tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354638362024-03-12T17:45:54.816-07:00Boycott 2008 Communist OlympicsMaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.comBlogger933125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-91887555242999584672010-09-24T13:40:00.000-07:002010-09-24T13:41:03.703-07:00Without Radical Change, China’s Current Development Has No Future<div class="post-header"> </div> <div class="post-body entry-content"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic7HjqL5PCVCpFMavV4UaK7p46BYbjpYjo1xSkG5rj6fcCpiitDexzVUAGO7zjDbTxYQTgfEQlqi2lhonBzwcl3og9ykzLOvRn7JSpSnUfCIt7LkdDl9h4gB3qJupKopDFonul/s1600/Pollution-Problem.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic7HjqL5PCVCpFMavV4UaK7p46BYbjpYjo1xSkG5rj6fcCpiitDexzVUAGO7zjDbTxYQTgfEQlqi2lhonBzwcl3og9ykzLOvRn7JSpSnUfCIt7LkdDl9h4gB3qJupKopDFonul/s400/Pollution-Problem.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520579483422510098" border="0" /></a><b>China Scope: Editor’s note - </b>In his analysis packed with numbers, Professor Zhou Tianyong of the Central Party School presented a disturbing forecast on China’s future. China’s growing and ageing population, overburdened land, scarce water resources, worsening pollution, and intense hunger for steel and oil are not exactly what the Chinese leaders want to hear. “Sustaining (China’s) current 2H1R (High energy consumption, High pollution, Resource depletion) development model,” writes Zhou, is “absolutely out of the question.” The following report is translated from excerpts of his article.] [1] <div><br /></div><div>1) The Crossroads: Over Population and a Botched Birth Control Policy </div><div> </div><div>At the end of 2009, China’s population was 1.334 billion. By 2040, a conservative estimate puts the number at 1.55 billion. China’s current agriculture land, per capita, ranks sixth from the bottom of the world. Based on China’s agriculture population, its per capita arable land is the third lowest in the world, beating Bangladesh and Vietnam.<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>Only 5% of Chinese people live on 64% of the land in the West Part; the remaining 95% concentrate in the East Part, which has 32% of China’s total size. Based on the East Part alone, the population density is 364 people per square km. That’s number three in the world, behind Bangladesh (1102) and India (393).<br /><br /></div><div> </div><div>Should China continue its current family planning policy? Or make adjustments? Or abolish it? It seems a Catch-22. If China abandons the one-child policy, its population may exceed 1.65 billion by 2040. That will create a huge burden on employment, resources and the environment. But with an ever expanding urban population and a long term one-child-per-family policy, China will have a big ageing problem associated with the high cost of care for senior citizens, which will reduce the country’s economic vitality. After 2040, the population will probably begin to contract. A shrinking and ageing society will result in a sharp and prolonged economic downturn, causing catastrophic consequences to the Chinese nation in the next thirty years (2041 – 2070). If that scenario comes true, China, after thirty years of rising, will plunge into a 30-year decline again. </div><div><br /></div><div>2) Overburdened Natural Resources and Environment</div><div><br /></div><div>China has 20% of the world’s population, but its land size is only 6.44% of the world. The majority of Chinese people live in the East Part. China has 1.74 million square kilometers of desert, or 18.12% of its total area. There is an additional 300,000 square kilometers of potential desert, which affects the life of 400 million people. Using international standards, China’s arable land is low grade in general. Only 6% of China’s farmland produces more than 1000 kg of grain per mu (666 square meters); a total of 3.57 million square kilometers of land suffer from water and soil erosion; more than 10% of the arable land is polluted by contaminated water, solid waste and heavy metal; a total 1.35 billion mu of grassland has become desert or wasteland. </div><div><br /></div><div>The fresh water supply is insufficient and badly polluted. The agriculture water shortage is 30 to 50 billion cubic meters per year; the industrial water shortage averages 6 billion cubic meters, causing 200 billion yuan in economic losses; of China’s 667 cities, 420 cities experience a water shortage. The total city water shortage is 10.5 billion cubic meters. </div><div><br /></div><div>Water pollution in the rural areas causes rapid deterioration. It is economically beyond salvage. Pollution by chemical fertilizers, pesticides and industrial waste water are commonplace. Irrigation with contaminated sewage, improper treatment of animal waste, and household garbage all directly contribute to the worsening environment. Nearly the entire rural population of 700 million people has drinking water that is substandard; about 190 million people’s drinking water contains hazardous chemicals that exceed the standard. Among the people with various health problems, 88% can blame their illness on dirty drinking water; and 33% of deaths are related to water contamination. </div><div><br /></div><div>Garbage pollution in the cities and country is severe. China has 600 million urban residents. Using a conservative estimate, each person produces 200 kg of trash per year. Annually, Chinese cities and towns produce 120 million tons of trash. At least two-thirds of Chinese cities are surrounded by trash. Every year, 80% of the world’s electronic trash is shipped to Asia. Among that, at least 90% ends up in China.</div><div><br /></div><div>3) A Severe Land Shortage</div><div><br /></div><div>By 2040, the gap between land availability and demand will grow to between 856 million to 1.556 billion mu. Among that, urban development requires 132 million mu. Transportation and water conservation need 137 million mu. Counting reconstruction of old factories and mines which may create 30 million mu, the net increase of land demand for transportation and water conservation is 107 million mu. </div><div> </div><div>Land usage in the country may be relaxed by policy. As a result, the villagers may take anywhere from 150 million to 358 million mu of land for homes. If the agriculture output is unchanged, the arable land shortage in China will reach 700 million mu by 2040. </div><div><br /></div><div>4) The Fresh Water Shortage is a Hard Constraint</div><div><br /></div><div>By 2040, the fresh water shortage will reach between 200 to 300 billion cubic meters. Using Japan’s water conservation model as a benchmark, China’s agriculture, industrial, living and ecological demand require 1.18 trillion cubic meters of water. That number approaches the total water resource for China. Even if we find 10% more fresh water, and increase our water supply to 880 to 990 billion cubic meters, our fresh water shortage is still between 191 to 301 billion cubic meters. Water is hard to import, and it will be a bottleneck for China’s development. </div><div><br /></div><div>5) The Need to Import 10 to 18 Billion Tons of Steel over the Next 30 Years</div><div><br /></div><div>Over the next 30 years, China’s demand for 55% grade iron core will be hit by a shortfall of 17.3 to 32.6 billion tons. Based on the author’s data, by the end of 2004, the global iron reserve was 80 billion tons. From the China National Bureau of Statistics Yearbook 2008, China’s total potential iron core reserve was 22.6 billion tons. Assuming a 35% grade, China’s maximum iron reserve is about 8 billion tons. If China’s economic development reaches the level of developed nations by 2040, it will need 22% to 33% of the world’s total iron reserve. Assuming China cannot find new iron mines before 2040, China will have exhausted all its iron reserves. In addition, it still needs to import 17.3 to 32.6 billion tons of 55% grade iron cores. </div><div><br /></div><div>6) China will consume 50% of the World’s Energy</div><div><br /></div><div>Using the modest energy consumption pattern of developed nations, by 2040, China is expected to consume 50% the world’s energy. In the next 31 years, using a modest plan, China will use 61.5 billion tons of crude oil and 25 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Assume the world’s oil and natural gas reserve stay at 2008 level, then in the next 31 years, China will consume 26% to 40% of the world’s oil reserve; it will use about 2.3% to 8.1% of the global natural gas. Assume China’s population by 2040 is 1.55 billion, and China becomes a developed country, barring a major change in global energy output or China’s development model, China will need half of the world’s total energy. </div><div><br /></div><div>According to the “China Statistical Yearbook 2009,” China’s current oil reserve is 2.89 billion tons; the natural gas reserve is 34 trillion cubic meters; the coal reserve is 326 billion tons. China’s oil and natural gas reserves per capita are below one tenth of the world average. Even as a coal rich nation, China’s per capita coal reserve is still less than 40% of the world average. Using the energy consumption rate in 2009, China’s oil reserve can last only 7.08 years; natural gas will last 39 years; and coal 108 years. </div><div><br /></div><div>Due to China’s overpopulation, scarce resources, and environmental restrictions, sustaining the current 2H1R (High energy consumption, High pollution, Resource depleting) economic model is absolutely out of the question. Even if we reduce our energy consumption to a moderate or low level of the developed countries, it is still unlikely to succeed. Read <a href="http://chinascope.org/main/content/view/2838/92/">more</a>...<br /></div> </div> <br /><!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" border="0" width="468" height="60" /></a><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-60822861695260233932010-09-24T13:11:00.000-07:002010-09-24T13:16:00.700-07:00World Expo 'Exposed' says Chinese Novelist<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcas85fvgBWGp_-WUfOYqQ86E9moYvJyU2CoyB8jSmb2zMPDtFlMOa2XQKKdWweTcfvsod1yVkzWVERhSFDisJTr1j0s_N4Ca8K8BKxNt0IutTYmQbSSbvIbE7xHl_lt-EDnb/s1600/expo.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcas85fvgBWGp_-WUfOYqQ86E9moYvJyU2CoyB8jSmb2zMPDtFlMOa2XQKKdWweTcfvsod1yVkzWVERhSFDisJTr1j0s_N4Ca8K8BKxNt0IutTYmQbSSbvIbE7xHl_lt-EDnb/s400/expo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520576215364249202" border="0" /></a>Epoch Times: Absent are halls filled with advanced technologies of previous World Fairs. Instead, scalpers, long lines, empty buildings, and videos are waiting for you at the World Expo in Shanghai.<br /><br />Recently a Shanghai Taxi driver said to me, “You will regret it if you don't visit the World Expo; but you will regret even more if you do.” So I decided to go and find out why.<br /><br />I went with Wang, a friend, and his girlfriend around noontime on Sept. 4. Wang is a media worker and got free tickets. He offered me one, but I insisted on buying my own. I paid 160 yuan (US$24), quite a fortune in China. It took us 32 minutes to pass a security check at the entrance. There were only two security checkpoints. No one complained. <strong><br /><br /></strong><h3><strong>Nothing Worth Seeing</strong></h3><p>Our guide thought this expo was a rip-off, not because of smalltime scalpers like himself, but because of the organizers, who he says are the real scalpers. They do all the marketing to get people there, but cannot provide matching services. They sell overpriced tickets in every possible ways, while giving away free tickets to boost sales volume, he said.<br /><br />He said that the Expo is already overcrowded, yet authorities are still using every propaganda channel to get more people to visit. He also said those major halls have nothing worth seeing except for some videos. During training he noticed that all the past World Expos in other countries were showcases of advanced technologies and ideas, but this expo has nothing but architecture and videos. He could not understand why it would be regarded to be so important for so many people to come visit. Read <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/43131/99999999/1/1/">more</a>...<strong></strong></p><div class="etRelated"> <div class="headline">Related Articles</div> <ul><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/35498/" target="_blank">China’s Use of ‘World Expo’ Tactical and Peculiar, Hong Kong Editor Says</a></li><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/34943/" target="_blank">How Shanghai’s World Expo Is Showcasing China's 'Ultimate Treasures'</a></li></ul> </div>MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-68841926463505512392010-08-12T17:34:00.000-07:002010-08-12T17:46:42.873-07:00Big Brother widens his watchful eye in China<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKac6W4O6luVWyeYGRrO_s621fGdwUx_6eTOglpB_17MS-j9M__1ek3a-ODknBBstOaKWs5P0A9KXsqxeX258fB3vWNuSldjCQcykn6Wk7GKP_Msq6z6TNPGMKWSLbNNyQAh95/s1600/china+surveillance-cameras-400.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKac6W4O6luVWyeYGRrO_s621fGdwUx_6eTOglpB_17MS-j9M__1ek3a-ODknBBstOaKWs5P0A9KXsqxeX258fB3vWNuSldjCQcykn6Wk7GKP_Msq6z6TNPGMKWSLbNNyQAh95/s400/china+surveillance-cameras-400.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504687675198940914" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Millions of cameras trained on cities, particularly on dissidents and politically sensitive spots</span><br /><br />The targets of this project are Chinese dissidents, and in particular, practitioners of Falun Gong. As one expert put it, when presented with Internet censorship technology, the “first question from the Chinese buyers was not ‘Will it make my workers more productive?’ but, invariably, ‘Can it stop Falun Gong?’”<a href="http://www.internetfreedom.org/The-High-Tech-Persecution-of-Falun-Gong-in-China#_ftn8" name="_ftnref" title="" id="_ftnref">[8]<br /></a><blockquote> </blockquote>Read more <a href="http://ahdu88.blogspot.com/2010/08/high-tech-persecution-of-falun-gong-in.html">here</a><br /><br /><span id="placeline"><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/big-brother-widens-his-watchful-eye-in-china/article1671347/">Globe and Mail</a>: Xining, China <span>—</span></span><span class="first-letter">E</span>ast Riverside Road – better known to locals as Tibetan Street – is in fact a dusty and narrow alleyway across from the main bus station in this ethnically mixed city on China’s Tibetan plateau. Lined with Tibetan shops and teahouses, as well as Muslim bakeries and a row of stalls selling fireworks, it’s crowded and chaotic enough that few cars bother trying to enter.<div class="copy"><p>But anxious local authorities watch the fray from above. Hanging at even intervals over the twisting 300-metre length of the road are seven domes containing closed-circuit television cameras – nicknamed “Global Eyes” by the Chinese company that makes them – recording nearly everything that goes on in the bustling alley below.</p><p>The use of such surveillance technology has skyrocketed in China in recent years – just as it has in many Western countries – with millions of cameras trained on cities around the country to watch traffic, prevent crime and to keep an eye on dissidents and politically sensitive spots such as Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. But the blanket coverage given to a narrow alley in the remote city of Xining highlights how cameras are also being used to closely monitor China’s restive ethnic minorities, especially since the 2008 riots on the Tibetan plateau and last year’s deadly ethnic violence in the predominantly Muslim Uighur region of Xinjiang.</p><p>The cameras along East Riverside Road were installed last year after a pair of murders on the street, which in addition to monks and traders also attracts gangs of beggars and, according to local shopkeepers, thieves. But while some say they’re glad for the added security that the cameras provide, many allege that the authorities have other goals in mind.</p><p>“We don’t like it because we know they’re only watching Tibetans. It’s political,” said Danjiang, the 36-year-old owner of a Tibetan restaurant on East Riverside Road.</p><p>Danjiang, who gave only his first name, said police had stepped up surveillance of Xining’s Tibetan population ever since the monk-led riots of March, 2008. Those were concentrated in the city of Lhasa and other parts of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, but spread to parts of neighbouring provinces, such as Qinghai, that have large Tibetan populations. At the time, Tibetan university students in Xining, the capital of Qinghai, demonstrated in support of the monks.</p><p>The use of video surveillance is common across China, though not excessive compared to some Western countries. (There are an estimated seven million cameras watching 1.3 billion people in China, compared to 4.2 million cameras watching 61 million Britons.) What’s troubling for human-rights activists is the overt focus on cities and neighbourhoods that are ethnically Tibetan or Uighur, as well as the specific targeting of political dissidents.</p><p>Following the March, 2008, riots in Lhasa, authorities awarded China Telecom – the maker of the “Global Eye” cameras – a $6.5-million contract to install cameras at 624 locations, including the train and bus stations, and all hotels in the city. Similarly, a cluster of cameras has monitored the Tibetan neighbourhood around Beijing’s Yonghegong Temple since before the 2008 Olympics there.</p><p>The program in the Tibetan capital was named “Peace in Lhasa.” A press release distributed by China Telecom after winning the contract boasted that “the police only need to lightly click their mouse to direct the ‘electronic policeman’ around. Such a ‘Security Skynet’ will leaves no place for criminals to hide, and ensures the citizens’ peaceful life and work, as well as the stability and harmony of society.”</p><p>In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and the site of deadly ethnic rioting last year between Uighurs and Han Chinese that left 197 people dead, there are already 47,000 cameras in place, with plans to install another 13,000 by the end of the year. Residents say a disproportionate number are trained on mosques and Uighur neighbourhoods of the city.</p><p>It’s not just minorities, but anyone that gives the government trouble who gets the extra scrutiny. Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy group, said that at least half a dozen prominent political dissidents have cameras trained on their residences. Amid growing expression of dissent online, video cameras have also been recently made mandatory in the country’s Internet cafés, with direct feeds to the local police stations, making it easier for the government to trace those making anonymous comments on websites.</p><p></p><blockquote>“Our concern is not surveillance cameras per se [but] the use of such surveillance to further enforce the ban on peaceful assembly and demonstration; the overt ambition by the Chinese government to marry video-surveillance data with a wide range of other government databases [and] the lack of any meaningful regulations to prevent uses that infringe on the right to privacy,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong-Kong based researcher for Human Rights Watch.</blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote>“The government is entirely free to do whatever it pleases for as long as it chooses with the data gathered through video surveillance, including mobilizing this technology to repressive political or religious ends. Such technology is already highly problematic in democratic countries with an independent judiciary – in China the counterweights are simply non-existent.”</blockquote><p></p><p>According to the official China Daily newspaper, the southeastern factory hub of Guangzhou – which is getting set this year to host the Asian Games – now has 2.6 million surveillance cameras in place around the city, likely making it the most-watched city on Earth. Beijing is believed to have the next highest number of any Chinese city with an estimated 470,000, followed by the heaving southwestern megalopolis of Chongqing with 310,000. (According to official figures, Xining will by the end of this year have a relatively modest 5,000 surveillance cameras watching its two million residents.) Those most closely watched by the cameras say it’s a cheap and efficient way for the government to insert itself into their lives. “They use [cameras] to observe human-rights defenders and activists more and more often, rather than arresting us directly. It costs less than using human beings to watch us,” said Zeng Jinyan, an outspoken blogger and the wife of jailed AIDS activist Hu Jia.</p><p>Ms. Zeng and her young daughter have lived with a camera trained on their Beijing apartment building for almost four years, since shortly before her husband was arrested. She said the biggest inconvenience has been that friends and family have become nervous about visiting her apartment since the cameras were installed.</p><p>“My apartment is like an isolated island in our compound. It’s very strange, but I try my best to carry on living a normal life.”</p> </div><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-49812274370728773092010-07-26T23:16:00.000-07:002010-07-26T23:24:35.300-07:00China used force at Tibetan protests: Rights group<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhqXVHqeBKLXKEKiDq6P-hpAddzaAX7RtsH8h5zbXvrR4cfh43oqkkRux968HDKjJtez1wZtKKi1yQVkhOdVCEXwhR-I7-ecnWdrs0YvwPx-R9tI950AN2gX2KsffsUCCHlUc/s1600/Tobet_Nepal_080317_ssh.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhqXVHqeBKLXKEKiDq6P-hpAddzaAX7RtsH8h5zbXvrR4cfh43oqkkRux968HDKjJtez1wZtKKi1yQVkhOdVCEXwhR-I7-ecnWdrs0YvwPx-R9tI950AN2gX2KsffsUCCHlUc/s320/Tobet_Nepal_080317_ssh.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498468054555500562" border="0" /></a><p><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Washington Post Foreign Service</span>, </span>BEIJING -- The New York-based group Human Rights Watch, in a report released Wednesday, said Chinese security forces used "disproportionate force" against peaceful, unarmed protesters and "acted with deliberate brutality" in suppressing widespread rioting in Tibet in March 2008. </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/07/22/i-saw-it-my-own-eyes-0" target="">73-page report</a> accuses the security forces of engaging in "a pattern of deliberate brutality" against the protesters, and then systematically torturing detainees in prison while seeking evidence that exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was behind the uprising. Human Rights Watch accused <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/china.html?nav=el" target="">China</a> of violating international law in quelling the protests. </p> <p> "The scale of human rights violations related to suppressing the protests was far greater than previously believed," the report concludes. It also says "violations continue, including disappearances, wrongful convictions and imprisonment, persecution of families, and the targeting of people suspected of sympathizing with the protest movement." </p>Read <a href="http://http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/22/AR2010072202011.html">more</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-21279942422998645942010-07-07T12:29:00.000-07:002010-07-07T12:30:47.141-07:00The Seduction of China’s Red Carpet<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><div id="article-author" class="clearfix"> <span class="author">By Hua Ming<br /><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/38465/">New <span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 204);">Epoch</span> Magazine</a></span> <span class="date"><i>Created:</i> Jul 2, 2010</span> <span class="date"><i>Last Updated:</i> Jul 6, 2010</span> </div> <div id="article-tools"> <span id="bookmarks"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/social-bookmarking.js"></script><a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F38465%2F&t=Epoch%20Times%20-%20The%20Seduction%20of%20China%E2%80%99s%20Red%20Carpet" title="Facebook"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/facebook.png" alt="Facebook icon" /> Facebook</a> <a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F38465%2F&title=Epoch%20Times%20-%20The%20Seduction%20of%20China%E2%80%99s%20Red%20Carpet" title="Digg"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/digg.png" alt="Digg icon" /> Digg</a> <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F38465%2F&title=Epoch%20Times%20-%20The%20Seduction%20of%20China%E2%80%99s%20Red%20Carpet" title="StumbleUpon"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/stumbleupon.png" alt="StumbleUpon icon" /> StumbleUpon</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Epoch%20Times%20-%20The%20Seduction%20of%20China%E2%80%99s%20Red%20Carpet%20http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F38465%2F" title="Twitter"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/twitter.png" alt="Twitter icon" /> Twitter</a> </span> <span><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/textsizebutton.gif" alt="" border="0" /> <a href="javascript:decreaseFontSize()"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/fontsize_down.