," and its leader Li Hongzhi, Xinhua said.

"... Even such an evil cult leader who is denounced by many people and had to flee abroad to escape the punishment of laws secured compassion and admiration from the 14th Dalai Lama," it added.

Critics have accused China of repressing religious freedom in Tibet and other parts of the country, but Beijing counters by saying it guarantees religious freedom and invests large amounts of money every year to modernize the underdeveloped Tibetan region.

Last month, China chided German Chancellor Angela Merkel for hosting the Dalai Lama and demanded Berlin take action to repair damage to bilateral ties.

Exiled Chinese Lawyer: Even Human Rights Lawyers Have No Human Rights in China

Lawyer calls Gao Zhisheng "a hero in China and in the world" and supports Olympic boycott

The Epoch Times

Oct 09, 2007

Guo Guoting, renowned Chinese human rights lawyer. (The Epoch Times)

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As the Chinese communist regime prepares for the upcoming CCP Party Congress in Beijing, The Epoch Times interviewed Chinese lawyer Guo Guoting, who currently resides in Canada, on the communist regime's human rights abuses and the recent re-arrest of prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng.

ET: Lawyer Gao Zhisheng has been called the "conscience of China" and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. How did he become so famous?

Guo: He became famous starting from the end of 2004 because he wrote three letters. First he wrote to China's National Peoples' Congress . In this letter, he, as a human rights lawyer, revealed the terrible, horrible persecution of Falun Gong in China. He was put under surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but his courage and persistence against the communist regime is unbelievable. He went on to write a second and third letter, based on his investigation of about 15 days.

This was the first time in China a lawyer revealed such torture of Falun Gong practitioners. This kind of evidence is believable because before that, although Falun Gong practitioners had already made a lot of claims, they themselves did so, not a third-party or an independent lawyer. In this way the three letters made Gao well known in China and even in the world.

After the three letters, Mr. Gao continued to openly fight for freedom in China. He never surrendered, and persisted for about one year until he was arrested in August 2006. This also made him famous, because nobody will do that in China. Everyone, almost every intelligent writer or scholar, knows the situation in China, but they don't want to do so themselves, yet Mr. Gao stood up and persisted, so this is really respected by the people.

Another important reason that made him famous is the Internet—because the Chinese communist regime cannot control the Internet totally. But recently when I checked with several university students who are abroad to study for higher degrees, when I asked whether they know about Gao, Guo Feixiong, or some other Chinese lawyers, they do not know. It is very strange.

ET: What role will Mr. Gao have in the future of China?

Guo: I believe he will become a very famous politician in China, even compete in future to be the elected president. He has become so famous because he is a lawyer who knows Chinese law and has a lot of experience in law practice. He also knows China's political system, legal system, and the evils of the CCP. These have made him a hero in China and in the world.

ET: You mentioned about the Internet, but there are still students unaware of the situation of Gao and other lawyers. Why is that?

Guo: They are law students and don't know, so I am surprised. This means that ordinary students cannot see this information on the Internet—because Google, Yahoo, and other websites are all controlled by the government of China. Only those who know the software that can break the firewall can see. Only those who have a strong idea of wanting to fight for freedom, who care about their political freedom, ideas, and expression, they will be concerned. Most of the people in China nowadays are not concerned and just think of their own benefits and interests.

China's education system is also controlled by the CCP. Professors have become very cowardly, with no courage at all, so they do not care and discuss this issue. The majority of Chinese professors have become slaves, I think. They have no free ideas and do not express their free thought.

ET: Then what is the status of the law profession in China? There is an All China Lawyers Association (ACLA) that represents lawyers in China. Is Gao different from other lawyers?

Guo: Gao's personality makes him very special. The All China Lawyers Association actually is a type of sub-governmental organization. It is not so-called "civil society" and is totally different from Western countries' lawyers' associations. It is not independent at all, but totally controlled by the CCP, so it has become a tool of the CCP. Its lawyers dare not speak out what they are thinking. They are not elected by the lawyers. The leaders of the association are mostly appointed by the CCP. Only recently has this changed. There are so-called "elections," but fundamentally there is no change at all.

In China so many human rights lawyers were persecuted by the CCP. ACLA just keeps silent. There are at least 12 human rights lawyers persecuted by the Chinese government. They openly defend Falun Gong, but the lawyers association never supports them.

ET: China is signatory to a number of UN conventions, and is preparing to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, such as by changing some of its laws to comply with international standards. Can you please comment on this?

