Why Chinese Communists repress Falun Gong (2): Speech by David Matas

By David Matas, Remarks delivered to an International Conference on Religious Freedom in China, European Parliament, Brussels, 15 April 2009 – (previous)

There are two obvious answers for organ harvesting, the large numbers and the grotesque incitement. Only the Falun Gong are a large enough number in the Chinese detention system to constitute, on their own, a captive organ donor bank throughout China. Only the Falun Gong are dehumanized so viciously that their jailers and the hospitals who pay them off do not even think of them as human.

But that does not get us very far. Why are the Falun Gong jailed in such large numbers? Why are they so dehumanized? I have a dozen suggested explanations.

1 One is simply the numbers. Falun Gong before it was banned had, according to a 1999 Government estimate, 70 million adherents. That year, the Communist Party of China membership was an estimated 60 million. In Beijing alone, before the banning, there were more than 2000 Falun Gong practice stations. Practitioners were found everywhere, at all levels of society and government, within the inner reaches of the Communist Party.

A group of that size no matter what its belief attracts the attention of a repressive government. The Falun Gong, before their banning, were not anti-Communist. But they weren’t Communist either. And that was, for the Communists, a matter of concern. These were people who no particular fealty to the Communist Party of China.

2 When it comes to victimization of the innocent at home, the Chinese Communist government is much like other tyrannies. The chosen enemies vary from country to country, but, whatever the country, the story is much the same – innocents suffer so that despots can stay in power.

At one level, the Chinese Communist repression of Falun Gong is sheer totalitarian nuttiness, the manufacturing of an enemy out of thin air, a form of paranoia to which the followers of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung are prone. The Communist Party needs enemies in order to justify their continuing hold on power and the Falun Gong had the bad luck to be around in sufficient numbers and available to fill the enemy slot.

For a communist regime, far worse than having bitter enemies is having no enemies at all. Without anyone to demonize, communists are left speechless when justifying their hold on power.

3 Another facet of the Falun Gong which led to their singling out is their principles. In short, the Falun Gong stand for three basic beliefs – compassion, tolerance and truth. Anyone who believes in any one of these principles spells trouble for the Communist Party government – a cruel, repressive, dishonest regime. Tens of millions of Chinese believing in all three principles had to give the Party chills.

The worst nightmare of a gangster is an honest person. The nemesis of the corrupt are those who will not take a bribe. The venal speak a common language with the unscrupulous. With the principled, dialogue is impossible. All that is left is force.

4 The collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism through Central and Eastern Europe haunts the Chinese Communist Party. The practice of Falun Gong went from a standing start in 1992 to numbers greater than the membership of the Chinese Communist Party within the space of seven years, spreading rapidly throughout China immediately after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Communist Party control in Central Asia and Eastern and Central Europe. The Communist Party of China feared a similar collapse, a similar loss of control.

When the Party saw their own Chinese nationals, in the tens of millions, engaging publicly in a form of exercise which had an underlying belief system completely divorced from Communism, Communists fantasized the Falun Gong as the engine of their destruction. They turned a group of innocents into an enemy and launched a persecution to combat this imaginary enemy. (to be cont’d)

- Via David Kilgour’s website

Between China and a flu pandemic: EDITORIAL by Taipei Times

Tuesday, Taipei Times, Taiwan, Apr 28, 2009 -

Amid reports that more than 100 people have died in Mexico from what is believed to be H1N1 swine influenza, 20 confirmed cases in the US and daily reports of possible cases in every corner of the world, Taiwanese health authorities have reacted with propriety: They have called for calm, reassured the public that the disease cannot be transmitted via food and heightened monitoring at ports of entry.

Fears of a pandemic and its impact on the global economy’s recovery sent most stock markets down yesterday, with the TAIEX dropping 2.99 percent. Economists in Australia, meanwhile, were saying that even a mild outbreak of swine flu could result in 1.4 million deaths worldwide and US$330 billion in lost production. (To put things in perspective, the Asian Development Bank said the cost of the SARS outbreak in 2003 for East and Southeast Asia was about US$18 billion.)

While it would be premature to call this “the big one” scientists have long been predicting, swine flu was responsible for three major pandemics in the past century — in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

Modern travel and the sheer number of people traveling daily have made it far easier for communicable diseases to spread. Given this, and in light of reports of possible outbreaks in countries such as New Zealand, which has ordered 50 people there to be quarantined, it is only a matter of time before cases start appearing close to home. In fact, it would not be a surprise if China already had some, which raises the specter, once again, of Chinese authorities’ tendency to muzzle reports of disease outbreaks — as it did in 2003.

The likelihood that an outbreak in China would go unreported is perhaps even greater today given the economic situation and fears of social instability. Confirmation of an outbreak and its consequences for the tottering economy would risk exacerbating social problems and undermine the Chinese Communist Party’s image as a totem of stability. Even if China had learned its lessons from 2003, institutional friction and the fact that information on disease outbreaks in China is a “state secret” means that by the time the information is made public, it may be too late to prevent the disease from spreading, especially in densely populated areas.

Aside from highlighting the urgent need for Taiwan to gain WHO representation, as well as the importance of direct connection to the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which Taiwan obtained earlier this year, the present scare raises questions about additional risks created by the recent rise in tourist arrivals from China and increases in the number of direct cross-strait flights.

While there is no question that checking body temperature at points of arrival is a necessary first line of defense, the short distance that needs to be covered for Chinese to travel to Taiwan means that by the time they arrive, people infected with swine flu may not have begun displaying telltale symptoms of the disease — sudden fever, coughing, muscle aches and extreme fatigue — and can remain contagious for as long as a week, the US Centers for Disease Control says.

Faced with so many uncertainties concerning China’s ability or willingness to be a responsible stakeholder when an epidemic occurs, and given Beijing’s poor track record, how would the Taiwanese government react? If the situation takes a turn for the worse and cases start appearing in China, would Taipei, given the position of dependence it has burdened itself with vis-a-vis China, be able to unilaterally suspend cross-strait flights?

- Taipei Times

‘Israeli oranges’ faked in China

By Andre Vornic, BBC News, Apr. 26, 2009-

A twist has emerged in the story of Israeli citrus fruit reportedly sold in Iran in defiance of a ban on commercial dealings between the two enemy states.