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="javascript:increaseFontSize()"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/fontsize_up.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38465&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=1" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/icon_print3.gif" alt="Print" /></a> | <a href="http://epoch-utils.com/website/feedback/mailform.php5?id=38465" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/icon_email3.gif" alt="E-mail to a friend" /></a> | <a href="http://epoch-utils.com/website/feedback/mailform.php5?id=38465&feedback" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/icon_feedback3.gif" alt="Give feedback" /></a> </span><br /> <span> Related articles: <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etsection/sectionid,16/">China</a> > <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etcategory/sectionid,16/categoryid,91/">Regime</a> </span> </div> <div style="width: 350px; float: left; margin-right: 12px;" class="mtImgBoxStyle"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2010/07/02/Red_c.jpg" rel="lightbox[]" title="When foreigners visit China, they may find the red carpet rolled out for them, an actual red carpet. (New Epoch Magazine)"><img class="multithumb" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/mambots/content/multithumb/thumbs/350.0.1.0.16777215.0.stories.large.2010.07.02.Red_c.jpg" alt="" title="When foreigners visit China, they may find the red carpet rolled out for them, an actual red carpet. (New Epoch Magazine)" border="0" width="350" height="332" /></a><div class="mtCapStyle">When foreigners visit China, they may find the red carpet rolled out for them, an actual red carpet. (New Epoch Magazine) </div></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />When foreigners visit China, they may find the red carpet rolled out for them—an actual red carpet. Behind the flattering attention and well-orchestrated hospitality may lie years of meticulous research aimed at gaining influence over selected visitors.<br /><br />“Doing business in China is the greatest honor in my life,” Steven Miller, director of a private storage company, told a New Epoch Magazine reporter. He was with other business professionals. “The treatment I’ve received is like a king: red carpet, excellent food, and local officials who are very responsive.”<br /><br />Sam Sullivan, former mayor of Vancouver, Canada, was equally moved and impressed during his time in China. “When I go to China, they treat me like an emperor. And we don’t have that tradition of that red-carpet thing, so it’s a little embarrassing for me in a way,” he said in an interview with <em>The Vancouver Sun</em>.<br /><br />According to the report, Sullivan recalled that on a trip to China as city councilor, he discovered that almost every major Chinese official at every city hall had his own dining room and his own chef to welcome guests. <div class="etRelated"> <div class="headline">Related Articles</div> <ul><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22241/">Media That Support CCP Also Support John Liu </a></li><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22402/">Former Agent Exposes Communist Regime’s Methods of Infiltration in the West</a></li><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/38068/">Chinese Embassy to Students: Prepare for 'War' During Hu's Visit to Ottawa</a></li></ul> </div><br /><br />Joe Trasolini, mayor of Port Moody, Canada, visited Beijing some years ago and was given similarly warm treatment. He met with the mayor of Beijing, and the city footed the bill for his travel expenses. The next time he visited China, although he paid for his own travel, he was entertained by municipal-level officials. After a few hours of sightseeing in the morning he would enjoy extravagant banquets in the evening.<br /><br />Except the super rich, most live a lifetime without receiving such treatment. In today’s China, however, it has become the norm for communist officials to personally receive in lavish style Western VIPs, businessmen, and delegates, who cannot help but feel honored.<br /><br /><h3>Changed Attitudes</h3><p>After being treated like an emperor, Western politicians have found their attitudes changed toward subjects such as Chinese dissidents and the persecution of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa). Some have gone from denouncing the human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to singing the praises of a developing China.</p> Mayors of Ottawa have for years issued a Falun Dafa Day Proclamation, meant to express recognition of Falun Dafa practitioners’ contribution and presence in Canadian society. Current Mayor Larry O’Brien, however, decided against that this year soon after returning from a recent business trip to China. He explained that he had “made a commitment”—to whom he would not say—and would not issue the proclamation.<br /><br />Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice including meditation and self-reflection on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Despite Mr. O’Brien’s refusal, the City Council unanimously passed the proclamation on June 9.<br /><br /><h3>Doing Research and Identifying Targets</h3><p>The red carpet is one of the more benign methods used by the regime to gain influence over businessmen, diplomatic staff, and politicians.</p> The Chinese communist regime’s intelligence agencies perform extremely thorough and “scientific” research on the human foibles of their targets, which are then ruthlessly exploited, according to a Beijing insider. The intelligence agencies work on the theory that there are four weak points in human nature: fame, profit, lust, and anger. The CCP intelligence agencies attempt to pinpoint these weaknesses in an individual and tailor their approach accordingly.<br /><br />Those fond of fame will find Chinese officials and scholars seeking humble consultation from them; they will receive invitations to universities to give speeches and have flattering reports written about their achievements in official media.<br /><br />For the greedy, Chinese intelligence organizes business opportunities for cooperation, investment, or a fast track to the market. Those whose weakness is lust will be sent pretty girls.<br /><br />The insider told the <em>New Epoch Magazine</em> that the United Front Work Department of the CCP, the International Department of the Central Committee, the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the General Military Department of the People’s Liberation Army, all have a large number of intelligence agents that search for and collect information on potentially useful figures, including Western governmental officials, businessmen, famous scholars, and leaders of overseas Chinese communities and their relatives.<br /><br />According to the degree of usefulness of the targeted individuals, the CCP establishes contact and invites them to China. The scale of the reception is decided on a case-by-case basis. Targeted individuals may then be subject to soft or harsh techniques to persuade them to act in a way that would benefit the Party.<br /><br /><h3>Australian Scandal</h3><p>In March 2009, the Australian media reported that then Defense minister of Australia, Joel Fitzgibbon, had a previously undisclosed close relationship with a Chinese-Australian businesswoman, Liu Haiyan, which posed a security threat to Australia.</p> <p>Liu was closely associated with the Intelligence Department of the People’s Liberation Army, a branch for the collection and analysis of military and political intelligence. The Fitzgibbons had visited China as early as 1993, and since 1993 Chinese intelligence had kept an eye on them.<br /><br />The revelations made a splash in Australia and Fitzgibbon resigned from Cabinet. Soon afterward a shadier deal was revealed: Fitzgibbon had received large sums of money from Liu, and established a joint venture company together with her in China. The incident brought to a wider audience the CCP’s meticulous efforts to cultivate influential figures in Western political circles.<br /><br />Foreign consular officials in China have also not been spared manipulation behind the scenes. In May 2004, a male diplomat from the Consulate General of Japan in Shanghai killed himself; two years later his testimony was uncovered.<br /><br />An investigation revealed that the motivation for his suicide was due to blackmail and threats from the Chinese secret police. The Japanese prime minister pointed out that the CCP had violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.<br /><br />Not all succumb to power and corruption, and many dare to say “no” to the CCP’s advances. Money, fame, lust, and anger are weaknesses inherent in human nature that the CCP has learned to exploit deftly.</p><br /><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-37386216485062749912010-07-07T12:25:00.000-07:002010-07-07T12:26:05.945-07:00CSIS has a long preoccupation with Chinese spying<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><div id="storyheader"><br /><div class="byline"><span class="name">By Jonathan Manthorpe, <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/CSIS+long+preoccupation+with+Chinese+spying/3194458/story.html#ixzz0sgkJ4hJz">Vancouver Sun</a></span><a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/CSIS+long+preoccupation+with+Chinese+spying/3194458/story.html#ixzz0sgkJ4hJz"> </a> <span class="timestamp">June 24, 2010</span> <span id="lblComment" class="comments"></span></div> <div class="clear"> </div></div>Beijing's efforts at espionage and recruiting agents of influence in Canada has been a preoccupation of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) for many years. <p>There has been no clearer indication of how large the issue looms for CSIS than when the former director, Jim Judd, appeared before a Senate committee in April 2007, and said fully half of his organization's work involved monitoring Chinese government espionage efforts in Canada.</p> <p>So there is a long heritage to the statement by the current CSIS director, Richard Fadden, that his organization has evidence that a few provincial and municipal politicians and officials have become "agents of influence" for foreign governments, with the clear inference that he meant primarily China.</p> <p>Indeed, CSIS has always been quite open that it believes Canada is an inevitable target of the Beijing government's determination to activate susceptible Canadians to gather both useful secrets -especially involving technological advances -and to influence Canadian public policy in China's favour.</p> <p>One of the first reports dealing with Chinese efforts to exert influence on other countries and governments was made public by CSIS in 1998. It is an examination of how Beijing used what is called "The United Front" to try to affect public opinion in Hong Kong ahead of the handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and minimize fears of repression.</p> <p>The United Front, now a department of the Chinese government since it was resuscitated by former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978, has a long history starting with the war against Japan in the 1930s and '40s of seeking to play on and use the natural patriotism of non-communist Chinese towards the Communist party's objectives.</p> <p>"Because they are international in scope and occasionally coercive, activities associated with this work can amount to interference in the internal affairs of other nations," says the 1998 CSIS paper.</p> <p>"In this context, Canada cannot claim disassociation from the phenomenon, if only because of the sheer size of its Chinese community."</p> <p>The report goes on to document the role played by the New China news agency, Xinhua, in United Front activities and it points out that the main targets for recruitment as agents of influence are not leftists sympathetic to communism.</p> <p>The main targets are business people who can be suborned by the inducements of contracts in China, and people who may rise to political or other positions of influence within Canadian society.</p> <p>The CSIS report is careful to say, however, that "ethnic Chinese who have settled abroad should not be viewed as a fifth column."</p> <p>The number of people within the Chinese diaspora who are susceptible to Beijing's blandishments are relatively few, the report says.</p> <p>The CSIS interest in Beijing's efforts to recruit agents of influence was refreshed in 2004 with the start of the Chinese government's worldwide program to place Confucius Institutes in academic and other institutions.</p> <p>The official Beijing line was that these institutes, paid for by the Chinese government, are only an attempt to win friends and calm fears about China's rise by spreading knowledge about Chinese culture and language.</p> <p>Institutions in scores of countries have taken Beijing up on the offer, including at least seven colleges and universities in Canada, among them the British Columbia Institute of Technology.</p> <p>But some jurisdictions such as Sweden, and some states in Australia and the United States, have been wary of accepting the institutes, seeing them as another effort by Beijing to recruit agents of influence and perhaps acquire technical secrets from academic institutions.</p><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-38327618921460560602010-07-07T11:43:00.000-07:002010-07-07T11:44:14.518-07:00'Quitting the CCP' Gets Attention at Hong Kong' Parade<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><div id="article-author" class="clearfix"> <span class="author"><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/38471/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 204);">Epoch</span> Times</a> Staff</span> <span class="date"><i>Created:</i> Jul 2, 2010</span> <span class="date"><i>Last Updated:</i> Jul 4, 2010</span> </div> <div id="article-tools"> <span id="bookmarks"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/social-bookmarking.js"></script><a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F38471%2F&t=Epoch%20Times%20-%20%27Quitting%20the%20CCP%27%20Gets%20Attention%20at%20Hong%20Kong%27%20Parade" title="Facebook"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/facebook.png" alt="Facebook icon" /> Facebook</a> <a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F38471%2F&title=Epoch%20Times%20-%20%27Quitting%20the%20CCP%27%20Gets%20Attention%20at%20Hong%20Kong%27%20Parade" title="Digg"><img 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<span> Related articles: <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etsection/sectionid,16/">China</a> > <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etcategory/sectionid,16/categoryid,90/">Democracy and Human Rights</a> </span> </div> <div id="article"> <div class="etinfobox"><div style="width: 350px; float: left; margin-right: 12px;" class="mtImgBoxStyle"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2010/07/03/quitccp.jpg" rel="lightbox[The lineup from Quit the Chinese Communist Party was the main focus of the parade.]" title="The lineup from Quit the Chinese Communist Party was the main focus of the parade. (The Epoch Times)"><img class="multithumb" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/mambots/content/multithumb/thumbs/350.0.1.0.16777215.0.stories.large.2010.07.03.quitccp.jpg" alt="The lineup from Quit the Chinese Communist Party was the main focus of the parade." title="The lineup from Quit the Chinese Communist Party was the main focus of the parade. (The Epoch Times)" border="0" width="350" height="233" /></a><div class="mtCapStyle">The lineup from Quit the Chinese Communist Party was the main focus of the parade. (The Epoch Times) </div></div> <div><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_ettopic/topicid,10/"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_ettopic/images/quitting-the-chinese-communist-party.png" alt="Quitting the Chinese Communist Party" style="background: url("/n2/components/com_ettopic/images/InFocus.png") no-repeat scroll left bottom transparent; padding-left: 77px; margin-left: 8px;" /></a></div></div> <p>Hong Kong's annual July 1st parade took place in the hot summer sun as more than 50,000 people from all walks of life took to the streets to continue their fight for general elections. </p> <p>The lineup consisting of more than 500 Falun Gong practitioners as the main body, with the theme – Quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) movement, became the highlight of the parade. Along the way, tourists and people watching the parade took photos and video recordings of the group.<br /><br /> Professor Gao Dawei, chairman of the Global Quit the CCP center said since 13 years ago, when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, the island previously lauded as the “Pearl of the Orient” has become the battleground of good versus evil.</p> <p> On July 1 2003, 500,000 took to the streets to force the Hong Kong government to protest against the proposed article 23 legislation which if passed would have destroyed all political freedom in Hong Kong. </p> <p>On July 1 2005, the 1st of July was designated as “Global Quit the CCP day” and July as “Global Quit the CCP month”. Since then, the annual July 1 parade has become a symbolic day for Hong Kong citizens fighting for democracy, protesting against suppression by the CCP and supporting Mainland citizens in quitting the CCP and its affiliated associations.<br /><br /> Gao appealed for more to step forward and protest against China. He quoted the words of famous US leader Martin Luther King who once said that change does not come naturally, but is the result of continuous battle. </p> <p>Gao advises Hong Kong people: “You should free yourself from the CCP's evil specter because it is against humanity and evil in nature. This not only requires strong conviction towards moral courage and conscience, it needs wisdom and power to save Hong Kong and the country, to save oneself and others.”<br /><br /> The CCP has gone against its promise of “one country, two systems”. In recent years, the regime has continuously put pressure on the Hong Kong government in areas such as economy, culture, immigration, media and political systems. In Professor Gao's opinion, the <em><a href="http://ninecommentaries.com/" title="Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (Chinese Communist Party)" class="simply_extern">Nine Commentaries</a></em> published by <em>The Epoch Times</em> is the key to disintegrating the CCP and freeing Hong Kong from its tyrannical rule.</p> <p> The <em>Nine Commentaries</em> exposes the evil nature and history of the regime. Through spreading the publication and reading it, people “understand the evilness and brutality of the regime, resolve to quit from it which in time will ultimately lead to its disintegration. In the process, people return to their benevolent nature and right traditions, forsaking the CCP and embracing what's true and beautiful in life.”</p> <h3>Prominent support<br /></h3><p>Szeto Wah, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China also commented that one has to publicly announce their decision to quit the CCP. This shows one's resolution in cutting off all ties with the CCP. He emphasized that action is not enough but in one's mind, one has to thoroughly deny the regime. “I hope this quit the CCP movement will continue. It is beneficial to ending the tyranny of the CCP and I hope the movement will continue to be successful.”<br /><br /> Many prominent Hong Kong citizens have also shown their support for the quit the CCP activities. Albert Lam, central committee member of Hong Kong's democratic party thinks that quitting the CCP is a sign of the awakening of people's conscience. “Yet such conscience cannot be betrayed with money, power and conciliation.” He continued: “every time we mention the issue of quitting the CCP, it is the same as saying that the day when the one party rule will end is coming. There will come a day when we can witness the end of a political power that has brutalized its people and distorted the moral values of the Chinese race. This also signifies that the Chinese people, as a nation with conscience and moral values, will truly stand up.”<br /><br /> Chow Wai Tung, district councilor of the Democratic Party who has already quit the CCP complimented the Quit the CCP movement on its revival of one's moral conscience. He said: “The nine evil genes of the CCP are clearly analyzed in the <em>Nine Commentaries</em>. The recent split within Hong Kong's Pan Democracy camp is the doing of the CCP. Those in the Pan Democracy camp could also easily be deceived by the outward appearance of the CCP and believe in the regime. Fortunately, we have the book <em>Nine Commentaries</em>, we think this is a great literary work. It is a cleansing agent for the CCP's poison. I hope everyone will read the Nine Commentaries and that everyone can quit the CCP on the Internet.”<br /><br /> Lam Wing Yin, former Sai Kung district council member for the Democratic Party praised Falun Gong volunteers for their dedication in handing out information to tourists from Mainland China and encouraging them to quit the CCP. He thinks it is no surprise that the number of people quitting the CCP will increase over time. He said: “As long as we continue to persist on this path, there will come a day when the CCP will disintegrate. The regime is actually very vulnerable.”<br /><br /> Albert Chan, member of the Legislative council of Hong Kong who once took to the streets to appeal for free elections, admired the actions of Falun Gong practitioners in spreading the <em>Nine Commentaries</em> and the Quit the CCP movement. He said that quitting the CCP is a basic right of the people. “Political freedom is the most important thing. The CCP is a one party dictatorship, restricting freedom of assembly, religious freedom and freedom of its people. Therefore we have to resolutely support the people's right to freedom of expression.”<br /><br /> Recently, the CCP caused a division within the Hong Kong Pan democracy camp and has attempted to deceive the people with alleged promises of open dialogue. Albert Chan emphasized that the words of the CCP cannot be trusted. “I appeal to the citizens of Hong Kong not to believe in those lies. We have been deceived so many times. The government has previously said that there would be general elections in 2007 and 2008 but this has been postponed to 2012 with no date set. The CCP still controls everything and the disparity between rich and poor in Hong Kong is increasing. As long as there is no democracy, the people in Hong Kong will remain oppressed.”<br /><br /> Read the original <a href="http://epochtimes.com/gb/10/7/2/n2955163.htm" target="_blank">Chinese article </a> </p> <p>Read the <a href="http://ninecommentaries.com/" target="_blank"><em>Nine Commentaries</em></a> </p> </div><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-29075782219606055342010-07-06T11:59:00.000-07:002010-07-07T12:01:11.897-07:00Disappearance of Chinese activist Gao Zhisheng demands action<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/">washingtonpost.com</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/05/AR2010070502584.html">WP July 6</a>: A MAN DISAPPEARS. He is subjected to excruciating torture -- his body broken until he is scarcely recognizable -- and threatened with death unless he disavows his beliefs and embraces the Party. It sounds like something out of the writing of George Orwell. But this is the story of <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905130,00.html" target="">Gao Zhisheng</a>, a prominent Chinese lawyer whose case has drawn international attention, and who has now vanished for a second time. <p> Mr. Gao's story is astonishing. With only a middle-school education, he taught himself law and went on to rank among China's top lawyers, becoming a dedicated advocate for justice and the rule of law. His writings earned international attention, from "<a href="http://www.broadbook.com/english/1product.asp?id=216" target="">A China More Just</a>," a book detailing his struggles, to his impassioned open letters denouncing China's human rights failures. He took on sensitive cases most other lawyers avoided, even asserting the rights of detained Falun Gong members to judicial review. As a result of his activism, he has been kidnapped, tortured and disappeared. Last year, he vanished for more than a year, emerging this March under tight scrutiny from authorities, forced to abandon his human rights efforts and seeming broken. In April, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/world/asia/01gao.html" target="">he vanished again</a>. </p> <p> And he is one of the few "disappeared" Chinese known to the public. More than 400,000 prisoners are said to be languishing in the "black jails," labor camps and detention centers of China. In the year following Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/20/AR2009022000967.html" target="">disastrous remarks</a> that human rights must not "interfere" with U.S.