Search This Blog

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Was Your Christmas ‘Made In China?’ Read A Letter Alleged To Be From A Forced Chinese Labor Camp.

 There is also a charge in the unsigned letter that workers are forced to be there in retaliation for being Falun Gong members (something that is not approved by the CCP).
 
The note was found by Julie Keith. The emotional letter had been sitting inside the package of a K-Mart 17  ’Totally Ghoul Piece Graveyard Kit” that Ms. Keith purchased a year ago to decorate her home. She did not use it last year. However, this past Halloween, Julie decided to open the box. That’s when she discovered the folded, handwritten note wedged between styrofoam skulls and bones.
“Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”
The letter continues, adding allegations of the horrible conditions under which the laborers are working;
  • 15 hour workdays
  • seven days a week (no holidays)
  • low wages of 10 yuan per month (that works out to about $1.60 per month in U.S. dollars)
For the record, China Daily reports that the average monthly salary for workers in that country ranges from 2742 to 4672 / yuan per month (or $440 to $750 per month). A salary of 10 yuan per month would be less than 5% of what the poorest regions are paying workers.

The author claims that many of the laborers are there for 1-3 years as punishment, although they were not afforded a trial. And poor work (in the eyes of the supervisors) often triggers torture and rude remarks.

More at The Blaze

Related:

FDI: Secret Note Found in Kmart Holiday Decorations Reveals Labor Camp Horrors



 

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Hong Kong’s Liberties Under Attack by Spreading Persecution

 A Hong Kong group with deep ties to China’s domestic security apparatus and the notorious 6-10 Office has recently made attempts to extend the Chinese regime’s persecution of the Falun Gong meditation and exercise discipline to the Hong Kong territory. A spokesperson for concerned citizens says the Chinese regime is systemically eroding democracy and civil rights in Hong Kong by targeting the Falun Gong first.

Tourists are now greeted by people clad in green uniforms, members of a newly formed communist-backed “youth group,” who verbally, and sometimes physically, assault the peaceful Falun Gong protesters, using loudhailers and waving banners bearing slogans that slander Falun Gong. Some of them have admitted that they are being paid to participate in these activities.

Their words and slogans are uncannily similar to those used in China’s prisons, forced labor camps, and brainwashing centers against Falun Gong, according to Falun Gong sources.

More at The Epoch 

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

CECC Hearing on Falun Gong Persecution in China

On Tuesday (Dec. 18th) the US Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a hearing on the human rights abuses against Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Falun Gong is a spiritual meditation practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999.
[Christopher Smith, Chairman of CECC]: 
“The campaign has been severe, brutal, ugly, and vicious.” 
Falun Gong practitioners have been illegally detained, sent to forced labor camps, and subjected to torture for their beliefs.
But that may not be all.
[Xu Jianchao, Professor of Yale School of Medicine]: 
“Faun Gong practitioners are the most likely source of organs used in the transplant procedures in China over the past decade.”  
The forced organ harvesting allegations first surfaced in 2006. This October, 106 members of the US Congress wrote a dear colleague letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They want the State Department to release any information it may have on the state-sanctioned transplant abuse.
Congressman Smith was one of the signees of the letter. He says the US needs to take decisive actions to stop illegal organ harvesting.
[Christopher Smith, Chairman of CECC]: 
“We need to speak out boldly, effectively, with great clarity about what is truly going on and then have a penalty phase. Those who do these things should be held to account. If not to go to prison, certainly not to be admissible to the United States by granting them a visa.”
[Sherrod Brown, Cochairman of CECC]: 
“China must end all repression of Falun Gong practitioners, guarantee their freedom of belief, and expression, and assembly and release all political prisoners.” 
Three US doctors have launched a petition under President Obama’s “We the People” initiative. The petition asks US government to quote “expose these crimes, stop them, and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.”
Once the petition reaches over 25,000 signatures by January 1st, the Obama administration will be obligated to respond.

More at New Tang Dynasty Television

‘So horrific:’ Organ Harvesting Petition Creator Wants US to Act

Since 2006, investigators believe that most of the tens of thousands of organs used for transplants in China have come from prisoners of conscience, namely Falun Gong practitioners, who form the majority of such detainees.

Centurion said that officials in the United States likely have information about organ harvesting in China. The White House “We the People” petition that Centurion launched Dec. 2 asks President Barack Obama to make these records public.

“As a world leader in protecting human rights,” the petition reads, “the United States has a moral obligation to expose these crimes, stop them, and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

Another initiator of the petition, Dr. Arthur Caplan, who heads the Division of Bioethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told The Epoch Times earlier this month that he hopes the petition will put an end to the practice of organ harvesting in China.

“It’s a serious, serious violation. It’s certainly about as bad as things can get. We do not accept killing for getting organs. It’s a basic principle of medical ethics that you don’t do that,” Caplan said.

Please sign the Petition here

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Organ Harvesting Raised at European Parliament Hearing

CLARIFICATION:
The December 6 hearing covered various topics, including China's rule of law, its leadership change, its international obligations, democracy, and organ transplants. The issue of organ harvesting in China was among the main topics.
 