It has now been revealed the fruit, a type of orange-grapefruit hybrid marketed as Jaffa Sweetie, were not Israeli in the first place.

The Sweeties were brought to Iran from China, where faking the origin of goods is a common practice.

The discovery of apparent Israeli origin caused a stir in Iran.

Outrage followed, distribution centres stocking the fruit were sealed and accusations were traded.

Such is the infamy of dealing with Israel that an Iranian official went so far as to accuse the opposition of a “citrus plot”.

However, Tal Amit, the general manager of Israel’s Citrus Marketing Board, told the BBC the fruit had not originated in his country.

Prestigious fruit

“First of all, it’s a bit annoying that somebody is using our brand name and registered trademark without our permission,” he said.

“Apart from this, I would like very much the Iranian people to eat Israeli fruit straight from the origin and not via China.

“But the politics is not allowing us to do any commercial relations with Tehran at the moment while back 30 to 40 years ago, Tehran was a superb market for our fruit.”

The genuine Israeli Sweetie is primarily exported to the Far East’s richest markets, Japan and South Korea.

That could explain the prestige of the fruit in the eyes of Chinese exporters and the temptation to counterfeit it.

It is not the first time, however, that citrus fruit have found themselves at the heart of an international political row.

Back in the 1980s, as the most visible of South Africa’s consumer exports, oranges became the key target of anti-Apartheid boycott campaigns.

- BBC News

Why Chinese Communists repress Falun Gong (1): Speech by David Matas

By David Matas, Remarks delivered to an International Conference on Religious Freedom in China, European Parliament, Brussels, 15 April 2009 -

The Communist Party of China represses every belief system it does not control. At one time, one could say that the Party would repress every belief system other than its own. But with the switch from socialism to capitalism highlighted by then president Deng Xiaoping’s statement 1984 “to get rich is glorious”, Communism in China was gutted of its ideological content. All that was left was the hollow shell of power to which the rulers have held on to for dear life. Despite ceasing to stand for anything except enriching and empowering its cadres, the Communist Party will not accept any other belief.

The Communist Party banned the practice of Falun Gong in 1999, a set of exercises with a spiritual foundation. At the time, the repression of the Falun Gong just seemed Communist Party business as usual. When the Communists are repressing every other community of belief they do not control, it is hardly surprising that they also banned the practice of Falun Gong.

What is striking about Chinese Communist repression of the Falun Gong is not so much the fact of repression as the extent of repression. Practitioners of Falun Gong are persecuted far more, far worse than adherents of any other belief.

Falun Gong has the ignominious honour of leading by far the parade of human rights victims in China. They represent two thirds of the torture victims. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture’s 2006 report on his 2005 mission to China1 indicated that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and ill-treatment in China were Falun Gong practitioners, with the remaining victims comprising Uighurs (11%), sex workers (8%), Tibetans (6%), human rights defenders (5%), political dissidents (2%), and others (persons infected with HIV/AIDS and members of religious groups 2%)2.

Falun Gong represents half the people in detention in re-education through labour camps. The United States Department of State Country Reports for 2008 state:

“Some foreign observers estimated that Falun Gong adherents constituted at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in the country’s reeducation-through-labour camps….”3

Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners sentenced to death are the sole victims of organ harvesting, the killing of innocents for their organs for transplant surgery. Former Canadian Minister of State David Kilgour and I wrote a report on organ sourcing in China released first June 2006 and, in a second version, January 2007 under the title “Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China”. In that report we concluded that between 2001 and 2006 China killed Falun Gong practitioners in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to foreign transplant tourists.

The extremes of language the Chinese regime uses against the Falun Gong are unparalleled, unmatched by the comparatively mild criticisms China has of the victims the West is used to defending. The documented yearly arbitrary killings and disappearances of Falun Gong exceed by far the totals for any other victim group.

The question which arises from all this is not so much why the Falun Gong is being persecuted. To believe in anything the Party does not control, if you live in China, means you run the risk of persecution. The question is rather, why is the Communist Party persecuting Falun Gong practitioners so much worse, so much more than adherents of other beliefs? Why is Falun Gong alone of all the beliefs which the Communist Party represses the victim of organ harvesting? (to be cont’d)

- Via David Kilgour’s website

Outrage over China government manual for bashing citizens

CLIFFORD COONAN, Irish Times, April 25, 2009 -

A brutal official manual highlights indifference about human rights in China, writes CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

“LEAVE NO blood on the face, no wounds on the body, and no witnesses in the vicinity”.

A Chinese government manual on how to beat up troublemakers without leaving marks is causing an outcry among webizens and again highlighted human rights issues in China, despite a new government programme aimed at improving the situation.

Copies of the manual are now available in any bookshop or online, and it is aimed at urban management enforcement squads, “chengguan” who are basically bailiffs who check permits and hassle street hawkers. Often poorly-educated and brutish, the appalling reputation of the “chengguan” has been forged through regular physical conflict with unlicensed street sellers.

“Urban management officials should seize the opportunity when there are not many onlookers around. Do not hesitate. Finish the job quickly, without giving your opponents time to prepare. The whole job should be completed within 10 seconds,” runs the handbook.

“Several officials should always act together. Make sure to leave no blood on the opponent’s face, no wounds on the body, and no witnesses in the vicinity. Be calm and focused. Be a firm public official,” it said.

Online commentators were angry: “These people are like wild dogs,” wrote one, while another said: “This is a handbook for terrorists.” Another netizen from Sichuan wrote: “China’s urban management officials are just like the mafia. It is failure of our system.” Earlier this month, China’s cabinet, the state council, issued the National Human Rights Action Plan (2009–2010), which is the first time China has set out a national programme focused on human rights. It sets out goals and concrete measures for the promotion and protection of human rights during the coming two years.

However, activists say the situation remains grim. There have been stories of thuggish behaviour being used on dissidents during their arrests.

Prominent Chinese lawyer and activist Gao Zhisheng, who has not been seen nor heard from since disappearing into custody in February, wrote a shocking account of his kidnapping in September 2007, which described torture sessions he said he endured involving severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals and burning with cigarettes.

