Friday, May 30, 2008

Beijing athletes urged to speak out on human rights

Paul Kelso, The Guardian,

UK Guardian: Athletes in the Beijing Olympics should use the platform they provide to speak out against China's continued human rights abuses, according to John Amaechi, an ambassador for London's successful 2012 bid who today takes on a similar role with Amnesty International.

Amaechi, who was raised in Stockport but made his name at the pinnacle of American sport in the National Basketball Association, will travel to Beijing as Amnesty's official sporting ambassador.

He will attempt to highlight what Amnesty claims is China's failure to deliver on the human rights reforms promised when bidding for the games, and will press athletes to do likewise. Amaechi is also scheduled to provide commentary for the BBC while in Beijing, a platform that may allow him to speak out.

Speaking to the Guardian, Amaechi said that athletes with any doubts about the Chinese regime had a duty as Olympians to raise their concerns publicly.

"I would encourage athletes not to distract themselves by burying themselves in the nuance and facts and figures and legislation of China, but simply to acknowledge that being an ambassador for human rights in China is the most Olympian thing to do. Anything less than that is not being a true Olympian, no matter the colour of the medal that you hold up," he said.

The International Olympic Committee is acutely concerned about the prospect of athletes criticising China and will remind all teams of their responsibilities under the Olympic charter, which outlaws "propaganda". Earlier this year the British Olympic Association was forced to abandon a clause in its athletes contract that would have prevented competitors from speaking about political issues.

Amaechi, who last year became the first NBA star to come out as gay, contends that the Olympic charter compels athletes to take a moral stance. "I've read the Olympic charter and when you read it, it is quite clear that it expects from athletes something more than being hugely talented beasts of burden," he said.

"It expects that sport be more than entertainment of the masses. It demands that they are intended to be a tool for wholesale change in the lives of individuals and groups." He called on the IOC to do more to pressure China into reform. "If you have the power to make the world better then that's something you should do, particularly when it is directly in line with your charter. To ignore those ideals so as not to embarrass a host compromises the movement."

Amaechi's appointment as a sporting ambassador is a coup for Amnesty, which maintains that China has failed to deliver promised reforms to the use of the death penalty, the justice system, media freedoms and the right of ordinary Chinese to express dissent.

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, said: "Amnesty International is delighted John Amaechi has chosen to work with us. We hope John's involvement will help encourage fellow sportsmen, the Olympic authorities and the thousands of press due to descend on the games to take a closer look at the appalling human rights record of the Chinese authorities. It is only through public scrutiny that we can hope to achieve a lasting legacy of human rights for the people of China."

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Former Chinese Diplomat: Flushing Incidents One of CCP's Biggest Diplomatic Scandals

By Ye Peiqing
Sound of Hope via Epoch Times
May 30, 2008

Chen Yonglin, who defected from his position as first secretary at the Chinese Consulate-General in Sydney in late May 2005, calls the Flushing incidents "one of the CCP's biggest diplomatic scandals since its establishment as a regime." (The Epoch Times)


The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) recently publicized a recorded conversation with Peng Keyu, the New York Chinese Consulate General, who admitted to organizing spies to attack a Quit the CCP rally in Flushing on May 17. On May 26, Sound of Hope interviewed the former Chinese diplomat in Sydney, Chen Yonglin, regarding the incident.

Chen explained that Peng Keyu's interfering with the internal affairs of the United States was a serious violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Regulations. The former diplomat stated that the United States must immediately warn the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and put an end to its manipulation so as to protect national interests and sovereignty.

Chen said, "Peng Keyu orchestrating a mass group of Chinese people to interfere with Falun Gong is in actuality the CCP slapping its own face. I think that this has been one of the CCP's biggest diplomatic scandals since its establishment as a regime."

After the mob attacks in Flushing, Chen kept a watch on CCTV, the regime's official media, and found groundless accusations against Falun Gong. The propaganda claimed that the Quit the CPP rally was a movement to hinder donations to the Sichuan earthquake.

"The content of the video recordings and [CCTV's] news are contradictory. The news was fabricated and a distortion of the truth. What I understand is that Falun Gong was holding a Quit the CCP event while pro-communist Chinese went to disrupt it. When Falun Gong was holding the event, they held a three minute silent tribute to those who died in the earthquake," said Chen.

"Since the CCP has established a regime in each global organization, the consulates control the local Chinese to split the Chinese community, and they never cease to incite hatred. The CCP's strategy is to use the Chinese people to infiltrate mainstream society in order to maintain its control. This way, it can cope with opposition to the CCP's power while deceiving the international society and continuing its rule. We, people in China, all know this is called the 'united front.'"

Chen expressed that the CCP's ability to control overseas Chinese and international students is evident of how the Olympic torch relay was transmitted. The CCP legations and consulates, such as Peng, violated the 1963 Vienna Convention by instigating nationalism overseas for its own political interests.

Chen explained, "Under the 55th stipulation of the Vienna Convention, the consular officials are not to interfere with the internal affairs of another country. Peng Keyu's actions have interfered with the internal affairs of the United States. I think that the U.S. government should immediately warn the CCP, announce that Peng is not welcomed, or even change the consulate general in New York so as to end the CCP's underhanded manipulations as soon as possible. Otherwise, U.S. society's law and order will be threatened. There may be serious damage to the country's interests and sovereignty. Most essentially, it will harm America's freedom, democracy and the foundational value of human rights, being an infinite disaster to the American democratic society."

Click here to read the original article in Chinese

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Matas: Calling China to account

Those who argue that Beijing is making great strides in respecting human rights and international law had better think again

Special to Globe and Mail Update

For tyrannies, there is a huge gap between word and deed. Repression at home goes hand in hand with hypocrisy abroad. The question then becomes, who will notice? Who is prepared to tell the tyrant that he is wearing no clothes?

When it comes to China, the answer is: not Peter Harder. In an essay last Saturday in The Globe and Mail advocating that the government of Canada provide "public expressions of support and confidence" in China, the former deputy minister of foreign affairs wrote: "In spite of the current controversies about China, its government has a mostly commendable record of responsible international behaviour."

Yet:

China has been financing the Sudanese genocide in Darfur, leading Mia Farrow to call the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games the genocide Olympics. Sudan uses the massive revenue from sale of oil to China to purchase instruments of destruction from China.

A Chinese arms shipment to the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe last month was thwarted only because South African dock workers refused to unload the arms.

China is the primary arms supplier of the Burmese military regime.

Immediately before the genocide in Rwanda in 1993, China sold and exported to Rwanda three quarters of a million dollars worth of machetes, one for every third male.

But Mr. Harder also wrote: "Membership in the World Trade Organization means that China adheres to international commercial values and standards, and to the rule of law."

Yet:

An investigation by Minister of State David Kilgour and myself led us to conclude, to our horror, that between 2001 and 2006 China killed Falun Gong practitioners in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to foreign transplant tourists. Falun Gong is an exercise regime with a spiritual foundation based on ancient Chinese traditions banned in 1999.

Christians who are not part of organizations controlled by the Government are harassed and detained.

China seized Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil from Uzbekistan in March, 2006 and threw him into a jail where he remains to this day as part of its campaign of repression against Uighurs, an ethnic group in the Chinese northwest.

Chinese paramilitary police, in March, beat and killed Buddhist monks peacefully protesting repression in Tibet.

The U.S. State Department, in March, reported that "atrocious" torture is widespread throughout China.

China routinely sends back refugees to North Korea who face arrest, torture or death upon return.

China has the death penalty for almost 70 crimes, many of them minor offences. Though a January 2007 change in procedure has led to a drop in executions, China still executes more offenders by far than any other country.