NTD News, Brussels, Belgium - China’s organ transplant industry has grown rapidly over the past decade. But the source of organs used for transplants has remained controversial. That’s particularly after 2006, when allegations surfaced that state hospitals were killing persecuted Falun Gong practitioners for their organs.
The issue was raised on Thursday in Brussels, during a hearing of the European Parliament’s Human Rights subcommittee.
[Corinna Barbara Francis, researcher at Amnesty International]: 
“In other words, individuals in China have their organs harvested and in the process of that they die. So this is the issue that will be discussed further. There are many groups that these organs may be taken from, the Falun Gong being one of the main groups.” 
Similar hearings were held in the European Parliament in 2006 and 2009. The Chinese regime has since admitted that executed prisoners are the main source of organs. 
Independent investigations suggest they are not just prisoners, but prisoners of conscience, and many went through no legal conviction.
[Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice-President of the European Parliament]:
“I have met someone myself. His best friend died in prison. He disappeared one evening from the cell. When he next saw his friend’s body, it had holes in it in the prison hospital. He thought that some operation had been done. But obviously, what had happened was that he had been harvested for his organs.”
Canadian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, David Matas, co-authored a book on the forced organ harvesting allegations. It includes dozens of pieces of data, and concludes that at least thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs.
The hearing, attended by EU officials, politicians and human rights advocates, called on the European Parliament to take concrete action to help end organ harvesting. 
[Leonidas Donskis, Member of the European Parliament]:
“We need to think about new legislation which will be exterritorial, which will be international, which will simply require individual responsibility of all people involved in these operations, in these absolutely criminal, illegal activities. So this would send a very strong message to China.” 

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Former McMaster Confucius Institute Teacher Files Case with HR Tribunal

A stipulation on CI's main website says teachers must have 'no record of participation in Falun Gong

“The respondent (McMaster) cannot evade its responsibility to respect the Ontario Human Rights Code standards by delegating its hiring responsibilities to an agent outside the jurisdiction and turning a blind eye to discriminatory hiring practices of its hiring agent,” Matas wrote in a submission to the OHRT, obtained by The Epoch Times.

CSIS head Richard Fadden has said CIs are under the control of Chinese embassies and consulates.

McMaster has also argued that it was unaware of Hanban’s rule forbidding practitioners of Falun Gong from teaching. Matas says the instruction is found in English on Hanban’s website and that McMaster should have known—if they didn’t it means they “didn’t do their homework.”
McMaster did not respond to requests for comment.
Other Canadian schools also claimed to be unaware of CIs’ discriminatory hiring policy, although the statement relating to Falun Gong has been available on the Hanban website.


More at the Epoch Times

Film Festival's China Focus Aims to Advance Freedom in China

Ottawa - Among its selections this year, the Third Annual Free Thinking Film Festival presented two compelling films on China that aimed to generate awareness and discussion about fundamental issues such as freedom, democracy, and human rights.

I wanted to make China a very big focus of our festival this year so that Canadians could see for themselves the human rights abuses.

— Fred Litwin, president, Free Thinking Film Society
“Free China” also described how Falun Gong practitioners were selected to have their organs and physical condition examined while in custody, speaking to ...

“Death by China: One Lost Job at a Time” analyzes the cost to the U.S. of its trade relationship with China, highlighting growing trade imbalances, the regime’s unfair trade practices, and consequences in the U.S. such as factory closures, unemployment, and rising debt owed to China.

Before Party Congress, Crackdown on Falun Gong in Full Force

Congress as ‘Excuse’

The campaign against Falun Gong has gone on since 1999, but anti-Falun Gong activities, and the severity with which they are carried out, appear to have been stepped up this year.
A review of Chinese regime websites at different departmental and administrative levels across the country shows a concerted campaign, extending to neighborhoods and apartment blocks, to identify and attack Falun Gong practitioners ahead of the 18th Party Congress, and in the name of the congress.
But according to Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, the Party’s security forces are using the idea of “safeguarding” the event as an excuse to persecute Falun Gong, and attempt to revive the campaign.
“It’s very difficult to keep up a campaign for 12 or 13 years with any kind of momentum,” he said. “That’s why they break it into little campaigns, as a way to package it, give it new objectives, and push it forward. The congress is no different.”
Like the Olympics and other major events in China, the event has simply become a way to “advance the long-term objective against Falun Gong, which is to stamp it out,” he said. “Look at the long prison sentences. If they were concerned about the safety of the congress, they would round everybody up and let them go afterwards. They would not hand down 14 year prison sentences.”

More at Epoch Times


Related Articles

Fallen Chinese Minister on Trial in China and Canada

The disgraced former commerce minister was well liked among Canada’s business elite, a charismatic figure who rose quickly under former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.

Bo reigned over one of the bloodiest crackdowns on Falun Gong.