-China relations, the Chinese government's crackdown on those who strive to build the rule of law has only broadened. Citizens blog, tweet and engage in discourse -- until their comments are censored, their opinions removed and they are arrested. </p> <p> Increased international attention may bring back Mr. Gao. But this will not solve the problem. </p> <p> President Obama has just <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/26/AR2010062603609.html" target="">invited Chinese President Hu Jintao for a state visit</a>. He must allow human rights -- and Mr. Gao -- to interfere. For years, Chinese lawyers like Mr. Gao have struggled to build the rule of law, case by case. The United States must support democratic processes and the authority of the legal system. A China in which the law is respected, where citizens have a say in their government and can count upon it to protect their rights, rather than depending upon the whim of Communist Party leaders, would be a great leap forward for individuals and businesses alike. </p><br /><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-87135371206790656042010-07-05T11:52:00.000-07:002010-07-07T11:55:52.851-07:00David Matas: Lessons From the Holocaust, Organ Harvesting in China<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><h2>The fight to expose systematic organ harvesting in China</h2> <div id="article-author" class="clearfix"> <span class="author">By Fany Qiu & Michelle Yu<br /><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/37742/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 204);">Epoch</span> Times</a> Staff</span> <span class="date"><i>Created:</i> Jun 20, 2010</span> <span class="date"><i>Last Updated:</i> Jun 20, 2010</span> </div> <div id="article-tools"> <span id="bookmarks"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/social-bookmarking.js"></script><a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F37742%2F&t=Epoch%20Times%20-%20David%20Matas%3A%20Lessons%20From%20the%20Holocaust%2C%20Organ%20Harvesting%20in%20China" title="Facebook"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/facebook.png" alt="Facebook icon" /> Facebook</a> <a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F37742%2F&title=Epoch%20Times%20-%20David%20Matas%3A%20Lessons%20From%20the%20Holocaust%2C%20Organ%20Harvesting%20in%20China" title="Digg"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/digg.png" alt="Digg icon" /> Digg</a> <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F37742%2F&title=Epoch%20Times%20-%20David%20Matas%3A%20Lessons%20From%20the%20Holocaust%2C%20Organ%20Harvesting%20in%20China" title="StumbleUpon"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/stumbleupon.png" alt="StumbleUpon icon" /> StumbleUpon</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Epoch%20Times%20-%20David%20Matas%3A%20Lessons%20From%20the%20Holocaust%2C%20Organ%20Harvesting%20in%20China%20http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fn2%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F37742%2F" title="Twitter"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/images/twitter.png" alt="Twitter icon" /> Twitter</a> </span> <span><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/textsizebutton.gif" alt="" border="0" /> <a href="javascript:decreaseFontSize()"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/fontsize_down.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="javascript:increaseFontSize()"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/fontsize_up.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37742&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=1" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/icon_print3.gif" alt="Print" /></a> | <a href="http://epoch-utils.com/website/feedback/mailform.php5?id=37742" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/icon_email3.gif" alt="E-mail to a friend" /></a> | <a href="http://epoch-utils.com/website/feedback/mailform.php5?id=37742&feedback" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_content/etimages/icon_feedback3.gif" alt="Give feedback" /></a> </span><br /> <span> Related articles: <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etsection/sectionid,1/">World</a> > <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etcategory/sectionid,1/categoryid,106/">International</a> </span> </div> <div class="etinfobox"><div><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_ettopic/topicid,6/"><img src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/components/com_ettopic/images/organ-harvesting-in-china.png" alt="Organ Harvesting in China" style="background: url("/n2/components/com_ettopic/images/InFocus.png") no-repeat scroll left bottom transparent; padding-left: 77px; margin-left: 8px;" /></a></div></div> <p>Men of conscience often face tremendous challenges in life. Driven by their hearts, when exposed to injustice and evil, they cannot turn away; despite the risks, they choose to do what they believe is right.<br /><br />Oskar Schindler, the heroic figure portrayed in the 1993 Spielberg film “Schindler’s List,” is a historic example of a person who risked everything to save nearly 1,200 Jewish workers from certain death during Nazi Germany’s “Final Solution” genocide targeting European Jews—the Holocaust. The brave Schindler risked life and limb to stand against tyranny and follow his conscience.<br /><br />Canadian David Matas is also a man of conscience. Although he does not find himself living and surviving daily while surrounded by oppressors, he has seen evidence of great tyranny. His determination to expose unspeakable evil may potentially save hundreds of thousands from the clutches of one of the most oppressive regimes in human history.<br /><br /></p><div style="width: 350px; float: left; margin-right: 12px;" class="mtImgBoxStyle"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2010/06/21/DavidMatas.jpg" rel="lightbox[]" title="David Matas. (Mingguo Sun/The Epoch Times)"><img class="multithumb" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/mambots/content/multithumb/thumbs/350.0.1.0.16777215.0.stories.large.2010.06.21.DavidMatas.jpg" alt="" title="David Matas. (Mingguo Sun/The Epoch Times)" border="0" width="350" height="318" /></a><div class="mtCapStyle">David Matas. (Mingguo Sun/The Epoch Times) </div></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Matas, along with former Canadian government official David Kilgour, published “BLOODY HARVEST—Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China.” In the report, they summarize their shocking investigation into a modern-day mass genocide:<br /><br />“We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centers and ‘people’s courts,’ since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries.”<br /><br />This conclusion was reached after months of documented, investigative research, and the eventual report released in July 2006. A subsequent 2007 revision of the report, and recently published book “Bloody Harvest,” include new evidence collected by the two authors in ongoing efforts to expose the mass killings.<br /><br />How does one investigate crimes committed by a communist regime that controls the very flow of information and stifles transparency? “The allegations, by their very nature, are difficult either to prove or disprove,” Matas and Kilgour stated in the “Difficulty of Proof” section in their 2007 report.<br /><br />Mr. Matas elaborated on this assertion in a recent interview with The Epoch Times. “What was difficult was to figure out a method to approach the issue when there are no corpses [according to the allegation, the victims’ bodies were cremated], no crime scene, no records, no independent media, no human rights NGOs working within the country.” <h3><strong>Request for Help</strong></h3><p>The investigation began when a non-governmental organization (NGO)—the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China (CIPFG)—sent the men a request for help in investigating emerging allegations that Falun Gong practitioners were being targeted for organ harvesting.<br /><br />With decades of experience as a human rights attorney—and participation as a Canadian delegate in the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust—Matas, along with Kilgour, immediately knew this investigation was no easy task.<br /><br />But they accepted the challenge and, drawing from lessons learned during the time of Oskar Schindler, couldn’t dismiss such allegations as mere rumor.<br /><br />“One of the lessons we’ve learned from the Holocaust is that human nature does not change,” Matas stated to The Epoch Times. “What changes is the technology, but the capacity for doing evil remains the same.”<br /><br />Once they decided on an approach to prove or disprove the allegations, no time was wasted in collecting evidence—not so easy when the Chinese regime was determined to thwart investigators.<br /><br />“First of all they wouldn’t let us go to China [to investigate the case],” said Matas. “They said, ‘We know what’s going on. We’ll tell you. You don’t have to go.’”<br /><br />Communist authorities also tried to prevent the investigators from interviewing witnesses by threatening those they wanted to interview.<br /><br />Still, the researchers were able to interview a substantial number of people, including released Falun Gong practitioners, non-Falun Gong former prisoners, and a family member of a surgeon involved in organ removal operations, as well as organ recipients.<br /><br />Investigators, posing as potential recipients inquiring about transplants, also contacted Chinese hospitals requesting organs and donor information.</p> <h3><strong>‘Shocking and Chilling’</strong></h3>The findings, Matas said, were “shocking and chilling,” and were more than enough to reach a conclusion. “Together, they paint a picture,” he stated in the 2007 report, “… particularly when there are so many of them.”<br /><br />Since the release of the first report, the two authors have been invited to 80 cities in 40 countries to present their research, while accumulating more evidence. Along the way, the biggest barrier has always been the Chinese regime’s obdurate interference around the world.<br /><br />When invited to speak of the genocide at certain universities, for example, Chinese student groups guided by the regime would show up in protest; in some cases, these students were so violent and disruptive that campus security ordered them to leave. In other cases, hosting organizations canceled the presentations on organ harvesting due to threatening pressure from Chinese embassies.<br /><br />“Everywhere [we see] this kind of harassment and interference,” Matas said, adding that Chinese embassies went so far as to call a parliament committee in Finland and demand they cancel a meeting with Matas and Kilgour.<br /><br />Sometimes harassment turns into threats—personal threats. When David Matas spoke on a radio program in Australia—broadcast live into China—audience members were invited to call in for questions and comments. A man calling in from China said, “I’m from the Internet police. What you are doing is an attack on China. By insulting China you are putting your own life at risk. My question for you is: are you not afraid?”<br /><br />“The problem is the abuse,” Matas replied. “Don’t blame the messenger. Blame the message. If you don’t want this sort of criticism, stop human rights violations. Stop killing Falun Gong for their organs.”<br /><br />Responses from regime officials have been annoying, to say the least. The rare and belated responses consist mainly of two parts: typical propaganda attacks on Falun Gong and personal attacks on the two authors and their “subversive intrigue” against China.<br /><br />Of note: no comment has been made to address the evidence listed in the reports, evidence which the investigators say is independently verifiable.<br /><br />After repeated requests, Kilgour and Matas were granted a meeting at the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa; a staffer showed up with a prepared statement consisting mainly of attacks on Falun Gong copied from Chinese propaganda materials. Mr. Matas described the staffer’s reference to the organ harvest report as “just silly.”<br /><br />“The way it attempted to refute our report was to take statements from our report that had citations or [were] supported by evidence, strip the citations, and changed the quotations to ‘it’s said that’ or ‘it’s rumored that’ … to give the impression that our report was based on rumors rather than on evidence. And then he criticized the report for being based on rumors.<br /><br />“For me and David Kilgour, we are two individuals working part time to take on the government of China, which has a budget of billions and full-time staff around the world,” Matas reflected, in our interview. “We know from defectors that [combating Falun Gong] is their number one priority. ... They have more personnel devoted to combating the Falun Gong than to anything else. For us two part-time individuations to stand against this monolith is a mammoth task.”<br /><br />Mammoth task as it is, giving up is never an option for Matas. Of Jewish descent, Matas says he’s learned important lessons from the Holocaust. “One of the reasons that the Holocaust happened was the global indifference, the notion that this is a country far away,” he said. “Crimes against humanity are not just crimes against the Chinese. It’s crimes against all of us.”<br /><br />Matas said conscientious law professionals in China such as Gao Zhisheng also inspired him to persist.<br /><br />Gao, nominee of the Nobel Peace Award for two consecutive years, has been repeatedly imprisoned, tortured, and placed under house arrest because of his efforts to appeal for persecuted Falun Gong practitioners. “If he can do all that,” Matas said, “what David Kilgour and I have done is the least we can do.”<br /><br />According to the Matas and Kilgour report, systematic organ harvesting started as early as 2000 or 2001.<br /><br />Four years have elapsed since the 2006 initial publication of the investigative report, and the persecution of Falun Gong is still going on. But Matas says he has faith.<div class="etRelated"> <div class="headline">Related Articles</div> <ul><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/29961/">Kilgour and Matas Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize</a></li><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/30776/">What's Really Wrong with Rights and Democracy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/33110/">Lessons of the Holocaust: Making ‘Never again’ a Reality</a></li></ul> </div><br /><br />“I’ve been in this business for a long time,” said Matas, now senior legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. “I know that human rights change doesn’t happen quickly,” he said. “But over a period of time I’ve seen a lot of changes.”<br /><br />He added that over the last four years, the publicity surrounding systematic organ harvesting has forced China’s communist regime to at least admit that organs do come from prisoners; responding to public scrutiny, regime officials have also removed websites that overtly advertise harvested organs for transplant.<br /><br />Both gentlemen have voluntarily carried the fight to expose the atrocities; when complimented for his generous deeds, Matas laughed, and dismissed the credit.<br /><br />“It’s not about me. It’s about all the other people,” he said. “But from a personal perspective, I’m Jewish and I’ve been very much affected by the Holocaust. … I’ve been trying to think about the Holocaust, learn a lesson from the Holocaust and act on them as a legacy to victims of the Holocaust.<br /><br />“One of the lessons I’ve learned is the need for people everywhere to act on human rights violations anywhere, to prevent those violations from happening.”<br /><br />In the “Recommendation” section of the Bloody Harvest report, Matas and Kilgour request from us:<br /><br />“To all those who are sceptical about the allegations, we ask you to ask yourself what you would suggest to prevent, in any state, allegations like these from becoming true. The common sense list of precautions to prevent the sort of activity here alleged have pretty much all been missing in China.”<br /><br />---<br /><br /><strong>Biography of David Matas (<a href="http://www.bnaibrith.ca/" target="_blank">www.bnaibrith.ca</a>)</strong><br />David Matas is senior legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada, and an internationally renowned refugee, immigration, and human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg. A former president of the Canadian Council of Refugees, he is also active in such organizations as Amnesty International, Helsinki Watch, and the International Commission of Jurists. He has represented B’nai Brith in many international fora, such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He is an accomplished author of several highly acclaimed publications, among them “Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada” (1987) with Susan Charendoff; “Closing the Doors: The Failure of Refugee Protection” (1989) with Ilana Simon; “Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech” (2000); and “Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and the Rise of Contemporary Anti-Semitism” (2005). His latest book is “Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for their Organs” (2009) with David Kilgour. He has received numerous awards and honors, including an honorary doctorate from Concordia University.<br /><br />For more information about David Matas, go to: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Matas" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Matas</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" border="0" width="468" height="60" /></a><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-5147456587264373342009-10-01T10:21:00.000-07:002009-10-01T10:22:48.764-07:00China Anniversary Memorial on Behalf of 70 Million Ghosts<!-- START OF BANNER CODE -->Thanks to Jack Fowler for this piece.<br /><p class="blog_title_holder"><span class="blog_title">China Anniversary Memorial on Behalf of 70 Million Ghosts</span> [Jack Fowler]<br /></p><p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span><a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDYyMmQzOTYzNjVhOWQ2Zjc1N2IxNzI0N2UzNGJiMmE=">NRO</a>: The <a title="http://www.visualartistsguild.info/VAG/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=44" href="http://www.visualartistsguild.info/VAG/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=44" target="_blank"> Visual Artists Guild</a>, sponsor of yesterday’s Big Apple “<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=7021154">die-in</a>” outside the PRC consulate, has issued this statement on the 60th anniversary of China going Red: </span></span></p> <blockquote> <p class="x_MsoNormal" align="center"><strong><span style=""><span style="font-weight: bold;">Memorial to the victims of 60 years of Peoples Republic of China</span></span></strong></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong announced the founding of the Peoples Republic of China. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>Today, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, we mourn the deaths of 70 million Chinese who died in the greatest genocide of human history. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We mourn those killed during the violent days of land redistribution when people were agitated into murderous frenzies against their fellow human beings labeled as being landowners, rich peasants and bourgeoisie. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We remember those intellectuals who answered the call of the Hundred Flowers Movement to speak freely about their government only to find that they were trapped during the anti-rightist campaign that followed.</span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We demand the release of all Political Prisoners.</span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We mourn the 38 million men, women and children who died in the greatest man-made famine in human history as a result of the wanton disregard of human lives under Mao during the Great Leap Forward.</span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We mourn the millions who died during the Cultural Revolution. <br /></span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We mourn the millions who were tortured and died in the laogai labor camps. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We mourn the deaths of the Buddhists, Taoists, Tibetans, Catholics, Protestants, Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghur Muslims, and many others who were persecuted and died when they struggled for their right to freedom of religion. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We mourn those who were slaughtered during the Tiananmen Massacre and the subsequent executions which followed.</span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We grieve with their families.<br /></span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>70 million human beings perished. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>Such intentional behavior by the government of the Peoples Republic of China in the treatment of its citizens must not continue in the 21st century. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We demand for the people of the Peoples Republic of China their rights to Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Religion and all other Freedoms as stated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. </span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We demand the release of all Prisoners of Conscience.</span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We demand that China's history record an official apology from its government for past transgressions against 70 million human beings and their families.</span></span></p> <p class="x_MsoNormal"><span style=""><span>We look forward to a peaceful and prosperous China whose citizens will live in a nation that respects basic human rights and respects the inherent dignity of human life that all people deserve.</span></span></p> </blockquote><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-55677189682280008262009-09-24T12:56:00.000-07:002009-09-24T13:01:53.966-07:00ZHAO ZIYANG -- MAJOR OPPORTUNITY LOST FOR CHINA<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><br /><div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western"> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b><span style="font-family:Georgia;">Discussion Paper </span></b><b>by Hon. Davıd Kılgour </b></span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size:130%;">23 September 2009</span></b></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Ottawa</span></strong></div> <div style="font-family:Georgia;"><span style="font-size:130%;">------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ </span></div> <div style="font-family:Georgia;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div><span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://mwcnews.net/content/view/33357/26/">MWC</a>: The publication this year of <i>Prisoner Of State-The Secret Journal of Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang </i> contains important insights into modern China by a leader who for almost 15 years played a key role in the management of its economy. Tienanmen Square events in mid-1989 sidelined Zhao, but party-state governance has probably worsened since and his observations recorded before his death in 2005 are useful to any student of China.<br /><br /></span></div> <div><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div><span style="font-size:130%;">From the time of Zhao's house arrest in 1989 until his death, he kept a secret audio journal at his home in Beijing-30 tapes of about one hour's length each-a copy of which was thereafter smuggled out of the country. They constitute an eloquent <i>cri de coeur</i> by an intelligent, reflective leader of integrity and candour, who sought always to do his best for the Chinese people.