China maintains a system of labour camps where people are detained without trial and forced into slave labour. The Laogai Research Foundation estimates the number of detainees to be at least two million.

Freedom House reports that China imprisons more journalists than any other country. As well, it blocks access to web sites that contradict Chinese propaganda.

Human Rights Watch reports that human rights lawyers face severe abuses ranging from harassment to disbarment and physical assault. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng wrote: "You cannot be a rights lawyer in this country without becoming a rights case yourself." Gao himself has been beaten, tortured and disappeared.

Communist China has killed more innocents than Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia combined. There is no accountability today for these crimes. The official policy of China remains to deny the existence of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989.

The courts in China are subject to the direction of the Communist Party. According to Politburo member Luo Gan, in a February 2007 speech: "Enemy forces are seeking to use China's legal system to Westernize and divide the country, and the Communist Party must fend them off by maintaining its dominance over lawyers, judges and prosecutors."

Amnesty International reported last month an increasing wave of repression because of the upcoming Olympics, in an apparent attempt to portray a stable image to the world.

This is not the rule of law. Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization does not mean that China now lives by the rule of law, only that Chinese hypocrisy has become more blatant.

David Matas is a Winnipeg-based international human rights lawyer.

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

China: Rights Lawyers Face Disbarment Threats

Intimidation Overshadows Reforms to Law on Lawyers

Human Rights Watch - (New York, May 30, 2008) – Two prominent Chinese lawyers who offered to represent Tibetans face the loss of their professional licenses as part of a recent drive to threaten lawyers and law firms, Human Rights Watch said today. The government’s unprecedented efforts to intimidate firms into refusing politically sensitive cases reflects the vulnerability of the legal profession, and overshadows the June 1, 2008, enactment of revisions to the Law on Lawyers, which is supposed to establish new procedural protections for lawyers.

The Beijing Judicial Bureau has to date refused to renew the professional licenses of Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong, two lawyers with distinguished records of defending civil and human rights cases. The deadline for renewal is May 31. The move followed a weeks-long delay by the bureau to complete the annual registration of more than a dozen law firms, many of which employ lawyers who have been involved in what the government deems to be “sensitive cases.” Some lawyers have privately denounced the bureau’s actions as “large-scale blackmail,” designed to deter law firms from getting involved in cases that may be embarrassing to the government.

“Beijing is trying to intimidate the legal profession by suspending these two lawyers and threatening not to renew many licenses,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The goals are to deter lawyers from representing human rights cases, and to deter firms from employing lawyers who want those cases.”

In early April, following the government’s announcement that several hundred Tibetans had been taken into custody for their role in the March protests in Lhasa, a group of 18 prominent civil rights lawyers issued an open letter offering to provide legal assistance to the detainees. “As professional lawyers, we hope that the relevant authorities will handle Tibetan detainees strictly in accordance with the constitution, the laws and due process for criminal defendants,” the letter said. “We hope that they will prevent coerced confessions, respect judicial independence and show respect for the law.”

The Ministry of Justice, which has authority over lawyers and bar associations and controls their professional licenses through a system of annual renewal, immediately responded by threatening the letter’s signatories and their respective law firms with disciplinary sanctions and holding up the renewal of their professional licenses. Beijing judicial authorities summoned individual lawyers and heads of law firms, told them the Tibetan protesters were not “ordinary cases but sensitive cases,” and asked law firms to dissociate themselves from the individual signatories or to terminate their employment.

Several law firms where notified in writing by the judicial authorities why their registration was being delayed: “The lawyers from your law firm are involved in representing some sensitive cases, therefore, the annual inspection and registration of your firms will be temporarily postponed,” the notification said. A number of lawyers were also warned by national security personnel against accepting retainers from relatives of Tibetan defendants. The Beijing Bar Association, which like other Chinese bar associations remains controlled by the local judicial authorities, also warned heads of law firms of possible disciplinary sanctions. The head of the Beijing Bar also accused the lawyers of having provided support to the “Dalai Lama clique.”

In a second open letter published on May 24, a week before the registration deadline, the signatories of the original appeal explained the motives behind their offer to defend Tibetans, and rejected the view that equated their offer of legal services with a proof of support for Tibetan separatism ideas (which constitutes a state security crime under Chinese law).

“To provide legal defense to criminal suspects and defendants is the function of a lawyer. It is an important component of the rule of law, and to defend them is not equivalent to agreeing to their position or actions,” the signatories wrote. “We could not imagine that issuing this appeal would result in such tremendous pressure and impact the yearly renewal of professional licenses.”

The authors also stressed that deeming cases “politically sensitive” and therefore denying due process conflicts with the rule of law: “…progress [towards the rule of law] lies precisely in these so-called politically sensitive cases. The more openly they are handled, the most visible the progress. As the world has its eyes on China, hastily trying defendants without allowing them their choice of counsel will only damage the image of legalism in China,” they wrote.

In late April, under instructions by the party secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region to proceed to “quick prosecutions and sentencing,” a court in Lhasa had summarily sentenced the only group of Tibetan defendants known to have been prosecuted so far. The defendants had been tried covertly in the preceding weeks without the benefits of choosing their legal counsel.

In addition, the June 1 revisions of the Law on Lawyers are being gutted before they are promulgated, leaving the legal profession as vulnerable as ever. The revisions, adopted in October 2007, were initially designed to address the problem of widespread difficulties met by lawyers when they try to exercise key procedural rights such as meeting their clients in custody, gaining access to evidence and court documents, or independently collecting material and testimonies for the defense.

But the revisions fall far short of the expectations of the legal profession, and of the minimum standards for justice prescribed under international law, such as the UN’s Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which China has endorsed. Bar associations still have virtually no autonomy from the Ministry of Justice. A new clause that lawyers’ court statements not “endanger state security” limits their immunity. And article 306 of the Criminal Law, which is frequently used to prosecute lawyers in sensitive cases for perjury if their clients or witnesses retract or alter statements collected by the police or the prosecution, remains unchanged.

Chinese lawyers are also thwarted by law enforcement and judicial institutions that deny the lawyers’ rights. For example, the right to access clients in detention, which was supposed to have been significantly improved by removing a widely abused clause allowing the police or the prosecution to deny client-attorney meetings “if the case involves state secrets” has been effectively nullified by an announcement by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (the public prosecutor) that such restrictions will still be imposed, no matter what the revised Law on Lawyers stipulates. On April 30, Zhang Geng, deputy procurator general, told the state-run China Daily, “If the suspect’s request is refused, prosecutors must inform detention centers of the refusal, and the suspect will not be allowed to meet a lawyer.”

Human Rights Watch has extensively documented abuses of lawyers, widespread violations of the right of the defense in legal procedures, and a pattern of interference and political control, especially in cases viewed as politically sensitive by the authorities.

“Chinese lawyers should be able to work without fear of interference or retaliation,” said Richardson. “Until the legal profession is truly independent, legislative fixes will remain mostly cosmetic.”

Human Rights Watch said that no lawyer should be denied renewal of registration on the basis of the cases he has represented or is representing, and called on the Chinese government to use the occasion of the promulgation of the revised Law on Lawyers on June 1 to publicly guarantee that lawyers’ annual registration would not be subjected to political considerations or other arbitrary factors.

“Curbs on lawyers defeat the goal of justice, and only undermine legal reforms,” said Richardson. “This is a high price to pay for short-term political expediency.”



