Why Wang Wenyi was shouting

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Yay! The charges were dropped--there is still hope for Uncle Sam!

Epoch Times: Praise for Dropping the Charges Against Wang Wenyi

...Indeed, the United States should be able to do more and better in stopping the persecution of human rights in China.

The United States and the world have all been looking forward to a humane, free, democratic China. The Chinese communist regime's wanton abuse of human rights and ruthless persecution of Falun Gong are completely opposed to this expectation. We should be clear: the communist regime does not represent China; it is certainly not the same as China.

...More than a month ago, Mr. David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia Pacific), and renowned human rights attorney Mr. David Matas initiated a joint investigation to probe into organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.

Three weeks ago, European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott met two Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing to understand more about the persecution. (full report)

To join the international Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) look here.

Is Beijing committing atrocities against the Falun Gong movement?
by Ethan Gutmann

Ethan Gutmann author of ‘Losing the New China’ interviewed the two witnesses (photo: Peter/Wenyi/Annie) who have exposed the Sujiatun Death Camp where Falun Gong practitioners’ organs are harvested for profit and their bodies cremated to hide all evidence. Ethan recounts the story behind the story. First let’s take a look at Media Channel dissector Danny Schechter’s comments on this situation and Wenyi Wang’s appeal.

For the latest Epoch Times reports on this topic go here.

Journalist Tells Story Behind White House Outburst

Well known media analyst Danny Shechter, who has written a book and produced a film about the Falun Gong issue in China, weighed in on the response of Western media to Dr. Wang's actions. He made it clear that he was not commenting directly on the facts of the organ harvesting allegations. Rather, he questioned the reluctance of the major U.S. media to pursue investigations into the story.

"When we look at the press coverage of the event involving Wenyi—and there was a lot of it—there was very little investigation by these media of any of the issues of organ harvesting raised by Ms. Wang," said Shechter.

He added, "I'm a news dissector not an organ dissector and I haven't investigated the facts of this story, however neither have most of my colleagues in the media, and that is what I'm here to talk about."

He dismissed the criticism leveled at Dr. Wang that she violated her reporters' mores by "getting personally involved" with her story, saying that she did what she felt she had to do to call attention to a major issue that was being mostly ignored by the world.

Shechter insisted, "If she had to yell, if she had to screech to be heard—so be it, because no one was asking the questions politely, as one would expect or demand that they do." (full report)

Here's an ingenuous comment from Chicago Sun Times columnist N. Steinberg.

Bush, U.S. media surrender to Chinese leader

Neil Steinberg writes: “Did I miss something? Have we already been conquered by Communist China? Did Chinese President Hu Jintao blow into Washington last week as a triumphant victor, inspecting his vanquished foe? That's how it felt. Because of the ringing silence about China's horrid, ongoing abuse of human rights.” (full report)

Why Wang Wenyi Was Shouting; Is Beijing committing atrocities against the Falun Gong movement? by Ethan Gutmann

Weekly Standard: 29 April 2006 - Wang Wenyi, the woman whose shouts disrupted the welcoming ceremony for Chinese president Hu Jintao on the White House lawn on April 20, is a middle-aged pathologist and a follower of Falun Gong. That spiritual movement was outlawed in China in 1999, and since then Falun Gong has become a focal point for opposition to the Communist party. To that extent, Wang's outburst was understandable. Less obvious was the connection between her profession and the raw intensity of her denunciation of "killing" by Hu's China.

As a doctor and a Falun Gong practitioner, Wang had to be incensed by a hair-raising story coming out of northeast China--of organ harvesting from live Falun Gong prisoners. The reports, which first appeared in print in the March 10 edition of the Falun Gong-associated publication Epoch Times, are still sketchy and confirmation scarce. Yet the allegations are just credible enough to demand attention--too serious to be ignored unless proven false. What's more, recent work by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, headquartered in Boston, has turned up some compelling corroboration. Here, then, is the narrative as it has emerged so far.

Back in 1988, a hospital was constructed on a 21,087-square meter plot (about five acres) a few miles outside of Shenyang, in a satellite city called Sujiatun. It's pronounced Soo-jah-tyun, and you might want get to know that name.

It happened that the hospital--now the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine--had a large basement and an inconspicuous back door. In 2001, some employees in the hospital's accounting and logistics department noticed that the hospital's requests for food, rubber gloves, toilet paper, and surgical equipment suddenly went way, way up. The food and surgical tools would disappear, the trash would get hauled away, yet it was unclear how they were being used. At one point in 2002, the accounting department estimated the logistical increase represented a whopping discrepancy of thousands of patients.

One accountant--called Annie in the Falun Gong literature on the scandal--was aware of the supply mystery, but what concerned her far more was the behavior of her husband, a surgeon at Sujiatun. On the surface, the couple was doing fine. He was bringing home increasingly large amounts of cash, and his job appeared secure. The hospital had even issued him a dedicated cell-phone, which would ring at odd hours and send him back to Sujiatun. Yet when he came home to bed, he had violent nightmares and would wake bathed in sweat. During the day, he was constantly on edge, preoccupied, even fearful of his wife's touch.

It took a year, but eventually he confessed to her: The accounting staff was right. There were extra "patients" in the subterranean depths of the hospital, and some makeshift operating rooms down there, too. When his cell phone rang, it meant that a "patient" had been wheeled in and given a small dose of anesthesia (the hospital had a limited supply). Then he and the other doctors--some hired from the outside, each with a specialty, all constantly on call--would come in and remove the patient's kidneys, skin tissue, corneas, and other organs, seemingly to order. The remains of the "patient" would then be carried down to the old boiler, which doubled as an incinerator. The workers who disposed of the bodies--sometimes still alive--helped themselves to the occasional watch, necklace, or ring as a kind of tip.