His wife Geng He appealed to the US Congress to pressure China to disclose her husband’s whereabouts, in a letter released by the activist group, Human Rights in China. She and her two children escaped from China to Thailand and now live in the United States, where they were accepted as refugees.

Earlier this week, Amnesty International issued a global Urgent Action for Tan Zuoren, an environmental activist from Sichuan province who was detained on March 28th and whom Amnesty believes it at serious risk of torture.

“Sources in China report that they believe his detention was linked to his intent to issue a list of the names of children who died in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake along with a report blaming corruption in state officials for the collapse of a number of schools,” the rights group said in a statement……. (More details from Irish Times)

How the War Against Falun Gong Started in China: Ethan Gutmann

By Ethan Gutmann, Via The Epochtimes,  Apr 24, 2009 -

Ten years ago, on April 25, I was attending a Beijing wedding when I heard a rumor that a large crowd of people had gathered at Zhongnanhai, the central Chinese leadership compound. I phoned my friend Jasper Becker, the Bureau Chief for the South China Morning Post.

Who are they? I asked him.

We think they are called “Falun Gong,” he said. “Apparently it’s a huge Chinese religious movement, but we don’t really know anything about them. Ethan,” he said, “we’ve simply been caught with our pants down.”

As we commemorate the 10 year anniversary of Falun Gong’s catastrophic oppression, we must acknowledge that—with a few special exceptions, the Western response has essentially given the Chinese Communist Party a free hand.

We have only begun to assess the damage: Over 3000 confirmed deaths by torture, abuse and neglect. According to my current research, at a minimum, over ten thousand Falun Gong have been harvested for their organs. The final tally is likely to go well over 100,000.

According to my colleague, Leeshai Lemish, quantitative analysis shows that media mentions of Falun Gong fell in proportion to rising fatalities. So I submit that our pants are still down. And I submit that the failure starts with the Western media’s interpretation of April 25 itself.

You can’t even refer to the event without feeding into a set interpretation, a pre-fabricated picture. Out of the clear blue sky, 10,000 majestically disciplined Falun Gong practitioners “surrounded” (that’s AP and Reuters) or “besieged” (that’s AFP) Zhongnanhai. These are straight-ahead translations of the Communist Party line. And they are repeated in scholarly works on Falun Gong history.

Even Falun Gong practitioners writing in The Epoch Times—perhaps feeling it’s too hard too explain—often refer to April 25 as a mass “gathering” at Zhongnanhai. The only difference is that they treat the word “demonstration” as if it’s a dirty word. Well, it is to the Chinese Communist Party. But not in the West right?

Henry Kissinger justified the Tiananmen Square Massacre with the statement: ”No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators…” That sentiment was recently echoed by Charles Freeman, the Obama Administration’s nominee to chair the U.S. intelligence council.

If the foreign policy elite talks this way about the student demonstrators of ‘89, imagine how they view an obscure Buddhist Revival movement in ‘99. How about: Well, that’s China. Those Falun Gong were asking for it.

Scholars might phrase it a little differently: the oppression of Falun Gong began as an action-reaction phenomenon. It’s a tragedy. A misunderstanding. A mistake.

Well, yes, Falun Gong practitioners have made plenty of mistakes. But I don’t accept that they asked to be martyred. And I don’t think you should accept that either. But if you do, you should interview people who actually participated on April 25, and its precursor, Tianjin.

Set Up at Tianjin

In early 1999, a physicist published an article in a Tianjin University journal attacking Falun Gong, essentially portraying it as a dangerous cult. Since the physicist and the journal were relatively obscure, Falun Gong has been accused of hypersensitivity to criticism.

But this isn’t the West and these things aren’t random. The physicist, He Zuoxiu, is said to be the brother-in-law of Luo Gan, at that time, the head of Public Security. And the Tianjin university journal answers to the state.

Li Hongzhi’s book Zhuan Falun had already been banned from formal publication in the mid-1990’s, in part because of Party concerns over runaway sales. By 1999, Falun Gong had attracted at least 70 million practitioners, 5 million more than the membership of the Party.

So the article wasn’t obscure at all; it was a flare in the night sky, a signal that the Party was trying something out. Something of consequence.

In China, when you see a signal like that, you have two choices. You can keep quiet. And probably get crushed. Or you can stand up. And you may well get crushed—yet spreading truth, refuting lies, these are essential parts of Falun Gong morality.

So Falun Gong stood up quietly; about 5000 practitioners staged a silent demonstration on April 22 at Tianjin Education College asking for a retraction of the article or dialogue. The police were called in. Officer Hao Fengjun was one of them. His “entire police force was suddenly maneuvered to the college.” They “were told to enforce martial law and close off the area.” When they arrived at the scene: “We all realized that it was nothing like what had been described to us—Falun Gong looking for a fight, disturbing public order, and so on. But we had no choice.”

Video surveillance records a bunch of people sitting around. So what prompted some policemen to wade into the crowd, beating and arresting 40 practitioners? Many practitioners—Jennifer Zeng is one—tried to reason with Tianjin officials and the police. The answer? The police were powerless. “This has been taken up by the Public Security Ministry, under the central government, so you need to go to Beijing to appeal.”

In the two days following the Tianjin arrests, that word “appeal” (or “petition”) spread widely among practitioners—not by some sort of central command, simply by word of mouth. But it had an explicit meaning: the National Appeals Office, the only location in China where a citizen can legally complain about their local or central government.

Auntie D (let’s call her that) says: “Everyone who was in China at the time knew that [the arrest of practitioners in Tianjin] was a very frightening thing. But we also knew that we should be allowed to appeal at the Appeals’ Office. We had the legal right to appeal. So we didn’t think about it too much.”

Looking for the Appeals Office

Echoing the Party’s own reticence about the petitioning process, the National Appeals office location wasn’t well publicized. Not a single practitioner that I have interviewed could place it precisely on a map, although it was widely believed to be in the hutongs, the twisting alleyways right off of Fuyou Street. And Fuyou Street abuts the western entrance to the Zhongnanhai compound.

