CHINA’S WAR ON WOMEN TURNS 30

Cypress Times: September 25 marks the 30th anniversary of the Chinese One Child Policy. Affecting 1.3 billion people, it is the most massive, systematic human rights atrocity in history. It doesn’t matter whether you are pro-choice or pro-life on this issue. No one supports forced abortion, because it’s not a choice.

1) Forced abortion is traumatic to women. It is a form of torture.

2) In China, sex-selective abortion and infanticide are common. Because of the traditional preference for boys, most of the aborted fetuses and murdered babies are girls. According to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal, the overall sex ratio for China is 120 boys for every 100 girls. Nine provinces had ratios of over 160 boys for every 100 girls, for second children, where the first child is a girl. The article stated, "Sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males." This practice constitutes "gendercide."

3) Because of this gendercide, there are an estimated 37 million more men than women in China today. This gender imbalance is a major force driving sexual trafficking of women and girls in Asia.

4) China has the highest female suicide rate of any country in the world. It is the only nation in which more women than men kill themselves. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 500 women a day end their lives in China. Could this extraordinary suicide rate be related to coercive family planning??

5) Women who have violated the policy are often forcibly sterilized. Forced sterilization is a serious human rights abuse and can lead to life-long health complications.

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Screaming the Truth

National Review: By Jay Nordlinger - The U.N. has reopened for business — who can be safe, except for dictators? — and I walked by it this morning, as I do many mornings. And, as on many mornings, people were screaming against the Chinese government: screaming about Tibet; screaming about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners; screaming about the brutality of the regime overall. I snapped a photo of the scene: here.

Barely a day goes by when I don’t receive, in my inbox, a report of another Falun Gong practitioner tortured and murdered in a prison camp. Meanwhile, what the West cares about is whether the darlings at Guantanamo Bay get four pedicures a week or five.

...Look, I know we need to engage China — I’m all for it. But we don’t need to bow to their rulers, and we don’t need to apologize for our laws, or our human-rights record. And my heart belongs to the screaming Chinese and Tibetans outside the U.N. They should know that some people hear them.

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Obama: Call upon Chinese Premier to Free all Falun Gong Prisoners of Conscience

FDI: New York --President Obama, you face the premier of a nation where 8% of the population is being systematically 'eradicated'.

By the Chinese government's own estimates, there were 70-100 million people in China practicing Falun Gong by 1999 -- more than the entire population of France. For the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has led a campaign to 'eradicate' the practice, sending millions to detention centers, forced labor camps and prisons. The use of torture to 'transform' Falun Gong practitioners is wide-spread in these facilities. Thousands have died as a direct result of persecution.

Democratic governments and international human rights groups affirm this reality.

In March 2010, a U.S. House Resolution asserted "Falun Gong practitioners and their family members ... have suffered persecution, intimidation, imprisonment, torture and even death for the past decade solely because of adherence to their person beliefs." (news / full text)

The Amnesty International 2010 Annual Report says, "the campaign against Falun Gong intensified, with sweeping detentions...enforced disappearances and deaths in detention following torture...Former prisoners reported that Falun Gong constituted one of the largest groups of prisoners." (report)

The "Falun Gong issue" is much more than a human rights atrocity -- it is a central factor eroding the moral fabric of Chinese society, and precluding the healthy development of a peaceful, stable China. Until Falun Gong practitioners are free, China itself will remain a prison of sorts.

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Havel endorses Nobel Peace Prize for Chinese dissident

Prague Daily Monitor - Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison over the Charter 08 initiative for the improvement of human rights standards in China which was inspired by the Charter 77 Czechoslovak anti-communist humans rights manifesto.

China warned against awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, similarly like last year when it criticised another Chinese candidate Hu Jia, an activist fighting for AIDS patients' rights.

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Chinese Regime Hires Security Company to Snuff out Dissent

A group of women petitioners kneel as they cry outside the court in southwest China's Chongqing municipality on May 13, 2010, as they holds up pieces of paper condemning mafia kingpin Wen Qiang during his appeal.

Epoch Times: Reports of Anyuanding’s violent treatment of petitioners have circulated before.

A letter published by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an NGO, originally written by Chongqing petitioners, says that children as young as 10 and old people aged 82, along with disabled individuals, were all locked in a room after having all their personal property confiscated.