The "patients"--men and women, old and young--were all Falun Gong practitioners. It was so much easier that way--no arrest warrants, no need for paper work. If a diagnosis had to be stipulated for some reason, the entry read "mentally destroyed," and the cause of death "suicide." The doctors' silence was bought with generous financial rewards, the assurance that they were simply "cleansing" for the party, and the vague threat implicit in the observation that if you had already done some of these operations then what difference would a few more make? Buck up!

The hospital is still operating, but the Falun Gong "patients" are apparently gone. The Chinese Communist party denies, of course, that they ever were there. More interesting, a recent U.S. consular visit found no cause for concern.

The first account of the horrors at Sujiatun was provided by a Chinese reporter now in hiding in the United States, with whom I spoke briefly. He claims to have many sources, some of whom he paid, as is common in China.

As for Annie, I interviewed her for ten minutes on April 20, after her first, rather chaotic, public appearance. She spoke at a rally at McPherson Square, a few blocks from the White House, to protest human rights abuses in China. Although our interview was hardly the six-hour session that I wanted, we were alone, apart from an interpreter, and could look each other in the eye. My strong impression was not of a Falun Gong devotee put up to a stunt, but of a classic accidental witness: pale, open-eyed, conscientious, and somewhat bewildered by Washington--a beautiful doctor's wife sitting in the back of a van, telling the most explosive story in recent Chinese history.

It must be noted that there are discrepancies between the Chinese reporter's account and Annie's. For example, he called Sujiatun a concentration camp at one point and spoke darkly of barbed wire and massive underground civil defense tunnels allegedly connected to the hospital. Annie portrayed Sujiatun as a regular hospital with a basement large enough to hold thousands of Falun Gong prisoners.

The U.S. State Department states that its "officers were allowed to tour the entire facility and grounds and found no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital." And for those who point out that you couldn't clean up Auschwitz in three weeks--the time that elapsed between the publication of the story and the consular visit--the matter ends there.

But, given the political sensitivities involved, particularly during a summit, I still have questions. Anyone who has lived in China knows that three weeks is a long time by Chinese construction standards. Is the State Department certain its officers toured an unaltered facility? Did they take an architect with them? Collect forensic samples? Sift through ashes?

Interview any hospital personnel privately, off-site? And on their tour, did they reject the company of the inevitable CCP handler or hospital operative?

If the answer to these questions is no, then the Americans' findings are interesting but hardly dispositive. The visitors could easily have missed a walled-off underground facility.

Experts have also pointed out that the Sujiatun hospital is prohibited by its legal classification from performing organ transplants in the first place. Yet Annie spoke of organ harvesting, not transplants. In any case, in the new entrepreneurial China, organ transplants at hospitals of a similar classification have been reported on Chinese state-controlled television, apparently without repercussions.

These are all legitimate areas for inquiry--which is difficult in surveillance-rich China. Certainly, investigating Sujiatun would place any Beijing-based media bureau on a collision course with the CCP. No wonder Sujiatun has so far been covered in depth only by the Epoch Times, the same paper that acquired a press pass for Wang Wenyi. It has numerous Falun Gong practitioners on its staff and has become a magnet for Chinese dissidents of many stripes. Like the Jewish papers that published the first accounts of the Holocaust, the Epoch Times and the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong have made this story their own.

Over the last month, Kevin Yang, a director of the latter group, has led a team making phone calls to hospitals in Tianjin, Shanghai, Shandong Province, and elsewhere in China posing as transplant candidates searching for organs. They made some 80 phone calls, and struck pay dirt at seven different hospitals. Recordings of the incriminating conversations were played for the press on April 18. They would be hard to script. Here are highlights from two of the phone conversations, translated by Yang's team:

Zhongshan Hospital, affiliated with Fudan University in Shanghai, March 16, 2006:

Q: I have to have a fresh and healthy kidney. And it should be alive. You are not going to give me a kidney from a dead person, are you?

A: Of course we will give you a good kidney, how could we give you a bad one?

Q: . . . Do you have ones from people who practice Falun Gong? I heard that they provide very good ones.

A: All that we have here are of this type. Tongji Hospital, Wuhan, March 30, 2006:

Q: . . . Do live transplants, for example, use organs from live people who practice Falun Gong?

A: Sure.

Q: At your place, for example, prisoners, like those who practice Falun Gong, can you guarantee enough live supplies from such people?

A: Yes, sure! When it's convenient for you, come over and discuss the details.

Now, given that many Chinese are consummate salesmen, could some of the responses be construed as simply attempts to please the customer? Perhaps. But the calls also turned up an unexpected timeline. Repeatedly, hospital representatives urged the potential customers to come in April when supplies would be plentiful, and got nervous when customers asked about May. Independently, unnamed sources in China have told the Epoch Times that after its story appeared on March 10, party authorities gave the hospitals until May 1 to end the practice (or at least make it untraceable).

Finally, Yang's team also placed a call to the workers in the boiler room of the Sujiatun hospital. The call confirmed that they burned bodies and had watches to sell.

If it is true that imprisoned practitioners of Falun Gong are being murdered for their organs in China, a remaining question is the scale of the practice. The number of Falun Gong practitioners in custody is disputed; estimates by the Chinese dissident community range from 235,000 to one million or more. An unnamed military doctor from the mainland told Epoch Times that Sujiatun is one of 36 such facilities, created following the directive of Liu Jing, China's former deputy minister of public security, to "stamp out" Falun Gong "before the Olympic Games in 2008." And for several years now, rumors have circulated on the mainland of a death camp in Xinjiang capable of holding 50,000 Falun Gong practitioners.