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Report, April 29, 2008

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Press Release, April 30, 2008

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Press Release, April 28, 2008

More on human rights in China and Tibet
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OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Video: China boycotts Sharon Stone films after star blames earthquake on bad karma for Tibet

Click here to watch Sharon Stone's cold blooded speech about China's earthquake. Very gutsy...but they were not impressed.
May 28, 2008
Sharon Stone

(Noah Berger/AP)

Stone’s comments have provoked outrage in China, where her films are being dropped

Film star Sharon Stone has set off a storm of fury across China after she suggested the deadly earthquake that killed as many as 80,000 people was bad karma for Beijing policy in Tibet.

Several Chinese cinemas have pledged not to screen her movies and the Internet has exploded in a stream of angry comments.

Ms Stone, speaking at the Cannes Film Festival last week, said: “I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else.”

Answering questions on the red carpet, she revived memories of the international outrage that followed a Chinese decision to send in troops and the paramilitary to restore order to swathes of Tibetan China after Tibetans rampaged through Lhasa on March 14, killing at least 18 people.

She said: “I’ve been concerned about how we should deal with the Olympics, because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma – when you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

The popular Beijing Times quoted Ng See-yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain, as saying that no film featuring Ms Stone would be shown from now on at any UME cinema in Hong Kong or in the mainland. Her most recent film, The Year of Getting to Know Us, and four other movies starring the actress, are scheduled by 2010.

The Chinese public relations company acting for cosmetic and couture house Christian Dior – which uses Ms Stone extensively in its advertisements – had distanced itself from her remarks, the newspaper said. Dior boutiques in major Beijing department stores had removed images of Ms Stone in advertisements by yesterday evening.

Thousands of Internet users have posted criticisms online. Many have urged a boycott of products with which Ms Stone is said to be associated – ranging from Guerlain to Ebel.

One young Chinese man, who gave his name only as Adam, posted a video on YouTube calling on the star to apologise. “I want her to say sorry. It’s not for me. It’s for the dead people.”

China says more than 67,000 people have been confirmed dead in the May 12 earthquake that devastated a mountainous corner of southwestern Sichuan province and more than 20,000 are still missing.

Some websites have even posted slideshows of Ms Stone, usually topless and sometimes in affectionate poses with a male friend, accompanied by captions describing the actress as “dissolute and shameless”. One read: “Shut up, shameless woman”.

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Chinese Communist Violence Spreads in Western Democracies

Experts discuss regime's possible motives
By Nan Xi
May 28, 2008

A protester holding a sign "Free All Mankind" in English and "Liberate Mankind" in Chinese, a popular slogan the Chinese Communist Party used during the Cultural Revolution to encourage people to "liberate" the world. (Yang Yang/The Epoch Times)



A forum about communist China's recent violent activities in foreign countries was held at American University, Washington, D.C., on May 21. Several days prior to the forum, Chinese thugs and overseas Chinese students besieged, harassed, and beat volunteers of the Global Quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Service Centers in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Sydney.

The organized harassment reached its peak in Flushing, New York. Several hundred pro-CCP agitators besieged several volunteers of the Quit the CCP Service Center, beating one volunteer in view of several video cameras on one occasion. The situation continued for several days, starting on May 17. New York police arrested several agitators.

A similar incident also happened during a rally celebrating the global Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR) to raise the awareness of the Chinese communist regime's deteriorating human rights abuses prior to the Olympic Games in Madison, Wisconsin, the United States. Protesters were mainly foreign Chinese students studying in the United States. They shouted slogans and held banners with a Mao-generation slogan: "Liberate Mankind" (in Chinese).

Meanwhile, the CCP's mouthpiece Xinhua News misrepresented the incident to the mainland Chinese, claiming that "New York Chinese were organizing donations for Sichuan earthquake relief, but then Falun Gong came to disturb the activities."

In the May 21 forum, Ms. Shi Rongfeng, who experienced violent harassment in Flushing, and other eye witnesses, including human rights attorney Ye Ning, and medical Dr. Wang Wenyi, discussed their experiences with forum participants.

Attorney Ye Ning commented, "For years, Falun Gong practitioners have held their activities in front of the Flushing Library, including exhibiting photos of those practitioners who had been persecuted to death for pursuing their basic human rights and freedom of belief. The various violent activities organized by the CCP have completely trampled U.S. law."

Ye criticized the "Flushing incident" as part of the CCP's attempt to use the Chinese nation's natural disaster for its political gain. "When this kind of violence happened after the earthquake, but never before, it becomes evident that the CCP is using this earthquake to achieve its political purposes. This kind of hoodlum conduct is held in the name of Sichuan earthquake relief," said Ye.

No Government Relief for Victims

In the two short weeks after the earthquake, more and more evidence has surfaced indicating that the CCP had repeatedly received accurate predictions from Chinese researchers, scientists, and scholars from the China Seismological Bureau that an earthquake measuring 6 to 8 on the Richter scale would happen near Aba Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province.

Several warnings were even released predicting a quake within 72 hours of the actual occurrence. However, the general public in China was never warned about the expected devastation.

"The CCP has to face the responsibility, whether or not it acted by negligence or on purpose. Either way, it is a responsibility that it must face," said Ye.

A New Political Offensive

Ye believes the Flushing Incident is a sign that the CCP, having endured the darkest era after the downfall of the European communist regimes in the early 1990s, is starting its strategic counter offensive. Step by step, the CCP is increasing its influence in democratic societies such as the United States, Canada, and others. This is a very alarming matter.

The Chinese mob shouted at an Epoch Times photographer, threatening, 'We will kill you!' (Sonya Bryskine/Epoch Times)
The Chinese mob shouted at an Epoch Times photographer, threatening, "We will kill you!" (Sonya Bryskine/Epoch Times)

Investigation Shows CCP Penetration Into Democracies

Dr. Pang Yubin, the representative of the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) was also an invited speaker. His speech focused on the CCP's policies of manipulating overseas Chinese communities and student organizations to carry out its persecution of Falun Gong in foreign countries. Pang said that the WOIPFG had been conducting an investigation for a long time. Based on the in-depth study of the findings, the WOIPFG revealed the extent of the CCP's global united-front strategy.

Pang said, "The Flushing incident is not an isolated case. Similar events have also occurred in Los Angeles, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. All such events were directed by Zhou Yunkang, the secretary of the Commission of Politics and Law of the CCP, which controls the communist spy system, and he is a human rights villain. Zhou's directives were carried out by the regime's overseas secret service and the overseas Chinese communities and student organizations controlled by its embassies.

Confirmed evidence indicates that the CCP's New York Consul General instigated and participated in the Flushing incident. During the period of several days, the Consulate staff and Consul General were on the scene. Consul General Peng Keyu was there personally for consecutive days to encourage the agitators by hiding in a far corner and shaking hands with the students who besieged and attacked the volunteers of the Quit the CCP Service Center. He also gathered them afterwards, along with members of a pro-CCP Chinese community organization, to express his gratitude.

Pang said, "The CCP, as incumbent party, used the resources of the country to tightly control overseas Chinese and students to serve its global strategy. The operation has reached a scale and depth that is unprecedented in history. For example, on April 9, 2008, in the San Francisco leg of the Beijing Olympic torch relay—the only stop in North America—the Chinese Consulate in the United States mobilized large numbers of foreign Chinese students and people from the local Chinese community and surrounding areas into a support group that outnumbered the protesters opposing the human rights suppression in China.

Similar incidents also happened in Australia, Japan and Korea afterwards. The violent behavior of the foreign Chinese students in Korea has triggered wide condemnation and even caused a diplomatic incident.