So as April 25 dawned, a lovely, crisp spring morning, every single practitioner (that I have interviewed) sincerely believed were following legal protocol, not that they were going to Zhongnanhai to demonstrate.

They were not naïve about the risks. Some practitioners made out their wills the night before. If that sounds melodramatic, consider this.

Early in the morning, a practitioner couple, on their way to the appeals office, walking by the moat on the Eastern side of the Forbidden City, observed something very strange: A large unit of Red Army soldiers, bayonets fixed and ready, sitting in jeeps, facing west, towards Zhongnanhai.

When they and other practitioners arrived in Fuyou Street around 7 a.m., and tried to make their way into the hutongs, where the fabled appeals office was believed to be, a huge police presence suddenly materialized. Yet Fuyou Street was wide open—Jennifer Zeng, having worked for the state council office in Zhongnanhai, thought this was odd too. Normally, “The security there was very tight and there were a lot of guards and it was hard to get near the street. But at that time nobody tried to remove people from there. Normally anybody who shows up there is questioned right away…it seemed they were very well prepared, they were expecting us.”

With some vague assurances that the appeals office would open later, the practitioners were herded onto Fuyou Street, directly in front of the gate to Zhongnanhai. Auntie D remembers official buses and police cars carefully arranged up and down Fuyou Street: “Cameras were also set up and were pointing directly at us. I was rather afraid and didn’t dare to stand in the front row. I thought if they caught me on film, they would come for me later.” (Auntie D would end up in a labor camp for several years).

Those practitioners who believed that the appeals office was on Southern Fuyou Street, or thought that they could circle around the block and enter the hutongs from the West, found their way blocked at Chang’an Boulevard and were encouraged to move north again in front of the Zhongnanhai Western gates. Those who came in from the north were allowed into the dragnet, and quickly herded directly opposite the northern exposure of Zhongnanhai and down Fuyou Street. Auntie C (a friend of Auntie D’s) described it this way: “At the time they just told us—go this way, go this way, and we just followed.”

The stage was set for the Kabuki performance that followed. Premier Zhu Rongji’s reassuring public appearance, and Jiang Zemin’s smolderingly slow circle around Zhongnanhai in his smoked-glass limousine. Throughout it all, for 16 hours, no record, film, or plausible account suggests that the Falun Gong practitioners did anything that could be construed as even faintly provocative. No littering. No smoking. No chanting. No talking to reporters (or anyone else).

One practitioner suggested that they take turns to go eat or get something to drink, but the other practitioners “Said no, definitely not. Because if we drink, we’ll have to go to the bathroom and that would disturb those living or working in that area.” Even by the Party’s rather creative standards, there was simply no pretext that could justify the use of the troops waiting by the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City.

The evening announcement that the Tianjin prisoners would be released was greeted with quiet relief and practitioners left feeling optimistic. The next day, according to Auntie C, the official media reports said: “FLG gathered at Zhongnanhai,’ they didn’t say we surrounded Zhongnanhai. It also said that there is freedom to practice or not practice as one wishes.”

Advanced Planning

In the days following there were constant reassurances from the Party that everything was okay, and that the “three no’s” (no promoting, no criticizing, no debating chi-gong) were still operational—while practitioner phones were tapped, spies appeared at practice sites, warnings were selectively issued at workplaces, and the Party created the 6-10 office, one of the most terrifying secret police agencies ever to receive extra-constitutional powers. On July 20, the well-oiled machine of the crackdown was given free reign to roam China at will. And it was all justified by an image of a day of infamy—April 25—an image used to stage an unprecedented persecution, one that continues to this day.

One final point. Officer Hao Fengjun went to work at the 6-10 Office in 2000. Here’s the first thing he noticed: “our monitor room already had a comprehensive record and data on the Falun Gong practitioners. These things are not something that can be done and collected in just one or two years.”

Hao’s suspicion is correct. According to a former district-level official, I’ll call him “Minister X,” the Party’s decision to eliminate Falun Gong—and preparations towards that goal—was actually made long before any ban was made public. It was circulated explicitly in internal Party meetings: Jiang Zemin could not resolve the Tiananmen slaughter except by creating a new target. Falun Gong was it. Minister X, for his part, was told to quietly stop granting business licenses to practitioners. April 25 was simply the unfolding of an elaborate bait and switch with Falun Gong as the patsy.

Perhaps that last term could just as well be applied to the West.

It’s ten years. Did the Party really mean to kill so many? Of course not. The Party is prone to believing in its own rhetoric. Generals always imagine short wars. So too, it seems, do Western reporters.

But today, let’s dispel at least one myth, one ugly relativist notion that feeds the misplaced idea that we in the West have no business commenting on an obscure family quarrel.

Falun Gong did not start this war. The Chinese Communist Party did. I submit that the Party should be held fully accountable for the results.

Ethan Gutmann is the author of Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal and of a forthcoming book on the Chinese state and Falun Gong. This article is the text of a talk given on April 15 at the International Conference on Religious Freedom in China, hosted by Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice President of the European Parliament, in the European Parliament, Brussels.

- The Epochtimes

Australia Urges China to Stop Supporting Fiji’s Military Government

By Phil Mercer, Sydney, Australia, 24 April 2009 -

Australia has been pressing China to reduce its support for the military government in Fiji. Canberra has been leading international calls for a boycott of the government of armed forces chief, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. But the Chinese have quietly increased aid to the troubled South Pacific country.

The concern among many in Australia is that China’s apparent effort to use money as a persuasive diplomatic tool in the South Pacific undermines international efforts to isolated Fiji’s military government.

Since Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s troops seized power in 2006, Beijing’s aid pledges to Fiji have increased seven-fold, to $160 million.

Buying influence?

China has been keen to spend big in the region to win a diplomatic battle with Taiwan for the support and recognition of island nations.

Fiji’s military has sought to cash in on this political competition, according to Fergus Hanson, a research fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.

“As the international community came down on Fiji following the coup and increasingly isolated the regime, I would imagine that the coup leaders would have been casting around for funds and playing off China and Taiwan against each other would have been an obvious trick to play,” Hanson said. “So, that was initially, I think, a key driver. Now we have had a bit of reconciliation between China and Taiwan, I think things might be starting to change.”