Personally, I fear the worst. One reason is that the Chinese authorities have always handled Falun Gong with a peculiar vehemence, even in comparison with other enemies of the CCP. When Falun Gong was declared illegal on July 21, 1999, ancient sound trucks drove around Beijing to make sure that no one missed the point. That's unusual. At the time, I was working in Chinese television, and I remember the day well. Several of my Chinese colleagues began laughing nervously and buried their faces in their hands, muttering that they had not seen such a thing since the Cultural Revolution. Since then, Falun Gong participants have regularly disappeared, with no arrest record, nothing but an assigned number, leaving them particularly vulnerable.

But the main reason I'm pessimistic is the money. Organ transplants are a profitable business. Until recently, a website out of Shenyang carried a price list for organ transplant operations in English to attract foreign customers, with a kidney transplant going for $62,000. And there is precedent; it is indisputable that the Chinese Communist party has sanctioned the sale of body parts from executed prisoners. As a former Beijing business consultant, I am familiar with the peculiar combination of state directive and entrepreneurial acumen pervasive in the New China. A directive comes from on high. The money is made down below. If the CCP orders tracking software, say, installed in Internet cafés across China, the local police will sell a version for $200 a pop, and every café had better purchase a copy. The May 1 shutdown will also be familiar to anyone who follows micropatterns of counterfeit enforcement in China. Chinese SWAT teams do not swoop down on illicit factories, even the ones that make fake Johnson & Johnson baby oil that causes skin rashes. Instead, plant managers are told to finish up their production runs and move their equipment elsewhere.

So I suspect that the profits from Chinese organ harvesting dwarf those of the Nazis' soap and hair-pillow-stuffing enterprises--but I also wonder whether they will prove the undoing of the CCP. Where there is money, there's a trail. Epoch Times, in a rush to get the story out, neglected to pursue that line of investigation. What if its reporters had formed a front company that had gone in and inspected the stock of potential organ donors--wired-up, spy-cam, the works--and only then released the statements of witnesses like Annie for corroboration and color? What if they had persuaded Congress to order U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept financial transaction statements and monitor train and truck movements to and from the hospitals of China?

No matter--that's not how Epoch Times handled it, because that's not the way real witnesses behave. Instead, when they are ready to come forward, they feel compelled to testify. And it's not the way real people behave, either, when they believe that family, friends, and fellow congregants are being thrown into incinerators and when they see their own honorable profession grotesquely perverted. Instead, they scream bloody murder--just as Wang Wenyi did--and silently pray that someone is listening.

**Ethan Gutmann is the author of Losing the New China. He has been a frequent speaker at forums organized by the Falun Gong-associated publication Epoch Times.

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US, Communist China, India, and Wang Wenyi

China home trouble sways US to India
by Indira Kannan

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Communist China may be a risk? Do you suppose that foreign investors got the hint from Wang Wenyi's bold appeal? It is clear that the current state of unrest in China certainly will have repercussions on their economy sooner than later; Bremmer expands on that situation below. Before we get to that...did you ever think that foreign investments might fuel the ongoing persecutions in Communist China? According to a WOIPFG report, the answer is yes. J. Podhoretz and Chris Brown offer some good insights on this topic as follows

A fine protest; will Wenyi Wang’s Words work?

New York Post: 21 April 2006 - China presents a peculiarly difficult challenge for the United States. On the one hand, the government's decision to liberalize its economy offers hope that this most populous nation on earth cannot long remain even partially shackled. On the other hand, it uses its growing economic power to strengthen its hold on its people.

So do we accelerate our business interests in China because, in part, that will accelerate its journey toward liberal democracy? Or are Western businesses inadvertently contributing to the power of the regime?

Do we seek a closer relationship with China? Or do we need to keep more than an arm's length so that we don't serve the interests of a system we want to see replaced as soon as is practicable - replaced because no regime that treats Falun Gong meditation as a crime against the state should survive and thrive?

These are questions that must be asked, and addressed. The great virtue of Wenyi Wang's protest was not only that it caused Hu some discomfort, but that it will provoke Americans to discuss them, and to pay heed to China's crimes even as we welcome China's freer economy. (full report)

Trade Won't Change China by Chris Brown

Front Page Mag (2005) - Trade with China has and will continue to be one-sided, resulting in the constant transfer of wealth to the government of China. This wealth has funded their military build-up, which is particularly focused on ballistic missiles and anti-carrier warfare that one day may be used against the United States or our allies. China has labeled the United States an enemy and declared our existing treaties and security relationships in the Asia Pacific regions to be infringements upon its sovereignty.

For those last true believers in "economic determinism," perhaps they need to consider the political situation within the oil rich nations of the Middle East. Both China and these nations are held up economically by the inflow of wealth from Western nations. This wealth goes to support the oligarchical regimes in both regions. Just as oil wealth has not empowered the people of the Middle East, the wealth from trade and economic assistance seems unlikely to bring democracy to China. Just as the benefits of the wealth from oil is limited to the ruling elites, so too the wealth gained by the Chinese goes to the Communist leadership and their friends, who continue to maintain their own power and position at the expense of the people's freedom and human dignity. (full report)

China home trouble sways US to India

New York (CNN-IBN) 25 April 2006 : China has seen a deluge of US investment and imports ever since it opened up its economy and has used this economic leverage to sideline political objections over lack of freedom or rampant piracy within the country.

But now, with questions emerging over China’s internal tensions, many US investors are eyeing its more stable, democratic neighbour – that’s India.

And with President Hu’s recent visit to the US failing to produce any breakthroughs, this could be an opportunity for Indian business to make itself heard.

Chinese President Hu Jintao’s eventful reception at the White House last week, disrupted by a Falun Gong activist, was an indication of the internal political and social challenges facing the country.