The violent behaviour of expat Chinese students in Korea, caused a diplomatic incident. (The Epoch Times}
The violent behaviour of expat Chinese students in Korea, caused a diplomatic incident. (The Epoch Times}

Dr. Pang pointed out that the San Francisco leg of the Human Rights Torch Relay drew attention from mainstream society in the United States. It was the first time that the CCP openly demonstrated its will and ability to mobilize Chinese communities on a large scale and revealed its long-term engagement in controlling Chinese communities.

The noted U.S. private intelligence service Stratfor Strategic Forecasting, Inc. reported and analyzed the San Francisco incident in its "Terrorism Intelligence Report" column. The report comprehensively lays out the background factors of this phenomenon from theory to actual operation.

Dr. Pang said, "In the Flushing incident, Peng, as New York Consul General of the CCP, led the Chinese consulate officials, treating U.S. territory as if it was Tiananmen Square in Beijing by directly taking command and participating in this violent incident. The CCP tramples the United State's sovereignty. This is a rarity in democratic history."

United Front: 'A Country Within a Country'

Dr. Pang gave further analysis: Although the CCP style of this "overseas Chinese affair" has avoided openly using the notorious form of the communist party organization, but this kind of political fusion is just like the "Third International," set up by the Soviet Union in various countries in the past, where the CCP directly cultivates and establishes its influence in the social fabric of other countries, through an ideological penetration to influence the host country's social values and national policy.

Without the notice of the international community, it has extended its control beyond the borders of China, even extending itself to persecute organizations and individuals in foreign countries it regards as "enemies" in China. Now, the CCP has established enormous organizations and communities inside the borders of many countries and has formed "the country within a country" in many nations.

Dr. Pang further explained: "Not long ago, because of the bloody suppression of the peacefully protesting Tibetan monks by the Chinese military and police, various people from the international community protested the Beijing Olympic torch relay to express their concerns.

"The CCP counteracted the international pressure by instigating many mainland Chinese to boycott French retail giant Carefour and organizing relay supporters in foreign countries—as well as organizing some overseas Chinese to protest CNN commentator Jack Cafferty's speech criticizing the regime as 'goons and thugs.' Those incidents show the CCP's will and ability to mobilize the Chinese community on a large scale in foreign countries, and exposes its long- term operations in the control of overseas Chinese communities."

Saving Face

Also in the forum, political commentators Mr. Zhang Jielian and Dr. Zhang Tianliang agreed with the view that the CCP is using the Sichuan earthquake and relief effort to create violence in order to cover up its crime of not warning the general public about the earthquake and its refusal of internal professional relief teams to enter the disaster areas during the first 72 hours after the earthquake.

Facing political fallout from the national disaster, the CCP has attempted to shift the Chinese people's focus by defaming Falun Gong—instigating hatred in order to maintain the legality of its rule and the persecution of Falun Gong.

Click here to read the original article in Chinese

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

China frees man who criticized government's response to mammoth earthquake

Pravda: A former Chinese professor who says he was detained for 10 days for articles he wrote criticizing the government's response to this month's deadly earthquake has been freed.

Guo Quan, who was released Wednesday, is the first known case of someone being detained for quake-related criticism. Other detentions reported by state media have been of people accused of spreading rumors of future quakes.

The criticism came as China enjoyed rare praise for the relative openness of its earthquake response and media coverage of the disaster, which has killed more than 68,000 people.

The articles by Guo said the Chinese government ignored warning signs before the May 12 quake, and that officials should have immediately responded to the danger of lakes formed by the quake that now threaten to burst. He also questioned the safety of nuclear facilities in the area.

At least one of his articles was published by The Epoch Times, a U.S.-based newspaper linked to the banned Chinese sect Falun Gong.

Guo has already been in trouble with police for founding the China New Democracy Party last year and claiming it had 10 million members in China and overseas. He also gained headlines earlier this year by threatening to sue Yahoo and Google in the U.S., accusing them of blocking his name from search results in China.

Guo, reached by phone Thursday in the central city of Nanjing, said police told him his detention was mainly for his quake-related articles.

"I'm used to this kind of thing," Guo, 48, said of the police treatment. He and his wife, Li Jing, said his computer was seized but later returned.

Calls to the media office of the Public Security Bureau in Nanjing rang answered Thursday.

Guo, an expert on Chinese literature, lost his teaching duties at Nanjing Normal University after founding the China New Democracy Party.

While in detention, police told him to give them the list of the party's members and other party documents. Guo said he refused.

"We're not against the Communist Party," he said. "We just want people to have the right to choose a party."

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Parents' grief turns to fury in China


IHT: Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party boss of Mianzhu, knelt Sunday to ask parents of earthquake victims to abandon their protest. (Shiho Fukada for The New York Times)

DUJIANGYAN, China: They came hugging framed photographs and dog-eared achievement awards, placing them on the spot where their sons and daughters died under heaps of broken concrete. The men set off fireworks to chase away evil spirits as wads of paper money smoldered amid the rubble.

Then the loudspeaker began playing a funereal dirge and all at once the women doubled over in agony, a chorus of 100 mothers wailing over the loss of an only child. The husbands wept in silence, paralyzed by the storm of emotion.

"We worked so hard to raise you and then you left us so suddenly," a woman screamed, pounding the ruins of the Juyuan Middle School with her fists. "How could you leave us to grow old alone?"

But what began Tuesday morning as an unofficial gathering of bereaved parents quickly gave way to unbridled fury. One of the fathers, a quarry worker named Liu Lifu, grabbed the microphone and began calling for justice. His 15-year-old daughter, Liu Li, had died along with her entire class during a biology lesson.

"We strongly demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the school building," he shouted. "Please, everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth."

The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents talked about how local officials knew for years that the building was unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours had passed before rescue workers showed up; even then, they stopped working at 10 p.m. the night of the earthquake and only resumed their search at 9 a.m. the next day. In the end, more than 200 bodies were recovered.

"The people responsible for this should be brought here and have a bullet put in their head," said Luo Guanmin, a farmer who was cradling a photo of her 16-year-old daughter, Luo Dan.

In recent days, such raw public outbursts have been taking place across northern Sichuan Province as grieving parents agitate for investigations into why so many school buildings fell during the May 12 earthquake, killing as many as 10,000 children.

On Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of parents whose children died at the Fuxin No. 2 Primary School in Mianzhu staged an impromptu rally, heaving insults on local officials. They surrounded one woman, screaming and yelling in her face until she fainted. Another official fell to his knees in an attempt to stop the parents as they began marching toward Chengdu, 75 kilometers, or 45 miles, away. Later, as the crowd surged into the hundreds, the protestors clashed with the police, leaving several parents bleeding and quaking with emotion.

As the official Chinese media continue to focus on the military's heroism and the nation's outpouring of generosity, a surge of anger is building among parents whose grief is overpowering the fear that often keeps ordinary citizens from challenging the government. In the first few days after the earthquake struck, the press freely reported on accusations of shoddy school construction. Within a week, however, the censors had gained the upper hand.

But in the past few days, articles about parents demanding accountability have begun to reappear. Late last week, Caijing, a business journal whose investigations often challenge the status quo, ran an editorial saying that inquiries should not be delayed. Xinhua, the official news agency, reminded readers Monday that it, too, supported a speedy response to the demands of grief-stricken parents.

The shift suggests that the authorities in Beijing may recognize the peril of ignoring public opinion. On Monday, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, Wang Xuming, promised a reassessment of school buildings in quake zones, adding that those responsible for cutting corners on school construction would be "severely punished." In recent days, local officials across Sichuan have also bowed to the pressure.

In Beichuan, officials announced an investigation into the collapse of a middle school there that killed 1,300 children; reached by phone Tuesday, two provincial officials in Chengdu vowed a vigorous response, although they suggested that full-scale investigations should take a back seat to the needs of survivors.