But what fuelled Bo’s rise ended up burning him. Promoted for his zealous adherence to Jiang’s efforts to eradicate the Falun Gong spiritual practice, Bo soon faced lawsuits around the world, including in Canada, for his abuses.
Those lawsuits marked the turning point in his career—key ammunition his political opponents used to orchestrate his downfall.

Organ Harvesting, Falun Gong, and the Future of China

by David Matas
Epoch Times - What impact is the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs having on Communist Chinese Party control of China? Are we seeing now, because of these killings, the end of communism in China?
Falun Gong is a blending of ancient Chinese spiritual and exercise traditions. It was brought out to the public in 1992 by Li Hongzhi and quickly spread throughout China with the encouragement of the government officials who considered the exercises as beneficial to health and to the finances of the health system. By 1999 Falun Gong practitioners were, according to a government survey more numerous than the membership of the Communist Party. At this point, out of fear of losing its ideological supremacy and jealousy of its popularity, former Party head Jiang Zemin declared Falun Gong banned.
Those who did the exercises after 1999 were arrested and asked to denounce the practice. Those who did not were tortured. Those who refused to recant after torture disappeared.
What happened to the disappeared? David Kilgour and I, in two reports dated July 2006 and January 2007 and a book dated November 2009 all under the title Bloody Harvest, concluded that many were killed for their organs used in transplants sold to patients, many of them foreign, for large sums. While it would take me too far afield to go through all the evidence which led us to that conclusion, I will mention a few bits.
Investigators made calls to hospitals throughout China, claiming to be relatives of patients needing transplants, asking if the hospitals had organs of Falun Gong for sale on the basis that, since Falun Gong through their exercises are healthy, the organs would be healthy. We obtained admissions throughout China on tape, and transcribed and translated them.
Falun Gong practitioners who were detained and after torture recanted and who then got out of detention and out of China told us that they were systematically blood tested and organ examined while in detention. Other detainees were not. The blood testing and organ examination could not have been for the health of the Falun Gong since they had been tortured; but it would have been necessary for organ transplants.
Waiting times for transplants of organs in China are days and weeks. Everywhere else in the world waiting times are months and years. A short waiting time for a deceased donor transplant means that someone is being killed for that transplant.
There is no other explanation for the transplant numbers than sourcing from Falun Gong. China is the second largest transplant country in the world by volume after the U.S. Yet, until 2010 China did not have a deceased donation system and even today that system produces donations which are statistically insignificant. The living donor sources are limited in law to relatives of donors and officially discouraged because live donors suffer health complications from giving up an organ.
The Ministry of Health of China accepts that organs for transplants are coming almost entirely from prisoners. The Ministry claims that the criminals sentenced to death not executed prisoners of conscience.
The number of prisoners sentenced to death and then executed that would be necessary to supply the volume of transplants in China is far greater than even the most exaggerated death penalty statistics and estimates. Moreover, in recent years, death penalty volumes have gone down, but transplant volumes, except for a short blip in 2007, remained constant.