And the American approach to the ceremony was in stark contrast to the state visit protocol extended to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year. The Bush administration is believed to be cultivating India in order to contain the growing influence of China outside its borders.

According to experts like Ian Bremmer – President, Eurasia Group, the head of a leading risk advisory firm, American businesses are doing the same, because they are nervous about what’s happening inside China’s borders.

Bremmer says, “There is a big question about to what extent the Chinese political system as it presently exists is sustainable for 5, 10, 15 years. If you are a major automotive manufacturer, telecommunications manufacturer and you are not just talking about selling white goods in China or India, you are talking about setting up shop, putting hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars in the country that you can’t get out tomorrow or in a month, then China represents a growing risk for you and there is no question that those companies are starting to take a more serious look at India and at countries throughout south and south-east Asia as their own hedging strategies. “

China still has tremendous economic leverage with the US. China enjoyed a trade surplus of over $200 billion over the US last year. China is also America’s fastest growing export market, and is the second largest buyer of US treasury bonds.

But as observers point out, crucial disputes remain over issues like the lack of Intellectual Property Rights and the undervalued Chinese Yuan, as well as China's relationship with countries like Iran, Sudan and Venezuela.

The recent summit between President Bush and President Hu failed to make progress on political or economic differences between the two countries. And American industry is also apprehensive about anticipated measures by the Chinese government to strengthen domestic businesses against foreign investors.

This could be a window of opportunity for Indian industry to highlight its advantages and attract more American investment.

Advantage China:

· Trade surplus over US in 2005: $201.7 bn

· Fastest growing export market for the US

· Holds $265.2 bn in US Treasury securities (as of February 2006)

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15,000 march in Taipei to protest organ harvesting in Communist China

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And 10 million quit the CCP!

Double WOW! Three cheers for Taipei!

Taiwan: Fifteen Thousand March to Condemn the CCP for Harvesting Organs from Living Practitioners

Falun Gong members march in Taipei to protest organ harvest in China

Taipei (Asia Pacific News) 23 April 2006 - Tens of thousands of Taiwanese Falun Gong members marched through Taipei on Sunday to protest China's harvesting of organs from Falun Gong members in labour camps, and to call on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to quit the party.

Waving yellow Falun Gong flags and beating drums, Falun Gong members marched through Taipei's main streets, shouting, 'Stop persecuting Falun Gong,' 'Heaven destroy communist China,' and 'Down with the wicked Chinese Communist Party.'

A moving truck showed a scene of Chinese doctors harvesting organs, with several doctors standing around a patient tied to an operation table, scalpel in hand.

Behind the truck, a column of Falun Gong members - in handcuffs, shackles and dark prison clothes - walked silently led by a rope by a whip-cracking prison warden.

Falun Gong has accused China of persecuting its members since 1999 when Beijing banned the group as a sect, and of killing Falun Gong members to harvest their organs for organ transplants.

The Taiwan Falun Dafa Society accused China of running a Nazi concentration camp-style facility to harvest organs from some 6,000 detained Falun Gong members and selling them to patients who need transplants.

Taiwan Falun Gong reported on March 20 that the operations were being performed at Shenyang Thrombosis Hospital in north-east China.

According to their source, an unnamed doctor that has since emigrated to the US, the harvesting of organs was carried out in the hospital's air raid shelters, and the bodies of the Falun Gong members were cremated in a furnace.

China has denied the accusations, and has enacted new interim regulations on organ transplants to be implemented on July 1.

Besides denouncing China's harvesting of organs from Falun Gong members, the demonstration called on members of the CCP to quit the party.

Since the Falun Gong launched the global 'Quit the CCP' movement in 1999, nearly 10 million members have left CCP, about 10 per cent of the party's membership.

'Large numbers of communist party members quitting the party led to the collapse of East Germany and the Soviet Union. So far 10 per cent of CCP members have quit the CCP. This shows the days of CCP are numbered,' Chin Heng-wei, a writer and political commentator, said at the rally before the march.

Falun Gong is a spiritual group which combines meditation and exercise and preaches truth, compassion and endurance.

China banned the 'cult' in 1999 and followers who refuse to renounce their beliefs have been detained for re-education. The movement has millions of followers worldwide.

According to Falun Gong, since 1999, tens of thousands of Falun Gong members have been sent to labour camps, 3,635 have been tortured to death, 7,758 have been detained by police and thousands have been sent to mental hospitals.

Video: How Communist China evicts her people

Silencing the people...

This link takes you to a news video covering Chinese people being evicted from their homes and having their homes torn down. It also shows a protest by villagers last year where 6 people were gunned down. It's 12 megabytes.

Prison Planet Blog: 18 April 2006 - Sky News recently produced a segment which highlighted how, despite fierce anger and resistance amongst the people of China, the Communist Government has instilled such fear and has such control over the media that very few dare to stand up and speak out. Those that do are forcibly quashed.

The Government and its contractors are seizing people's land and homes and building their own developments on it, forcing the population into living lives of poverty and squalor.

The state controlled Chinese media does not cover this because they know they would be immediately shut down if they did. The only footage that comes out of China is shot by the people themselves or undercover foreign reporters.

These revelations should remind us of the fact that tyrannical governments, in order to succeed know they have to infiltrate the lives of their populations to every degree, not allowing any form of self sufficiency or independence to endanger their iron fist control. (full report)

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Canadian MPs call for organ harvesting investigation

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Reports Say Chinese take body parts from live prisoners

By Deborah Gyapong

Photo - A group of four Falun Gong practitioners re-enact the organ harvest in Sujiatun Extermination Camp at a rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, 3-06-2006. (Central News Agency)

Sky TV Station Confirms Organs Available in China on Demand

Chinese Organ Extraction Scheme Part of Larger Campaign to Eradicate Falun Gong, Human Rights Group Says

Essential Information on Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners in China

Ottawa (Canada Catholic News) April 23, 2006 - Members of Parliament from all the major parties want Canada to investigate allegations the Chinese Communist Party is harvesting organs from live prisoners.