"We are not officially investigating the quality problems in school buildings but we definitely will, after we finish the temporary lodging for refugees," said Tian Liya, the party secretary of the Sichuan Construction Bureau's emergency department.

Gauging from the outbursts of recent days, any delay will only embolden infuriated parents. In their confrontation with Communist Party officials Saturday, the parents encircled the vice secretary of the Mianzhu city government and called her a liar for her report on the destruction of the Fuxin school that failed to mention that 127 students had been killed.

"Why can't you do the right things for us?" they shouted. "Why do you cheat us?" For the next 20 minutes they yelled and screamed in her face until she passed out and had to be carried away by an aid.

The next day, the parents directed their ire at Jiang Guohua, the party boss of Mianzhu. When his answers proved unsatisfying, they began their march to Chengdu. Jiang dropped to the ground several times and begged them to stop.

"Please believe the Mianzhu Party committee can resolve the issue," he said. They kept walking.

Three hours later, the police tried to intervene. During the ensuing struggle, the broken glass from the pictures of dead children left several parents bleeding. After a tense standoff, the marchers agreed to board government buses that brought them to Deyang, the county seat. There, they met with the vice mayor, who promised he would start an investigation the following day.

"I hope you can be free from this mood of sadness," Zhang Jinming, the vice mayor, said before sending them away. "The government will make a research team and give you satisfying results."

The parents who lost their children at Juyuan Middle School say they have yet to hear from Dujiangyan officials. A few parents said they had been approached by teachers and told they would be well compensated for their loss - about $4,500 per child - if they would stop their increasingly vociferous public campaign.

"We don't want their money; we just want this corruption to end," said Luo, the farmer, as others nodded in agreement. Many parents said they felt insulted that no one from the school or the government had come to offer their condolences.

The only official presence at the gathering Tuesday was a pair of tanker trucks full of disinfectant whose arrival coincided with the start of the ceremony. As the parents began lighting candles and incense, a worker directed his hose at the mountain of rubble. The sting of bleach drifted over the crowd. Then, perhaps sensing the potential for confrontation, the workers drove away.

The parents were told to group themselves according their children's classes, and as they lined up, they numbly exchanged stories of loss.

"When they pulled my boy out he kept begging for water but then he died," said Wang Chaoping, holding a passport-sized photo of his 16-year-son, Wang Tinghai. "He wasn't the best student, but he loved sports."

Another mother thrust a picture of her twin daughters into the circle. "They were such good girls," said the woman, Zhao Deqin, weeping. "On weekends, they only wanted to cook and clean and help make my life easier."

The parents whose children attended Juyuan were mostly farmers and factory workers, and the harshness of their lives, and their loss, was etched in their faces. Many, like Li Ping, 43, said they had lived frugally in order to pay obligatory fees for meals and a bed in the dormitory, which withstood the quake with nary a crack.

"I put all my hope in my one child," said Li, who been unable to work because of chronic liver disease. "They were supposed to support us in old age."

He started to well up but then stopped himself.

"We're not asking the government for money," he said. "We just want them to tell us why they died."

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Add even the earthquake news among China’s tainted products


Canada Free Press By Judi McLeod Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Earthquake Bureau of Communist ChinaFrom before it even happened, the coming news of the devastating China earthquake was being managed by the Communist Chinese government.

In fact, the cadres of the Earthquake Bureau of Communist China held a major conference in Hangzhou on April 28, 2008—two weeks before the Sichuan earthquake.

Suppressing news of earthquakes from the outside world was number one on the Conference agenda.

The title of the conference was “Training Course for Keeping Earthquake Information Confidential”. Agenda item # 1? “Study of Regulations and Provisions for Keeping Earthquake Information Confidential. Agenda item # 2 was “Discussions of Working Methods for Keeping Earthquake Information Confidential”.

Why the Chinese government would want to keep the devastation of a natural disaster that was to claim so many humans secret is mind boggling even for a regime that continues to thumb its nose at Human Rights.

Earthquake Bureau of Communist China The April 28 inclusive Conference was held for everyone in the Chinese seismological business. The Conference was for the Earthquake Bureau of all provinces and all metropolitan regions; for all controllers of Seismo-websites, all forecast stations, all Earth Institutes, all Crust Institutes, all Geology institutes, all Emergency Search and Rescue Centers, and included the First Test Centers, the Second Test Centers and all Geophysical Centers.

It was for everyone except the country’s inhabitants and their relatives living abroad.

People of the free world are often fooled by the `news’ and `reports’ they have received in the `open’, assuming them to be accurate and true.

The fact is that all `stories’ from communist China have been sanitized and re-written by communist editors and commentators for the consumption of wishful thinking, kind human beings who do not live or never have lived under the brutal heel of Communist rule.

Scores of stories have been written about the cyber cops who keep bloggers from posting anti-government stories to the Internet in China under penalty of imprisonment or worse.

Little is ever written about the estimated one million secret special editors and commentators trained by the Chinese Communist regime to control `opinions’ on the web around the world.

It required the time and kindness of Chinese translators to write this Canada Free Press (CFP) story. That’s because the Chinese Communists do not broadcast these things in English lest the West may get to know.

The horrific devastation of the Sichuan earthquake is not even close to being over.

After shocks are still claiming lives and injuring people. Add 270,000 more houses destroyed or damaged to the more than 4.7 million leveled when the earthquake struck on May 12.

In recent days, China sent troops and police to try to prevent floods now threatening more than 700,000 survivors of the country’ deadliest earthquake in 32 years, as weather forecasters predict that thunderstorms are on the way.

Military engineers equipped with dynamite arrived Tuesday at the site of a lake created by landslides that lies 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from Tangiashan in Beichuan County, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Helicopters also dropped men and equipment.

The lake is only one of 34 in Sichuan posing a danger to people.

Evacuation plans have been prepared for communities near 19 lakes, E. Jingping, deputy minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, said. Sixty-nine reservoirs are in “immediate” danger of bursting and measures, such as draining the worst-damaged constructions, are being taken.

Tangjiashan is the most dangerous of the lakes because its water level rose almost 2 meters on May 24. Soldiers will try to blast its landslide barrier away in a desperate attempt to drain the water.

Thunderstorms may increase the risk of flooding on rivers that have been blocked by landslides.

The Sichuan earthquake killed 65,080 people and left 23, 150 missing. But according to Premier Wen Jiabao, who toured the area with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the death toll may rise to more than 80,000.

Instructing authorities how to keep earthquake information confidential cannot be much comfort to a population vulnerable to catastrophic earthquakes.

Meanwhile, it would seem that many things exported from China—including the news—is highly suspect.

Posted 05/28 at 07:29 AM Email (Permalink) OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Monday, May 26, 2008

[Video] Human Rights Torch arrives in Vancouver

HRTR via Global TV BC: May 25, 2008

Sun, May 25 Activitists rally in Vancouver to draw attention to human Rights


http://www.youmaker.com/

From: http://www.canada.com/globaltv/bc/video/index.html

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Video: 24 Hrs: Human Rights Torch Relay comes to Vancouver


24 Hours: Human Rights Torch Relay comes to Vancouver. To watch the video click on Try the New YouTube Player Beta!
OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Global Human Rights Torch Relay visits Vancouver as last North American stop

May 25, 2008

CP: VANCOUVER — The Global Human Rights Torch Relay made a stop in Vancouver on Sunday.

The visit is part of a campaign to highlight China's record on human rights prior to the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.

Several politicians and human rights lawyers spoke out against the Games being held in China, which they say has an appalling human rights record.