Boxun.net, a website that focuses on human rights in China, says “Anyuanding specially prepared truncheons, cords, steel needles, handcuffs, shackles, high-voltage electric batons, leather whips, drugs and other instruments of torture, and set up a kind of ‘torture chamber’ for special force personal to deal with ‘unruly citizens who alienate themselves from the government.’”

This language may be particularly haunting to older petitioners: It is a variation on a slogan that was commonly used during the Cultural Revolution. Read more...

Apple Censors Falun Gong, Dalai Lama IPhone Apps in China

TomWilt.com: The Chinese iPhone also appears to be subject to the country’s set of Internet controls known by critics as the “Great Firewall.” Searching the App Store for “Falun Gong,” the name of a spiritual sect banned in China as a cult, caused iPhones in the Beijing Apple Store to display a results loading screen indefinitely, though no Falun Gong apps appear to be offered in any countries. In contrast, searches for other terms quickly returned a results page.

Other iPhone apps that might be seen as sensitive by Chinese authorities are still offered in the China App Store. Apps that, for instance, show YouTube videos or let users update their Twitter accounts remain available even though YouTube and Twitter are blocked on the Internet in China. Read more...

Twitter Clone Helps Chinese Family Thwart Authorities

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- It was a typical case of property seizure, like those that happen nearly every day in China, but with a key difference.

This time microblogs blasted the story across the Chinese Internet, causing an immediate outpouring of sympathy this month for the Zhong family at the center of the dispute, and outrage against the local officials that tried to evict them.

Chinese authorities recently decided to require microblogs to appoint "self-discipline commissioners" responsible for censorship, according to the media group Reporters Without Borders.

China maintains a vast army of Internet censors who rapidly delete content deemed subversive from chat rooms, or block entire sites and blogs.

Forbidden content includes excessive criticism of the central government, promotion of Tibet or Taiwan independence, and discussion of the banned religious group Falun Gong. Read more...

EU to press China on rights

AFP: STRASBOURG - Mr De Gucht said the EU wants to take a 'forward-looking' approach and 'act as partners' with China on global challenges such as climate change, international stability and the need to maintain open markets and equal access to raw materials. But he made clear that human rights would also be addressed again with the communist-ruled country. 'There is a strong international expectation that China should live up to internationally-recognised standards in all fields of human rights,' Mr De Gucht said. Read more...

Urgent Appeal: Rescue Falun Gong Practitioner on the Verge of Death in Chinese Prison Camp

FDI: "Liu's life could very well depend on how quickly we act," says Falun Dafa Information Center executive director Levi Browde. "There have been many cases where the abuse of detainees stopped after their stories received international attention. We must act now to save this man."

Liu's family confronted Hu Shaobin, the head of the local district's 6-10 office (an extralegal agency leading the campaign against Falun Gong). Hu told them he'd rather let Liu die in prison than send him to a hospital because Liu was "so stubborn," referring to Liu's resistance to prison efforts to "transform" him.

"Transformation" refers to the process of coercing practitioners to abandon their Falun Gong-based beliefs and adopt the Communist Party's perspective on the practice. Authorities in locales across China have reported quotas issued by central Party authorities on the number of Falun Gong practitioners that must be "transformed" in their respective areas. Failure to meet these quotas often results in punishment, while police who meet or exceed quotas frequently receive promotions or other benefits.

Efforts to "transform" practitioners routinely involve torture, brainwashing techniques and other forms of abuse inflicted in custody. Detention facilities commonly refuse to release detained practitioners until they "transform." Each year, several practitioners die after being tortured to the verge of death and then denied release unless they submit to "transformation."

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7 arrested in China's latest tainted milk scandal

(AP) –BEIJING — A Chinese dairy company executive and six other people were arrested after authorities discovered 26 tons of milk powder tainted with a toxic chemical, the latest incident highlighting the country's enduring struggle with food safety, a report said Monday.

China has been shaken by a series of safety incidents, some of them fatal, involving products such as toxic toothpaste, faulty tires and tainted milk. The troubles underscore the challenges in regulating the multitude of small companies producing consumer goods and food products in China.

In 2008, more than 300,000 children were sickened and six others died after drinking infant formula tainted by melamine — which is high in nitrogen — that suppliers added to fool tests for protein content.