<br /><br /></span></div> <div><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b> Career<br /><br /></b> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Zhao's career as a Communist party administrator began in Henan province after the Japanese invaded it in 1937, causing him to leave high school. He made his reputation as a reformer in Guangdong province in the '50s and 60's, becoming at only 46 years of age party chief in Guangdong. He was purged in Mao's Cultural Revolution as a "revisionist", specifically for ending agricultural communes and leasing land to farmers in an attempt to recover from Mao's disastrous 'Great Leap Forward' in which millions starved to death.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">By 1971, Zhao was reinstated by the party leadership and two years later rose to become a member of its Central Committee. His next advance was to join the Politburo; only a year after that, he joined its key Standing Committee and at Deng Xiaoping's request later took charge of China's national economy as premier of the State Council.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Zhao's patron Deng, by 1986 firmly established as paramount party leader despite being purged twice by Mao, also made him leader of a group invited to propose a political reform package. As acting General Secretary of the Party later, Zhao proposed to separate the party from the government. He told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 that the rule of law should replace the rule of party officials and that more transparency was needed. The economy, he argued, needed an independent judiciary.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Tienanmen Disaster<br /><br /></b> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">During 1989, Zhao's immediate hopes for a China with acceptable governance were dashed. In response to the student demonstrations in April against corruption and other issues, Zhao proposed a return to classes, dialogues and punishing only those who had committed crimes. Unfortunately, a few days later, Deng, then aged 85 and holding only the official position of chair of the Military Commission, condemned the protests to party insiders. When his remarks were circulated by hardliner Li Peng, events at Tienanmen escalated.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Zhao nonetheless called for the protesters to be dealt with "based on principles of democracy and law". A week later when Deng decided to impose martial law, Zhao showed enormous courage by telling his mentor that he'd find it difficult to carry out such an order. Two days later, he visited the square and pleaded with the demonstrators to leave, knowing that a brutal assault was imminent.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">This was in fact his last public appearance as premier. Soon after the massacre of hundreds of students and others in and around Tienanmen Square, Zhao was stripped of all party offices and put under house arrest for 16 years until he died.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Three Key Insights</b> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Deng<br /><br /></b> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Deng Xiaping, the acknowledged paramount leader after Mao's death between 1981 and 1997, is presented as sympathetically as possible by Zhao as his longtime friend and favourite, but overall Deng emerges as deeply flawed. He made Zhao premier and responsible for the economy and was in the process of making him General Secretary of the CCP when Tienanmen events intervened. Deng did support economic liberalisation after the crippling central planning of Mao since 1949, including various initiatives by Zhao in the '70s and '80s, but he opposed the rule of law, multi-party democracy and virtually every principle of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also unleashed the terrible violence of Tienanmen Square upon his own people and encouraged a small group of like-minded hardliners, Li Peng and Jiang Zemin in particular, in effect to swallow the Party. China and the world would be much better places if Deng had continued to support Zhao.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Governance<br /><br /></b> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">In large part because of Deng's choices during 1989, the party-state of China continues to govern in the mould of some of the most authoritarian regimes of the present and past centuries. The country's constitution remains an empty vessel. Not even the party charter was heeded in its treatment of Zhao. For example, Deng and a few cronies decided at a meeting a Deng's home to remove Zhao as General Secretary of the Party, but under the charter only the Standing Committee of the Politburo could do so. As Zhao notes, two of its five members (including Zhao) were not invited to attend. At a subsequent meeting of the Central Committee to censure Zhao, his statement of defence was not even shown to some of those present. He provides other examples of Cultural Revolution tactics used against the people of China since 1989.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Zhao notes that even during the height of the 'class struggles in 1962, Mao did not deprive Marshall Peng Dehuai of his personal freedom over his criticisms, sending him instead to do useful work. Jiang Zemin as General Secretary claimed the party would govern according to the rule of law, but much of what happened to Zhao during his eight years as boss was a violation of both the laws of China and the party charter. </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Economy<br /><br /></b> </span></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Zhao's insights into the reasons for his country's breakneck economic growth after 1978 are also important. In his view, the key elements were allowing direct foreign investment, the creation of special economic zones on the coast, expanded autonomy for enterprises and allowing land to be leased.<br /><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Here, I offer some personal views, not Zhao's, including my essential concurrence with Peter Navarro, a professor at the University of California, who argues that consumer markets across the world have been “conquered” by China largely through cheating on trade practices. These include export subsidies, widespread counterfeiting and piracy of products, currency manipulation, and environmental, health and safety standards so weakly enforced that they have made China a very dangerous place to work. </span></div> <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></div> <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Navarro says new trade legislation by all of China’s trade partners should achieve fair trade by the following: </span></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> </p> <div style="text-align: left;"> <ol><li><span style="font-size:130%;">All must refrain from illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation and abide by the rules of the World Trade Organisation(WTO); </span> </li><li><span style="font-size:130%;">For currency manipulation, he supports what the bi-partisan US-China Commission has recommended to the American Congress: define it as an illegal export subsidy and add it to other subsidies when calculating anti-dumping and countervail penalties; </span> </li><li><span style="font-size:130%;">Every trade partner must respect intellectual property; adopt and enforce health, safety and environmental regulations consistent with international norms; provide decent wages and working conditions; and ban the use of forced labour; </span> </li><li><span style="font-size:130%;">Adopt a 'zero-tolerance' policy for anyone who sells or distributes pirated or counterfeit goods; </span> </li><li><span style="font-size:130%;">Defective and contaminated food and drugs must be blocked more effectively by measures which make it easier to hold importers liable for selling foreign products that do harm to people or pets; </span> </li><li><span style="font-size:130%;">Despite growing criticism, China's party-state continues to trade its UN Security Council veto for energy, raw materials and access to markets from Angola to Burma to Zimbabwe. Increased monitoring and exposure of China's party-state activities everywhere is important; </span> </li><li><span style="font-size:130%;">To reverse the 'race to the environmental bottom' in China, to require all to compete on a level playing field and to reduce acid rain and smog affecting populations abroad, all bilateral and multilateral trade agreements should henceforth include strong provisions for protection of the natural environment. </span></li></ol> </div> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">Many Canadians allow our respect for the people of China to mute criticism of their government. When apologists for its party-state insist that the situation for a growing part of the population is getting better, many of us appear willing to overlook bad governance, official violence, growing social inequalities, widespread corruption and chronic nepotism. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">The Chinese people want the same things as Canadians, including, respect for all, education, to be safe and secure, good jobs, and a sustainable natural environment. Living standards have improved on the coast and in other urban areas in China, but there is a cost. Most Chinese continue to be exploited by the party-state and firms, often owned by or contracted for manufacturing to multinationals, which operate today across their country like 19th century robber barons. This explains partly why the prices of consumer products 'made in China' seem so low—the externalities are borne by workers, their families and the natural environment. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Labour Camps</b> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">In doing our final report on party-state organ pillaging from Falun Gong practitioners since 2001, David Matas and I visited about a dozen countries to interview adherents sent to China's forced labour camps since 1999, who managed later to leave the camps and the country itself. They told us of working in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay, little food, being cramped together on the floor for sleeping and being tortured. They made export products, ranging from garments to chopsticks to Christmas decorations as subcontractors to multinational companies. This, of course, constitutes both gross corporate irresponsibility and violations of WTO rules. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">The labour camps are outside the legal system and allow the party-state to send anyone to them for up to four years with neither hearing nor appeal. There is a link between the involuntary labour done since 1999 by tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners in these camps and the resulting loss of manufacturing jobs in Canada and elsewhere. One estimate of the number of the camps across China as of 2005 was 340, having a capacity of about 300,000 inmates. In 2007, a US government report estimated that at least half of the inmates in the camps were Falun Gong. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">Such <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">grave abuses</span> would not be occurring if the Chinese people enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the intrinsic importance of each one of them. It is the combination of totalitarian governance and 'anything is permitted' economics that allows such practices to persist. Canada and other countries should ban forced labour exports. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">The attempted crushing of democracy movements, truthful journalists, Buddhist, Falun Gong, Christian, Muslim and other independent faith groups, human rights lawyers and other legitimate civil society communities in recent years indicates that China's party-state must still be engaged with caution. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;">If its government stops abuses of human rights and takes steps to indicate that it wishes to treat its trade partners in a mutually-beneficial way, the new century will bring harmony for China, its trading partners and neighbours. The Chinese people have the numbers, perseverance, self-discipline, entrepreneurship, intelligence, culture and pride to make this new century better and more peaceful for the entire human family. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Conclusion</b> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;">To return to Zhao's important book in closing, the people of China and the entire world can only regret that Deng did not allow his protege to continue leading the party and the government towards the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Imagine how much different China itself and so many countries from Sudan to Burma to Iran might be be if the leader who was so much in tune with the values emerging in numerous authoritarian countries in the '80s and '90s had succeeded. The world must hope that the next Zhao in China will be allowed to succeed. </span></p> <p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">-30- </span></p> </div><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-67530074990863438132009-09-24T12:45:00.000-07:002009-09-24T12:52:12.237-07:00FORUM ON CHINA: Vancouver, Sept. 27, 2009<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b><span style=";font-family:";" >60 Years of Communist Dictatorship<br /><br /></span></b></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule in China, the Simon Fraser University China Research Society invites everyone to participate in a Forum on China. With China well on the way to becoming a major world power, experts and scholars will come together to analyze China’s current situation and review the Party’s 60-year reign.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Will China’s version of Communism survive unbridled capitalism? Will the Party itself survive? If the regime continues to allow rampant pollution of China’s air, land, and water, what does the future hold for the Chinese people?</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And what about China's egregious human rights record, including religious repression and persecution?</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Find out more by joining in the discussion on Sunday, September 27 at 1: 30 pm at SFU Downtown Campus. Admission is free.</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><br /><b style="">PANELISTS:<br /></b><br /><b>China Expert Clive Ansley<br /></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Clive Ansley has practiced law in Vancouver, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. He now heads up Ansley and Company, based in Courtney, British Columbia.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><br /><b>Author Sheng Xue</b><br /><br />Sheng Xue grew up in Beijing. Since coming to Canada in 1989 she has worked for a number of Chinese media, winning many awards for her investigative journalism.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><br /><b>Lawyer Guo Guoting</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Guo Guoting is a human rights lawyer from China who defended prisoners of conscience. He came to Canada in 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><b>Venue: </b> <b>Room 1700, Labatt Hall, SFU Downtown Campus<br /> 515 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC</b></span></p><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12;" ><br /></span><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-22294317613447542512009-09-23T13:05:00.000-07:002009-09-24T13:07:20.582-07:00China Suspends Plans to Install Internet Filtering on PCs<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --> <div class="header"><h6 class="node-title"> </h6> </div> <div style="font-family: georgia;" class="info"> <div class="meta date"> <span style="font-size:130%;"><span class="created">September 16, 2009 -<a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/16/china-suspends-plans-install-internet-filtering-pcs"> </a></span><a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/16/china-suspends-plans-install-internet-filtering-pcs">HRW</a>: China has indefinitely suspended its plans to install internet filtering software on all new personal computers. The “Green Dam Youth Escort” filtering software attracted ire due to assessments by Human Rights Watch and others that the program, pitched as a tool to block pornographic content from personal computers, represented a much more sinister threat to privacy and choice. Human Rights Watch testified on these types of threats to free speech in front of the US Senate subcommittee on human rights and the law and wrote <a href="http://www.hrw.org/node/83928">letters</a> to computer manufacturers urging them not to become complicit in China’s infringement of freedoms. We helped rally public outrage at China’s attempts to curtail free expression, intrude on user privacy, and undermine user choice. Millions of Chinese internet users offered up scathing criticism as well, and our advocacy contributed to unprecedented opposition by foreign computer manufacturers and international business associations, and a threat from both the US trade representative and US secretary of commerce that Green Dam might prompt a challenge from the World Trade Organization.<br /></span></div> </div> <div style="font-family: georgia;" class="node-body"><p> <span style="font-size:130%;"><a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/category/topic/business">Read more.</a></span></p> </div><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-1344685210170473222009-09-02T11:53:00.000-07:002009-09-02T11:54:49.550-07:00China Detains 15 Over Lead Protest<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><cite><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125189922999979627.html">WSJ</a>: Associated Press</cite><h3 class="byline"> </h3><p>BEIJING -- Police in central China detained 15 parents for blocking roads and damaging government offices in a protest over factory pollution that left hundreds of local children with lead poisoning, villagers said Wednesday.</p> <p>In a bizarre twist, police in Hunan province's Wenping township accused the parents involved in the Aug. 8 unrest of being either members of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, or influenced by such members.</p> <p>Villagers mocked the accusation, saying authorities were using the charge as revenge against parents for rioting over the lead poisoning of more than 1,300 children caused by a manganese processing plant. Falun Gong practitioners are relentlessly persecuted by Chinese authorities.</p> <p>Anger is growing in China over public safety scandals in which children have been the main victims. The ruling Communist Party is worried mass protests will threaten the country's social stability and challenge its grip on power.</p> <p>The Wugang city public security bureau, which oversees Wenping, issued a notice Tuesday saying "cult members with ulterior motives" led a few villagers to block roads, attack government offices and damage public property, 40-year-old resident Dai Zuoyi said.</p> <p>Police said 15 people were being held and urged the "Falun Gong practitioners to turn themselves in as soon as possible," said Dai, who read the announcement to the Associated Press over the phone.</p> <p>"When I saw this notice, I laughed till my stomach hurt," Dai said. "There have never been any Falun Gong followers in Wenping. This is clearly a reprisal attack against villagers."</p> <p>A notice posted on the Web site of the Wugang city government last week said Chinese and foreign Falun Gong members were spreading false rumors and "instigating the public to cause trouble" in response to the lead poisoning incident. It did not mention detentions.</p> <p>Dai said his brother-in-law Li Changye was among the parents detained this week. Li, 40, was among hundreds of residents who blocked roads leading to the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant, Dai said.</p> <p>Both Dai's and Li's sons, aged 5 months and 6 years, have excessive levels of lead in their blood, Dai said. Lead poisoning can damage the nervous and reproductive systems and cause high blood pressure and memory loss.</p> <p>The Wugang government's spokesman, who would give only his surname, Xia, denied that any Wenping residents had been detained.</p> <p>"We have not taken any measures against the parents. But if anybody has broken the law, their cases will be investigated by the police," Xia said by phone.</p> <p>He said city government officials have recently received phone calls from out of town by people who personally attacked the officials. Based on "previous experience," the police think they might be Falun Gong members, Xia said, without going into details.</p> <p>The Wenping incident was one of three cases of lead poisoning involving large numbers of children last month. The first case involved more than 600 children living near a lead smelter in northwestern Shaanxi province, while the latest one occurred in Yunnan in the southwest, with about 200 children sickened.</p> <p> <em>Copyright © 2009 Associated Press</em> </p><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-73765308974996750052009-09-01T12:04:00.000-07:002009-09-02T12:07:03.280-07:00‘Sandstorm’—A Story of Reckoning, Repentance, and Redemption<!-- START OF BANNER CODE -->Film drama based on the persecution of Falun Gong in China <div id="article-author" class="clearfix"> <span class="author">By Masha Savitz<br /><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/21870/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 204);">Epoch</span> Times</a> Staff</span> <span class="date">Sep 1, 2009</span> </div> <div id="article-tools"> <span id="bookmarks"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/includes/et/socialbookmark/social-bookmarking.js"></script></span><span><br /> </span> </div> <div style="width: 350px; float: left; margin-right: 12px;" class="mtImgBoxStyle"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2009/09/01/SStorm.jpg" rel="lightbox[]" title="PERSECUTION: The Falun Gong practitioner, played by Lili Li, forbears through the torture. (NTD Films/Requisite Films)"><img class="multithumb" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/mambots/content/multithumb/thumbs/350.0.1.0.16777215.0.stories.large.2009.09.01.SStorm.jpg" alt="" title="PERSECUTION: The Falun Gong practitioner, played by Lili Li, forbears through the torture. (NTD Films/Requisite Films)" width="350" border="0" height="199" /></a><div class="mtCapStyle">PERSECUTION: The Falun Gong practitioner, played by Lili Li, forbears through the torture. (NTD Films/Requisite Films) </div></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />For over ten years, the general public has known relatively little about the realities of torture committed against Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese prisons. The Chinese communist regime has worked overtime to ensure it stays that way, implementing a rigorous propaganda campaign to malign the practice and suppress the truth inside and outside China. <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">With the arrival of <em>Sandstorm</em> in New York and Los Angeles, these harsh realities can be experienced in a compelling and ultimately uplifting film.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Michael Mahonen’s fact-based drama accurately and sensitively portrays this dire situation in post 1999 mainland China, following the order from former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin to systematically wipe out the popular practice.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Based on actual survivor accounts, Mahonen tells the story of a man, (played convincingly by newcomer, Rong Tian), who has been trapped with his wife for twelve days in a massive sandstorm without electricity or provisions. We learn that he is a police officer, instructed by his superiors from the Gestapo-like 610 Office, to “reeducate” the Falun Gong adherents “at any cost.”</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Days pass, rations diminish, and the officer watches his wife wither away as we witness, in a series of flashbacks, the actions which have led to these circumstances. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Most heartrending in this tale, is the detained Falun Gong practitioner, (Lili Li) who demonstrates remarkable courage, conviction, and forbearance during severe torture to break her faith. Despite the officers’ inhumane brutality, she actually remains concerned for her torturers’ well being. She warns them of the consequences they will have to face for the actions of killing and harming innocent people.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><em>Sandstorm</em> is Mahonen’s first project as writer and director. His earlier work found him on the other side of the camera as and award winning actor starring in films and TV.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Initially learning of the persecution in China in 1999, Mahonen started to practice the meditation discipline Falun Gong in 2001 after finding an informational flier outside his apartment door. After he began to understand the effect of the Chinese regime’s propaganda-machine, he was moved to expose their atrocities and communicate the truth about these kind hearted people who were being victimized.</p><div style="width: 350px; float: left; margin-right: 12px;" class="mtImgBoxStyle"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2009/09/01/MichaelMahonen.jpg" rel="lightbox[]" title="STORY TO TELL: "Sandstorm" writer, director, and producer Michael Mahonen. (NTD Films/Requisite Films)"><img class="multithumb" src="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/mambots/content/multithumb/thumbs/350.0.1.0.16777215.0.stories.large.2009.09.01.MichaelMahonen.jpg" alt="" title="STORY TO TELL: "Sandstorm" writer, director, and producer Michael Mahonen. (NTD Films/Requisite Films)" width="350" border="0" height="350" /></a><div class="mtCapStyle">STORY TO TELL: "Sandstorm" writer, director, and producer Michael Mahonen. (NTD Films/Requisite Films) </div></div> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">“I had been interested in writing and directing for a number of years,” Mahonen explains in a phone interview from Toronto. “After I started practicing Falun Gong, I read the teachings and realized the extent to which the propaganda and misinformation put out by the Chinese regime had been deceiving people, both inside and outside China.”</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">His target audience, he explained, were the police in China. He wanted to present them with a third person perspective of themselves in order to help them see their actions more clearly.</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">In 2003, without experience or financial resources, Mahonen set out with only an earnest dedication and righteous purpose to make <em>Sandstorm</em>. The cast and crew all volunteered their time and talent with many working on a film for the first time. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">His background as an actor was a particular asset. “With a character driven film you need strong performances. My acting experience allowed me to help the actors feel relaxed and confident and to make the roles their own.”</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">What he learned from this remarkable endeavor is “If the intention is good, a lot can be achieved.”</p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">Since then, the film has been screened around the world, translated into approximately 15 languages, and lauded with 29 festival awards, including best feature film, best dramatic film, best director, best actress, and best screenplay. </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">One highlight of the multiple festivals Mahonen attended has been the question and answer sessions following the screenings. “During the screenings it was common to hear people crying. At the Q&A’s people often expressed their anger toward the persecution and a desire to help in some way.” </p> <p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><em>Sandstorm</em> will run in a special limited engagement in New York at the Village East Cinema at 2nd Ave and 12th street, playing from September 4-10 with multiple screenings everyday. There is a special "Meet the Director" reception on Friday, September 4, after the 7:30pm show, with a Q&A to follow in the lobby of the Village East Cinema.<br /><br /><em>Sandstorm</em> will then screen for a limited engagement in Los Angeles, running from September 11–17 at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills. Director Michael Mahonen will be attend a reception on Friday, September 11, after the 7:15pm show with a Q&A to follow at the Writers Guild Theatre.<br /><br />Fore more information, visit <a href="http://www.sandstormmovie.com/">www.sandstormmovie.com</a> . </p><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-82183415061546757372009-09-01T11:55:00.000-07:002009-09-02T11:56:57.706-07:00Web tools help protect human rights activists<!-- START OF BANNER CODE -->BOSTON (<a href="http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/news/gizmos/story.html?id=085151a6-3166-4076-a319-8b801a76f806">Reuters</a>) - Chinese human rights activist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005 after authorities tracked him down using data provided by Yahoo. <p>The Internet service supplied information that it garnered about his location when he accessed his Yahoo e-mail account. That was enough to find him and put him in jail.</p> <p>Now, human rights activists are looking to a new generation of Internet privacy tools to keep companies from gathering such data, hoping that it will protect dissidents like Shi.</p> <p>One, called Tor, scrambles information, then sends it over the Web. It hides the user's location and gets past firewalls. Those features make it popular with activists in countries like China and Iran.</p> <p>"Tor is a tunnel. What you send into it comes out the other end, untouched," said Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Foundation, which is funded by the U.S. government.</p> <p>It lets surfers get around Internet censorship software - whether installed by governments or companies seeking to keep workers from using social networking sites like Facebook.</p> <p>Tor also can protect against identity theft and monitoring by parents, suspicious spouses and bosses. It may even be able to evade the warrantless wiretapping program started in the United States following the September 11 attacks.</p> <p>When a user shuts down a browser running on Tor, all information exchanged during the Web session is deleted.</p> <p>The U.S. government is one of Tor's biggest financial backers. It contributed $250,000 of the $343,000 in income the nonprofit reported in 2007, the most-recent year for which financial data is available.</p> <p>"We are trying to encourage a certain freedom of the Internet," said Ken Berman, director of information technology at the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America.</p> <p>CHINA, IRAN</p> <p>Tor use has risen in China as authorities block access to sites that the government has banned for political reasons. They include Google's e-mail service, Lewman said.</p> <p>"People who were never were never concerned about censorship suddenly had it thrown in their face when they couldn't get to Gmail anymore," Lewman said. "Average people said 'How do I get around this?'"</p> <p>In May, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese government also blocked access to Twitter and Microsoft Corp's Hotmail.</p> <p>Connections to Tor from Iran surged five-fold in June as protest organizers used social network services Facebook and Twitter to coordinate demonstrations in the wake of the country's disputed presidential election.</p> <p>"These are great features. These are exactly the kinds of things Iranians need," said Sam Sedaei, an independent economic researcher who studies human rights in Iran.</p> <p>The nonprofit group Human Rights in China plans to test a newer version of Tor to secure its communications. It is also developing tools to fight surveillance.</p> <p>"As activists, we want anonymity and security. The challenge is to keep up with the new technology," said Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom.</p> <p>Tor runs on a free software package available on the group's website, http://www.torproject.org . It includes a customized version of the Firefox browser and other programs.</p> <p>The service connects a user to a second PC that links to a third computer, which does not know the location of the first machine. When the data stream hits the Internet, it is impossible to trace the identity of person accessing the Web.</p> <p>One drawback that has hurt adoption is speed. Not all users volunteer to let traffic flow through their computers, which makes the service far slower than regular Web browsing.</p> <p>It has another. Tor's features can help criminals evade detection as they use the Web for activities ranging such as spam, identity theft or pedophilia.</p> <p>At the same time, police can use it to cloak their identities when they go undercover to conduct online stings.</p> <p>Tor competes with several other technologies, including one known as Freegate, which China's banned Falun Gong movement developed to allow its members to communicate in secrecy.</p> <p>Freegate runs on a dedicated network paid for by a U.S.-based company that owns the product, Dynamic Internet Technology, which is run by members of Falun Gong.</p> <p>DIT also sells an e-mail service that evades spam-filters installed to weed out correspondence related to human rights and other sensitive topics. Customers include the Voice of America and Human Rights in China.</p> <p>It distributes about 250,000 e-mails with Human Rights in China's electronic newsletter, about 80 percent of which make it past the censorship filters, according to Hom.</p><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-25253416861388370882009-08-14T10:13:00.000-07:002009-08-14T10:14:46.101-07:00John Li: Falun Gong survives assault by China<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><span class="vitstorybody"> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><h5 class="vitstorydate"><span class="vitstorydate">01:00 AM EDT on Monday, July 27, 2009</span></h5></b></span><span style="font-size:-1;"><b><span class="vitstorybyline"></span></b></span> <span class="vitstorybody"> <p><a href="http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_li27_07-27-09_1LF4GHG_v11.3f8d47c.html">NEW YORK Projo.Com<br /></a></p><p>AS SOME SEE IT, Nostradamus’s most famous quatrain, predicting that the King of Terror would descend in July 1999, failed to come true, costing the prognosticator his credibility. To millions of Falun Gong practitioners in China, however, that prophecy has fulfilled itself with terrifying precision.</p><p>On July 20, 1999, an outburst of fanaticism suddenly gripped China. Amidst a constant cacophony of Cultural Revolution-style propaganda blitz, tentacles of the communist regime reached into every nook and cranny of the vast land. This unbridled unleashing of venom targeted Chinese citizens practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual movement based on traditional Chinese beliefs and exercises. They were rounded up by the police, and forced to give up their faith. Many refused, and they became the victims of a ten-year struggle by the atheist government to wipe out Falun Gong.</p><p>So far, over 3,000 Falun Gong practitioners have reportedly been tortured to death; hundreds and thousands more are now toiling and languishing in labor camps. Fighting Falun Gong has even become a top priority of China’s foreign missions. Diplomats’ vulgar anti-Falun-Gong language jarred with the image of a confident, rising China that the regime painstakingly projects to the outside world.</p><p>For its savagery and irrationality, the persecution offers a rare, but sobering, glimpse into a country in flux. It highlights the totalitarianism perpetuated by the current regime that tends to be shrugged off by people obsessed with China’s seeming prosperity. Ian Johnson, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, knew this the best. He earned the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting about Falun Gong followers adhering to their beliefs in the face of the persecution. One of them, 57-year-old Ms. Chen Zixiu, was beaten to death by a cattle prod, and left in a pool of her own blood. </p><p>Nobody now knows how many persevered in their practice after the crackdown; nobody can write off the Falun Gong, either. Its organization estimated that millions of users accessed its Web site regularly. They were able to do so because of Freegate, a software developed by Falun Gong volunteers to circumvent the Chinese government’s Internet censorship. The software has also found its popularity in such information-challenged places as Iran, Burma, etc. Ten years onward, Falun Gong has survived the lethal wrath of July 1999. By Chinese standards, this is an unprecedented miracle, since no mandated public enemy has ever done this before. </p><p>Falun Gong’s unusual allure and resiliency speak to a collective reawakening of the Chinese people to their spiritual identity. It came at the right moment to fill in a vacuum left by the demise of communist ideology. This explains the insecurity of the Chinese leaders, who saw the rise of Falun Gong as a viable threat to their legitimacy, a competing force that has to be crushed sooner or later. </p><p>On April 25, 1999, thousands of followers gathered outside the government’s petition office (incidentally, close to the leadership compound) for release of jailed fellow practitioners. The event thrust the Falun Gong into the international spotlight, and some believe, precipitated the persecution. They were wrong. Investigations by Public Security, always a prelude to an official crackdown in China, started as far back as in summer 1997. On my visit during that summer to a Falun Gong practitioner, also a high-ranking party official, she said her local practitioners had carefully stashed away their Falun Gong books and paraphernalia for fear of police harassment. In retrospect, with or without the April 25 protest, the persecution would have taken place.</p><p>Ten years is a long time, at least long enough to refute the once popular comparison between an apparently peaceful Falun Gong and the deadly Taiping Uprising or Boxer’s Rebellion. A new, visceral reaction at the mention of Falun Gong seems to have gained traction nonetheless: Falun Gong is controversial.</p><p>Since 1999, China has changed a lot economically. Perhaps, with its ascension to the World Trade Organization, its prestigious membership card at the G8 Summit, and the dazzling spectacles at the Beijing Olympics, China has also earned a seat at the table to pass judgments on Western values. Well, if that is true, then Falun Gong might be controversial — just as freedom and democracy are in China.</p><p>Of all the prominent (read tragic) Chinese anniversaries this year, from the uprising in Tibet in 1959 to the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, the repression against Falun Gong is obviously the most recent and relevant in fathoming the future of Communist China, which is celebrating its 60-year anniversary. If history offers any guide, nearly no one predicted the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc, because the Kremlinologists only looked at numbers, missing the most important and intractable variable in the equation: a country’s psyche. </p><p>Falun Gong should be helpful in this regard. It cuts through the fanfare of China’s economic development and geopolitical intrigues, and goes straight to the heart of the issues that make China what it is today. For instance, unburdened by such superficially complicating factors as ethnic tension and religious strife that cloud people’s thinking, Falun Gong is a clean laboratory test that shows who should be held responsible for the recent riots in Tibet and Xinjiang.</p><p>This means, sadly, for all its exceptional qualities, Falun Gong cannot escape the same fate of other Chinese movements commemorating their losses. As long as the current regime is in power, Falun Gong’s crusade has to go on, it seems.</p><p>John Li is a professor of economics at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.</p></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-21690467265541991322009-08-14T10:00:00.000-07:002009-08-14T10:03:09.462-07:00One year after start of games, Olympic flame exinguished for good<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><!-- RELHEAD END --> <!-- RELBODY START --> <!-- RELBODY END --> <!-- RELCONTACT START --> <pre> MONTREAL, Aug. 7 /<a href="http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2009/07/c3494.html">CNW Telbec</a>/ - A year after the Beijing Olympics began<br />on 8 August 2008, Reporters Without Borders regrets that the limited progress<br />China made in free expression has largely evaporated. Only foreign journalists<br />continue to benefit from measures that were adopted for the Olympic Games.<br />Online censorship and repression of free speech activists have been stepped up<br />in the past year.<br /><br /> "The new openness touted by the organisers of the Beijing Olympics and<br />the International Olympic Committee was just an illusion," Reporters Without<br />Borders said. "The dozens of petition organisers and human rights activists<br />who were jailed for speaking out before and during the games have been joined<br />in prison by lawyers, bloggers and intellectuals who had hoped the Olympic<br />promises would be kept. Their disappointment matches the cynicism displayed by<br />the authorities during the games."<br /><br /> Reporters Without Borders calls for the release of all the Chinese<br />citizens who are being held for speaking out or demanding their rights during<br />the Beijing Olympic Games. See the petition:<br /><br /> The colossal sums being spent on disseminating the Communist Party of<br />China's official view suggest that the authorities have learned the lesson<br />from the protests that accompanied the games. But the party's media control<br />apparatus, the Propaganda Department, does not seem to have learned the lesson<br />from its disastrous decision to cover up the tainted baby formula scandal<br />because of the games. Coverage of public health and general interest issues is<br />still being censored.<br /><br /> Olympic prisoners<br /><br /> Dozens of dissidents and ordinary citizens are still in prison for<br />expressing their view of the Olympic Games or criticising the government at a<br />time when international attention was focussed on Beijing. The most famous of<br />these detainees is human rights activist Hu Jia, who is serving a 3 1/2-year<br />sentence in Beijing.<br /><br /> Yang Chunlin, the leading initiator of the "We want human rights not<br />Olympic Games" campaign, is being mistreated in prison. An intermediate court<br />in the northeastern city of Jiamusi sentenced him on 24 March 2008 to five<br />years in prison followed by two years without civic rights on a charge of<br />"inciting subversion of state authority."<br /><br /> Human rights activist Zheng Mingfang has fared little better. She was<br />sent to a camp for reeducation through work in April 2008 for a two-year<br />period because she published an open letter to the authorities before the<br />Olympic Games. It was criticism of the games that also led to pro-democracy<br />activist Zhang Wenhe being forcibly confined to a psychiatric hospital.<br /><br /> A Guangxi woman, Huang Liuhong, and her two sisters have spent nearly a<br />year in detention without trial. They went to Beijing during the September<br />2008 Paralympics to protest property seizure by local officials and were<br />arrested (along with a fourth relative) after being interviewed by a US<br />journalist. After being held for 314 days in one of China's many grim prisons,<br />she is still facing a one-year jail sentence for "vandalism."<br /><br /> Filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen has been detained since March 2008 for<br />interviewing Tibetans, especially in the Amdo region, for a documentary he<br />made about Tibet. Called "Leaving Fear Behind" (<a href="http://www.leavingfearbehind.com/">www.leavingfearbehind.com</a>),<br />the film was screened clandestinely in Beijing during the Olympics.<br /><br /> Foreign journalists still privileged?<br /><br /> The organisers of the Beijing games provided the foreign media with<br />spectacular installations and comforts and the authorities changed the rules<br />for foreign journalists radically, allowing them an unprecedented freedom of<br />movement and freedom to interview.<br /><br /> The new rules are still in force but they are applied in a very uneven<br />manner. They are not applied at all in Tibet and the Tibetan regions, where<br />dozens of foreign journalists were prevented from working during the rioting<br />in March 2008 and again, on the anniversary of the riots, in March 2009. The<br />government allowed the foreign press to go to Xinjiang immediately after last<br />month's rioting there, but journalists were arrested if they showed too much<br />interest in the fate of Uyghurs held by the police.<br /><br /> The foreign media's freedom to work was also curbed in the run-up to the<br />20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June, when the political<br />police arrested of threatened many dissidents or other persons who are used as<br />sources by foreign reporters.<br /><br /> The central government is also trying to exercise closer control over<br />Chinese citizens who work for foreign news media, forcing them to register<br />with official or semi-official bodies. And many foreign news media, radio<br />stations and websites, are still being censored without any official<br />explanation.<br /><br /> New communication strategy - lessons from the Olympics?<br /><br /> The Chinese authorities accused the foreign media of being anti-Chinese<br />during the March 2008 events in Tibet and the Olympic torch relay. A<br />nationalist campaign was launched to intimidate the foreign media and some<br />countries were accusing of demonizing Beijing's human rights performance in<br />Tibet.<br /><br /> To combat "western influence," the Chinese authorities allocated<br />additional resources to the provision of more favourable news and information<br />internationally. Tens of millions of euros were invested in creating an<br />international version of the government television station CCTV, and the other<br />leading state-owned media were urged to promote their services more abroad.<br /><br /> The Chinese media were forced to use only the official version of events<br />during the rioting in Tibet and Xinjiang, while the state apparatus<br />orchestrated the incitement of hatred against minorities in order to better<br />cover up the existence of Tibetan and Uyghur victims. The debate on the<br />failure of current policies in these restive provinces was quickly restricted<br />to the few liberal publications.<br /><br /> End of Olympic good times online<br /><br /> The arrival of thousands of foreign journalists for the games resulted in<br />censorship being eased for Chinese Internet users. But almost all the websites<br />that were unblocked at the time of the games have since been blocked again.<br /> A major Internet filtering campaign was launched by the information<br />ministry on 5 January 2009 with the declared aim of combating pornography.<br />State enterprises heeded calls for renewed vigilance about website content.<br />Among the sites that were blocked was the political blog portal Bullog<br />(<a href="http://www.bullog.cn/">http://www.bullog.cn</a>), which had "published many negative reports of a<br />political nature," the information ministry said. The New York Times website<br />has also been blocked several times.<br /><br /> To boost the campaign's effectiveness, the government ordered Chinese and<br />foreign computer manufacturers to install a filtering software on all<br />computers sold in China. Called "Green Dam Youth Escort," it is supposed to<br />protect young people from "negative" Internet content. Its filtering options<br />include the possibility of blocking political and religious content, including<br />content linked to the Falun Gong movement. After an outcry, the authorities<br />postponed obligatory installation of the software.<br /><br /> But not all online censorship is done in the name of combating<br />pornography. The authorities censored all Uyghur-language websites during last<br />month's rioting in Xinjiang and they are still inaccessible<br />(<a href="http://www.rsf.org/Independent-reports-about-Xinjiang.html">http://www.rsf.org/Independent-reports-about-Xinjiang.html</a>). Access to the<br />video-sharing website YouTube has also been blocked since March, without any<br />official reason being given.