Winnipeg-based lawyer David Matas and Vancouver's Clive Ansley alleged China has been harvesting organs for transplant from followers of the banned Falun Gong, an accusation that China denies.

About 200 people watched a white-clad woman carry the torch into the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The relay started in Athens last August.

When it wraps up July 20 in Hong Kong, it will have been through 40 countries and an estimated 150 cities.

Vancouver is the last of a dozen Canadian cities the torch has visited prior to its departure for Malaysia.

Form there it goes to Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Macau before arriving in Hong Kong.

It wasn't the only rally concerned with the Olympic Games in Vancouver this weekend.

On Saturday, a rally was held on the city's East Side calling for greater social legacy from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Activist Am Johal called for increases in social housing and for the more government involvement in stopping evictions of tenants by landlords looking to cash in on the hot Olympic accommodation market.

When the relay visited Parliament Hill in Ottawa May 14, the protesters found a reception they weren't expecting.

They ran right into the middle of scores of Chinese tourists.

The reaction of Chinese tourists to the Parliament Hill protest was mixed. Some showed passive interest in placards declaring human-rights abuses, while others ran away when protesters tried to hand them information pamphlets.

One did accept a brochure, took a look at it and muttered "garbage" in Chinese as he walked away.

The relay group has condemned Beijing's crackdown in Tibet, the alleged arrests of nearly 2,000 Falun Gong followers, and it support of the governments in Burma, Darfur, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

It also claims persecution of Christians, lawyers, reporters and "all who have suffered as a result of Beijing's pre-Olympics whitewash."

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Chinese pour cold water on Kiwi rowers

By JOHN MATHESON
Sunday News | Sunday, 25 May 2008

NZ Stuff: The dirty tricks have already started as hosts China play the roll of bully in the build-up to the Olympics' rowing regatta on the outskirts of Beijing.

New Zealand officials have had their plans to base their champion team in a hotel near the Shunyi Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Park snuffed out by Olympic organisers.

Sunday News understands Rowing NZ had paid out nearly $110,000 in accommodation fees so the team could stay in a local hotel. Team bosses were concerned the daily 60-minute round trip from the athlete's village to the rowing and canoeing venue would be too taxing for their athletes.

The venue is the furthest away from the Olympic Village than any of Beijing's 31 designated Games' sites.

At least three other countries had been booked into the hotel but recently all of the teams were told their bookings had been cancelled.

The other federations involved include Great Britain, Italy and France.

It is understood the Chinese team has now booked out the entire hotel.

Rowing NZ spokesman Richard Gee confirmed there was "an issue" with the hotel but said he was not ready to go to the press with the story.

"There is a story here," he said last night, "but we are still trying to work out exactly what has happened."

Gee confirmed the team including world champion Mahe Drysdale and former Olympic champion Rob Waddle had booked into the hotel.

Kayak team boss, Olympic legend Ian Ferguson, has heard the rowers have been kicked out of their hotel.

"It's a worry for them," he told Sunday News. "If we had the money we would have been in the hotel too.

"They say the venue is a 30-minute bus ride from the Olympic Village.

"But by the time you add 10 minutes to each side of that trip to get yourself down to the bus, and remember that you are making the trip twice a day for the different sessions, all of a sudden you're spending nearly three hours of your day travelling.

"Three hours when you are trying to peak as an athlete is not good."

When told the Chinese rowers are rumoured to have booked into the former New Zealand hotel, Ferguson called the move the lowest of the lows.

"If the Chinese have kicked our rowers out and put themselves in, that is the dirtiest low-down trick I've ever heard of. Mind you, they do play low."

Ferguson was now worried his team may struggle to get things like food supplements and vitamins into China "if they (want to) play hardball".

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Friday, May 23, 2008

Chinese media toe the survival storyline

Mary-Anne Toy, Beijing
May 24, 2008
Page 1 of 2 | Single page

The Age -

CHINA'S worst natural disaster since 1976 has shown the limits and pervasiveness of the ruling Communist Party's strict controls on media and information.

Within an hour of the earthquake of May 12, the powerful Central Propaganda Department was calling newspapers and other media to ban reporters from the disaster zone. But news of a serious quake had already spread via 140 million internet users and 580 million mobile phone users.

Reporters and editors across the country, some with staff about to board flights to the epicentre in Sichuan, debated whether to ignore the edict.

Many of the "docile" media hesitated but bolder outfits did not, setting off unprecedented coverage of the quake and its devastating impact.

The death toll is now confirmed at 55,239 people in the province, with another 24,949 missing, Sichuan Vice-Governor Li Chengyun told a Beijing press conference yesterday. Hundreds of deaths have been reported in neighbouring provinces. More than 5 million are homeless.

A day after the quake, when it was clear the Propaganda Department's edict had been ignored, another propaganda arm, the Government's General Administration of Press and Publications, issued a more realistic memo. It asked media to make "timely and accurate" reports "on quake-hit areas and victims to reassure the public" and directed local officials to co-operate with reporters.

Chinese journalism thus began almost non-stop broadcasting of even the most graphic pictures of the devastation. Some Chinese journalists, especially those in their 20s, have been euphoric because they defied the censors and for the first time in many of their careers were filing first-hand reports from the scene.

A closer examination shows, however, most of the reporting has focused on non-threatening storylines — extraordinary rescues, miraculous survivals, heroism, heartbreaking losses and the laudable efforts of Premier Wen Jiabao to comfort and reassure victims that help was on its way.

According to Chinese analysts and senior journalists, most of whom decline to be named, there has been little analysis of earthquake prevention measures or apparently substandard construction of schools and other buildings, and few negative reports.

The initial wave of anger, questioning why so many school buildings — especially newer ones — collapsed and killed thousands of children when other government buildings withstood the quake, was confined largely to the internet, to blogs and chat rooms, and the Hong Kong-based media (which, under the deal returning the former British colony to Chinese rule, enjoy greater freedom than media on the mainland).

Exceptions included the investigative economic magazine Caijing, which questioned the official decision to continue the Olympic torch relay.

Another exception was the Shanghai Securities News. It editorialised that corruption had allowed substandard buildings that proved fatal in the quake.

The Hong Kong-based Phoenix Cable Television's host Liang Wei Dou showed emails and spoke of phone contact with Chinese journalists in the field complaining of dysfunctional management structures holding up relief operations and inadequate training of soldiers for disaster recovery.

Chinese-language papers including Hong Kong's most popular tabloid, Apple Daily, and Takung Pao have also published stories on tents going missing in Chengdu — but the websites of these papers are blocked on the mainland.

The English South China Morning Post ran a Reuters report about a demonstration by hundreds of people at Wufu, demanding that someone be held accountable for the collapse of Fuxing's primary school, where 127 children died.

But these were the exceptions. Negative coverage on the internet, such as questions about the efficiency of the Chinese Red Cross or rumours that heavy dam construction in the area had caused or contributed to the quake, have since been removed. One Beijing resident complained it had been difficult to find "any rational thinking" in Chinese reporting.

"There have only been stories of love and caring or sadness, but nothing on how or why this has happened," the resident said.

A senior Chinese journalist complained to a colleague in Beijing that the Chinese Government's days were numbered because the rescue operations he had seen had been chaotic. But the story he filed for his newspaper the next day reflected none of those concerns. It was a touching story of survival amid tragedy.

Beijing-based political analyst Russell Leigh Moses said the Government had seized back control of the narrative.

■ Australia's first shipment of a $1 million package, including 250 tents, 10,000-plus water purification tabs, 1600 mosquito nets, blankets, four generators and water tanks, plus search-and-rescue equipment, arrived in Chengdu yesterday.