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15 Chinese jailed for airing facts of Falun Gong crackdown

First time in history that Chinese citizens had their say on communist state party owned CCTV

Today in History - 2002: A Chinese court sentences 15 followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to prison for broadcasting protests of the government's crackdown on the movement.

FDIC: Preliminary reports from Heilongjiang Province say that Luo Gan (appointed by Jiang Zemin to oversee the state-ordered extermination of Falun Gong) has already visited Harbin City and given local authorities the order to arrest 6,000 practitioners by the end of June. Jailed convicts are reportedly being turned loose on the street to free up prison space for the anticipated internment of Falun Gong practitioners. Sources also report that pressure from Beijing is so intense that police have been encouraged to drop all other investigations and focus on Falun Gong alone.

Harbin City residents have been "advised" to turn off their televisions in the event of any "interruptions" in the cable signal.

These broadcasts are the latest avenue used by Chinese citizens in their rapidly evolving efforts to expose the lies of Jiang Zemin’s anti-Falun Gong propaganda as well as reveal the regime’s persecution of those who practice or are sympathetic to the spiritual practice.

Dr. Zhou concluded:

"Sooner or later those who carry out this persecution will realize that coercion can’t change people’s hearts. The appeal for Falun Gong in China is stronger than ever because Falun Gong is something that has touched people’s lives. You can’t stamp that out. You can’t crush the essence of the human spirit: Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance."

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Developer Withdraws Anti-Censorship Software for Iranians

Epoch Times: Iranians, however, are not without alternatives, even if Haystack has to be mothballed. Software that proved pivotal in facilitating last year’s protests to take place, was created by the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF) and includes FreeGate, UltraSurf, and GTunnel.

GIF, formed in 2006, has a mission to “build a pioneering online platform that breaks down the Great Firewalls blocking the free flow of information penetrating into, moving within, and originating from closed societies (e.g., China and Iran) via the Internet,” states the GIF website.

Different member organizations of the consortium have contributed a total of seven different software products to allow those living under totalitarian governments to punch through Internet censorship without being caught by the authorities.

A July 23, 2009, Wall Street Journal article stated, “GIF has an impressive history of aiding anti-authoritarian movements in real time. When Burmese monks and others rose up against their military rulers in August 2007, its programs saw a threefold increase in average daily hits from Burma.”

According to the GIF website, most consortium members are “Falun Gong practitioners exiled from China, and many were also Tiananmen Square students in 1989.” The GIF software packages were originally designed to keep Chinese citizens safe from the world’s largest totalitarian regime while they seek freedom on the Internet. Read more...

Related Article:

Internet Freedom Software Should Get Federal Funding, Group Says

Beijing is always watching Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans and Taiwanese

Chinese-Canadians say spies have been monitoring and intimidating them

MacLean - Charlie Gillis: Those anxieties rose further in March when Jiyan Zhang, an accountant who worked at the embassy and the wife of a Chinese diplomat, told reporters that staff there had formed a special unit to collect information on groups like the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong. Zhang, herself a practitioner of Falun Gong, also smuggled out a document suggesting that the embassy had mobilized a letter-writing campaign to the CRTC in hopes of scuttling the licence application of a Chinese-language TV station it considered anti-Communist. Her husband has been sent home to China in disgrace, but Zhang, who's now claimed refugee status, has kept up her offensive. "I just hope to show that the Chinese embassy was doing bad things," she told the Ottawa Citizen. "I wanted to reveal their lies."

Not everyone, however, is feeling so brave when it comes to tweaking Beijing. Several Chinese expatriates who last week recounted harrowing tales of threats and intimidation asked not to be identified in Maclean's for fear of reprisals against relatives they left behind. Others worried about their own safety -- though there are no known incidents of violence by Beijing's agents on Canadian soil. Nearly all agreed that Canadians need to be better informed about the espionage going on inside their own borders. Read more...

Related Article:

Chinese Regime’s Tactics to Influence Canadian Officials, Corroborating Fadden’s comments

Are Falun Gong cadavers showcased in Winnipeg BODIES this weekend?

Due to the fact that the cadavers featured in the exhibition are Chinese in origin, critics suspect that some or all of the bodies may be those of Chinese political prisoners or Falun Gong practitioners, who may have been subject to arrest and execution without due process, in order to be sold as cadavers.

cnews: WINNIPEG - A prominent Winnipeg human rights lawyer says a touring exhibit of dead bodies should be legally prohibited from putting cadavers on display in the city beginning next month.

