Search This Blog

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Google calls for pressure on Internet censors


(Reuters) - Google Inc's legal chief called for pressure on governments that censor the Internet, such as China and Turkey, arguing that their blocking access to websites not only violates human rights but unfairly restrains U.S. trade.

Google has had a rocky relationship with Chinese authorities since it announced in January that it would no longer censor search results in mainland China and accused Chinese hackers of orchestrating a sophisticated cyber attack on Google and other major U.S. companies.

Read more...

Gao Zhisheng, Defender of Falun Gong and Christians Confirmed Tortured




Gao Zhisheng

ChinaAid told the ASSIST News Service that Beijing "refuses to back down in the call for freedom for Gao Zhisheng, and all other human rights defenders like him."

Reliable sources in China recently confirmed that Gao Zhisheng was severely tortured last year in Xinjiang, following his family's escape to the United States. After briefly resurfacing this March, Gao Zhisheng was able to talk to his family and visit his brother and father-in-law, before being kidnapped again by the authorities from Beijing. No one has seen or heard from him since April 20, 2010.

“Gao's continued forced disappearance is a blatant disregard of the basic human rights of the Chinese people,” says Pastor Bob Fu, who visited Gao’s family in June.

“If there is no regard for even a well-respected, human rights attorney's dignity, what stops the Chinese Government from exploiting the dignity of its citizens? We will not stop until Gao’s rights are restored, as a law-abiding citizen of China. We will not rest until Gao Zhisheng is allowed to be reunited unconditionally with his family in the U.S.”

Read more...

China Blacks out Towns to Meet Energy Goal

China blacks out factories, homes in drastic move to meet energy-saving targets

SBS plans Chinese social network


iTWire logo iTWire - Public broadcaster SBS will launch a social networking site for Chinese speakers by the end of the year. Intended as a pilot service, the company hopes to follow with other language sites in the future as it seeks to offer a venue for more foreign language content and community information.

...This would undoubtedly be the case were an organisation such as Falun Gong to load material on a site ultimately owned by the Australian Government. Late last year the ABC pulled a film about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, rather than risk upsetting...
Read more...

Doubts over Chinese Leader's Call for Political Reform

Embed:" type="text">

NTDTV: Chinese head of State Hu Jintao spoke in the southern city of Shenzhen on Monday, promising political reforms.

[Hu Jintao, Chinese Head of State]:
"We need to expand socialist democracy and speed up the construction of a socialist country that is ruled by law, and to allow more democratic elections in accordance with the law, democratic policy decisions, democratic management and democratic oversight and safeguard the people's rights to know, to participate, to express and to oversee."

That probably means any kind of democracy will be carried out under the framework of the communist regime, instead of real democratic practices where the public can freely elect a government.

This was explained in a commentary published by state-run Xinhua News Agency last month, which said (quote), "The reform is aimed at securing the governing party status of the Communist Party of China, under whose leadership other parties jointly participate in state affairs through political consultation.”

Read entire story here...

Blind activist lawyer set to be released in China


AP: BEIJING —Chen Guangcheng is a charismatic, inspirational figure for civil liberties lawyers who have fought to enforce the rights that are enshrined in China's Constitution but often breached by the authoritarian government and police. Chen's harassment and then imprisonment in 2006 after documenting forced abortions around his hometown marked the start of a government crackdown on activist lawyers. Read more...

Hunan Police Beat Falun Gong Businessman to Death within Days of Detention

Renactment of torture methods used on Falun Gong including forced organ harvesting

FDIC: NEW YORK—Falun Gong victim's son able to view body with signs of wounds
“The speed with which Falun Gong practitioners like Mr. Zeng are taken into custody and beaten to death is a horrifying testament to the danger facing each of the tens of millions of people who continue to practice Falun Gong in China,” says Falun Dafa Information Center executive director Levi Browde. “Not only has an innocent, honest man died, but his family is now left to pick up the pieces, all while the authorities are already taking measures to cover-up their crimes.”

It is common for practitioners and supporters of Falun Gong inside China to speak with or hand leaflets to people, be they passers-by on the street or fellow passengers on a bus or train, about the human rights abuses Falun Gong practitioners face throughout the country. This grassroots effort aims to expose human rights abuses that are covered up by the CCP as well as let people know the true nature of Falun Gong, which has been much maligned by China's state run media since the CCP launched its campaign to 'eradicate' the traditional Chinese discipline in 1999.

... Instead, they reportedly threatened hospital staff and Zeng’s family not to spread information about his death, including offering the family 260,000 yuan ($38,000) for their silence. Read more...