When Parliament opened April 3, about 200 people, most of them practitioners of Falun Gong, demonstrated on the lawn to raise awareness of eyewitness accounts of these abuses. They were joined by several MPs who called for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government to investigate.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is based on qigong, "the practice of refining the body and mind through special exercises and meditation," according to the organization's website.

Among the MPs present were Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani, Liberals Borys Wrzesnewskyj and Larry Bagnell, NDP MP Peter Jullian and Conservative Bruce Stanton.

On April 4, Falun Dafa Association of Canada spokeswoman Lucy Zhou told an Ottawa news conference about three eyewitness accounts from China about "secret concentration camp-like facilities that arestaffed by surgeons and equipped with crematoriums to dispose of corpses and other evidence."

Zhou said one of the sources, a medical doctor who served in the Shengyang military zone, said about 36 concentration camps hold Falun Gong practitioners and "other prisoners of conscience." Zhou, however did not know how many of those prisoners might be Christian.

Amnesty International is in the process of doing its own investigation, according to spokeswoman Beth Berton-Hunter.

MPs who have been following the plight of Falun Gong in China believe the allegations are credible.

"I think China has a proven track record as the worst human rights violator in the world," Conservative MP Rob Anders told CCN April 6.

"They are certainly willing to kill, torture and mutilate people for opposition to their regime. The nuance between torturing and killing people and harvesting their organs isn't very much."

Anders said he has seen evidence of torture that demonstrates to him the Chinese "don't have much respect for the sanity of life."

Liberal MP Dr. Keith Martin told CCN that while he does not know to what extent organ harvesting is taking place, he is not surprised by the allegations.

"The Chinese government commits all manner of atrocities against members of Falun Gong," he said. "The Chinese government has mobile execution groups, and they have harvested organs of people on death row. "

Zhou told the news conference the reporter for Japanese television who broke the story said the estimated two million Falun Gong practitioners in detention are targeted because not enough organs come from death row. According to one of the eyewitnesses, a former staff member at a facility in Liaoning province, about three-quarters of the 6000 Falun Gong prisoners held there had their hearts, kidneys,corneas and skins harvested, Zhou said.

Zhou pointed out the government-sponsored website for the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center boasts "it may only take one week to find out the suitable donor," a rate she said is not matched in any developed country where organs are donated.

The centre's web site offers organ transplants to an international clientele.

"There are more than 35,000 kidney transplant operations that have been done in public hospitals in 29 cities, provinces and municipalities in China, and the number of kidney transplant operations is at least 5,000 every year all over the country," the site claims.

"So many transplantation operations are owning to the support of the Chinese government."

The site acknowledges that in many areas China's health care is not as advanced as in developed countries, but claims: "in the are of organ transplantation, the mode of the operation is the same all over the world, and the level of medical technology in China is the same as that of a developed country."

Zhou said this site is further evidence the government may be harvesting organs to meet the demands of this international clientele.

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How Corrupt is the United Nations?

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'CORRUPT' UN IN URGENT NEED OF OVERHAUL

"How corrupt is the United Nations?" is the title of Claudia Rosett's new book (coming out soon) and below is one interesting comment. Unfortunately Claudia fails to mention the new genocide in Communist China. The FalunGong cannot wait ten more years before the UN sends the envoy to investigate the China laogai--the organ-harvesting death camps deserve immediate attention as the CCP is killing them like flies. For the latest reports on this topic look here.

"The UN vowed "never again" to abdicate as it did in Rwanda and Srbrenica when faced with genocide. Yet in Darfur, with genocide underway, it has refrained from acting against Sudan -- which is a member of its Human Rights Commission in Geneva, along with such bastions of liberty as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe."

The London Free: 25 April 2006 - Press After a decade or so of United Nations debates on the need to reform the world body, Secretary-General Kofi Annan tabled his proposals for change last month. He noted that "previous reform efforts . . . have addressed the symptoms rather than causes of the organization's weaknesses," and said that a "radically expanded range of activities calls for a radical overhaul of the UN secretariat."

In peacekeeping alone, he said that in the first 44 years of peacekeeping since the Suez War, 18 peace missions were authorized,while in the next 16 years since 1990, there were 42 new missions -- with costs tripling and staff numbers soaring.

While Annan is right in his assessment of the need for change, unmentioned is that he may be one of the reasons that need is so acute.

It was Winston Churchill, in 1946, who urged that the newly formed UN become "a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words . . .in a Tower of Babel."

Churchill's pithiness inspired the title of an excellent book -- Tower of Babble, by Israel's former UN ambassador, Dore Gold -- that shows how hopeless and craven the UN can be.

Annan even undermined UN weapons inspections aimed at bringing Saddam Hussein to heel long before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and after Saddam had defied 16 UN resolutions to change his ways -- or else.

Now a new book is in the works by Claudia Rosett that promises to be a devastating indictment of UN corruption. April's Commentary magazine runs her assessment: "How Corrupt is the United Nations?"

The simple answer: Very.

The UN even misleads the world on its funding, claiming its "core" budget is $1.9 billion, with 29,000 employees. When various UN agencies are included, such as UNICEF, the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the World Food Program (WFP), the total budget is closer to $30 billion with 60,000 employees (excluding 80,000 peacekeeping (troops).