David Matas is speaking out against Bodies ...The Exhibition, a renowned exhibit of preserved human remains that illustrates the workings and complexity of organs, tissues, muscles and other physiological parts.

He alleged Friday that the cadavers and partial remains used in the exhibit are the bodies of people executed in China, which he said "kills prisoners in the tens of thousands so they can sell their organs for transplant."

It takes very little imagination, he said, to understand that the communist country - whose human rights record has long been under fire around the world - could profit in other, similar ways.

"If they're killing prisoners for organs, the likelihood strikes me as pretty high that they're also killing people so they can put their bodies on display for money," Matas told QMI Agency. "It seems likely that these bodies are from the same source as the organs."

Even if the official government in China isn't directly involved in such sales in that country, he charged, it "knows about it, accepts it and tolerates it."

The five-year-old touring show is being brought to Winnipeg by the management of MTS Centre and will open Sept. 17 for an approximately 3 1/2-month run at a renovated, two-storey building. Promoters of Bodies ...The Exhibition say it has pulled in more than 15 million customers around the world since opening in the U.S. in 2005.

The exhibit's organizers have denied that the specimens are those of executed prisoners.

Matas, who is outspoken on human rights issues in China, is echoing some of the charges of many critics across North America who have slammed Bodies for various reasons - bio-ethics and religion also among them.

Along with the criticism, noted Matas, the exhibit has been hit hard in other ways. He points out that such commercial displays of cadavers are banned in Seattle, following a vote by that city's council last month.

"The city should do the same here," he said of Winnipeg. "And if they don't, absolutely, people here should boycott it."

A spokesman for Mayor Sam Katz did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment.

Asked for a more general perspective on Bodies, Matas didn't pull punches.

"I think the whole thing is ghoulish," he said. "But that's a separate issue."

Related: Disgraced Anatomy?

The Falun Gong T-Shirt That Scared Beijing

A young researcher finds he is not so welcome in China

Epoch Times: ...Also, I told them that I had kept my Falun Gong T-shirt in my close possession, and it was not visible to the public. The policemen who had searched me had to pull out the T-shirt and open it up to see that it related to Falun Gong.

The interrogator admitted that I had not done anything illegal. He told me that there would be no punishment and no charges against me. He then said that Falun Gong is illegal in China: “The American government may allow you to practice it; the Indian government may allow it, but in China, we don't allow you to practice it.”

In addition, the interrogator told me, “Do you know ... what you did could be constituted a threat to the Chinese government!”

How silly! My having a Falun Gong T-shirt constituted a threat to the Chinese state? Was the Chinese regime scared of international researchers bringing with them a T-shirt with the words “Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance” written on it? Did the regime believe my T-shirt was a threat to its existence...Read more

Torture in China continues

Means deemed necessary by the CCP to transform spiritual Falun Gong adherents

Asia.It: As China prepares its fifth periodic report to the Committee against Torture, Chinese Human Rights Defenders charges Beijing of formally banning violence in prisons, when in fact they continue and are getting worse. Read more...

Young Chinese mother kidnapped and sterilized to enforce one-child law

Asia.It: The woman disappeared on 15 July and was subjected to forced sterilization. Because of the operation she is still in hospital. Her mother, who reported her missing child, was arrested for 10 days. The damage of the one child law. Read more...

First conviction for human organ trafficking in Beijing

Spero News: The problem is so widespread that organs are offered on the internet, price included. Every year, thousands come from abroad for a transplant in China.

Human rights groups have accused Chinese authorities of allowing trafficking of organs taken from prisoners, for instance, members of Falun Gong. Some go so far as to charge Beijing of keeping thousands of death row prisoners alive until their organs are needed. Read more...

Legal Rights Beijing Lawyer Wang Yajun Barred from Handling Falun Gong Case in Jilin Province: AI

Amnesty International: On the morning of September 10, Beijing lawyer Wang Yajun was forced to leave his hotel in Yitong Manchu Autonomous County, Siping City, Jilin Province, by three police officers and placed on a train back to Beijing. Wang had been in Jilin to represent a Falun Gong practitioner in a criminal case. On September 9, Wang was visited in his hotel by officials who claimed to represent the secretive government unit which handles Falun Gong cases, the "610 Office" of the Yitong County Political-Legal Committee. The officials told Wang that, according to Jilin Province and Siping City regulations, lawyers from outside the province were not permitted to handle "these types of cases." When Wang asked to be shown the regulations, the officials told him they were "top secret" and could not be shown to lawyers. (CHRD)[ix]

Warning: Is BODIES Exhibit displaying Falun Gong at Galleria?