<br /><br /> Bloggers and other Internet users continue to comment and criticise the<br />ins and outs of Chinese society and politics. With increasing frequency, this<br />forces the official media to cover embarrassing stories they would rather have<br />ignored. But repressive measures are nonetheless still being taken against<br />bloggers, especially by authorities at the local level. At least 10 have been<br />arrested in connection with their blogging in the past 12 months.<br /><br /><br /></pre><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-13449279899023513142009-07-21T14:53:00.000-07:002009-07-21T14:54:26.757-07:00Commemorating persecution in China<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""></span>by David Matas<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">(<i>Remarks prepared for delivery to a candlelight vigil, Legislative Buildings, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 19 July 2009</i>)<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Today we must remember all the victims of persecution in China <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">- the Uighurs and Tibetans who are senselessly killed solely for seeking to preserve their identity and culture, <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">- the democracy activists, human rights defenders and political dissidents who stand up for universal human rights values, <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">- the Christian evangelicals and members of house church congregations, repressed for holding a belief which the Chinese state does not control, and <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">- all those who protest the arbitrary power of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">On this day, we should pay especial attention to the persecution of the practitioners of Falun Gong.<span style=""> </span>The Communist Party of China decided ten years ago, on July 20, 1999, to have the Government of China ban the practice of Falun Gong. The Government announced the ban two days later.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Falun Gong is a set of exercises with a spiritual foundation based on Taoism and Buddhism.<span style=""> </span>Since the banning, the practitioners of Falun Gong have been persecuted in China far worse than any other victim group.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">• The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture reports that 66% of the victims of torture and ill</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">‑treatment in China are Falun Gong practitioners. The next largest group is Uighurs at 11%. Every other victim group is single digits.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">• The extremes of language the Chinese government uses against the Falun Gong are unparalleled, unmatched by the comparatively mild criticisms China has of other victims.<span style=""> </span>The standard regime refrain about the Falun Gong community is that it is an evil cult, though the practice of Falun Gong has none of the characteristics of a cult.</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">•<span style=""> </span>The documented yearly arbitrary killings and disappearances of Falun Gong exceed by far the totals for any other victim group.<span style=""> </span>Since the banning, over three thousand named Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of the persecution. </span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">• The United States Department of State's Country Reports provide that Falun Gong adherents constitute at least half of the inmates in the country's re-education</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">‑through‑labour camps.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">• Human rights lawyers, left alone when they defend other unpopular causes, are persecuted once they defend Falun Gong practitioners.<span style=""> </span>That was the case for Gao Zhisheng who was fine despite taking on a number of unpopular causes, until he opposed the victimization of Falun Gong.<span style=""> </span>Now he is disbarred; his office has been shut down; he has been brutally tortured; his family was forced to flee China to escape danger; he has been arbitrarily detained and has disappeared.</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">• Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners sentenced to death are the sole victims of forced organ harvesting, the extraction and sale of their organs to patients in need of transplants.<span style=""> </span>Former Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific David Kilgour and I released a report in July 2006 and a revised report in January 2007 which came to the conclusion that practitioners of Falun Gong were being killed for their organs throughout China from 2001 to the date of our report.<span style=""> </span>Since our report has come out, statistics show that this problem has got even worse.</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">This mistreatment since 1999 raises four questions.<span style=""> </span>Why does the Communist Party of China and the Government it controls treat practitioners of Falun Gong so badly?<span style=""> </span>What can explain the survival of the practice of Falun Gong in the face of this brutal repression?<span style=""> </span>What does this experience - the unsuccessful, fierce repression of the practice of Falun Gong - mean for the future of China? What can be done to end the persecution?<o:p></o:p></span><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></b><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">A. Causes of persecution</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Why are practitioners of Falun Gong treated so badly?<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">1. One reason is simply the numbers.<span style=""> </span>Falun Gong before it was banned had, according to a 1999 Government estimate, 70 million adherents. A group of that size no matter what its belief attracts the attention of a repressive government. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">2. The Communist Party needs enemies in order to justify their continuing hold on power. The Falun Gong had the bad luck to be around in sufficient numbers to fill the enemy slot. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">3.<span style=""> </span>The Falun Gong community embrace three basic beliefs - compassion, tolerance and truth.<span style=""> </span>Anyone who believes in any one of these principles spells trouble for the Communist Party government - a cruel, repressive, dishonest regime.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">4.<span style=""> </span>The practice of Falun Gong went from a standing start in 1992 to numbers greater than the membership of the Party within the space of seven years, spreading rapidly throughout China immediately after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Communist Party control in Central Asia and Eastern and Central Europe.<span style=""> </span>The Party in China feared a similar collapse, a similar loss of control.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">5. Fifth, the amorphous nature of Falun Gong meant that it was impossible for the Communist Party to control it.<span style=""> </span>Falun Gong is neither a movement nor an organization; it is not even people.<span style=""> </span>It is rather a set of exercises with a spiritual foundation.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">6. The mobilization capacity of Falun Gong practitioners alarmed and frightened the Communist Party. An event of April 25th, 1999, petitioning the Communist Party against the arrest and beatings of practitioners in Tianjin a few days earlier, was the largest gathering in Beijing since the Tiananmen square massacre.<span style=""> </span>Many of the leadership in the Party had no advance warning of this event and were startled.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">7. The ability of the Falun Gong community to take advantage of modern technology, the internet and cell phones, to gather in large numbers worried the Party.<span style=""> </span>This phenomenon was unknown in China before it was manifested through the Falun Gong community.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">8. Though the Falun Gong is not an organization with a leadership, the Communist Party of China surely is.<span style=""> </span>The Communist Party of China saw the Falun Gong community as a mirror of itself, organizationally similar, but ideologically different.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">9. The practice of Falun Gong was inspired by the writings and teachings of Li Hongzhi.<span style=""> </span>Then Chinese president Jiang Zemin was envious of Li Hongzhi's efforts, that something an outsider proposed could become so popular while his own writings languished in obscurity.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">10.<span style=""> </span>Many Falun Gong practitioners, in an attempt to protect their families and communities, did not identify themselves once arrested.<span style=""> </span>These unidentified are more vulnerable than other detainees because no one who knows them knows where they are and no one who detains them knows who they are.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">11. Repressed democracy activists, journalists, human rights defenders, Tibetan and Christian activists generate more sympathy than the Falun Gong because they are more familiar to outsiders, more in tune with outsider sensibilities.<span style=""> </span>The Falun Gong are recent, without an obvious link to global traditions. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">12.<span style=""> </span>Falun Gong is authentically Chinese, rooted in ancient Chinese traditions.<span style=""> </span>Communism, in contrast, is a Western ideological import into China.<span style=""> </span>Communists saw a widespread, popular Chinese-based ideology as cutting out from under them the very ground on which they stood.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></b><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">B. The survival of the practice of Falun Gong</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">How has the practice of Falun Gong been able to survive in the face of this brutal repression? <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">1. An obvious explanation is the appeal of the practice and its associated beliefs to practitioners.<span style=""> </span>No practice or belief system could survive the cruelty of Communism unless its adherents had a deep commitment to their beliefs.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">2. The practice of Falun Gong has spread world wide.<span style=""> </span>David Kilgour and I, in the course of travelling the planet to campaign against the abuse of organ harvesting our report documents, have seen this phenomenon more than anyone.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">In Mexico, Falun Gong practitioners are primarily Mexicans; in Israel, they are primarily Israelis; in Holland they are primarily Dutch, and so on.<span style=""> </span>The practice of Falun Gong started in China but, in most countries where it has spread, is no longer exclusively or even primarily Chinese.<span style=""> </span>Chinese government repression has little traction on these non-Chinese adherents.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">3. Modern technology is a boon to any popular idea including the ideas behind the practice of Falun Gong.<span style=""> </span>The Government of China is powerless against the internet, satellite and cell phone technology outside of China.<span style=""> </span>Even inside China, the Communist Party control of modern technology is far from complete.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">4.<span style=""> </span>The amorphous nature of Falun Gong has meant that it is impossible for the Communist Party to control it.<span style=""> </span>For the practice of Falun Gong, there is no organizational leadership.<span style=""> </span>That means that there is no one the Government of China can appoint to head the Falun Gong. <o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">If Falun Gong had an organizational leadership, the Party, as it had done with the major religions, would have appointed some of its cronies and said that they were the leadership of the Falun Gong. There is a Chinese government appointed Buddhist Panchen Lama, Chinese government selected Roman Catholic bishops, Chinese government chosen Muslim imams. But Falun Gong does not lend itself to this sort of usurpation.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">5. Because Falun Gong is a practice or exercise regime, and not an organization, it lacks all the elements of an organization.<span style=""> </span>That has a down side - weaknesses in communication and coordination, the lack of a charitable tax number and a total absence of staffing and funding.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">But it also has an upside, the heavy contribution of volunteers.<span style=""> </span>Through collaborative volunteer effort and voluntary donations directly from individuals to the purchase of specific goods and service, the Falun Gong community world wide produces a newspaper -the Epoch Times, runs a satellite TV and radio network - New Tang Dynasty TV and Sound of Hope radio, and tours a classical Chinese dancing company and orchestra - the Divine Performing Arts.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Members of organizations with professional staff tend to leave their staff to do the heavy lifting. The Falun Gong community have no such luxury and more than compensate for it.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">6. Falun Gong rose to fill a vacuum, the abandonment of the belief in Communism world wide.<span style=""> </span>Communism today in China is not so much a belief system as an organizing idiom for power.<span style=""> </span>For those uninterested in climbing up the greasy Chinese pole to power, Chinese Communism means nothing.<span style=""> </span>For those who want to believe in something beyond their own careers, Falun Gong is an answer.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">7. The rise of Falun Gong speaks not just to the collapse in the belief in Communism but also to the basic human need for spirituality.<span style=""> </span>We are used to thinking of spiritual beliefs as old, something developed centuries even millenia ago.<span style=""> </span>The beliefs though which survive from ancient times continue not because they are old, but because they speak to the constantly changing present.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The development and rapid growth of Falun Gong, a modern spiritual belief, a belief system which began only in 1992, tells us for sure something about China and Communism.<span style=""> </span>But it also exists and endures because of something fundamental to human nature, the longing for spiritual fulfilment.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">8. Though Falun Gong is no longer exclusively Chinese, it has a particular resonance for the Chinese people, the Chinese soul.<span style=""> </span>Its updating and blending of strongly rooted, well developed ancient Chinese exercise and spiritual traditions meant Falun Gong was immediately and deeply appealing to a Chinese people who had seen the Communist belief system nominally inserted to replace those ancient beliefs crumbling around and underneath them.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">9. The nonsense the Government of China produced to combat the Falun Gong is all too easy to ignore.<span style=""> </span>It is impossible to ignore torture, arb itrary detention and execution.<span style=""> </span>But the ideology behind this repression, that Falun Gong is an evil cult, is so obviously disconnected from reality to anyone who knows even the least bit about the practice of Falun Gong, the beliefs of Falun Gong or individual practitioners, that it was hard for anyone other than Chinese Communist Party adherents or their fellow travellers to take it seriously.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">10. The vicious, unbridled persecution of Falun Gong has had a perverse effect for the persecutors. The persecution has made vocal people who would otherwise have been silent.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Many believers have dug in their heels.<span style=""> </span>Their reaction to the lies the Party and Government have spread about the Falun Gong and the persecution they inflicted on the Falun Gong is to convey to as many people as possible the nature of Falun Gong, as well as the cruelty of the persecution.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The persecution has won over to practitioners of Falun Gong sympathizers they would not otherwise have, people who are not practitioners but who oppose human rights violations.<span style=""> </span>It hard to think of a more searing indictment of Chinese communism than that it has led to the killing of innocents so that their organs could be sold to transplant tourists.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">IV. The future of China</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Well what does all mean for the future of China?<span style=""> </span>An historical guide is the persecution of Christianity by the Roman empire. Eventually, despite that persecution, the Roman Empire became Christian.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 A.D.<span style=""> </span>Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire in 391 A.D.<span style=""> </span>The belief in Christianity had grown so strong and the belief in the traditional Roman values had grown so weak that Christianity became a better organizing idiom for the empire than the old Roman values.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">One can see the same happening in China.<span style=""> </span>Communism today is incapable of holding China together.<span style=""> </span>At some time the leadership will realize that they need a better set of principles than they have got if they are going to maintain China as a going concern.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Though the teachings of Li Hongzhi have no political content or intent, he managed to articulate a set of beliefs which reverberates with the Chinese people.<span style=""> </span>At some point, the leadership of China will realize this.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The Chinese leadership today treats the Falun Gong as their worst enemy, imprisoning and torturing them more than any other group, killing only them and prisoners sentenced to death for their organs.<span style=""> </span>At some point, they will realize that the Falun Gong are their best friends, an authentic Chinese belief system that is capable of keeping China united, that is capable of keeping China, to use the catchword of the muddled ideology of current Chinese President Hu Jintao, harmonious.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">China one day will be predominantly Falun Gong not because the current set of Falun Gong practitioners will one day take over the leadership of China but because the leadership of China will one day become Falun Gong practitioners.<span style=""> </span>In the wings of the stage of Chinese history stands a Constantine.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></b><br /><b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">V. Ending the persecution</span></b><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">It took over three hundred years before from the birth of Jesus Christ to the Christianizing of the Roman Empire.<span style=""> </span>We cannot afford to wait that long to end the persecution of the Falun Gong nor to stop abusive organ sourcing in China.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Today, not three hundred y ears from today:<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">•<span style=""> </span>The persecution of all victims in China, including Falun Gong practitioners, should stop.</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-CA">•<span style=""> </span>Those complicit persecution in China, including organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, should be brought to justice.</span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">How will that happen?<span style=""> </span>Those who are most free to stand against Chinese human rights violations, those whose stance carries most graphically the universal human rights message, and, consequently, those whose opposition China finds hardest to ignore, are those with no connection to China whatsoever.<span style=""> </span>When it comes to mobilizing those who are neither Chinese nationals nor ethnic Chinese to combating human rights violations in China, by far the biggest obstacle is indifference.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The way to end human rights abuses in China is for those who are neither Chinese nationals nor ethnic Chinese to shake off indifference to those abuses.<span style=""> </span>If we do that, if we act persistently, act publicly, act now, those violations will end.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">..................................................................................................................................<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada</span><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-21261222574904595542009-07-17T22:19:00.000-07:002009-07-17T22:23:19.559-07:00West Still Silent Over Falun Gong 10-year Persecution<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><!--[if !mso]> <style> v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> 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style="margin-left: 30pt; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><span style=""> </span>by Clive Ansley, US-Canada Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) President</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >July 20, 2009 marks an important anniversary.<span style=""> </span>But unlike most anniversaries, this is not a happy one, and provides no occasion for celebration.<span style=""> </span>Ten years ago, on July 20<sup>th</sup>, 1999 the Chinese Communist Party launched a genocidal campaign of torture, mass murder, and ultimately of genocide directed against some seventy to one hundred million Falun Gong practitioners in China.<span style=""> </span>This pogrom has continued unabated now for a full decade while the world has stood silently by, averted its eyes and essentially re-enacted the “see no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” cowardice and avarice which characterized the callous indifference of the world during the 1930’s to the growing evidence of the coming Nazi holocaust against the Jewish people.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >Just as William Lyon Mackenzie King refused to allow any Jewish refugees to disembark in Canada, Canadian politicians at every level of government today demonstrate their unprincipled and craven willingness to succor the most bloodthirsty and barbarous regime since the Nazi era.<span style=""> </span>In the face of substantial and uncontradicted evidence that the Beijing police state has murdered tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners on the operating tables of China’s hospitals in order to harvest their organs for lucrative profits on the international transplant market; and as the most vicious and unprecedented campaign of persecution and terror against China’s lawyers unfolds before our eyes, disbarring, torturing, incarcerating and “disappearing” incredibly courageous human rights lawyers, what do our unprincipled politicians and our “Fourth Estate” have to say? What do the representatives of the legal profession in democratic countries have to say?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >The mass murder of healthy Falun Gong practitioners for the sole purpose of plundering their organs constitutes the greatest Crime against Humanity since the Holocaust; the brutal persecution, terrorization, and repression of the entire “Rights Protection” bar in China constitutes the single greatest affront to the Rule of Law which the world has witnessed in a long time.