With MAYA LI, AFP

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Costs of Corruption

Chinese government officials are complicit in the earthquake disaster.
Guardian: by Reuben F. Johnson
05/20/2008 12:00:00 AM

THE DEVESTATION AND DEATH toll from last week's earthquake centered in China's Sichuan province continues to rise. The quake registered a 7.9 on the Richter Scale (and has been reported as an 8.0 magnitude on some Chinese television networks--roughly equivalent to a 600 megaton explosion) and is the worst in China in three decades. The death toll is officially over 34,000 and rising by the hour, and some reports list as many as 100,000 persons still missing.

But long after the thousands are dead and buried, China will be coping with two major issues that are the long-term fallout from this horrific human tragedy

One is that the corruption that is endemic with construction projects in almost any dictatorship has turned out to be a casebook example of how bribe-taking and the general greed of local authorities in China is worsening--and showing just how catastrophic the consequences of these practices can be.

In the city of Dujiangyan, which is closest to the quake's epicenter, the UK's Guardian newspaper reports residents there furious over the shoddy workmanship and substandard materials used in many of the buildings that collapsed around their families. Many of them blame local officials for selling off the high quality materials that should have been used in these buildings and putting the money in their pockets. The same government functionaries then signed off on certifications that these structures were built according to local codes and ordnances, even thought that they knew them to be incapable of surviving even small tremors.

"The contractors can't

have been qualified. It's a 'tofu' [soft and shoddy] building. Please, help us release this news," one local resident pleaded with the Guardian's correspondent.

City residents were particularly angered by the collapse of the Juyuan High School, pointing out that this much newer building folded like a house of cards while considerably older structures--most conspicuously local PLA offices and other government buildings--were left standing.

"About 450 [students] were inside, in nine classes and it collapsed completely from the top to the ground. It didn't fall over; it was almost like an explosion . . . why isn't there money to build a good school for our kids?" shouted several at the site. "Chinese officials are too corrupt and bad. These buildings outside have been here for 20 years and didn't collapse--the school was only 10 years old. They took the money from investment, so they took the lives of hundreds of kids. They have money for prostitutes and second wives but they don't have money for our children. This is not a natural disaster--this is done by humans."

Other news outlets reported that at the same school site some of the same locals present took out their frustrations on Chinese troops that had been sent in to try and dig out collapsed buildings as part of the relief effort. Soldiers were told to go away and that "we do not need you here."

To put this into perspective, one should remember that these provincial Chinese cities are not like Beijing or Shanghai, where the local populations have long become accustomed to seeing large numbers of foreign expats, nor are they as cosmopolitan in their outlook. For people in such places not to shun contact with foreigner reporters, but instead seek them out and ask that the international press denounce their local party officials--and at the same time tell military units participating in the rescue operation to get lost--is no small measure of the anger that the earthquake survivors are now feeling.

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

China Quake Used to Rail Against Overseas Dissent

Regime could be behind rash of protests against critics, says former CSIS agent
By Matthew Little
May 22, 2008

Chinese disrupters heckle organizers at the Quit CCP booth in Flushing, New York. (Dai Bing/Epoch Times)
Chinese disrupters heckle organizers at the Quit CCP booth in Flushing, New York. (Dai Bing/Epoch Times)



China's communist regime could be behind a rash of angry, sometimes violent, protests in the United States and Canada, said a retired Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent and expert on the regime's clandestine operations in Canada.

Meanwhile Chinese media appear to be covering these events in a way that channels emotion about the recent quake in Sichuan into animosity against the regime's critics.

In Flushing, New York City, on the weekend, Chinese people were reportedly heard being offered money to attack critics of China's communist regime while Chinese media closely recorded events.

Large groups of outraged Chinese people have gathered for protests, or counter-protests, in Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, New York, Madison and other cities. The protests often take place at human-rights events in which people raise awareness about the Chinese regime's human rights abuses.

This week saw an escalation of those protests when a mob of hundreds swarmed a small rally in Flushing where a group had a booth set up so that Chinese people could withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The mob shouted, spit, threw eggs and physically attacked the small group of volunteers that tended the booth outside the Flushing Library. Two attendants were assaulted after attempting to take picture of their assailants. Police arrested Guang Chen and Fu Ni following the attack.

The booth encourages Chinese people to withdraw from the CCP. In China many citizens are compelled to join the CCP out of fear or to gain material advantages. Since coming to power 60 years ago, the CCP policies are blamed for causing up to 80 million deaths in China.

But Chinese people in North America who rely on Chinese media, and people within mainland China, will hear a very different account of what took place.

On the video reports covering the Flushing protests released on the internet yesterday, Xinhua News, China's state-run news outlet, said Falun Gong adherents disrupted an earthquake relief donation activity and that is why they were swarmed. No mention was made of the violent attacks or arrests.

In a press release the Falun Dafa Information Centre said the Flushing attacks, coupled with aggressive coverage from state-run media in China, suggest that Beijing authorities are orchestrating these events, post-earthquake, as a means of channeling emotions against political targets.

It's a strategy the regime has employed continually throughout its reign. One of the booths attendants compared her experience that day to the Cultural Revolution, a strategy nearly tore China apart.

"If you had been there when the attack [in Flushing] happened, you would have been terrified," said Yi Rong, Vice Chairman of the service center to quit the Chinese Communist Party.

"It was as though the Cultural Revolution had started again because 'inciting one crowd to attack the other crowd' was a typical strategy used in China's Cultural Revolution… I felt I was no longer in the United States."

A bespectacled elderly Chinese man with black cap shouting insults and profanity raised a fist at volunteers at the Flushing 'Quit the Chinese Communist Party' service center, threatening to attack and smash the camera of an Epoch Times reporter. (The Epoch Times)

Yi said that although the CCP frequently manipulates nationalistic fury against political targets to divert Chinese people's attentions from domestic troubles in China, this is the first time she had seen this strategy used in the United States.

"This is a new lesson for the Americans," said Yi.

Edmund Erh, a computer engineer from Queens who volunteers at the booth said he also believed the mob was incited by the Chinese regime. Erh was attacked after trying to take a photo of men who were disrupting their activities. One of the men, Guang Chen, was arrested after police arrived.

When the mobs started appearing last Saturday, Erh heard Chinese man was heard to yell into his cell phone "Hurry! Bring more people over here. Each person will be paid $90."

Erh was one of two booth attendants who were assaulted after taking pictures of the people swarming the booth.

While Flushing is the most recent example, similar events have taken place across North America in recent months.

In Ottawa last April, around 2,500 Chinese students gathered at Parliament Hill to denounce Western media and Tibetan demonstrators following widespread coverage of the unrest in Tibet in March.

The students denounced western media as biased and "anti-China" for coverage that criticized how the Chinese regime handled the unrest. Tibetans were also denounced for protesting instead of being grateful for being "liberated" from the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is frequently vilified in Chinese media and described as a villainous slave driver.

A small group of Tibet protesters stood near the rally quietly holding Tibetan flags but were soon escorted away by police for their own protection after some of the Chinese demonstrators started swarming them and chanting, "Liar, Liar, Liar."

That scenario was repeated in Toronto where, besides yelling "Liar," pro-CCP demonstrators also yelled "Dalai Lama die."

On May 9th in Winnipeg, a group of around 30 Chinese students attempted to disrupt events marking the Global Human Rights Torch Relay, an international effort to raise awareness about China's human rights abuses in advance of this summer's Olympics

While speeches were given by a city councilor, an MLA, a rabbi and a human rights lawyer, the students shouted slogans, sang communist party songs and denounced the speakers as liars.