Politics of Organ Transplant Abuse

The Ministry of Health acknowledges that sourcing of organs from prisoners is wrong and promises eventually to end the abuse—in five years but not immediately. The reason the Ministry gives for not ending the abuse immediately is politics.
I and others had pressed the World Medical Association to expel the Chinese Medical Association because of organ transplant abuse in China. Dr. Wonchat Subhachaturas, President of the World Medical Association, in a letter dated July 18, 2011, to Dr. Torsten Trey, Executive Director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, wrote: “[Deputy Health Minister] Professor Huang … said that he would not get the necessary political support to change the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners immediately.”
The use of the word “immediately” is a euphemism. Deputy Minister Huang had been advocating an end to the practice at least since August 2009. Why in the intervening years had the abuse not stopped?
To understand the politics of organ transplant, it is necessary to understand the politics of repression ofFalun Gong. According to an April 9, 2012 Epoch Times article by Cheng Jing, the political dynamic preventing the end to organ transplant abuse was explained in a cryptic nutshell by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in March this year. According to a source, the Premier, at a closed Communist Party meeting in Zhongnanhai on March 14, 2012, stated: “Without anesthetic, the live harvesting of human organs and selling them for money—is this something that a human could do? Things like this have happened for many years. We are about to retire, but it is still not resolved. Now that the Wang Lijun incident is known by the entire world, use this to punish Bo Xilai. Resolving the Falun Gong issue should be a natural choice.”And what did politics have to do with it? Organ transplants are done by medical practitioners, not politicians. One could maybe understand Deputy Minister Huang’s pleading economics, that too much money was being made from transplant abuse to stop it. But instead, he pleaded politics.
The Party announced the next day that Bo lost his position as Communist Party General Secretary of Chongqing.
So, the Chinese Premier Wen urged using the Wang Lijun incident to punish Bo Xilai. Live harvesting of organs for money, he was asserting, is tied up with the Falun Gong issue. Resolve the Falun Gong issue, that is to say end the banning of Falun Gong, and the killing of people for their organs, according to Premier Wen, would end.
This statement of the Premier needs unpacking. What does organ transplant abuse have to do with the ban on Falun Gong? A lot, if you conclude, as David Kilgour and I have, that Falun Gong are being killed for their organs.
What is the Wang Lijun incident? On Feb. 6 this year, Wang Lijun, then deputy mayor and police chief in Chongqing, visited the American consulate in Chengdu for a full day. When he left, the Chinese security police arrested him. Wang went on trial for his attempted defection secretly on Sept. 17 and publicly on Sept. 18. He pleaded no contest.
What is the connection between organ transplant abuse and Bo Xilai? That takes a bit of explaining.
Although this is a simplification, the civilian power struggle in China revolves around three factions—the hardliners, the reformers, and the harmonizers. The leader of the hardliners used to be former President Jiang Zemin who led the banning of Falun Gong in 1999. His successor in the current Standing Committee is Zhou Yongkang, the Party head of Chinese security apparatus and also of the repression of Falun Gong. The man designated to replace Zhou Yongkang in the Standing Committee at the 18th National Congress was Bo Xilai.
The position of premier has sporadically been held by a line of reformers—Zhao Ziyang from 1980 to 1987, Zhu Rongji from 1998 to 2003, and Wen Jiabao from 2003 to the present. Before Jiang Zemin began his campaign to ban Falun Gong, Premier Zhu Rongji was encouraging the practice of Falun Gong as beneficial to health.
The harmonizers, exemplified by current Communist Party chief Hu Jintao and his designated successor Xi Jinping, are not trying to keep everybody happy, just the various factions within the Party. They attempt to avoid confrontations and paper over differences.
Bo Xilai was not just tough on Falun Gong. He and his assistant Wang Lijun were central to the killing of Falun Gong for their organs.
The investigation David Kilgour and I did was triggered by a statement by a woman using the pseudonym Annie. She told The Epoch Times in Washington D.C. in a story published in its March 17, 2006 edition that her ex-husband harvested corneas of Falun Gong practitioners in Sujiatun hospital between 2003 and 2005. Annie said other doctors at the same hospital harvested other organs of these victims, that Falun Gong were killed during the harvesting and that their bodies were cremated.

The details of the story Annie told about the work of her husband were not that different from the details of the story Doctor Wang, another speaker here, who told this Congress about his own work.

The details of the story Annie told about the work of her husband were not that different from the details of the story Doctor Wang, another speaker here, who told this Congress about his own work, a story which, as you can see, was initially vehemently denied by the Government of China and then years later admitted. The only substantial difference in the two stories, Annie’s and Doctor Wang’s, was a difference in the type of prisoner from whom organs were extracted.
Sujiatun, where Annie’s husband worked, is a district in the city Shenyang. Shenyang is a city in the province Liaoning. Bo Xilai was appointed Mayor of Dalian City in Liaoning Province from 1993 to 2001. He was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for Liaoning Province in 2000. From February 2001 to February 2004 he was Governor of Liaoning Province.
While he was in Liaoning, Bo developed a reputation as a brutal leader of the persecution of Falun Gong. The period that Annie’s husband worked in Sujiatun hospital and the period that Bo Xilai was Governor of the province in which the hospital was located overlapped, for the years 2003 and 2004.
From 2003 to 2008, Wang Lijun was the head of the Jinzhou City Public Security Bureau Onsite Psychological Research Centre (OSPRC), Liaoning Province. He conducted research on a lingering injection execution method which would allow organ removal for transplants before the person died from the injection. He conducted further research to prevent patients who received organs of injected prisoners from suffering adverse effects from the injection drugs.
One of the calls the investigative callers made which we used for the reports and book David Kilgour and I authored was placed to the First Criminal Bureau of the Jinzhou Intermediate People’s Court. The call, dated May 23, 2006, had this exchange:
Investigator: Starting from 2001, we always [got] kidneys from young and healthy people who practice Falun Gong from detention centres and courts … I wonder if you still have such organs in your court right now?
Official: That depends on your qualifications … If you have good qualifications, we may still provide some … .
Investigator: Are we supposed to get them, or will you prepare for them?
Official: According to past experience, it is you that will come here to get them.
In September 2006, Wang Lijun received the Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation Innovation Special Contribution Award for his research and testing of this lethal injection method. In his acceptance speech, he talked about “thousands” of on site organ transplant cases from injected prisoners in which he and his staff participated. He said “to see someone being killed and to see this person’s organs being translated to several other person’s bodies is profoundly stirring,” a remark that would have been worthy of Josef Mengele.
Wang Lijun worked directly under Bo Xilai in Liaoning Province in 2003 and 2004. Bo in February 2004 went to Beijing where he became Minister of Commerce. While Minister of Commerce, Bo traveled around the world to promote international trade with China and investment into China. His traveling gave victims the opportunity to serve him with lawsuits for his role in the persecution of Falun Gong in Liaoning Province. Lawsuits commenced against him in thirteen different countries, including one in Canada in which I am acting as counsel.
The American Consulate in Shanghai wrote in December 2007 to the State Department in Washington: “Gu [Nanjing's Professor Gu] noted that Bo had been angling for promotion to Vice Premier. However, Premier Wen had argued against the promotion, citing the numerous lawsuits brought against Bo in Australia, Spain, Canada, England, the United States, and elsewhere by Falun Gong members. Wen successfully argued Bo’s significant negative international exposure made him an inappropriate candidate to represent China at an even higher international level.”
Bo became a member of the Politburo and went from Minister of Commerce in Beijing to Communist Party head of Chongqing in November 2007.
In 2008, shortly after Bo was moved from Beijing to Chongqing, Bo brought Wang Lijun from Liaoning Province. Wang held various positions in public security in Chongqing and in 2011 became deputy mayor of the city under Bo. Wang attempted his defection from that position in February this year.
Superficially, the attempted defection of Wang Lijun related only to the murder of British national Neil Heywood by Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai. However, as the remarks of Premier Wen Jiabao at the March Communist Party meeting indicated, there was more going on than that.
What happens in China behind closed doors at Communist Party meetings is, by its very nature, not a matter of verifiable public record. What could be seen though by anyone at this time was the lifting of censorship on the killing of Falun Gong for their organs.
In late March 2012, search results about organ transplants on the officially sanctioned Chinese search engine Baidu showed information about the work David Kilgour and I did, Bloody Harvest and the involvement of Wang Lijun in organ harvesting. There appeared to be an active attempt to discredit the Bo faction through disclosure of organ transplant abuse in which Bo was complicit.