<span style=""> </span>As the documentation of these crimes continues to grow exponentially, politicians such as Bob Rae assure us that while there are still some human rights problems in China, Beijing is making substantial progress and the human rights situation is improving significantly.<span style=""> </span>Our current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Cannon, thinks we should avoid publicly embarrassing the Beijing dictators about little things like organ harvesting and the bestial torture and disbarment of human rights lawyers.<span style=""> </span>The Canadian Bar Association and some provincial law societies (with the commendable exception of the Law Society of Upper Canada) have remained totally mute with respect to the treatment of their Chinese colleagues; indeed various CBA representatives continue to peddle the errant and vapid nonsense that China is committed to the Rule of Law and that reform of China’s spurious and fraudulent “legal” system is progressing at an impressive pace.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >And the Fourth Estate? The pathetic North American media has been virtually mute throughout this full decade of organ theft and genocide committed by Beijing.<span style=""> </span>Hardly a word has ever appeared in print and scarcely a whisper of this mass atrocity has been heard on the television networks or cable services.<span style=""> </span>In terms of sheer undeniable newsworthiness, it is irrefutably the biggest story of this century. Yet it is apparently a taboo topic in our derelict media.<span style=""> </span>We are informed that those conscientious reporters who turn in stories on the persecution are told by their editors that their papers will not touch this topic.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >Instead of offering comfort and support to the innocent victims of Beijing’s bestiality, unprincipled politicians such as those on Vancouver City Council turn the victims into the culprits and curry favour with Beijing.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >This is the holocaust all over again. The Beijing Olympics was the Berlin Olympics of 1936 all over again.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >Those who do not recognize this parallel are limited to the willfully blind; the morally bankrupt; and the profoundly ignorant.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >And I want to end by coming back to the report -- 'Bloody Harvest' -- by David Matas and David Kilgour. This report MUST be addressed seriously and extensively by the North American media.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >The credibility of the authors of this report is simply not in question -- David Matas is perhaps the leading human rights lawyer in Canada; David Kilgour is a former Secretary of State for Far Eastern affairs in Canada; both are lawyers; and they have impeccable credentials. This is not coming from the National Enquirer or Fox News; this is coming from sources that are simply unimpeachable. And given the horrendous nature of the allegations -- and the unimpeachable sources which have produced the report -- crime cannot be legitimately ignored by legitimate journalists. It must be debated.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >Journalists are entitled to dispute the methods of the Kilgour-Matas research; they have not done so. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >Journalists are entitled to criticize the nature of the evidence; they have not done so.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" >Journalists are entitled to produce contrary evidence; they have not done so.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><i style=""><span style=";font-family:";" >But what the legitimate media is not entitled to do</span></i><span style=";font-family:";" > is to leave their readers and viewers uninformed about credible and compelling evidence of a new holocaust.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 30pt; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:183.75pt;" ole=""> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\MARIEB~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:oleobject type="Embed" progid="PBrush" shapeid="_x0000_i1025" drawaspect="Content" objectid="_1309374333"> </o:OLEObject> </xml><![endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 30pt; text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:";" ><span style=""> </span><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-70268753561304027642009-07-02T12:22:00.000-07:002009-07-02T12:24:26.742-07:00Falun Gong helps crack Iran's web filter<!-- START OF BANNER CODE -->By Desmond Ang for Radio Australia / <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/02/2614914.htm?section=justin">ABC</a> <p class="published"><br />Updated <span class="timestamp">Thu Jul 2, 2009 1:32pm AEST</span> </p> <div id="storyRelatedMedia"> <div id="storyPhotos" class="photo"> <a id="storyPhotosLink" href="http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200906/r389318_1818863.jpg"> <img title="Neda Agha-Soltan was watching post-election protests in Tehran when she was shot in the chest." id="storyPhotosImg" src="http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200906/r389318_1818867.jpg" alt="Neda Agha-Soltan was watching post-election protests in Tehran when she was shot in the chest." width="285" height="190" /> </a> <p id="storyPhotosCaption" class="caption">Neda Agha-Soltan was watching post-election protests in Tehran when she was shot in the chest. (Reuters/Flickr)</p> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> <!-- if (typeof showPhotos == 'function') showPhotos('2614914-mediarss.xml'); --> </script> </div> <p class="first">Computer software invented to beat China's stringent internet controls is being used by pro-democracy activists in Iran to manoeuvre around authorities there. </p> <p>Developed and managed by a team of volunteers from the Falun Gong spiritual group, Freegate was created to allow net users to bypass Beijing government censorship.</p> <p>Now it is estimated as many as a million Iranians use the free service each day, as anti-government demonstrators take their protests online. </p> <p>The death of Neda Agha Soltan, for example, would have been in vain had it not been for the Falun Gong and their desire to liberate internet surfing in Iran. </p> <p>The 26-year old was observing post-election protests in the Iranian capital of Tehran when she was shot in the chest.</p> <p>A passer-by recorded the scene and posted her dying moments on the YouTube hosting website, bringing global attention to a conflict the Iranian government was trying to muffle. </p> <p>Iranian authorities had started blocking certain websites in the lead-up to the presidential elections.</p> <p>Foreign news services, religious websites and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were said to be on the blacklist. </p> <p>But Iran's internet firewall proved futile against Freegate's software, which allows users to gain access to blocked sites by constantly switching different internet protocol (IP) addresses. </p> <p>Bill Xia, the inventor of Freegate, told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program: "We're very happy to see our tools become very useful for people, especially for the people in Iran, where people cannot get their voice out." </p> <p>Mr Xia says the number of users in Iran multiplied after Freegate was translated into Farsi. </p> <p>"Last year, the traffic on our network is too high and we cannot sustain the cost," he said.</p> <p>"So we actually start to limit the service, but last month we tried to open it to Iran to provide as much service as possible. </p> <p>"Mostly it's from China and Iran, and they total to more than one million users per day." </p> <p>Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, which developed the Freegate software, says: "The reason that we created this service was mainly due to the suppression of the Falun Gong in '99.</p> <p>"Many of us were Tiananmen students during the Tiananmen massacre time in '89, so we knew how frightening state-controlled media can be, like in China, that can turn white into black overnight." </p> <p>He says the software draws most visitors from closed societies such as China, Iran, Syria and Burma. </p> <p>"People want to know what's going on, because people care about society, people care about other people and they want to know what exactly is happening," Mr Zhou said.</p> <p>"They hunt for information over the internet because it has become an open platform, a multimedia platform, and the most powerful and widely used form of media."</p> <p>The consortium recently released a software called Green Tsunami, to counteract China's coming mandatory internet filtering program, Green Dam.</p><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-23274860846556950882009-07-01T11:02:00.000-07:002009-07-01T12:18:25.770-07:00Appeal for the rescue of Chinese rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> 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mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://mwcnews.net/content/view/31605/42/">MWC</a>: Open Letter to Lawyers requesting support in securing the release of leading Chinese rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gao Zhisheng </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Appeal for help </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=""> </span><br />We write to seek support from members of the Canadian legal profession in order to help secure the release of Gao Zhisheng, a leading Chinese rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, who was abducted and tortured by Chinese security agents largely for defending Falun Gong adherents and publicly exposing the atrocities they have suffered. Gao has been missing since February 2009. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gao Zhisheng</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Mr. Gao was a successful practising lawyer and by 2001 China's Ministry of Justice had rated him as one of China's top ten lawyers. He is a Christian, and has opposed persecutions against Protestants and Catholics and also has defended workers who have been victimized by Chinese government policy. But it was his defence of Falun Gong victims which led directly to his subjection to inhuman tortures at the hands of the Chinese government. </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Falun Gong</span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on the principle of Truth, Compassion, Forbearance and five sets of meditative exercises introduced in China in 1992. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) initiated a campaign of State terror and hate propaganda intended to eradicate Falun Gong after this popular practice had attracted 100 million people, outnumbering CCP members, by 1999. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Since July 1999, with the extreme vilification of Falun Gong in and outside China, the victimization of the group has also been horrendous, far greater than that of any other group. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture reported in March 2006 that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and ill treatment in China were Falun Gong practitioners. Over 3,000 identified Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of persecution and there is compelling and substantial evidence Indicating that tens of thousands of unidentified Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered by the Beijing regime for the purpose of harvesting all their organs for use in transplant operations for profit. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gao's Three Open Letters for Falun Gong</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />It was this maelstrom into which Gao threw himself. Gao's ordeal began when he started investigating the persecution of Falun Gong and subsequently published three open letters to top Chinese officials. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In 2004, he defended a Falun Gong practitioner who had been illegally persecuted and sentenced without trial to a labor camp. Upon finding that judges refused to hear the case because of "orders from above," he wrote an open letter to China's National People's Congress. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">On October 18, 2005, Gao wrote his second open letter to Hu Jingtao and Wen Jiabao, urging them to end the "barbaric" persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, detailing a wide range of abuses they suffer in custody, including torture, sexual assault, beatings, and executions. Within days of sending the letter, Gao Zhisheng and his family were put under 24-hour police surveillance. In early November that year, his law firm was shut down and soon afterwards his licence to practise law was suspended. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Later in November 2005, Gao traveled to northeast China and spent two weeks interviewing Falun Gong practitioners in an investigation of the torture they had suffered. Upon his return, he published another open letter to China's top leaders, detailing what he had found. He wrote, </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> "Among the true accounts of unbelievable brutality, among the </span><span style="font-size:100%;">records of the government's inhuman torture of its own people, the immoral acts that shocked my soul the most were the lewd yet routine practice of attacking women's genitals by 6-10 Office staff and the police. Almost every woman's genitals and breasts or every man's genitals have been sexually assaulted during the persecution in a most vulgar fashion...." </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In the wake of this third open letter, his subsequent resignation of CCP membership, and his meeting with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Special_Rapporteur">Dr. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture</a>, on January 17, 2006, according to Amnesty International, Mr. Gao narrowly escaped an alleged assassination attempt. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">On December 22, 2006, Mr. Gao was convicted of "subversion." He was sentenced to three years in prison, which was suspended, and placed on probation for five years. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">On September 22, 2007, after writing to the US Congress calling for a boycott of the Olympics, Gao was secretly taken away once again by Chinese State security police. In August 2008 reports surfaced that he had been tortured for close to two months in the same way that Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In the early morning of February 4, 2009 the State security police took Gao away from his home in Shaanxi. He has been missing ever since. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Responsibilities of the International Legal Profession </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br />Today, Gao Zhisheng is China's foremost leader in the rights movement and has become an icon of the Chinese rights defenders fighting for the basic rights of the Chinese people. He has been called "China's conscience". He was the 2007 recipient of the prestigious 'American Board of Trial Advocates' Courageous Advocacy Award. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">What has happened to Gao should be a wake-up call to the international community concerning the Chinese State's disregard for human rights and the rule of law. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In Gao's open letter depicting the fifty days of horrific torture he suffered in 2007 at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he expresses a few thoughts directed to the international community: "I want to remind those so-called global 'good friends', 'good partners' as called by the CCP that the increasing degree of brutality and cruelty against the Chinese people by the CCP is the direct result of appeasement by both you and us (our own Chinese people)." </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">There is a moral responsibility on members of the legal profession in every country which enjoys the Rule of Law to speak out in support of their Chinese colleagues who are victims of torture intimidation and who are deprived of their right to practise law by a Chinese government. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Canadian lawyers have in the recent past stood up for Pakistani lawyers facing persecution at the time; the present persecution of Chinese lawyers is exponentially more severe than that which the Pakistani lawyers experienced, but to date, with the exception of Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, and the Law Society of Upper Canada, Canadian lawyers have been strangely silent about the reprehensible persecution of their fellow lawyers in China. </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Clive Ansley, China Monitor for Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, described Gao Zhisheng on the occasion of the 62nd session of the UN general assembly in New York: </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"Has there ever been a man at any time, in any country, who has shown more courage than Gao Zhisheng, staring down the most brutal and vicious oppressor in modern world history? Has there ever been a man at any time, in any country, whose courage has been so married to integrity, ethics, and morality? </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br />Has there ever been a man at any time, in any country, who has been more ready to sacrifice his own life for the good of his fellow citizens; citizens not only of China by citizens of the world?<br /><br />There may well have been a precious few in human history whose sacrifices and courage have equaled those of Gao Zhisheng, but I can think of none who surpasses him." </span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">What You Can Do </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">1. Write a letter to: <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hu Jintao, President of China</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Zhongnanhai Beijing, People's Republic of China </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">2. Write to governmental and non-governmental organizations that are cooperating with China's legal systems such as CIDA and the Canadian Bar Association, as well as your provincial law societies, to raise your concern and ask these organizations to urge their Chinese counterparts to press for the release of Gao Zhisheng . </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">3. Write to Prime Minister Harper, and to the opposition leaders Michael Ignatieff, who is set to visit China, Mr. Jack Layton and Mr. Gilles Duceppe and ask them to urge the Chinese government to release Gao Zhisheng: </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Right Honourable Stephen Harper Email: pm@pm.gc.ca Fax: 613-941-6900 </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Mailing Address: PMO Office, 80 Wellington Street,Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A2</span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mr. Michael Ignatieff Email: IgnatM@parl.gc.ca Fax: (613) 992-5880 </span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> Mr. Gilles Duceppe Email: DucepG@parl.gc.ca Fax: (613) 954-2121</span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mr. Jack Layton Email: LaytoJ@parl.gc.ca Fax: (613) 995-4565<br /></span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mailing Address for all: House of Commons Ottawa.Ontario K1A 0A6 </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">We thank you very much for your attention.</span></p><p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p> <span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >On behalf of Canadian Friends of Gao Zhisheng </span> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Clive Ansley <a href="mailto:cmansley@ansleyandcompany.com">cmansley@ansleyandcompany.com</a> , Canadian Human Rights Lawyer, and China Monitor for Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">David Matas <a href="mailto:dmatas@mts.net">dmatas@mts.net</a>, International Human Rights Lawyer <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Hon. David Kilgour <a href="mailto:dwkilgour@gmail.com">dwkilgour@gmail.com</a> <span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />Former MP and Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific </span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Reference:<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">1. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng's account of being tortured by the Chinese State: <a href="http://www.chinaaid.org/qry/page.taf">chinaaid.org</a></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />2. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng's open letters to Chinese leaders / <a href="http://en.epochtimes.com/news/6-3-25/39696.html">letter 1 </a>/ <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-10-24/33667.html">letter 2</a> / <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-12-16/35876.html">letter 3</a> and the U.S. Congress <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/7-9-27/60173.html">letter</a> detailing his own investigation into atrocities against Falun Gong.<br />3. <a href="http://http//www.david-kilgour.com/2007/July_13_2007_01.htm"></a><a href="http://www.david-kilgour.com/2007/July_13_2007_01.htm">Remarks</a> by David Matas delivered at the American Board of Trial Advocates Directors Meeting honouring Gao Zhisheng on June 30,2007, Santa Barbara, California on presentation of the Courageous Advocacy Award to Gao Zhisheng </span></p><br /><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-5334704068493689202009-06-25T14:20:00.000-07:002009-06-25T14:21:28.638-07:00How the pro-Beijing lobby has exaggerated fears over upsetting the Chinese regime<!-- START OF BANNER CODE -->Beijing's 'second channel' Diplomacy in Canada <div id="article-author" class="clearfix"> <span class="author"><br />By Matthew Little<br /><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/18634/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 204);">Epoch</span> Times</a> Staff</span> <span class="date">Jun 25, 2009</span> </div><br /> Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi made an official visit to Canada this week, prompting some to proclaim a breakthrough in Canada-China relations. China-business lobbyists will say the Conservative Government has now seen the light. But there are others who fear the government is stepping down from a stance toward China that was not only principled, but also made sense.<br /><br />Early on, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had chilly relations with the communist regime. He publicly criticized its notorious human rights record, angering the China-business lobby. But he also earned respect as one of the few world leaders to speak up for China’s downtrodden.<div class="etRelated"> <div class="headline">Related Articles</div> <ul><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/18465/">Former Chinese Ambassador to Canada Describes Efforts to Influence Conservatives’ Stance on China</a></li><li><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/18528/">Canadian Reporter Barred From Luncheon With Visiting Chinese Official</a></li></ul> </div> <br /><br />That was then. Today it is hard to tell what Mr. Harper's position is. The Prime Minister’s Office seemed reluctant this week to put “human rights” and “China” together in the same sentence when asked if Harper and Yang had discussed that issue in their meeting. Instead, his spokesperson, Demitri Soudas, would only say the two had talked about all issues of concern to both countries.<br /><br />It could be said that Yang's arrival in Canada was paved by former Chinese ambassador to Canada, Mei Ping. Beginning last fall, Mr. Mei worked behind the scenes to influence the Conservative government's China stance, a fact he boasted about in a reception at the Chinese consulate in Toronto last Wednesday night.<br /><br />Ming Pao, a pro-Beijing Chinese-language newspaper who covered the event, reported that the communist regime turned to Mei because of his extensive ties here.<br /><h3> A ‘Secondary Channel’</h3><p>The paper quoted Mei as saying he visited Canada in September and October of last year on a mission to use a “secondary channel” of diplomacy to change the government’s stance.<br /><br />His efforts took him on a cross-Canada tour with stops in eight cities where he met with business leaders, think-tanks, opposition leaders, and media.