Regional condemnation of Beijing’s support

Australian and New Zealand officials have raised their concerns with China about its support for Fiji.

Canberra and Wellington believe a concerted international approach to the dismantling of democracy there is the best way to convince Commodore Bainimarama to relinquish power.

Fiji faces suspension from both the Commonwealth of former British colonies, and the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s key political and trade bloc. That prospect does not seem to worry Fiji’s military.

Arrogant dictator?

The most recent unrest, which saw Fiji’s president scrap the constitution after judges ruled the army’s power grab illegal, has seen the army’s position strengthened, with senior officers insisting that fresh elections could well be more than five years away.

The army seized control in Fiji almost two-and-a-half years ago, accusing the elected government of Laisenia Qarase of corruption and of pursuing racist policies against the country’s ethnic Indian minority.

Commodore Bainimarama said Fiji’s political system would have to be cleansed before democracy could be revived.

His critics accuse him of being an arrogant dictator, who was leading his country of 800,000 people towards economic collapse and international isolation.

- VOA News

Disabilities in China’s polluted Shanxi Province

By James Reynolds, BBC News, Shanxi, central China, Apr. 23, 2009-

For the Li family, the best part of the day comes at noon.

Every day, after school, Li San San picks up his children from school, jams them all onto the back of his motorbike and drives them through the hills back home.

The kids cling onto each other and laugh as they try not to fall off.

On the main roads nearby, lines of coal trucks head off to the rest of China. The valleys are full of steelworks and heavy industry.

The Li family get back to their home, which is carved into the side of a hill.

Six-year-old Hong Wei eats his noodles and sits quietly in front of his school notebook.

He has a shy smile and hides in his sister’s lap when we try to talk to him.

Hong Wei was born with an extra thumb on his right hand. His elder sister Lixia, who’s 14, was born with a twisted left foot and walks with a heavy limp.

Like many people in Shanxi, this family is too poor to go to the doctors. The parents don’t know why their children were born with defects. They’re simply left to guess.

“The air isn’t good around here,” says Li San San. “When it’s bad, it’s difficult to breathe, it looks gloomy and smoggy out there.”

The province of Shanxi is one of the most polluted places in the world.

The rate of birth defects in this region is six times higher than the national average.

In January, the director of family planning in Shanxi, An Huanxiao, told the China Daily newspaper that the province’s high rate of birth defects was related to environmental pollution. …… (more details from BBC News)

Concern that detained Tibetan magazine editor is being tortured

Reporters Without Borders, Apr. 24, 2009-

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the physical safety of journalists and website editors who have been arrested in the past few months in Tibet and neighbouring Tibetan regions. The latest to be arrested is Dokru Tsuilrim, a monk who edited the magazine Khawai Tsesok (Soul of the Snow).

The press freedom organisation hails the release of Golok Jigme, a monk who helped filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen make the 2008 documentary “Leaving fear behind”. Dhondup Wangchen is still being held.

“We are very worried by the reports of Chinese police torturing detained Tibetans, including a lama defended by lawyer Li Fangping,” Reporters Without Borders said. “They increase our concern that the six journalists detained in Tibet are being mistreated. All those held because of the views they expressed must be released without delay.”

Chinese police arrested Dokru Tsuilrim in his room in Ngaba Gomang monastery (in Sichuan province) at the start of April for publishing articles that allegedly support the “separatist forces.” The authorities have suspended publication of his magazine.

The authorities have meanwhile stepped up controls in Machu county in Gansu province. According to a researcher at India’s Norbu Lingka Institute, Chinese officials threatened reprisals against residents who continue to listen to international radio stations or visit websites such as the Radio Free Asia one. The authorities have installed dozens of satellite dishes while confiscating those belonging to private individuals.

Tibetan human rights groups have reported new cases of Tibetans being arrested for sending “state secrets” abroad. One is a monk identified as Thuksam, based in Nurma monastery, who has been held since 11 March. The Public Security Bureau accuses him of sending reports about human rights violations to organisations abroad. It is not known where he is being held.

- Reporters Without Borders

(Video) China: April 25, 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong Practitioners Appealed in Beijing

Behind the April 25 Incident

Introduction

The Falun Gong incident of April 25, 1999 was not a sudden, accidental event.  Nor was it the kind of political demonstration involving the besieging of a government compound as claimed by Jiang Zemin.  From the written attacks begun during the July 1996 Guangming Daily incident in July, 1996 to the mobilization of police and using violence in Tianjin in April, 1999, the development and escalation of the persecution actually happened over a period of three or four years.

On April 25, 1999, more than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in China went to the Appeals Office of the State Council on Fuyou Street in Beijing to make an appeal in accordance with the law. They wished to ask the authorities to release the Falun Gong practitioners who had been arrested by the Tianjin public security officers.

After Premier Zhu Rongji, the official head of the State Council, personally came out and met with practitioners, the situation was handled and a resolution was reached that was acceptable to both the government and the practitioners.

However, after the “April 25th Incident,” Chinese president Jiang Zemin used two secret documents to accuse Falun Gong of two crimes that he wanted to charge them with – namely conspiring with foreign forces and being directed by senior insiders in the Communist Party.  In the absence of any corroborating evidence, Jiang decided on a policy of persecution.

To allow the reader to have a relatively comprehensive understanding of this important “April 25th Incident,” this document provides a synopsis of the events surrounding the incident in chronological order.  For the first time, among the facts presented are excerpts from interviews with those who participated in the April 25th events, including the dialogue between Premier Zhu Rongji and those who went to appeal.

Included are also crucial comments made by Jiang Zemin in two classified documents as he decided to crack down on Falun Gong based on information recently revealed by certain high level officials in the Communist Party.  This document is provided as reference for those who are interested in learning the truth of the “April 25th Incident.” …… (More details from THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER)

Wife of Abducted Rights Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Requests Urgent Help from U.S. Congress in Open Letter

Human Rights in China (HRIC), April 23, 2009 -

Geng He (耿和), wife of Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), the prominent Chinese rights defense lawyer who has been disappeared since early February 2009, is requesting help from the United States government to put pressure on the Chinese government to disclose Gao’s whereabouts. She has requested that Human Rights in China (HRIC) release her open letter, dated April 23, 2009, to members of the U.S. Congress.