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

History's Greatest Book Burners

The Daily Beast: If Pastor Terry Jones goes through with his threat to burn Korans on Sept. 11, he’ll take his place alongside fanatics who destroyed Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Falun Gong texts—and even Braille books.

During the Cultural Revolution, young Chinese zealots burned not only classic works of Chinese literature, but also irreplaceable family genealogy books in which the names of all male offspring were inscribed. And in 2004, according to a United Nations report, Beijing publicly destroyed hundreds of thousands of books and materials as part of its campaign against the Falun Gong movement.

Read more...

Why is Falun Gong Banned?

New Statesman: - Facing international criticism and domestic sympathy for Falun Gong, the ruling Chinese Communist Party scrambled to rationalise its campaign of violence and defamation against the spiritual group. State-run media tell gruesome stories of mutilation and suicide, but outsiders aren’t allowed to examine them. When investigators somehow manage to scrutinize such cases, they find stories of individuals who don’t exist and crimes committed by people who have nothing to do with Falun Gong. Human Rights Watch simply calls the official claims ‘bogus’.

Some Western academics have suggested Party leaders feared Falun Gong because it reminded them of past religions-turned-rebellions. But the broad-brush parallels ignored how bloody those groups were – the often-referenced Taiping, for example, was responsible for 20 million deaths. Falun Gong has been strictly non-violent and had no rebellious plans...

As torture survivor Zhao Ming told me in Dublin, ‘the Party’s machinery of persecution was there - Jiang Zemin pushed the button’.

Read more...

Master Li attends Falun Gong Conference in New York City


Clearwisdom News and Epoch Times: On September 5, the 2010 New York Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference was held at Javits Center in Manhattan with 6,500 practitioners from all over the world attending. In the afternoon, Master Li Hongzhi came to the conference and gave a lecture.

The teachings of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) are based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Adherents of the spiritual discipline aim to improve their moral character and be honest, kind, and tolerant in their daily lives through cultivation of mind and body.

In 1999 the CCP outlawed the spiritual practice (of Falun Gong) and a systematic and brutal campaign to force practitioners to renounce their belief in Falun Gong ensued. According to an Amnesty International Annual Report published this year, the vilification of Falun Gong has become even worse this year.

"The government campaign against Falun Gong intensified, with sweeping detentions, unfair trials leading to long sentences, enforced disappearances, and deaths in detention following torture and ill-treatment," said the report.
Read more here

Monday, September 06, 2010

China pushes integration of Taiwan culture

Taiwan News: In the wake of the signing of a controversial "Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement," the authoritarian People's Republic of China has launched drives to push President Ma Ying-jeou's rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government to accept political negotiations and help promote "cultural unification" under a "Chinese national identity." Read more...

Chinese film on 1960 labor camps cheered in Venice


NewsDaily: A powerful Chinese film on the plight of political prisoners condemned to forced labor camps in the late 1950s wooed critics in Venice on Monday, with some tipping it as a strong contender for the festival's top prize.

"The Ditch" tells the little-known story of some 3,000 people deported for "re-education" to labor camps on the edge of the Gobi desert, in western China, and struggling to survive extreme climate and acute food shortages. Read more...

Bush: Sensitive, literary first lady

Did she say: Let them eat cake????

The Chronicle Herald: Bush is mostly discreet about revealing her thoughts on the people and issues she encountered between 2001 and 2009. When she and the president hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao, for example, a woman protested noisily about Chinese persecution of Falun Gong believers. Bush states only that she and George were embarrassed to have a state visit so rudely interrupted....

Read more...

And here is the memorable Human Rights moment that the first lady was referring to in her book that happened on 20 April 2006:

VIDEO: SHOUTING DOWN A TYRANT

Drudge flash:

FLASH: Chinese heckler disrupts Hu’s speech on south lawn at White House, ‘President Bush, stop him from killing’… one cameraman put a hand on her shoulder as she shouted… seemed to be trying to quiet her down… ‘Stop persecuting the Falun Gong,’ she yelled’… she is taken away by uniformed secret service officers… right after Bush urged Hu to allow Chinese to ‘speak freely’…

Download and watch the video (.wmv file).

Best coverage: Weekly Standard: Why Wang Wenyi Was Shouting by Ethan Gutmann and NTDTV Asia Talk

Centre explores spiritual movement

Press and Journal.uk: Professor Zhang Kunlun, founder of the exhibition, was detained for three months in a labour camp in China. In 2004, he started to work with other artists who practise Falun Gong to create the exhibition.

Promoter Eddie Aitken said: “These paintings express both the inner life of a Falun Gong practitioner and the shocking human rights tragedy that is currently unfolding in China.”