Guo: This question is the subject I'm studying. Actually when the Chinese government amends laws to meet the so-called "international standards," it does not really want to do so at all. In this covenant the basic principle is human dignity, fundamental freedoms, and human rights. But the CCP first took away the Chinese people's human rights, then their fundamental freedoms, then their human dignity. Nowadays the CCP will do everything to cheat and lie internationally, to fool people in the world. Western countries do not understand the Chinese government or the CCP. They are evil beyond imagination, beyond ordinary people's imagination. They are liars, and not honest at all.

What they do [in amending the laws], even they themselves do not believe in it. The CCP has never respected human rights or the rule of law. There is no rule of law at all, because in China there is no independent media, independent legal system or judicial system, and no independent court. The CCP controls all the judges, prosecutors, and public security officers. All are CCP members. In this way, there is no such thing as so-called "civil rights" or "political rights."

Although the Chinese Constitution speaks of these rights, and says that the Chinese people enjoy freedom of thought and expression, none of these articles in the Constitution are executed in the real world. This is because if China really were to have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or freedom to form a union, then the communist regime would be broken immediately. Maybe in two or three months it would totally lose power. This is why the CCP will never give up control.

One thing is very simple: In China, even human rights lawyers have no human rights, how can ordinary people have so–called "human rights"?

So all they are doing is just to fool the people in the world, fool other countries. In my opinion, as long as the CCP survives, it will be absolutely impossible for China to go to democracy or rule of law, never.

ET: Mr. Gao called for boycott of the Olympic Games.

Guo: This problem is a little complicated, because as you see, ordinary Chinese, really many Chinese people, welcome the Olympic Games in China. For the ordinary citizens, especially those whose rights or properties are not touched by the CCP, they don't care about the victims who suffer. They themselves do not suffer; they are not victims. They enjoy the system, so they welcome the Olympic Games.

But for so many, for the huge number of human rights cases, the poor people, the citizens evicted from their homes, the thousands working in the city with very low income and no guarantees at all, the many Falun Gong practitioners persecuted by the CCP, and those in the so-called "family church" who are being persecuted, I don't think they welcome the Olympic Games. They personally feel great fear, how can they want the Games?

I understand why Mr. Gao is against China holding the Olympic Games, because if the CCP succeeds as host of the Games, this will support the Chinese government and the CCP and let them prove that their government is legal. Actually, the Chinese government is illegal, because it was never elected by the people of China. In over 55 years, there has never been any election in China. The CCP stole power and rules China based on violence, the police and army, and also based on cheating and control of the media. The CCP wants to prove it is a legal government.

As the CCP spends huge amounts of money to prepare for the Games, only those in high power and enjoy a special privileged life, this small number of CCP officials can gain a lot of money upon injustice.

I personally am also against China in this situation to hold the so-called Olympic Games. We only welcome the Olympic Games to be held in China when China becomes a free country.

Award-winning Chinese human rights lawyer Guo Guoting practised law for over 20 years in Shanghai. In 2003 Guo began a human rights and civil rights law practice. For his defence of journalists, cyber-dissidents, fellow civil rights lawyers, and in particular Falun Gong practitioners, Chinese communist authorities revoked his license to practise in early 2005 and placed him under house arrest and criminal investigation. Due to international appeal efforts, Guo was released and safely arrived in Canada in May 2005. He now lives in Victoria, B.C.

HRW: China: Issue Moratorium on Executions Before Olympics

Human Rights Watch: Secrecy, Unfair Trials, Overbroad Laws Still the Rule Despite Reform

(New York, October 8, 2007) – China should impose a moratorium on all executions as a goodwill gesture before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch issued its call for a moratorium in advance of the World Day against the Death Penalty on October 10. China is estimated to execute more people than the rest of the world combined.
" As the world focuses on China’s poor human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics, the Chinese government could avoid further embarrassment by making a bold step to address its position as the world’s leading executioner of its own citizens. "
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch said that during the moratorium the Chinese government should sharply reduce the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty, make public the number of people executed and awaiting execution, and institute changes in trial and appeal procedures to ensure that they meet at least international minimum standards of fairness in all cases where capital punishment is demanded by prosecutors.