At a concert that followed the students were all photographed by a black-clad Chinese man who appeared to be friends with the students but not students themselves. One Chinese man said the students would get "extra credit" with the Chinese Communist Party for participating in the protests. That recognition can give their careers a boost or translate into other opportunities.

On April 19 in Madison, Wisconsin, hundreds of Chinese people waving the communist regime's flag also attempted to disrupt a Human Rights Torch Relay by singing communist party songs, jeering at rally participants and shouting slogans.

Similar events have played out in cities not just in North America but also in other countries, including Japan.

Some observers blame overseas Chinese media for the upsurge in outraged nationalism.

A report by the Jamestown Foundation published in 2001 found that after Hong Kong was returned to Beijing rule, the Chinese regime made a push to gain financial control or influence over overseas Chinese media. The report found that that influence resulted in Chinese media imitating mainland China's state-controlled media outlets.

Recent coverage of Tibet, Olympic protests and other controversial subjects by overseas Chinese media has largely followed Beijing's lead. Those reports depict the Dalai Lama as inciting violence in Tibet, Tibetans as being a liberated people with no just cause for unrest, and any criticism of the CCP as an attack on Chinese people.

A more recent twist has seen those media suggesting that any criticism of the CCP shows that the people involved, such as at the Flushing booth attendants, do not care about the earthquake victims in Sichuan. While the Chinese protesters often appear unorganized and mob-like, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former intelligence officer and director of the Strategic Analysis Unit, Asia-Pacific for CSIS, Canada's spy agency, has said it is possible they may be directly coordinated by the mainland Chinese regime.

"It's totally, totally possible. There is too much organization to a certain extent to simply refer to it as something random," he said. "We know for sure that in the past the Chinese intelligence service partnering with the United Front Work department has been using, quite abundantly, quite often, the various student groups."

Juneau added that defectors from china have shed light on the regime's practice of using overseas Chinese students in this way.

"We also have several Chinese diplomats or Chinese intelligence officers who defected to the western world and basically share and confess that yes, this is happening, this is happening regularly where the Chinese student groups are not only controlled, they are specifically formed to be used by the Chinese intelligence services.

"So to have now, potentially these students showing up and acting on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service is not out of this realm. Does it mean that every student showing was necessarily in contact with an intelligence officer? No, probably not. They probably simply were influenced by a Chinese agent."

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

Burma victims lose aid battle as cash flows into China on a flood of sympathy

Times UK - May 22, 2008

Rosemary Bennett and Jane Macartney in Chengdu

For the millions still suffering in misery after Cyclone Nargis and the Chinese earthquake, how their plight is presented on the world’s TV screens may be of little interest. For them food, shelter and medicines are the overriding priority.

But it appears that media coverage may be of great consequence. While millions of dollars have been flooding into China – much of it from the corporate world – appeals for aid to Burma have been less successful.

Mark Astarita, head of fundraising at the British Red Cross, said the reporting of China’s disaster was “immensely powerful”, but it also made the situation in Burma look even more impossible. “At the end of the day, charitable giving doesn’t necessarily follow need. Disaster fundraising follows the news agenda,” he said.

Multinationals have all made generous donations to the earthquake appeal. HSBC, Glaxo and Unilever have each given $1.5 million (£740,000) to China’s special emergency fund. BP, Diageo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Pfizer have also made significant contributions.
Executives privately admit that their reasons for giving to China are not all humanitarian. They are also driven by the need to bolster business relationships in the country.

Although some companies have also have also donated to Burma – Merrill Lynch has given $1 million to both China and Burma – the cyclone appeal is struggling to engage the corporate world and the general public.

Britain’s national fundraising appeal for Nargis has raised just £8 million since it began almost two weeks ago.

In contrast, the Red Cross Society of China has raised more than $400 million and the Government’s emergency fund more than $500 million.


Experts say the disaster is greater in Burma where 134,000 people are dead or missing and 2.4 million are homeless, with many sheltering from terrible weather under trees and plastic sheets. In China 74,000 are dead or missing and although five million are homeless there is a greater government infrastructure to help them.

But reports of aid being blocked have undermined the Burma appeal. Fundraisers are also frustrated that there is little TV footage to illustrate the plight of the people, or show the success that some charities are having. The Red Cross has had 20 planeloads of aid successfully distributed and Save the Children half a dozen. Its workers have now reached the westernmost tips of the Irrawaddy delta.

In China, journalists have been given unfettered access to the disaster zone so every news bulletin around the world has shown dramatic footage of survivors being pulled from the wreckage by heroic rescue workers, and the homeless being offered shelter and food by aid workers.

Mr Astarita said: “When there is clearly acute and visible need, and pictures show that victims are being helped, just as we see in China every night on the news, people give money.”

But it is also China’s rapidly expanding economy that has made it a magnet for donations. Dozens of multinationals have a base there, huge numbers of staff and millions of customers. The earthquake has given them an opportunity to show their commitment to the country.

In addition the relief effort coincided with protests against foreign companies after the Olympic torch demonstrations worldwide. Their donations have helped them to reconnect with their customers, some of whom were threatening a boycott of foreign goods.

A spokeswoman for GSK said its donation was more generous than the money given to Burma, or the Bangledesh cyclone last autumn. GSK gave about £50,000 each to Burma and to the Bangledesh cyclone appeal last September. “We have a lot of business in vaccines and consumer health care goods in China. Our donation reflects the scale of the disaster and our commitment to the Chinese people,” she said.

“We have given a smaller amount to Burma, not because our commitment to the people is different, but because we did not want to overwhelm the aid agencies who are having such a difficult job there.”

A spokesman for HSBC declined to comment on why it had made such a generous donation to China, but pointed out its strong and historic ties with the country. The company has so far given about $62,800 to Burma. It gave about $145,000 to Bangledesh.

However, an executive at another multinational, which has given more than $1 million to the Chinese relief effort, was more candid.

“China is big business and it is important to be seen by the Government to be doing the right thing, and that is the same for every company,” he said.

“In particular with China it was important to offer help before the Government had to ask for it. It is a cultural thing. It is not a country that wants to have to ask for help.”

The Disaster Emergencies Committee is putting a brave face on its Burma appeal saying it was encouraged by “ongoing interest”.

Brendan Gormley, its chief executive, admitted it was difficult to get across the message that aid was getting through in Burma and the major charities were reaching victims.

“It has been hard because of the lack of pictures to tell the human story and to cover the aid effort. That is overwhelmed by the political story. All we can do is keep saying we are there and we could be spending far more,” he told The Times.

Reactions to the disasters
CHINA
— Earthquake on May 12
— 74,000 dead or missing, 5 million homeless
— Foreign media given unfettered access
— Chinese Government has raised $500 million, Chinese Red Cross $400 million
— UN donated $8 million
— 250,000 temporary housing units under construction, 280,000 tents shipped and 5,000 epidemic prevention workers sent to 125 villages
— Hundreds of foreign aid workers
— US supplied spy satellite images for Chinese Government to examine dams, reservoirs, roads and bridges
— Investigation under way into whether public buildings were poorly constructed
BURMA
— Cyclone struck on May 2
— 134,000 dead or missing, 2.4 million destitute
— Foreign media banned
— Disasters Emergency Committee has raised £8 million, UK pledged $10m, UN $10m, Japan $10m, US $3m, France $3m, Australia $2.8m
— Burma says it has spent $2 million on relief work
— World Food Programme fed 212,000 of the 750,000 people most in need after regime relented and allowed in nine UN helicopter flights
— Red Cross has distributed 20 planeloads of aid and Save the Children six. Save the Children has reached more than 160,000 people
— Offer of aid from US warship in area turned down

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008