<br /><br />Chen Yonglin was a student at the Foreign Affairs University in China in the 1980s when Mei was the Chancellor there and said he is familiar with Mei's “secondary channel.” It's a concept Mei discussed at that time too.<br /><br />“The ‘second channel’ is also called ‘non-governmental’ diplomacy,” explained Chen. “It means to influence the Canadian Government through the Chinese community in Canada.”<br /><br />Chen said Beijing previously exercised this “second channel” through overseas front organizations to dissolve the trade sanctions Western countries imposed on China after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.<br /><br />Chen was the consul for political affairs in the Chinese consulate in Sydney before he defected in 2005. He revealed that one of his duties there was to monitor Chinese political dissidents and rights activists in Australia.<br /><br />He also revealed how the regime used front organizations, including Chinese community groups, Chinese student groups, and Chinese media, to further Beijing’s interests abroad.<br /><br />In his reported speech, Mei had also highlighted that the opinion of Chinese Canadians during the last election had altered Canada's China stance, something Mei was in the country to witness.<br /><br />The Epoch Times was following odd occurrences in the Chinese community during the election, many of which take on new significance in light of this information.<br /><br />Among those odd occurrences was a poll published by the Ming Pao Chinese newspaper which claimed the single largest concern of Chinese Canadians was China-Canada relations. The poll came with the suggestion that political strategists could use the findings to lure Chinese voters.<br /><br />These findings ran counter to most national election polls, which at the time found the economy was the overriding concern for the vast majority of Canadians.<br /><br />Also odd were the townhall debates organized by Chinese community groups whose members were vocal supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and its foreign policy objectives. </p> <h3> Intelligence Efforts </h3><p>Michel Juneau-Katsuya, formerly a senior intelligence officer at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) and head of its Asia Pacific bureau, believes these incidents could be efforts by the Chinese regime to influence Canada's foreign policy.<br /><br />His description of the Ming Pao newspaper offers some explanation.<br /><br />Intelligence agents, he said, “have evidence to believe that Ming Pao has been used by the Chinese intelligence services on numerous occasions. So when we look at Ming Pao we see it as an extension of the government of China, the Central Committee of China and [an instrument of] Chinese intelligence services for its propaganda purposes.”<br /><br />The same went for many Chinese community associations operating in Canada, he said. The goal was to exercise influence without getting caught.<br /><br />"The Chinese government is having things done on their behalf but by someone else so you don't have a smoking gun."<br /><br />Juneau-Katsuya backed Chen’s assertion that Chinese media, community and student groups were all frequently employed to influence foreign governments.<br /><br />But a luncheon Minister Yang attended during his visit may add another dimension to that influence effort. </p> <h3> Not Just Business</h3><p>The luncheon was put on by the Canada China Business Council, an influential China-lobby group whose membership roster includes some of Canada’s most powerful business leaders.<br /><br />The business organization revealed in an email to members that the Chinese regime had directly asked the organization to put on the event.<br /><br />Juneau-Katsuya said that because of its actions the CCBC, though made up of Canadians rather than Chinese diaspora, looks similar from an intelligence perspective to a front organization.<br /><br />He suggested the group was heavily influenced by the Chinese regime.<br /><br />"We've seen some positions, some statements made by these people, that were very very much representing the party line and the policies that the Chinese government wanted its allies to reverberate and to disseminate left and right," said Juneau-Katsuya.<br /><br />He added that intelligence agents never considered the CCBC to be "strictly business orientated."<br /><br />The Canada China Business Council (CCBC) has twice barred reporters who write articles critical of the Chinese regime from attending its events including its most recent luncheon. The organization has consistently cited “space limitations.”<br /><br />Kate Heartfield with the Ottawa citizen attended the event and noted that Minister Yang's speech was politically charged and mentioned the regime's claims not only to Tibet, but also Taiwan.<br /><br />She blogged about the contradiction presented by Canadian-China business community's frequent attempt to argue that doing business with China's authoritarian regime had nothing to do with politics.<br /><br />“But that's a lie. The Canada-China business community doesn't avoid politics; it just avoids political opinions that run contrary to the propaganda spread by the totalitarian regime,” she wrote.<br /><br />“Bombardier was a major sponsor of the lunch. How is it not interfering with China's affairs when a heavily taxpayer-subsidized Canadian company like Bombardier builds a rail link into Tibet to help China speed up its cultural genocide there? Maybe politics and business aren't that easy to separate after all.”<br /><br />“And how come Canada's not allowed to interfere in China's affairs, but China's allowed to run guns to the likes of Robert Mugabe and Than Shwe? Why doesn't China stop interfering in the affairs of Burma and Zimbabwe?”<br /><br />Not surprisingly, the founding president of the CCBC is former CEO of Power Corp, Paul Desmarais Sr.. Desmarais is one of the richest men in Canada and one of the most heavily involved in business with China.<br /><br />Juneau noted that when former Chinese Premier Li Peng came to Canada in the early 1990s he spent a day and a half visiting then Prime Minister Jean Chretien and the rest of his five-day visit at one of Desmarais’ residences.<br /><br />The CCBC has basically dictated Canada’s China policy for the past 50 years, said Clive Ansley, former president of the Shanghai chapter of the CCBC and the first Western lawyer to establish a practice in China.<br /><br />The CCBC did this through Desmarais’s close personal relationships with former Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, and Jean Chretien, said Ansley. Desmarais’s son is married to former Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s daughter.<br /><br />Ansley said the CCBC has managed to convince Canada’s A-list business leaders to pay hefty membership dues to join the organization with promises to facilitate trade with China.<br /><br />However, despite the CCBC’s efforts to influence Canada’s business elite and its very vocal claims to the contrary, three national business polls conducted by COMPAS Inc. in 2006, 2007, and 2008 found that most business leaders judged Mr. Harper to have done well on his public criticism of China’s human rights abuses.<br /><br />The executives said they believe Mr. Harper’s tough stance would either have no impact on Canadian business opportunities in China, or actually be good for business by helping Chinese improve their legal system. They also saw it as advancing human rights in China in the long run. </p> <h3> Legitimate Concerns</h3><p>As a former Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin is well familiar with the inner workings of the regime and said its foreign policy effort all boils down to one thing.<br /><br />“The core of China's diplomacy is to maintain the international recognition of the Chinese Communist Party as a ruling regime in China,” said Chen.<br /><br />In short, the CCP is entirely focused on ensuring it is recognized as the legitimate ruler of China, an issue all the more critical at the present moment, he said.<br /><br />“The exchange of visits with the Canadian top leaders will strengthen the public impression of the legitimacy of the Chinese government, which is not popularly elected.”<br /><br />He points to the fact that China has been encouraging and assisting unstable neighbours North Korea and Pakistan in developing nuclear weapons as evidence that matters like national security hardly matter at all.<br /><br />“The image of the Chinese leaders is the most important matter.”<br /><br />It was once the case that a protest in China was met with bullets. But as the regime prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary, public demonstrations and riots in China are at an all time high. In January, China's state-run <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-10-12/33256.html" title="Xinhua" class="simply_intern">Xinhua</a> news agency published an article saying this year will be the peak period for “mass incidents.”<br /><br />Official reports of “mass incidents” grew by more than seven times over ten years to 74,000 in 2004. Since then, officials have been tight lipped about the details of unrest in China which suggests that the numbers have continued to rise.<br /><br />The largest recent protest in China was in Shishou city, Hubei province, from June 19 to 20. Estimates vary, but anywhere from several thousand to 70,000 residents were involved. Protesters overturned police and fire vehicles during the confrontation with police, who called in soldiers from another city to put down the demonstration. Another smaller riot erupted the following day in Nanjing, when students found out their technical college would be giving them degrees equivalent to high school diplomas rather than the associate degrees they were promised.<br /><br />Some China analysts say public discontent in China is nearing a breaking point and the regime is deeply concerned about anything that could push the masses towards a popular uprising.<br /><br />“The Chinese regime has never been so weak as it is now,” said Chen. “With the rapid expansion of Internet surfers, the regime has found it is harder and harder to fool the Chinese people. The people know more about the truth of China’s past and present. The regime has exhausted all methods to cover the brutality and persecution. Petitioners demanding their cases to be reviewed have become more united than ever.”<br /><br />While the elite of CCP officials have prospered in communist China, the masses have suffered through corruption and persecution, and an increasing number of them aren’t willing to accept it quietly. A small but well-reported case reveals the magnitude of the change taking place.</p> <h3> Blog Justice</h3><p>Waitress Deng Yujiao was charged with murder after she stabbed and killed one of three Chinese Communist Party officials who were allegedly trying to rape her.<br /><br />The case caused outrage across China. Bloggers called for her release and for the officials to be punished. Many advocated taking their protest from the web to the streets. Other people started support groups in her name and a grassroots effort grew to have her freed.<br /><br />Last week her sentence was handed down. She was found guilty but her murder charge was downgraded twice, from manslaughter to assault, and she received no punishment. Witnesses were not called, leading many to suggest the verdict was politically decided. While Chinese judicial system remains little more than political tool of the CCP, it seems China's masses can influence the system by taking their concerns to the street.<br /><br />But there is another situation the CCP is not likely to reconsider: its decision to stomp out a movement chipping away its very foundation. Chinese people have begun registering public withdrawals from the various organs of the Chinese Communist Party that they either voluntarily joined or were compelled to enlist in by their workplace or school.<br /><br />The withdrawal movement sprang from an editorial series called the <a href="http://ninecommentaries.com/" title="Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (Chinese Communist Party)" class="simply_extern">Nine Commentaries</a> published by The Epoch Times. The series details the regime's often hidden bloody history, and has led to over 56 million withdrawals. The Nine Commentaries are among the materials produced by the approximately 200,000 underground presses operated by Falun Gong practitioners in China, according to the Falun Dafa Information Centre. The CCP has made stopping the spread of the series among Chinese a top concern, and Canadian researchers at the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab found that the Chinese version of Skype was storing messages that talked about the series.</p> <h3> How Mighty the Dollar?<br /></h3><p> The CCP’s perceived legitimacy becomes even more crucial in the face of an economic downturn, given that the regime has staked its life on improved economic prosperity for China’s masses.<br /><br />But with unemployment rising, the findings of a report by Albert Edwards, a strategist at Societe Generale who predicted the Asian Crisis in 1997, couldn’t have come at a worse time.<br /><br />Earnings for Chinese companies have fallen through the floor, revealing critical faults in the Chinese economy. “I believe we will look back on the Chinese economic miracle as the sickest joke yet played on investors,” Edwards wrote in his report.<br /><br />“The bullish group-think on China is just as vulnerable to massive disappointment as any other extreme example of bubble-nonsense I have seen over the last two decades... The fall to earth will be equally as shocking.”<br /><br />And given that Canada runs a huge trade deficit with the Chinese regime, and that the value of Canada's exports to China is tripled by as small a trading partner as the State of Illinois, maybe now is not the time to kowtow to Beijing.<br /><br />Prime Minister Harper’s now famous claim that Canada would not compromise its principles for trade with China seems all the more a position for the government to reconsider.<br /><br />“Canada should learn how to deal with a non-democratic regime like China,” said Chen. “Pressure is the only language that a dictatorship can understand.”</p><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-36283504703449541722009-06-24T11:11:00.000-07:002009-06-24T11:15:29.623-07:00Canadian Reporter Barred From Luncheon With Visiting Chinese Official<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><br /> <h2 style="font-family: georgia;">Sun Media’s Christina Spencer kept out of Yang Jiechi welcome lunch organized by Canada-China Business Council</h2> <div id="article-author" class="clearfix" style="font-family:georgia;"> <span class="author">By Matthew Little<br /><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/18528/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 204);">Epoch</span> Times</a> Staff</span> <span class="date">Jun 24, 2009<br /><br /></span>A member of the Parliament Hill press gallery was barred from attending a Tuesday luncheon with China's foreign minister in a move reminiscent of a similar incident in 2005 when the same business lobby barred reporters from two media outlets from a dinner event welcoming Chinese leader Hu Jintao.<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal">The luncheon with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was hosted by the Canada China Business Council (CCBC) in Ottawa at the bequest of the Chinese regime.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Christina Spencer, a Parliament Hill reporter for Sun Media who has written articles critical of the communist regime, was turned away when she tried to attend the event at the Chateau Laurier Hotel.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">A spokesperson for the council said the reporter was barred because she hadn't been invited. An emailed response from Victor Hayes, CCBC's director of public relations, said space was limited and so only a small number of media were invited.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The luncheon came on the heels of a meeting between Yang and Prime Minister Stephen Harper where a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's office said the two discussed “the entire range of issues between our two countries.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Attempts by the Parliament Hill Press Gallery to reach the CCBC had gone unanswered by Tuesday afternoon, but the gallery's vice president, Chris Rands did tell the <em>Epoch Times</em> the journalists' association was concerned about what happened.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“We are dismayed by the Canada China business Council’s decision to bar a member of the parliamentary press gallery from attending their event,” Rands said. “We will examine this issue at our next meeting later this week.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The invitation for Tuesday's luncheon attracted the interest of Canadian China scholar Charles Burton.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a recent blog post he noted that it was the Chinese regime and not the Canadian government that asked the business lobby group to make arrangements for Mr. Yang in Canada. The CCBC is an association that includes some of Canada’s largest corporations with business interests in China. The luncheon was to be attended by around 150 of Canada's business leaders. Journalists from Canwest News Service, CBC, CTV and others were able to attend.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In 2005, both <em>The Epoch Times</em> and New Tang Dynasty Television were kept out of a CCBC organized banquet for Hu Jintao in Toronto. The CCBC at the time again cited “space limitations” for excluding the two media outlets that frequently carry articles highlighting human rights abuses of the Chinese regime.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Kate Heartfield with the <em>Ottawa Citizen</em> did attend Tuesday’s luncheon and blogged afterwards about the contradiction presented by Canadian-China business communities frequent attempt to argue that doing business with China's authoritarian regime had nothing to do with politics.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“But that's a lie. The Canada-China business community doesn't avoid politics; it just avoids political opinions that run contrary to the propaganda spread by the totalitarian regime,” she wrote, citing some charged comments that appeared in the speech of the Chinese foreign minister about Tibet.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Bombardier was a major sponsor of the lunch. How is it not interfering with China's affairs when a heavily taxpayer-subsidized Canadian company like Bombardier builds a rail link into Tibet to help China speed up its cultural genocide there? Maybe politics and business aren't that easy to separate after all.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“And how come Canada's not allowed to interfere in China's affairs, but China's allowed to run guns to the likes of Robert Mugabe and Than Shwe? Why doesn't China stop intefering in the affairs of Burma and Zimbabwe?”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Heartfield wrote that she would have like to ask Yang these questions “but the media weren't allowed to ask him anything.”</p><br /> </div> <div id="article-tools" style="font-family:georgia;"> <span id="bookmarks"></span><span><a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/component/option,com_etcategory/sectionid,3/categoryid,101/"><br /></a> </span> </div> <br /><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35463836.post-47791188111309939972009-06-24T11:06:00.000-07:002009-06-24T11:09:17.108-07:00Christian Attorney Zheng Enchong Interrogated and Tortured<!-- START OF BANNER CODE --><div class="IEhack"><div class="release_title"><br /></div> <div class="release_content"> <img src="http://www.christiannewswire.com/images/1245844329.jpg" alt="" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 5px 5px; float: right;" width="250" /> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/1558110764.html">Contact: Katherine Cason</a>, 267-210-8278, <a href="mailto:Katherine@ChinaAid.org"><span style="color: rgb(202, 5, 5);">Katherine@ChinaAid.org</span></a>; Washington, D.C. Contact: Jenny McCloy, 202-213-0506, <a href="mailto:Jenny@ChinaAid.org"><span style="color: rgb(202, 5, 5);">Jenny@ChinaAid.org</span></a>; <a href="http://www.chinaaid.org/"><span style="color: rgb(202, 5, 5);">www.ChinaAid.org</span></a>, <a href="http://www.monitorchina.org/"><span style="color: rgb(202, 5, 5);">www.MonitorChina.org</span></a></div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">SHANGHAI, China, June 24 /<a href="http://www.christiannewswire.com/"><span style="color: rgb(202, 5, 5);">Christian Newswire</span></a>/ -- On June 17 Christian human rights attorney, Zheng Enchong, was interrogated and tortured for nine hours by Public Security Bureau (PSB) officers because of his work defending Chinese citizens whose land has been confiscated by the government. During his detention, he was beaten, stripped and cigarettes were held to his lips and eyelids. Zheng Enchong has filed a written protest and plans to file a complaint to the central government. </div> <p><em>Photo: Zheng Enchong </em></p> <p>According to ChinaAid sources, Zheng Enchong was summoned by four officers from Zhabei District Branch of Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau on June 17. During his detention, officers took turns slapping him five or six times in the face, and hitting him three times in the back of his head. Police also held lit cigarettes to his lips and eyelids. Later, the officers pulled him from the seat and took off all his clothing, except his underwear. Police threw his personal belongings, including: money, keys, pen, and a Bible and some cookies to the floor. Then the PSB officers proceeded to search his body. </p> <p>Authorities compiled a written record of the interrogation without interrogating Zheng at all, and, then, wanted him to sign it. Instead, he wrote down a statement on the record describing his violent treatment by the PSB. He denounced authorities for using the same method on him as they use on Falun Gong practitioners.</p> <p>Attorney Zheng has been summoned by officials nearly 20 times, and his house searched twice in the past two and a half months. In 2003, he filed a major legal case exposing how government officials conspired with Zhou Zhengyi, "the richest man in Shanghai, " to illegally confiscate homes for demolition. Since that time, Zheng Enchong has been continually harassed and persecuted by Chinese officials. He was sentenced to three years in prison for "illegally providing secrets to overseas entities." The charge related to two faxes regarding workers' protests that Zheng was accused of sending to Human Rights in China, a non-profit organization. Zheng has also been beaten by authorities four times, so badly that he now has difficulty walking. </p> <p>"As an internationally well-known Christian human rights lawyer, Attorney Zheng has always defended the poor and vulnerable," said Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid and a friend of Mr. Zheng and his family. "The repeated harassment and torture against such a conscientious rights defender demonstrates the Shanghai authorities' total disregard to citizens' basic human rights. We encourage the international community to continue to press the Chinese authorities to stop these hideous acts and to hold the abusers accountable."</p> <p>ChinaAid calls on the international community to contact the Chinese Ambassador and urge that the violence against Zheng Enchong end, and that the government respect and uphold human rights according to the Chinese Constitution and international agreements:</p> <p>Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong<br />3505 International Place, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008<br />Tel: (202) 495-2000<br />Fax: (202) 588-9760</p> <p><em>ChinaAid grants permission to reproduce photos and/or information for non-fundraising purposes, with the provision that </em><a href="http://www.chinaaid.org/"><em>www.ChinaAid.org</em></a><em> is credited. Please contact: </em><a href="mailto:Katherine@ChinaAid.org"><em>Katherine@ChinaAid.org</em></a><em> with questions or requests for further information. </em></p></div> </div><a href="http://www.olympicwatch.org/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.olympicwatch.org/img/banners/banner-anim.gif" alt="OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008" width="468" border="0" height="60" /></a><br /><!-- END OF BANNER CODE -->MaKinahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08644441244302911065noreply@blogger.com0