The banning of Falun Gong and their killing for their organs are issues too big for the Party to handle easily.

The focus on the murder of Neil Heywood looks to be the work of President Hu Jintao and Vice President Xi Jinping to minimize the scope of the dispute between the factions. The banning of Falun Gong and their killing for their organs are issues too big for the Party to handle easily.
President Hu and his successor Xi then, in the grab for places in the new Communist Party Standing Committee, were prepared to sacrifice Bo, but wanted to take Falun Gong and organ transplant abuse off the table. I suggest that those of us who are interested in ending organ transplant abuse in China should make every effort to prevent that from happening.
There may be a tendency to watch from the sidelines and speculate on what the future holds. We must not forget that, when it comes to human affairs, we hold the future in our hands. We do not need to sit idly by and predict the future. We can make the future. We should be making effort to fashion the future in a way that respects human rights.
The struggle to shape the new Standing Committee of the Communist Party shows that the Party is far from monolithic. Bo Xilai was moved from the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing to the City of Chongqing because of the lawsuits against him abroad. Foreign resistance to Chinese Communist Party oppression, when it is knowledgeable and directed, has an impact.
Killing innocents for their organs is a tragedy and a disgrace, a delegitimization of the whole Communist Chinese regime. Wen Jiabao used the killing of Falun Gong for their organs to discredit Bo Xilai. In reality, it discredits the whole Communist Party control over China.
Repressive regimes look stable because they are not threatened by elections. However, their repression is brittle. Each human rights tap on the hard shell of a repressive regime may seem to have little impact. The accumulation of these taps over time though leads to the shattering of the shell unpredictably, at any time, all at once.
That is the experience through which we lived with the apartheid regime in South Africa, communist tyranny over the Soviet Union, Soviet control of Eastern and Central Europe, and the national security states of Latin America. Yesterday they were there and looked impervious to change. Now they are gone.
Communist China awaits a similar fate. We can not be sure when it will happen. But we can help to make it happen, accelerate its happening. We should not stand idly by in the face of Chinese Communist Party atrocities, wringing our hands, hoping for the best, when we can actually do something to counter these atrocities.
The book State Organs that Torsten Trey and I have co-edited, which addresses organ transplant abuse in China and which has just been published, begins with a quote from Athenian ruler Solon from the 7th century B.C., almost three thousand years ago. He said: “When will we end injustice? When those who are not victims feel as much outrage as those who are?”
That is a universal truth. Not only will the concerns of outsiders have an impact on the evolution of events in China. Only when those outside China who are not victims of the communist regime show as much outrage at the crimes of the regime as the victims themselves will Communist Party oppression in China end.
This article is an edited version of remarks prepared for delivery at a public forum at the Koreana Hotel, Seoul Korea, October 31, 2012.
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Organ Harvesting in China
Click www.ept.ms/ccp-crisis to read about the most recent developments in the ongoing crisis within the Chinese communist regime. In this special topic, we provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation. Get the RSS feed. Who are the Major Players?





Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Why the government shouldn’t allow the CNOOC takeover: a Falun Gong perspective


Activists level serious allegations against the Chinese state-owned company

by Nick Taylor-Vaisey on Thursday, October 18, 2012 

MacLeans - Yesterday, when I asked readers to direct my reporting on the Hill, someone asked me to tell a story about one of the hottest issues of the past few months.