Read more

Saturday, September 04, 2010

The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers


The China Beat interview with Richard McGregor: The other major theme of my book is secrecy. Once you begin to describe bodies like the Central Organisation Department, which is really the world’s most powerful human resources outfit, you can convey just how absurdly secretive the CCP is. This body controls the lives and careers of a vast elite in China, and it has no sign outside of its office and no listed phone number! To me, simple facts like this don’t need dressing up. Just tell it as it is and hopefully readers will get a sense of what a strange pre-modern body the CCP is.

I think a lot of western journalists do have a sense of how pervasive the party is but it is quite a hard thing to explain in day-to-day news stories. Frankly, it is also hard to explain to editors back in head office at all. It is kind of like – “The Central Organisation what?! Read more...

Mainland Chinese Support Argentina’s and Spain’s Decisions on Genocide Case of Falun Gong

Epoch Times: News of the Spanish court’s acceptance of the lawsuit against five Chinese officials for the genocide and torture of Falun Gong practitioners and Argentine judge Octavio Araoz de Lamadrid’s arrest warrant for Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan have spread among Chinese intellectuals and citizens. Many activists expressed their particular support for the charges against Jiang and Luo.

Hubei democracy activist Song Xiangxian thinks the legal actions undertaken in Spain and Argentina place the two countries at the forefront of civil rights history. Song believes such actions demonstrate leadership and advocacy for a system of values for humanity.

“The actions of Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan do not simply harm the Falun Gong community, but they plunder and encroach upon all of civilized humanity,” said Song. “Their crimes must be met with a corresponding punishment.”

Guizhou democracy activist Mr. Chen Defu said, “This arrest warrant is a warning to high ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, warning them to not persecute Falun Gong practitioners and democracy activists. I think this is very good, very good. Now everyone is talking about this, so it is a form of encouragement for the disadvantaged groups being suppressed inside China.”

Read more...

Related Articles:

Falun Gong Lawsuit against Jiang Zemin Appears on Baidu


Chinascope has been informed that on Baidu, the heavily censored Internet search engine, users can find extensive information about Falun Gong practitioners’ lawsuits against Jiang Zemin. When searching for “西班牙诉江" (the lawsuit in Spain) where the Spanish Court decided to try Jiang Zemin and other CCP officials for persecuting Falun Gong, Baidu returned 450,000 results. When searching for “阿根廷诉江,” (the lawsuit in Argentina) where the Argentine Judge issued an arrest warrant against Jiang Zemin through INTERPOL, it returned 179,000 results. In an initial scan of the articles, many were found to have quotes directly from Falun Gong practitioners.

With an extremely tightly controlled media, Baidu’s loosening up of information on lawsuits against Jiang is very likely to have complicated political maneuvering behind it.

Source: Chinascope

Related Article:

Mainland Chinese Support Argentina’s and Spain’s Decisions on Genocide Case

Friday, September 03, 2010

Falun Gong: A young spiritual discipline with a turbulent history

CBC: Amidst the cars zooming past, tourists milling around and gardeners mowing the lawn in front of Queen's Park, they stand calm and relaxed.

Eyes closed, arms swooping slowly to soothing music, these followers of Falun Gong — an ancient Chinese practice for the mind and body — seem oblivious to the fact that they're in the heart of Toronto, Canada's largest and busiest city. They're here every day, from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., doing one of the group's core practices, a deep-breathing exercise system sometimes combined with meditation. Passersby stop, watch and smile. It's odd that this innocuous-looking movement has been outlawed by the Chinese government, and its members reportedly imprisoned and tortured.

Falun Gong, which translates to wheel of law, borrows from Buddhist and Taoist traditions. But follower and Canadian spokesperson for the group, Joel Chipkar, says it is a spiritual discipline that can improve physical and mental health.

"It has a strong creed, strong belief in the divine and a strong belief in God, but there's no worship, no ritual, no temples, no membership, no money involved," he says. "The framework of religion doesn't apply to Falun Gong. It transcends racial and religious boundaries. It's open to anyone who wants to learn."

Read more...

Thursday, September 02, 2010

China coal trucks stuck in 120 km traffic jam

Now that's a carbon footprint for ya!

BEIJING - More than 10,000 trucks mainly carrying coal are stuck in a 120 km (75 mile) traffic jam in the northeastern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, in the latest dramatic snarl-up on the country's roads.

State television said the highway heading towards Beijing and the neighbouring province of Hebei was now more like a car park. The jam started forming on Tuesday after traffic restrictions began being enforced in Hebei, it added. Read more...