RFT Missouri: At issue is whether or not the bodies in BODIES could be executed prisoners from China, particularly persecuted Christians or members of Falun Gong. Premier admits that they got the cadavers from China, but cannot say whether or not the bodies were prisoners.

Alarmed Congressman Todd Akin earlier this summer fired off a letter to the owners of the Galleria ... So, the settlement?


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Lawyer Barred from Representing Falun Gong Client by “6-10” Agents

Human Rights in China: Wang said, “The whole episode—from preventing me from performing my duties as a defense lawyer, to depriving me of my personal liberty and freedom to communicate, to threatening me not to take any cases in Jilin—is an attempt to create an atmosphere of terror and to send a warning signal to outside lawyers.”

“The forcible removal of a lawyer from a case that he is lawfully representing clearly violates procedural rights guaranteed by China’s Criminal Procedure Law and the rights of defense lawyers guaranteed by the Lawyers Law,” said Sharon Hom, Executive Director of HRIC. “We urge the Jilin authorities to investigate possible abuse of official power to deliberately deprive a Falun Gong defendant of due process and legal representation.” Read more...

CCP's Illegal Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong and others is Getting Worse: Expert

NTDTV: Watch Video: Illegal organ transplants are becoming more widespread in China, says Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas. Mr. Matas says a growing number of organs are being harvested from prisoners of conscience.

The Nobel Peace Prize nominee touched down in Melbourne, Australia this past week to speak at the 63rd annual UN conference on Advanced Global Health.

Matas travels the globe drawing attention to the contents of a book he co-authored called Bloody Harvest. Bloody Harvest details allegations that the Chinese communist regime is harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience, followers of the persecuted spiritual practice Falun Gong.

Matas believes forced organ harvesting in China is not only continuing, but increasing.

Voluntary organ donations are practically unheard of in China, and according to the World Health Organization, the vast majority of transplant organs come from executed prisoners.

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Falun Gong: defying the odds

New Statesman: Leeshai Lemish talks about Falun Gong’s resistance and the complicity of the West

If this persecution is so severe, why is it so rarely in the news and why isn’t more being done about it?

Last month, I sat down with a journalist in a Taipei pub. ‘The media have a blackout on Falun Gong’, he said. ‘You mean Chinese or Western media’? I asked. ‘Both’.

Indeed, despite notable support from several politicians, journalists and NGOs, after being persecuted for 11 years Falun Gong practitioners still face an uphill battle in the West. Read more...

Organ transplant tourists drive sinister trade, targets Falun Gong

ABC via Detroit Free Press: "'I know of one patient who was heading for a country overseas; told the unit that they would be unable to come in for dialysis tomorrow because they were shooting her donor tomorrow ... wherever there are rich people, they're preying on where there are poor people.' ...

'We had investigators phoning in to Chinese hospitals, asking the hospitals if they had organs of Falun Gong practitioners to sell and we get admissions throughout China, which we have on tape saying, 'Yes we do', or 'No we don't, but you can go to this hospital' ... the short waiting times mean somebody's being killed for their organs on demand when the patients arrive,'' David Matas said. Full Article

China's blind activist lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, released from prison

Christian Science Monitor: Chen was a leader of the first generation of Chinese civil rights activists, encouraged by signs that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wanted to widen avenues of legal redress for injustice so as to dampen popular discontent.

The government changed tack, however, and in 2006 Chen was arrested. A prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was also jailed, as was another member of his firm Guo Feixiong, who had represented villagers alleging official corruption. Mr. Gao has now disappeared, and is believed to be in government hands. Mr. Guo remains in prison.

Sometimes the authorities simply close law practices that do not bow to their demands. The Beijing-based An Hui firm that refused to sack Tang Jitian, a lawyer who lost his license last April after representing members of the outlawed Falun Gong religious movement, failed its annual government check and is no longer allowed to operate. Read more...