An Open Letter to Foreign Journalists in China: CIPFG

MWC: A list of 51 labor camps provided- reporters urged to investigate

View the list of 51 labor camps

The Beijing Olympic Games are on and more than twenty thousand journalists from around the world are reporting on the games. At the same time, these journalists have an opportunity to depict the true face of the Chinese regime, a regime that continues to torture and kill its own people under the guise of denials and glitter.

The Chinese Communist regime relentlessly uses its power to cover up its true image. A small but telling example is the lip sync event at the opening ceremony, flawlessly innocent on the outside, but treacherously deceitful on the inside.

Prior to the opening ceremony, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) published a guide called Torture Outside the Olympic Village: A Guide to China’s Labor Camps, which showcased seven labor camps located near Olympic venues said to imprison thousands of Falun Gong practitioners. After the Guide was published, sources reported that the communist regime secretly relocated many of the steadfast practitioners-those who refuse to rnounce their faith in Falun Gong- to camps in other provinces.

For nine years the Falun Gong spiritual group has suffered tremendously at the hands of the communist dictatorship. Documented reports detail how Falun Gong practitioners have been dehumanized, raped, tortured, and killed. Several reports provide evidence supporting claims of a vast organ harvesting scheme targting practitioners, run by the Chinese military in collusion with the courts. The United Nations Special Rapporteurs twice requested that the Chinese government fully explain unusually short wait times to receive an organ, compared with waiting times in Western countries, and the over 41,500 organ transplants that were not attributed to donors. Apart from categorical denials the regime offered no explanation.

The key questions that remain are: Why does the communist regime continue to refuse independent investigations into the claims of abuse if they are innocent? Why does the communist regime continue to deny reporters an opportunity to investigate alleged Falun Gong crimes if Falun Gong practitioners are guilty?

If reporters neglect to investigate the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who are currently being persecuted, the future will show that the Beijing Olympics will be among the darkest in Olympic history.

Out of the nearly 300 concentration-camp-like labor camps in China, we are announcing 51 here. These Chinese gulags have locked up hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners over the course of 9 years, including those who were seized in mass arrests in the name of “a peaceful Olympics,” months before the Games began.

All international media are urged to investigate the labor camps and the dire circumstances endured by Falun Gong practitioners. However, if you are given a tour by Chinese officials, be aware that the tour, like almost everything else related to these Games, will be fake. When you are guided through a comfortable and beautiful labor camp, and when you are told by healthy-looking inmates that they are thankful for the opportunities to be ‘reborn’ in these camps, please remember the little girl’s lip sync, and a regime that will stop at nothing to make sure you are shown the image it wants you to see.