Gao, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government who represented, among others, victims of forced evictions, Falun Gong practitioners, and house church activists, has been a target of government actions since 2005, after he wrote a series of letters to Chinese leaders urging them to stop their attack on Falun Gong practitioners and dissidents. In late 2006, he was convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and received a suspended three-year prison term. Even though he was not imprisoned, he was detained multiple times, and his family was frequently harassed. After writing an open letter to the U.S. Congress denouncing the human rights situation in China, Gao was kidnapped in September 2007 and kept for 59 days, during which time he was brutally tortured. In early February 2009, HRIC released an account by Gao of his torture.

On January 9, 2009, Gao’s wife, Geng He, and their two children escaped from China and made their way to Thailand a week later. On February 4, Gao was seen taken forcibly from his hometown, Xiaoshibanqiao Village in Shaanxi Province, by more than 10 state security policemen. He has not been heard from since. His wife and two children arrived in the United States on March 11, 2009. There have been urgent expressions of concern for Gao’s safety from various governments, human rights groups, and lawyers’ associations…….

Details of Geng He’s letter

Honoring Falun Gong’s April 25th Appeal in China, Ten Years On

Press Release, Falun Dafa Information Center, Apr. 23, 2009 -

On April 25, 1999 thousands of Falun Gong practitioners gathered quietly in Beijing to ask for the release of adherents who had been beaten and detained in a nearby city. More broadly, they sought to raise concerns with government leaders about ongoing harassment of Falun Gong at the hands of a few high-ranking officials.

The event captured headlines around the world, but more importantly to those who were there, it was a chance to explain to the Chinese leadership how Falun Gong had brought health and harmony to their lives, and that the attacks by some Chinese officials were unwarranted.

Ten years later, Falun Gong practitioners and their supporters are honoring the spirit of peace, justice, and compassion with which that appeal was held. Equally important, we are remembering the tremendous price Falun Gong adherents and their families in China have paid for their unyielding dedication to their faith and its underlying principles of honesty, kindness, and forbearance in the face of unrelenting brutality.

Hundreds of thousands—if not millions—remain unlawfully imprisoned in Chinese labor camps and prisons, the largest single population of prisoners of conscience in the country. Tens of thousands have suffered torture at the hands of police and security agents. Over 3,200 identified adherents have lost their lives, though the true death toll of the decade-long persecutory campaign is almost certainly much higher. Millions of others face destitution, job loss, expulsion from school, and other forms of systematic discrimination.

With the machinery of the state turned against them as forcefully as ever, practitioners in China continue to risk their lives on a daily basis, not only to practice Falun Gong’s exercises and study its teachings for their own self-improvement, but also to inform others of the injustice done to them, of the atrocities happening in their own backyard. Outside China, practitioners around the world hold vigils and rallies, distribute leaflets, circulate petitions, and take whatever non-violent avenues might help raise awareness of what is happening to fellow adherents in the Middle Kingdom.

The ultimate aim of such actions remains the same today as it was ten years ago—to end the persecution, to convince people not to participate in harming our sisters, husbands, mothers, and friends. This is not only for the protection of our loved ones, but also for the sake of other members of the public, lest they willingly or not participate in terrible crimes, if only via forcibly imposed silence. It is thus with an eye towards the benefit of society as a whole that adherents act—to finally stop the cycle of violence against innocent people that has engulfed China for too long.

For this reason, we hope that on this day, people the world over may join us in honoring, remembering, and keeping alive the spirit of that spring day in Beijing ten years ago; that they not accept the reality of injustice simply because of the Communist Party’s seemingly tight grip on power; that they strive to see through the veil of Party propaganda and understand for themselves what Falun Gong is; that they lend their support to our peaceful efforts to restore hope, dignity, and basic rights to tens of millions in China.

For with such collective dedication, we might just find ourselves ten years from now celebrating freedom for Falun Gong in China and with that, the relief for Chinese society of no longer bearing the burden of a violent, ongoing campaign.

- Falun Dafa Information Center

Zhongnanhai: The Day so Many Chinese Lost Their Innocence

By Lillian Chang, Epoch Times Staff, Apr 22, 2009 -

In Australia, April 25 is synonymous with Anzac Day, a remembrance day for those who lost their lives in the World War I battlefields of Gallipoli.

For millions of Chinese people, April 25 is also a remembrance day, for it is the day that millions of Chinese citizens lost their faith in the Chinese communist authorities. It was the day they lost their innocence.

On April 25 1999, an estimated 10,000 practitioners of Falun Dafa, a qigong exercise and meditation practice, arrived at Zhongnanhai—the government compound in Beijing—to protest the beating and arrest of some 45 practitioners in Tianjin the previous day …

The Tianjin practitioners had gone to the offices of the university newspaper to correct an inflammatory story about Falun Gong by He Zuoxiu, the brother-in-law of Luo Gan, head of the Ministry of Public Security at the time, that had been published on April 11. This was the first instance of practitioners being  beaten and arrested by the police.

At that time, figures collated by Chinese authorities estimated that between 70 and 100 million people were practising Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa, or the Great Way) in China. Jiang Zemin, who held the positions of President of the People’s Republic of China, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and Chairman of the Central Militray Commission at the time, was starting to become uncomfortable and jealous over the numbers and there were rumours that a clampdown could be imminent. However, to the thousands in Beijing, the inflammatory newspaper articles and random arrests were a sign Chinese authorities had got it wrong.

“We believed, because we just follow Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, to be a good person, so we believe this happens [the arrests] because the Government does not know the truth and … maybe there is some misunderstanding,” said Tian Tian, a Chinese practitioner who now lives in Australia.

“Those practitioners believed the Government will do something about it and solve the problem,” she explained.

All through the day, practitioners waited quietly to meet with officials. Finally, three of them were able to speak to

Premier Zhu Rongji. He promised to have the Tianjin practitioners freed and reiterated the regime’s policy on non-interference in qigong practices.

Ms Liu, who studied at Beijing University and now lives in Canada, said: “Many people were practising Falun Gong back then, especially in the Haidian District, where many institutions of higher academic learning were located. We all thought the problem was over after April 25 and we would be able to continue to practise in peace.”