“As the world focuses on China’s poor human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics, the Chinese government could avoid further embarrassment by making a bold step to address its position as the world’s leading executioner of its own citizens,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The Chinese government classifies as “state secrets” all statistics regarding capital punishment. Credible estimates suggest approximately 7,500 executions per year. State media claim that the number of people executed decreased in 2007 after the adoption of a system of mandatory vetting by the Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest judicial institution, took effect on January 1, 2007. The government also cites two additional regulations aimed at “killing fewer, killing more cautiously,” which were promulgated on February 27 and March 9, respectively. However, while this new system provides an additional centralized administrative review, it does not address serious systemic weaknesses in the trial process.

“The reported decrease in the number of executions is welcome, but that is no substitute for full transparency, fair trials, adequate defense counsel, and judicial independence,” said Adams. “Because of structural deficiencies in the conduct of trials in China, no one executed in China today receives a fair trial in line with international standards.”

The Chinese criminal justice system recognizes neither the presumption of innocence nor the right to remain silent, and places sharp limits on defense counsel and the rights of the accused. Torture to obtain confessions remains prevalent. A spate of wrongful convictions have emerged in recent years, with the deputy procurator-general, Wang Zhenchuan, estimating in 2006 that there are at least 30 cases every year of wrongful convictions attributable to confessions extracted through torture and that “nearly every wrongful verdict in recent years relates to illegal interrogation.”

Chinese scholars have also expressed doubts that the newly introduced regulations can ensure justice in cases that have political implications. In particular, they point to the extreme speed with which the Supreme People’s Court approved the execution of two former senior officials whose cases had national repercussions. In the case of Guo Yanyu, the former head of China’s food and drug agency, who was charged with corruption, the Supreme Court completed its review in 13 working days, while it took just 10 working days for Duan Yihe, a member of the Chinese People’s Congress from Jinan, Shandong Province, who was convicted of murdering his mistress in a car explosion.

The desire to be seen as being tough on corruption and public order and to “appease public indignation” is a repeated justification advanced by the Chinese government to retain capital punishment.

Human Rights Watch said it was particularly concerned about official announcements by top security officials that the authorities would carry out anti-crime campaigns in the run-up of the 2008 Summer Olympics. These campaigns are often directly linked with an increase in death penalty sentences and executions.

In July, China’s top law and order official, Luo Gan, announced that the authorities would “crack down severely on all kinds of hostile forces and troublemakers” bent on disturbing a “peaceful Olympics,” and “severely punish all kinds of crimes.”

“The International Olympics Committee should publicly press China for a moratorium on all executions during the Games,” said Adams. “This would be in line with the Olympic Charter, which aims to promote through sport ‘a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.’”

The death penalty is currently mandated for no fewer than 68 crimes, including embezzlement and corruption. Chinese legal experts have long advocated that the most effective way of limiting the number of executions would be to limit the death penalty to violent crimes. But the government has shied away from such reform, because it does not want to appear as if it is unwilling to punish severely corrupt cadres and party officials, which is a growing cause of social discontent in China.

Although the death penalty has not been banned categorically in international law, the strong trend is toward its eventual abolition. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as inherently cruel, irreversible, and usually discriminatory in application, and believes it violates the right to life and fundamental dignity that all human beings possess.

Related article - China still not remedying rights abuses in lead-up to 2008 Olympics: Amnesty

Group says China's float is thorn of Rose Parade

From news service reports - October 8, 2007

The ugly world of political suppression and international politics might rain on Pasadena's famous parade, as human rights groups are planning to protest the inclusion of a float from China in the Rose Parade, it was reported Saturday.

A news conference is planned for Monday outside Tournament of Roses headquarters to protest the float advertising the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.

Human rights activists say the government of China should not be treated as a welcome guest on Colorado Boulevard at the same time it is throwing political dissidents in jail. "We cannot avoid human rights issues," said John Li, president of a Falun Gong club at Pasadena's Caltech campus.

Li told The Los Angeles Times that members of his spiritual group will protest during the parade, and will ask other human rights group members to join them.

The political aspect of the China float is putting Pasadena's city council in the spotlight. The city's Human Relations Commission has asked the council to look into human rights violation in China, and Falun Gong members went to commission meetings to describe their imprisonment and torture in Chinese prisons.

The commission has asked the City Council to formally look into the issue, and suggested that the Dalai Lama, a Tibetan spiritual leader, be grand marshal of next year's parade.

Pasadena's city council has been handed the hot potato issue, and at least one council member said the float should be viewed as representing the Beijing Olympic games, not the Chinese political situation.

Pasadena's city council has been handed the hot potato issue, and at least one council member said the float should be viewed as representing the Beijing Olympic games, not the Chinesepolitical situation.