Paul Volcker's probe into the UN's oil-for-food program, designed to help Iraqis, confirmed massive corruption involving "bid-rigging, conflicts of interest, bribery, theft, nepotism and sexual harassment."

Saddam himself skimmed off up to $17 billion from the $64-billion program which, Rosett writes, "was buying 'milk' from a Chinese weapons manufacturer, contracting for 'vehicles' and 'detergent' with Sudan, and negotiating for missiles with North Korea."

Annan (whose son was implicated in the program scandal) has since described oil for food as a mistake in a good cause -- neglecting to point out that the UN collected 2.2 per cent of oil revenues as agent fees, roughly $1.4 billion into the secretary-general's spending fund.

Small wonder Saddam felt immune. Small wonder Annan wanted no military action against Iraq. Small wonder that his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, shredded three years' worth of oil-for-food documents the Volcker inquiry wanted to examine.

Although founded to advance peace and prosperity, in the age of terror the UN "has been in most ways useless and in some ways positively dangerous," Rosett argues. It has become a gigantic bureaucracy. Its lax controls, diplomatic immunity and culture of impunity make the UN ripe for corruption and "for arms deals masked as medicine and soap."

The UN vowed "never again" to abdicate as it did in Rwanda and Srbrenica when faced with genocide. Yet in Darfur, with genocide underway, it has refrained from acting against Sudan -- which is a member of its Human Rights Commission in Geneva, along with such bastions of liberty as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe.

In contravention of its own charter, Rosett says, the UN has evolved into "a predatory, undemocratic, unaccountable and self-serving vehicle for global government."

While facets such as the World Health Organization and UNESCO serve a purpose, the UN now threatens more than strengthens global peace, security and freedom.

Related Article:

What Ever Happened to Reforming the UN?

Hu Jintao deserved to be heckled

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Falun Dafa Hao!
Hu 'your days are numbered'... Look here for an UPDATE.

Dr. Wang Wenyi...a heckler? Hardly!

China calls on US to crackdown onFalun Gong after heckling

UPDATE: 25 April 2006 - Well this news from Beijing comes as no surprise. Now the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) wants the US to oppress Falun Gong! If this is any reflection of China's new socialist democracy that Hu is talking about, I think they could use some more time to rethink that one over! This is a perfect example of the Communist rule of law being pushed over the free world every time we trade with them...except that this time they're pushing a bit much. Actually it is the best opportunity Beijing has had so far to further persecute the Falun Gong and to control the US all at the same time. Who is going to buy this package of deceit?

This is how one US representative sees the Beijing-Falun Gong relationship.

Smith, chairman of a House International Relations Committee human rights subcommittee, said Beijing had a "special hate" for Falun Gong. "Like all dictators and totalitarian terror systems, the [People's Republic of China] fears and hates what it cannot control. So it decided to destroy and intimidate those who practice Falun Gong," he said. (full report)

Here are the views from Christian Leaders:

Christian Leaders Call for Bush Administration to Drop Charges Against Falun Gong Activist Wenyi Wang at Georgetown University News Conference

"It is seems extremely hypocritical for the White House to roll out the red carpet for a world leader whose government supports the trampling and crushing of human rights. And, at the same time pursue prison time for a women fighting to end religious persecution and violence. Our message is clear; President Bush, support religious freedom and the First Amendment, and drop all charges against Dr. Wang."

UPDATE: 24 April 2006 - Go here to read Wenyi Wang's statement. Wang's next hearing is on May 3rd, World's Free Press day--let's support her every step of the way. It is interesting to note that Wang was censored by CNN. Before the interview she was asked (by CNN) not to mention organ harvesting--their excuse--it was going to be aired at supper time. However, during the interview she attempted to mention the organ-harvesting death camps but she was interrupted every time. So it went unreported. Look here to view the video.

Related Article: Media Takes Note of CCP's Crimes as Wenyi Wang is Released Without Bail

Voice of support from the 'Traditional Values Coalition':

Chicago Tribune: ( … ) Now the chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition has come to the protestor's defense. TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon said today: “The home of the free should not be threatening to jail those who speak the truth.

Calling on the president to intervene and see that the charge of disorderly conduct that was lodged against the protestor is dismissed, Sheldon invoked the Chinese protests of 1989 as the wrong sort of precedent: “None of us can forget the footage of the young Chinese man who faced down the tank in Tiananmen Square. He disappeared shortly after that incident and has not been seen since.

“Mr. President, one can debate the protocol or politeness of what this woman did but, ultimately, isn’t there a transcending consideration here -- this woman spoke the truth, and no American wishes to see her punished for doing that.'' Sheldon said. "No government in the history of civilization has violated human rights as grievously and on a scale comparable to the People’s Republic of China.''(fullreport)

Other voices from protesters:

Pro-Torture, Pro-Tyranny Media Rebukes Brave Falun Gong Protester

Falun Gong Demonstrator Embarrasses Global Mafia

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20 April 2006 - Hat tip to Epoch Times Reporter, Dr. Wang Wenyi, who courageously got her human rights message across in DC to President Bush and Hu Jintao. In so doing Wang's public appeal drew international attention to the plight of Falun Gong in China. Recently the Falun Gong( CIPFG) wrote an open letter to President Bush demanding a thorough independent investigation of all the jails/labour camps in China including the36 Nazi-like death camps that are being used to harvest organs from the Falun Gong for profit where their bodies are cremated to hide all evidence. So far a show-tour investigation did not reveal any evidence--the US have to dig deeper. The urgency of this situation cannot be overly stressed as thousands of (Falun Gong) lives are hanging in the balance. According to reliable sources the massive slaughtering has already begun. Part of Wang's strong message was meant for Hu Jintao who refuses to dialogue with the Falun Gong; "Hu your days are numbered" simply means--the time is now--stop the persecution--beware of karmic retribution; instant karma.In 2001, fearless Wang had astutely managed to get close enough to Jiang Zemin in Malta while he was visiting there to ask him to stop persecuting Falun Gong.