These dreams soon faded, however. The Chinese Communist Party began a vicious campaign against Falun Gong and used the turnout at Zhongnanhai to claim that Falun Gong was subversive and a threat to the Communist state.

Falun Gong was officially banned on July 20 that year, the Communist Party propaganda machine geared up for action and so began a decade of violent, state co-ordinated persecution.

According to the Faluninfo website, over 3000 practitioners have died as a result of torture and detention in labour camps since 1999 and thousands remain missing or in labour camps. Others put the number of deaths much higher.

In a report on his 2005 mission to China, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture stated that 66 per cent of the reports of torture involved Falun Gong practitioners as victims.

More recently, a report from the Falun Dafa Information Centre recorded over 8000 arrests of Falun Gong practitioners in China during 2008. These arrests fly in the face of claims that the Olympics would improve human rights and freedom of expression in China.

April 25 at Zhongnanhai will be commemorated around the world and remembered as the day so many everyday Chinese people learned what the Chinese Communist Party is really like.

- The Epochtimes

Up to 190,000 may have died as a result of China’s weapons tests

Michael Sheridan, Times Online, April 19, 2009 -

The nuclear test grounds in the wastes of the Gobi desert have fallen silent but veterans of those lonely places are speaking out for the first time about the terrible price exacted by China’s zealous pursuit of the atomic bomb.

They talk of picking up radioactive debris with their bare hands, of sluicing down bombers that had flown through mushroom clouds, of soldiers dying before their time of strange and rare diseases, and children born with mysterious cancers.

These were the men and women of Unit 8023, a special detachment charged with conducting atomic tests at Lop Nur in Xinjiang province, a place of utter desolation and – until now – complete secrecy.

“I was a member of Unit 8023 for 23 years,” said one old soldier in an interview. “My job was to go into the blast zone to retrieve test objects and monitoring equipment after the explosion.

“When my daughter was born she was diagnosed with a huge tumour on her spinal cord. The doctors blame nuclear fallout. She’s had two major operations and has lived a life of indescribable hardship. And all we get from the government is 130 yuan [£13] a month.”

Hardship and risk counted for little when China was determined to join the nuclear club at any cost.

Soldiers galloped on horseback towards mushroom clouds, with only gas masks for protection.

Scientists jumped for joy, waving their little red books of Maoist thought, while atomic debris boiled in the sky.

Engineers even replicated a full-scale Beijing subway station beneath the sands of the Gobi to test who might survive a Sino-Soviet armageddon.

New research suggests the Chinese nuclear tests from 1964 to 1996 claimed more lives than those of any other nation. Professor Jun Takada, a Japanese physicist, has calculated that up to 1.48m people were exposed to fallout and 190,000 of them may have died from diseases linked to radiation.

“Nuclear sands” – a mixture of dust and fission products – were blown by prevailing winds from Lop Nur towards towns and villages along the ancient Silk Road from China to the West.

The victims included Chinese, Uighur Muslims and Tibetans, who lived in these remote regions. Takada found deformed children as far away as Kazakhstan. No independent scientific study has ever been published inside China.

It is the voices of the Chinese veterans, however, that will reso-nate loudest in a nation proud of its nuclear status but ill informed about the costs. One group has boldly published letters to the state council and the central military commission – the two highest government and military bodies – demanding compensation.

“Most of us are between 50 and 70 and in bad health,” they said. “We did the most hazardous job of all, retrieving debris from the missile tests.

“We were only 10 kilometres [six miles] from the blast. We entered the zone many times with no protective suits, only goggles and gas masks. Afterwards, we just washed ourselves down with plain water.”

A woman veteran of Unit 8023 described in an interview how her hair had fallen out. She had lost weight, suffered chronic insomnia and had episodes of confusion.

“Between 1993 and 1996 the government speeded up the test programme, so I assisted at 10 underground explosions,” she said. “We had to go into the test zone to check highly radioactive instruments. Now I’m too sick to work – will the government help me?”

The price was paid by more than one generation. “My father was in Unit 8023 from 1967 to 1979, when his job was to wash down aircraft that had flown through the mushroom clouds,” said a 37-year-old man.

“I’ve been disabled by chronic immune system diseases all my life and my brother’s daughter was born with a heart defect,” he said. “Our family has spent thousands of yuan on operations over the decades. Two and three generations of our family have such illnesses – was it the nuclear tests? Does our government plan any compensation?”

In fact, the government has already responded to pressure from veterans’ groups. Last year Li Xueju, the minister of civil affairs, let slip that the state had started to pay “subsidies” to nuclear test personnel but gave no details of the amounts.

Such is the legacy of the decision by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, in 1955, to build the bomb in order to make China a great power.

Mao was driven by fear of the US and rivalry with the Soviet Union. He coveted the might that would be bestowed by nuclear weapons on a poor agricultural nation. Celebrations greeted the first test explosion on October 16, 1964.

The scientists staged a total of 46 tests around the Lop Nur site, 1,500 miles west of Beijing. Of these tests, 23 were in the atmosphere, 22 underground and one failed. They included thermonuclear blasts, neutron bombs and an atomic bomb covertly tested for Pakistan on May 26, 1990.

One device, dropped from an aircraft on November 17, 1976, was 320 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

The last explosion in the air was in 1980, but the last underground test was not until July 29, 1996. Later that year, China signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and, once again, only the sigh of the winds could be heard in the desolation of the Gobi desert.

The financial cost remains secret, but the price of the first bomb was roughly equal to more than a third of the entire state budget for 1957 – spending that went on while at least 30m Chinese peasants died of famine and the nuclear scientists themselves lived on hardship rations.

Rare was the outsider who gained a glimpse of this huge project. One was Danny Stillman, director of technical intelligence at Los Alamos, New Mexico, home of America’s nuclear weapons. He made 10 visits to secret Chinese nuclear facilities during a period of detente and information exchange from 1990 to 2001.

“Some of the videos they showed me were of PLA [People’s Liberation Army] soldiers riding on horses – with gas masks over the noses and mouths of both the horses and the soldiers – as they were riding towards the mushroom cloud of an atmospheric surface detonation,” Stillman recalled.