China gears up for ruling party's closed-door power play

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING — China is rounding up activists and cracking down on online dissent ahead of a critical Communist Party gathering intended to identify the next generation of leaders and tackle key issues such as corruption.

The party congress, held every five years, starts next Monday in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. It offers President Hu Jintao and other leaders a chance to reshuffle membership on the party's Politburo Standing Committee, China's most powerful political body.

The event also gives Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao an opportunity to establish their credentials as corruption fighters and lay out their political agenda, which includes spreading prosperity more evenly throughout society.

In recent weeks, police have swept Beijing's streets of potential troublemakers and tightened their grip on cyberspace.

China's leaders "don't want any unharmonious incidents ahead of the congress," said Peking University law professor He Weifang, a proponent of political reform. The campaign has included:

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Beijing | Chinese | Taiwan | Communist Party | Tiananmen Square | Great Hall | Traffic Safety

•Roundups of aggrieved citizens. Police have increased patrols in the capital's southern Fengtai district, where a slum that draws rural Chinese who come to Beijing to plead for help from the central government. The city has threatened to demolish the area, known as Petitioners' Village.

"I don't know where I can move to," said Han Hongbu, 55, a farmer from eastern Shandong province who said he is in Beijing to protest the seizure of farmland by local officials he said are corrupt.

Han and other petitioners said some of those detained in recent days have been sent to psychiatric centers in the suburbs.

"There is a concerted effort to clean up the streets, which you can see from police statements" in the Chinese media, said Mark Allison, researcher for Amnesty International in Hong Kong. "What is extremely worrying is that there is unofficial detention of people that … violates Chinese law and international principles governing detention."

•Arrests of human rights activists and lawyers. Amnesty International said activists, including Li Heping, a prominent lawyer known for his defense of Christian activists, have been detained and tortured.

Li said last week that he was recently abducted and beaten by unidentified men who used electric batons on him.

An activists' network, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said in a Sept. 21 report that the government is using secret detention facilities — "black jails" — to house protesters and others ahead of the party congress and next summer's Olympic Games in Beijing.

"The crackdown flies in the face of official promises to improve human rights in the run-up to the Olympics," Amnesty International said.

•Raids on Internet data centers and websites. Chinese authorities in August pulled the plug on several data centers housing computer servers that host thousands of websites.

The raids were an escalation of previous efforts to police the Internet by attacking or bringing down individual sites. "Some of our 4,000 servers were shut down for the first two weeks of September," said Tang Haobai, who works in the business department of Shanghai's Waigaoqiao Internet data center.

Tang said government officials are "checking for illegal information — mostly pornography, but some websites also had political content" on blogs, chat rooms and other online forums.

Tang said servers at his center are running again but that the message from authorities is clear. "We need to manage our clients more carefully," he said.

•A propaganda campaign. The Communist Party, plagued by corruption scandals, is trying to reclaim the high ground by promoting 53 "moral models" — squeaky-clean individuals who have made sacrifices for the country.

The party also is trying to clean up the state-controlled media, banning sexually daring ads for push-up bras and sex toys. The party says it is banning "vulgar" material and "sexually provocative sounds" from TV shows; and American Idol-style talent shows have been barred from prime time. This month, Hollywood movies are being pulled from movie theaters in favor of patriotic Chinese films.

The congress will cap a 70-day campaign announced by police to improve the "tranquility" to Beijing. Traffic safety is the major target, and potential dissidents are also being targeted.

"Traffic management is getting stricter and stricter ahead of the congress," taxi driver Liu Chunfa said. "I have attended several meetings with police lecturers," he added. "They told us if we report suspicious people, like believers in (the outlawed spiritual group) Falun Gong, we could get a 2,000-yuan ($250) reward."

The closed-door party get-together no longer rivets the nation as it did under Mao Zedong. It remains important, though.

The Communist Party has "moved from being Big Brother to big bother, but this congress is an opportunity to remind people: 'We are still a big deal,' " said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of Chinese affairs. The state and party "see the congress as an opportunity to make people stand up straight and pay attention, which is difficult in this hypereconomic and apolitical society."

The congress also will be filled with warnings for Taiwan, where President Chen Shui-bian is trying to distance the island from mainland China through a proposed referendum. It calls for the island to drop the name Republic of China and apply for United Nations membership as Taiwan.

The party has called for China to "oppose and repulse separatist activities for 'Taiwan independence,' " China's official Xinhua news agency reported.