I didn’t think I’d get a chance to report on that, since I’m sticking to parliamentary committees, for the most part, during this crowdsourcing experiment. But then, lo and behold, an email popped into my inbox announcing a press conference this morning. Former Liberal and independent MP David Kilgour, a human-rights activist and long-time supporter of the Falun Gong, was appearing with Lucy Zhou, the national coordinator of the Falun Dafa Association of Canada. They were there to call on the federal government to block state-owned CNOOC’s takeover bid of Nexen. I checked out the press conference this morning.

(By now, you might have seen some of the reporting that came out of that presser: both iPolitics’ Derek Abma and Sun Media’s Daniel Proussalidis have already filed stories that detail what was presented.)

Zhou presented journalists with 14 pages worth of documents detailing alleged abuses committed by a CNOOC subsidiary in Tianjin, Bohai Oil Corporation, against employees who practiced Falun Gong. The allegations are sweeping, and if you’ve followed Falun Gong protests over the years, the language will sound familiar. It’s unlike anything we’d encounter in Canada.

The documents allude to “brainwashing centres” where some employees were sent; crimes against humanity; mental and economic persecution; forced labour camps; and ransacking, confiscation and kidnapping.

The Falun Dafa allege that in 2005, a 43-year-old Falun Gong practitioner named Wang Yanying was locked up simply for accessing the internet. Later that year, when her contract was up for renewal, she was allegedly told to renounce Falun Gong or be fired. Then, when she was pregnant, she was allegedly arrested—illegally—and sent to a mental hospital where she “was forced to take medication and injected with harmful drugs for ‘psychiatric treatment.’” After that, she was allegedly tortured at a forced labour camp. That’s where “as many as twelve convicts struck her head with electric batons all at once.”

That’s heavy stuff. And documents handed out to journalists chronicled more than a dozen other stories, each similarly disturbing. It’s hard to report that material verbatim, because we’re so removed from it all. But there was Zhou, at the podium, claiming some of the people allegedly persecuted were friends of Falun Gong practitioners in Canada. Would they make this stuff up, or exaggerate it, because they simply don’t like the Chinese government?

It’s hard to know, sitting here on Parliament Hill, where we’re a world away from the answers to those questions.

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

KILLED FOR ORGANS: China's Secret State Transplant Business - Video

KILLED FOR ORGANS: China's Secret State Transplant Business" is a new documentary about the unethical organ harvesting practices in China. It raises again questions on the practice itself as well as what the world will do about it. For the past years, medical doctors have been among the front runners in calling for an end of this unethical practice in China (and elsewhere), as the documentary shows.


A new form of evil in the world that has never been done by any government in the past, is taking large groups of its own people and killing them without any kind of trial and selling their vital organ parts. 
Please view the evidence in this video.
According to the Epoch Times newspaper, “Starting in 1999, the number of transplant centers in China increased by 300 percent in just eight years, even though China has no effective national organ donation system. 1999 was the year the Chinese regime began persecuting adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, sending hundreds of thousands to labor camps. Many of them were never seen again. Transplant medicine was developed to save lives. But in China, innocent people are being killed for their organs – so they can be sold for profit.”
US Congressman Denny Rehberg signed a “Dear Colleague” letter regarding organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and other religious and political prisoners in China, and asking the State Department to release any information they may have on this very important matter so as to make the Chinese government accountable for these atrocities.
There is a petition to stop forced organ harvesting in China by the nonprofit Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.
DAFOH-petition: http://tinyurl.com/