Preventing Organ Transplant Abuse in China targeting Falun Gong and others

Epoch Times - by David Matas: David Kilgour and I have concluded (first in a report released in July 2006 and updated in January 2007, and then in a book titled Bloody Harvest, released in November 2009) that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed in China in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to transplant patients. I invite you to take a look at our report, which is online, or read our book to see how we came to that conclusion. Falun Gong is a simple set of exercises with a spiritual foundation that started in China in 1992 and was banned in 1999.

(...) This dual admission (from the Party) means the international community can press for the end of transplant abuse in China without meeting with denials and intimidation, the typical Chinese government/party response to concerns about other forms of human rights abuse. Regrettably, all too many people are misled by Chinese party/state denials or cowed into silence by Chinese official political and economic bullying. It should in principle be possible to gather together a larger coalition in support of ending an abuse in China the government of China acknowledges exists and is wrongful than the abuses the party/state covers up.

To deal with international organ transplant abuse in China, and learning from the China experience, I propose these fifteen steps...

Read more...

'Stand up' for Falun Gong employee, Qantas told

QANTAS should "stand up" for a Falun Gong practising employee who was deported from China, the spiritual group says.

news.com.au: Sheridan Genrich, of Lane Cove, has told a workplace relations tribunal that Qantas demoted her after she was threatened by Chinese authorities during a stopover in Beijing.

During a search the authorities found Falun Gong material in Ms Genrich's luggage (including the Epoch Times).

Read more...

China requires ID to buy mobile phone numbers

PhilStar: The new regulation probably won't impact Chinese dissidents, many of whom already have their phones closely monitored, but it could help police track down ordinary people who take part in protests, Wang said. China has seen a growing number of protests sparked by labor disagreements, anger over pollution or other issues.

The ID requirement is also raising new privacy concerns and will likely upset some customers unwilling to give personal information to vendors and telecom companies

for fear it will be resold, said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd., a technology market research firm.

China has more than 800 million mobile phone numbers already in use. The Global Times newspaper reported Wednesday that about 320 million of those were purchased without real-name registration. They will have to be reregistered by 2013 or could be suspended, it said. Read more...

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Political Struggle May Lie Beneath Chinese Premier's 'Reform' Remarks

Remarks on Reform are Deceiving

Epoch Times: Zhu Xueye, a commentator with New Tang Dynasty Television, argues that there’s no realistic expectation that the CCP will implement genuine political reform. If it did, he says, the only changes that would be made would be those needed to survive and prolong the Party’s rule. Lieutenant General Liu Yazhou’s claim that “without political reform China is doomed,” combined with the idea that there is still hope for the CCP to reform, is precisely the impression the Party wants to create, Zhu says.

Political progress is unlikely under any totalitarian regime, and a totalitarian regime is by definition unlikely to change its own system of rule, according to Peter Drucker, author of The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Drucker says that in totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany, and other fascist and communist regimes, even if a leader wanted to implement a better political system, others would fight him. This is due to the nature of totalitarianism, which is one of “struggle.”

This has held true throughout the CCP’s history, as leaders who have advocated political reform, such as Liu Shaoqi, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang, have all failed and been punished for their efforts.

It is highly improbable that Wen Jiabao is at this moment advocating for genuine political reform in China. Because his relationship with the CCP is one in which he and the CCP each take advantage of the other, his remarks are more likely a clever ploy: The people are given the impression that the CCP is progressing toward a great change, but in reality it is panicking about losing control, focused on buying more time while figuring out how to “manage” the mounting powder keg of social inequality and discontent. Read more...

Read the original Chinese article.

China Spied On Qantas 'Falun Gong' Employee


Epoch Times: SYDNEY—A Qantas employee, removed from her job after being deported from China for practising Falun Gong, was likely targeted by Chinese spies, says a representative of Falun Gong in Australia.

Mr. John Deller, spokesman for the New South Wales Falun Dafa Association, said that Falun Gong practitioner Sheridan Genrich, a Qantas flight attendant, was stopped and interrogated before she was searched during a stopover in Beijing.

“They had already targeted her, so they must have known she was a Falun Gong practitioner,” he told The Epoch Times.

“Falun Gong is not illegal in China,” he said. “The Peoples Congress have to pass laws to make something illegal and they haven’t done that on Falun Gong.”

Mr. Deller said that within Chinese law and the Chinese constitution, people in China have the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

“It is actually the persecution of Falun Gong which is illegal,” he said.

Read more...

Australian organ tourists drive sinister trade

ABC: Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas says he has uncovered evidence of organ harvesting from death row inmates and political prisoners in China.

He says evidence suggests that most of the 10,000 organ transplants which happen each year in China are the result of organ harvesting.

"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'," he said.

"We've got these advertisements for short waiting times on hospital wait sites at big prices and the short waiting times mean somebody's being killed for their organs on demand when the patients arrive." Read more...