Times of Malta: Falun Gong Practitioner Appeals to Jiang Zemin

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Falun Gong Show

Investors.com: 20 April 2006 - Foreign Affairs: When China's President Hu Jintao hugged Boeing workers Wednesday in Everett, Wash., their exuberant boss exclaimed, "China rocks!" Perhaps Alan Mulally should tell that to Wang Wenyi.

On Thursday morning, the New York-based pathologist, carrying a credential from a Falun Gong newspaper, fairly rocked Hu's ceremonial visit to the White House. Standing on a camera platform, she shouted in English:

"President Bush, stop him from killing. . . . Stop persecuting the Falun Gong."

Shifting back to Chinese, she yelled, "President Hu, your days are numbered. No more time for China's ruling party."

Naturally, she was wrestled off the platform and interrogated by swift-thinking Secret Service agents. We don't know if any of those agents instantly translated, but the words could have been construed as threatening.

Even in a country that celebrates free speech, you don't spontaneously vocalize grievances at state events. Disruptive citizens routinely are pulled out of congressional galleries. And don't even think about saying something snarky in a presidential rope line.

Still, we marvel at Dr. Wang's timing, even at what might be recorded as a landmark accomplishment in China's long march to a freer society. Her outburst came just after Bush, in his prepared remarks, urged Hu to allow Chinese to "speak freely."

The scene went out live on CNN International, only to be blacked out on the Chinese mainland. Enough might have slipped through, however, to have caused murmurs among Chinese dissidents, any one of whom would have been jailed and even tortured for such an impertinent protest.

The Falun Gong, of which Dr. Wang is a practitioner, has felt the communist lash most painfully. Sometimes depicted in Western media as a flaky cult, the movement offers a syncretistic update of Confucianism and Taoism. Its members stress meditation, exercise and a noncoercive lifestyle.

All that, together with the serious analysis of Hu's regime published in its international newspaper, runs afoul of collectivism, which even now provides the ruling communists a governing ideology. Falun Gong members regularly find themselves taken from their families, jailed, tortured and reportedly killed.

The Epoch Times also fills its pages with photographic evidence of their bloodied brethren. So this is the murderous milieu from which Dr. Wang thought it necessary to scramble onto her momentary platform. Her editors claim they didn't authorize her performance, which went well beyond a reporter's role.

But just maybe there was something deliciously reportorial about Dr. Wang's protest. It drew attention to the many victims of Beijing's oppression at a time when so much of the Western media gloss over the ugly side of modernizing China. Surely it was no ruder than some of the White House press corps' antics.

Boeing's Mulally turned oral cartwheels on the Everett stage when Hu announced his crews would be working on 80 jetliners, even holding out the prospect of 2,000. We share the joy. Trade does conduce to liberalization. China's growing commercial class has stepped up its demands for human rights.

The ceremony on the White House lawn was billed as an effort to "enhance dialogue." Dr. Wang, who will be admonished and no doubt kept away from future presidential appearances, made sure that happened.

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Red Flags Over New Haven

Yale - One reporter was thrown out of the scrum after asking Hu if he saw the 1,000 protesters on the lawn...that is telling. It seems that tension was quite high amongst the protesters...

( … ) As the band struck up a number, two Falun Gong protesters stopped inches from their faces. They held placards detailing murders of dissidents during the Cultural Revolution and today. A drummer (in picture) skipped a beat, stepped forward toward one of the placard-bearers, and spit on the sidewalk by her feet. Then she stepped back and resumed the rhythm. (full report)

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Hu Jintao's US visit spurs protests in Seattle

It is worth mentioning that Hu Jintao took the back road at the Paine Field airport to avoid Falun Gong practitioners on Tuesday morning. Of course, the Falun Gong (Vancouver group) were the only ones at that specific exit with banners. Some of them read "Stop killing Falun Gong", "Bring Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, Liu Jing and Zhou Yongkang to Justice," "Demand that the CIPFG be Allowed to Investigate China's Forced Labor Camps for Truth," "Strongly Condemn the Barbaric Atrocities of Harvesting Organs from Live Falun Gong Practitioners in China's Forced Labor Camps," "Urgently Call for an End to the CCP's Nazi-like Atrocities," and "Heaven will Eliminate the CCP."

It's time for government officials to take notice of the true nature of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).

Take a look at NTDTV's report. On the eve of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit protesters in Seattle demanded that the Chinese Communist Party stop persecuting spiritual and democratic groups in China. The groups also wanted the world to know about the crimes and tyranny of the Communist regime.

Censorship, organs, Communist China, and us

China's Grim Harvest

Time Europe: 23 April 2006 - ( ... ) But Falun Gong activists aren't the only ones concerned about China's organ trade. A day before Hu's interrupted White House speech, the British Transplantation Society, a group of 800 surgeons, issued a statement criticizing the use of death-row prisoners' organs in transplants — because it cannot verify China's claim that it only procures organs from prisoners who have given consent. "I don't believe anybody in a prison would be sitting around having voluntary consent discussions," says bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania. (full report)

Update: The BTS statement (above) is really timely. WOIPFG have just released a new factual report further confirming evidence of organ harvesting in China's labour camps. Meanwhile the two witnesses who first exposed the Sujiatun death camp openly gave their testimonies at a press conference held in Washington DC last Thursday. Earlier, Vancouver's Wang Yuzhi related her own experience in China's labour camp to the National Press Club where the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) reinforced the need to have all labour camps investigated to collect more evidence. Go here for the latest Epoch Times news reports on this topic.