Statement on China's Plan to Phase out Organ Harvesting from Executed Prisoners

By Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting

The November Bulletin of the WHO presents an interview with Dr. Haibo Wang, where he announces China's intention to phase out the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners. While the announcement marks a shift in China's handling of organ procurement practice—which have drawn international condemnation—DAFOH is concerned that the announced changes are primarily aimed at appeasing the international community, while the unethical organ transplant abuses will continue in secret.
Dr. Wang claims that "many major transplant countries used organs from executed prisoners". UCLA professor Gabriel Danovitch describes this statement as misleading, however. "There may have been occasional cases of organ donation after execution in other countries several decades ago. No country other than China ever relied on executed prisoners as their donor source." Prof. Arthur Caplan, bioethicist of the NYU Langone Medical Center, concurred: "Transplant medicine started with living donors and cadaver donation started with regional procurement banks. They did not use prisoners. The statement of Dr. Wang is wrong."
Dr. Wang further stated that "the executed prisoners [have the] right to donate organs", however it is globally acknowledged in the ethical guidelines of all major medical associations, including WMA, WHO and TTS, that prisoners are not in the position to provide free consent, which is the basis of ethical organ procurement. We are concerned that Wang's statement creates a loophole for continued organ harvesting abuses among prisoners.
Although the plan to begin phasing out the old organ procurement system was announced, there was no timeline set for when the 25-year-old practice of using organs from executed prisoners will actually end. This requires further attention by the international community.
While Dr. Wang praises the transparency of the announced new organ procurement system, David Matas explains in State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China (2012), when confronted at The Transplantation Congress in Vancouver in August 2010, Dr. Wang instead upheld China's secrecy and lack of transparency in his defense of decisions to "shut down public access to the data on the China Liver Transplant Registry website." There is no indication that transparency will improve under the new system.
The announcement of a new organ donation and transplantation system comes at a time when leaders around the world, including members of the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, the Israeli Knesset, and many others have begun to expose China's unethical organ procurement system—which is not limited to prisoners sentenced to death, but also extends to prisoners of conscience. 
Testimony at the U.S. Congressional hearing on September 12, 2012, explained that the number oforgan transplants in China has risen exponentially since 2000, but this increase is not attributable either to an increase in the number of executed prisoners or a rise in voluntary donations. Instead, the increase in transplant procedures corresponded to an explosion in China's population of prisoners of conscience, particularly practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice.
Multiple sources of independent research corroborated by witness testimony have disclosed that Falun Gong practitioners are specifically targeted for medical examination and their organs are harvested on demand. After years of denying its use of executed prisoners as the source for transplant organs, China has since admitted this unethical practice. However, it has not yet admitted to its use of organs from detained prisoners of conscience. Without disclosing the true extent of the source of organs, there is no reason to assume that the harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners will phase out as well.
The WHO demands transparency and traceability. Without full disclosure of the organ sources and with a lack for international scrutiny, we remain concerned that the computerized organ donation system might even be used to enroll detained Falun Gong practitioners into the national organ donation system.
To truly ensure that real changes are being implemented in China's organ transplant system, we call upon the Chinese government to disclose all sources of organs that are used for transplantation and open all registers and allocation systems for scrutiny. This is a necessary step for China to become respected member of the international medical community.
In 1944 the international Red Cross misinterpreted the deadly gas chambers of the Theresienstadt Ghetto as "shower facilities"—a mistake that led to fatal consequences for hundreds of thousands of Jews. We hope the Red Cross Society of China will not make the same mistake leading to fatal consequences for tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners.
We state that the world community must continue to call upon China to immediately halt the forced organ harvesting from executed prisoners, detained prisoners of conscience and Falun Gong practitioners.
For further information please visit DAFOH web site at http://dafoh.org.
SOURCE Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)
Please sign the DAFOH petition here.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Chinese pressure costly for show

Producers accuse diplomats of bullying sponsors

National Post Allison Hanes,  Published: Thursday, April 24, 2008

The producers of a glitzy variety show - with song-and-dance numbers dramatizing Falun Gong persecution among its musical depictions of Chinese history and culture - are accusing the Chinese consulate of bullying sponsors of a performance next week in Calgary into withdrawing their support.

New York-based Divine Performing Arts is scheduled to stage several Chinese Spectaculars in Alberta starting next week, with controversial dance acts such as The Risen Lotus Flower and The Power of Awareness, as it winds down its 65-city world tour.

Tourism Calgary was supposed to host an opening-night reception for the internationally renowned troupe's April 30-May 2 performances in the city. It was also planning to welcome some of the singers and dancers with its signature White Hat ceremony, as it did when the group passed through town last year, which recognizes visitors as honorary Calgarians.

Travel Alberta, the provincial tourism body, had also agreed to put up the performers in Banff for three days before their three-date Edmonton engagement May 5-7 in exchange for television advertising on the producer's Chinese-language satellite television station, New Tang Dynasty TV.
But both Alberta travel organizations have now pulled their participation.

The reason, said Caylan Ford, a spokeswoman for NTDTV Canada, conveyed in e-mails and phone conversations with the agencies, appears to be disapproval from Chinese officials.

"That was basically the message -- they were told not to have a direct relationship with this show," she said. "We have no ill will toward them or anything. We wish they would have taken a stronger stance, but I can understand they were put in a very difficult position. They said that they really have to do business in China and this could endanger that."

One e-mail, distributed by the show's backers, went so far as to cite an intervention from China's official diplomatic representative in Calgary and referred to the affair as "a sensitive situation."

"Our managing director has received implicit instruction for full cooperation from Wi Xinjian, Consul General of [the] Chinese Consulate," a Travel Alberta employee wrote. "I am truly sorry that I have been instructed to rescind all services to facilitate the visit."

Calls were not answered at the Chinese Consulate in Calgary Thursday.

Travel Alberta did not return calls.

"This is a systematic, premeditated violation of our national sovereignty in Canada and of free speech and artistic expression in Canada," complained Ms. Ford. But she said it is not an isolated incident.

"This happens in every city and every country that this tour group performs in. The Chinese consulates and embassies go to great lengths to interfere with it however they can. They've threatened performers, venues, elected officials, sponsors, even national governments, telling them not to support this show or not to allow this show to play."

Malaysia cancelled the group's shows in the country in March, with an unnamed official saying in news reports: "We have to take care of our relationship with China."

All this over a stage show that features such sequences as the Tibetan Sleeve Dance, the Mongolian Chopstick Dance and or the Drummers of the Tang Court, often by elaborately costumed performers glistening with sequins.

The People's Republic objects to Divine Performing Arts' sympathetic portrayal of the spiritual movement Falun Gong, which is outlawed in China.

At least one number in the production is quite "explicit" in showing Falun Gong practitioners resisting authorities, said Ms. Ford. There are also personal proclivities at play among some cast members, she added, such as the principal dancer whose mother was "tortured to blindness" for belonging to the sect.

This is not the first time China has tried to stymie Divine Performing Arts' shows in Canada, said Joe Wang, the president of NTDTV Canada, but it's the first time they've been so successful.

City councillors in Toronto have passed along letters from Chinese diplomats urging them not to attend the show when it passed through town in January, said Mr. Wang. Artists, dignitaries and sponsors are widely believed to have been dissuaded from supporting the production.

"Different people react differently," he said. "Why do they pick on this show? To be honest they are probably right... It's a powerful show with a strong message in there."

National Post

Related:

Shen Yun request shunned by Alberta culture ministry | Metro

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Vancouver: Matas launches 'State Organs: Transpland Abuse in China'


BOOK LAUNCH

State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China


David Matas presents a collection of essays from four continents that provide facts and witness accounts on the practice of illegal, forced organ harvesting from prisoners in China. Referring to the international code of ethics, the author will discuss what needs to be done to end the killing of Chinese prisoners for their organs.


Co-editor and contributor David Matas is the co-author, with David Kilgour, of “Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs.” For their efforts in combating Chinese organ transplant abuse, Matas and Kilgour were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.


October 21, 2:30pm - 4:30pm
Vancouver Public Library, Alice MacKay Room
350 W Georgia Street


Free admission
Presented by Seraphim Editions

US House Members Seek Answers on Transplant Abuse in China

Andrews and Smith refer to “testimony implicating Chinese hospitals and doctors in the practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners, to allegedly include from living practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, Uyghurs, Tibetans and House Christians.”
The letter to Clinton asks in particular for the release of documents regarding organ harvesting that former Chongqing deputy mayor Wang Lijun may have transmitted during his stay in the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, on Feb. 6.
“If such evidence was received and brought to light,” the letter states, “measures could be taken to help stop such abominable abuses.”
Out of a total House membership of 435, 106 representatives from 33 states signed the letter to Clinton, as of Oct. 3 when sponsorship closed.


More at The Epoch Times - Oct 06 12:31am

Chinese Regime Lurches Toward Disclosing Organ Harvesting

There do 10,000 organs for transplantation come from in a country that has no functioning organ donation system? That question has pushed against the Chinese regime’s [...]

More at The Epoch Times - Oct 09 08:31pm



Tuesday, October 16, 2012

President Obama Accepts Letter From Falun Gong Practitioner

DC - The letter may help direct President Obama’s attention to congressional interest in the issue of organ harvesting in China.
On the previous day, Oct. 4, 106 U.S. congressmen, approximately one-fourth of the membership of the U.S. House of Representatives, co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State, asking to “release any information” the State Department has “relating to transplant abuses in China.” 
The CQ Global Researcher has reported that investigators into organ harvesting in China estimate that in the years 2000-2008, 62,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed through forced live organ harvesting. The human rights lawyer David Matas (co-author with David Kilgour of the groundbreaking book “Bloody Harvest”) estimates that each year 8,000 practitioners are killed by forced, live organ harvesting. 
The persecution of Falun Gong was launched by former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin in 1999. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center , those who practice Falun Gong are subject to severe human rights violations at the hands of the CCP. 
More at the Epoch Times

CNOOC Security Arrest Falun Gong Adherents

The Epoch Times has learned of several cases of Falun Gong adherents being arrested by the security forces of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and its subsidiary, the Bohai Oil Corporation.
In total, the company has persecuted over 100 employees for practicing Falun Dafa, says a spokesperson for the group.
More at the Epoch Times

Falun Gong persecution a CNOOC deal-breaker, say protestors

Calgary - China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s bid to buy Nexen should not be allowed to proceed if the state-owned company continues to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in China, demonstrators in Calgary argued on Tuesday.

“If we allow this to happen, really, what are we becoming?” said Jenny Yang of the Calgary Falun Dafa Association. “This is a monstrous crime against humanity.”

Demonstrators set up a mock surgical operation in front of city hall as a graphic illustration of one of the most horrific allegations against the Chinese government, namely the live harvesting of organs from practitioners of the spiritual discipline that has been outlawed in China.

There is significant evidence that CNOOC persecutes followers of Falun Gong among its own staff, said Calgary Mountain View MLA David Swann, who took part in the demonstration.
In addition to labour camps and brainwashing programs, that persecution includes “potentially submitting them to the same type of forced organ donation that we have heard so much about in the last five years,” Swann said.

Shareholders of Nexen, a Calgary-based oil and gas giant, have approved CNOOC’s offer to buy the company but the deal is currently under review by the federal government.