The following piece from Chris Smith of Global Human Rights is a great overview of the present situation in Communist China. And lastly it would seem that SKYPE has just caved in to China and joined the censorship gala.

Google...China...and Us
Moral challenges we face

By US Representative Christopher Smith

National Review: 20 April 2006 - On Wednesday, I conducted a hearing to examine China's human-rights record. Over the years, I have held more than 25 hearings on human-rights abuses in China and although some economic progress has been made, the human-rights situation remains abysmal.

Among other things, this week's visit of President Hu Jintao to the United States provides an opportunity to expose the terrible human rights situation in China today on a global stage. And it will, I hope, convey our unshakeable regard and commitment to press Beijing for serious, measurable, and desirable reform. Any relationship we have with China must begin with a fundamental respect for basic human rights. The people of China deserve no less. It is our moral duty to stand with the oppressed, not with the oppressor.

State Department and other human-rights watchdogs indicate that Chinese government's repression of its citizens continues. In fact, the current regime is one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. The most recent State Department Human Rights Report for China is approximately 45,000 words and lists 22 major rights problems.

Beijing views the information on the Internet as a potential threat to the party's control over the people and the monopolization of political power. And so, they restrict it. The freedom to publish information and read news on the web unfiltered does not exist and individuals who attempt to speak freely are frequently imprisoned and tortured. U.S. corporations should not be aiding in that process. Yet at a February hearing I chaired on global Internet freedom, some of the biggest corporations in America revealed how they have partnered with the Chinese secret police to find, apprehend, convict, and jail religious believers and pro-democracy advocates.

Though Yahoo voiced their profound regret for the imprisonment of Shi Tao for 10 years, they couldn't say — and didn't seem to know — how many others were condemned to jail and torture because of their willingness to comply with the secret police. When asked under what conditions — court order, police demand, a fishing trip — Yahoo surrenders e-mails and files to authorities, their representative declined to reveal the information because it would break Chinese law. Sadly, it was revealed at our hearing that Yahoo's cooperation with the Chinese police has seemingly lead to the imprisonment of another democracy advocate, Jiang Lijun.

Google, for its part, created a search engine tailored to the wishes of the People's Republic of China. Type in any number of searches, for "human rights," or "Tiananmen Square massacre," or "Falun Gong," and the site conveniently reroutes the web surfer to government propaganda — much of it heavily anti-American, anti-Bush, and full of hate. Google responded to concerns about enabling a dictatorship to expand its message of hate by hiring big-time lobbying firms like Podesta-Mattoon, and the DCI group to put a good face on it all — and presumably kill my pending legislation, the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006.

Amazingly, Cisco showed no concern whatsoever that its "Policenet" technology — a tool for good in the hands of legitimate law enforcement, but a tool of repression in the hands of Chinese police — has now linked and expanded the capabilities of the Chinese police. Microsoft censors and shuts down blogs that the government objects to. (So I'm guessing Bill Gates kept human rights off the agenda when he hosted Hu on Tuesday.)

A Stalinist Nightmare Revived for the 20th century

China's continued repression of religion is among the most despotic in the world. Citizens practicing a faith other than officially sanctioned religions are often subject to torture, imprisonment, and death at which time prisoner organs are frequently harvested. Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslim Uighurs are all being persecuted for their faith. Today, numerous underground Roman Catholic priests and bishops and Protestant pastors languish in the infamous concentration camps of China for simply proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Beijing reserves a special hatred for the Falun Gong. Nearly seven years ago, the government began its brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong after party members and Army officials had begun to practice the faith. Like all totalitarian governments, the PRC fears and hates what it cannot control. It is a Stalinist nightmare revived for the 21st century.

China's one-child per couple policy, decreed in 1979, has killed hundreds of million babies by imposing Draconian fines — up to ten times annual salaries — on parents. Brothers and sisters are illegal and sex selection abortions have resulted in gendercide (100 million girls who should be alive today are not). One Chinese demographer has admitted that by 2020, forty million Chinese men won't be able to find wives because population control will have destroyed the girls.

There is no recourse for millions of Chinese laborers trapped in poor working conditions. Those who protest unjust wage and labor practices outside of the government-controlled labor union are arrested and imprisoned. Citizens are often persecuted for seeking help from the court system to secure rights that the law, as restrictive as at is, guarantees them. Lawyers who seek to help them are threatened, harassed, beaten, disbarred, and jailed. They may join countless prisoners of conscience in their modern-day concentration camps.

China admits to continuing a barbaric policy of harvesting human organs for sale and transplant. We are told that since 1993, there have been over 65,000 transplant procedures performed in China and a deputy health minister recently stated that 95 percent of the organs are from executed prisoners. In an effort to boost profits, it is reported that some provincial or local officials have begun to allow mobile medical vans at execution sites to facilitate the harvesting of prisoners' organs. The State Department and the U.N. are investigating claims that China is targeting the thousands of innocent Falun Gong prisoners it holds for organ harvesting and perhaps not even waiting until they are dead.

The Communist regime in the Soviet Union fell after the economy collapsed and voices of freedom and democracy were able to break through the walls of repression. The Communist regime in China today has learned from the mistakes of the former regime and seeks to build and consolidate economic power while quickly and harshly stifling dissent. Human rights are everyone's rights. Governments are instituted to secure, protect, and safeguard those rights. Human rights aren't privileges. Human rights are worth fighting for, even when inconvenient.

— New Jersey Republican Chris Smith is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations.

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Skype The Latest Firm To Comply With China's Censors

...Such automatic filters remove controversial topics such as 'Falun Gong' and 'Dalai Lama' from messages (full report)