“It was strange because the soldiers had swords raised above their heads as they headed for the radioactive fallout. I have always wondered how many of them survived.”

Stillman was also allowed to see the lengths to which the Chinese scientists had gone to experiment with annihilation in the desert.

Like the Americans, the Chinese placed caged live animals, tanks, planes, vehicles and buildings around test sites. Such were the remains gathered by the men and women of Unit 8302.

“The surprise to me was that they also had a full-scale Beijing subway station with all supporting utilities constructed at an undefined depth directly underneath,” said Stillman.

“There were 10,000 animals and a model of a Yangtze River bridge,” recalled Wu Qian, a scientist.

Li Yi, a woman doctor, added: “Animals placed two kilometres from the blast centre were burnt to cinders and those eight kilometres away died within a few days.”

China had borrowed Soviet blueprints and spied on the West, according to The Nuclear Express, a book by Stillman and Thomas Reed, the former US air force secretary.

It explains how China then exploited its human capital to win technological parity with the US for just 4% of the effort – 45 successful test explosions against more than 1,000 American tests.

“The Chinese nuclear weapon scientists I met . . . were exceptionally brilliant,” Stillman said.

Of China’s top 10 pioneers, two were educated at Edinburgh University – Cheng Kaijia, director of the weapons laboratory, and Peng Huan-wu, designer of the first thermonuclear bomb. Six went to college in the United States, one in France and one in Germany.

For all this array of genius, no Chinese scientist has dared to publish a study of the human toll.

That taboo has been broken by Takada, a physicist at the faculty of medicine at Sapporo University, who is an adviser on radiation hazards to the government of Japan.

He developed a computer simulation model, based on fieldwork at Soviet test sites in Kazakhstan, to calculate that 1.48m people were exposed to contamination during 32 years of Chinese tests.

Takada used internationally recognised radiation dosage measurements to estimate that 190,000 have died of cancer or leukaemia. He believes 35,000 foetuses were deformed or miscarried, with cases found as far away as Makanchi, near the Kazakh border with China.

To put his findings in perspective, Takada said China’s three biggest tests alone generated 4m times more radioactivity than the Chernobyl reactor accident of 1986. He has called the clouds of fallout “an air tsunami”.

Despite the pall of silence inside China, two remarkable proofs of the damage to health have come from official Communist party documents, dated 2007 and available on provincial websites.

One is a request to the health ministry from peasants’ and workers’ delegates in Xinjiang province for a special hospital to be built to cope with large numbers of patients who were “exposed to radiation or who wandered into the test zones by mistake”.

The other records a call by a party delegate named Xingfu for compensation and a study of “the severe situation of radiation sickness” in the county of Xiaobei, outside the oasis town of Dunhuang.

Both claims were rejected. Residents of Xiaobei report an alarming number of cancer deaths and children born with cleft palates, bone deformities and scoliosis, a curvature of the spine.

Specialists at hospitals in three cities along the Silk Road all reported a disproportionate number of cancer and leukaemia cases.

“I have read the Japanese professor’s work on the internet and I think it is credible,” said one. No cancer statistics for the region are made public.

Some memories, though, remain indelible. One man in Dunhuang recalled climbing up a mountain-side to watch a great pillar of dust swirl in from the desert.

“For days we were ordered to keep our windows closed and stay inside,” recounted another middle-aged man. “For months we couldn’t eat vegetables or fruits. Then after a while they didn’t bother with that any more.”

But they did go on testing. And the truth about the toll may never be known unless, one day, a future Chinese government allows pathologists to search for the answers in the cemeteries of the Silk Road.

The dead of Dunhuang lie in a waste ground on the fringe of the desert, at the foot of great dunes where tourists ride on camels. Tombs, cairns and unmarked heaps of earth dot the boundless sands.

By local tradition, the clothes of the deceased are thrown away at their funerals. Dresses, suits and children’s garments lie half-buried by dust around the graves.

“People don’t live long around here,” said a local man who led me to the graveyard. “Fifty, 60 – then they’re gone.”

- Timesonline.co.uk : Revolt stirs among China’s nuclear ghosts

China seen as growing sourceof cyber attacks, Symantec report says

San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, April 19, 2009 -

A Symantec report released Tuesday said 22 percent of all attacks targeting governments around the world originated in China.

Symantec’s technical director, Zulfikar Ramzan, said the increase in attacks originating from China mirrors the rise in Internet use in China. “I think what we’re seeing is that there are a lot more machines that are online,” Ramzan said. “Those machines then become more easy to compromise,” he told Congressional Quarterly.
Notable cyberattacks

2007: Chinese hackers broke into the Pentagon’s computer network, as well as systems of the German government.

2008: A virus infiltrated the U.S. military’s computer system. The Pentagon blamed the use of external drives by troops in the field.

Russian spies are blamed for crippling the civilian and military computer networks of Georgia prior to the invasion of that country.

2009: The Internet network of Kyrgyzstan is shut down in January. The worms are traced to Russian servers.

- San Francisco Chronicle

Former Party Leader’s Memorial Day Becomes China’s Taboo

The Epoch Times,  Apr 16, 2009 -

Beijing was unusually quiet on April 15, a day that marks the 20th anniversary of former senior leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Hu Yaobang’s death. The official ceremony was banned and Tiananmen Square was also closed early. Hu’s remaining family held a private ceremony at his cemetery while the general public was seen in Beijing holding a tribute for him. Vigorous discussion was seen online to commemorate Hu as well.

The Memorial Becomes the CCP’s Political Taboo

Hu Yaobang, a reformist in the communist party, won people’s heart but was forced to resign in 1987 due to his weak response towards the 1986 student protest. Hu passed away on April 15 two years after his resignation. His death triggered the explosion of public anger. Large scale commemorative activities were initiated and gradually evolved into student demonstrations of anti-corruption. Finally, the series of activities ended with the military, and police opened fire upon the student protest at Tiananmen Square to suppress them. Since then, the day of April 15 has became a political taboo for the CCP. Years later, the regime did hold a memorial ceremony for Hu; however, it was done in 2005 on Hu’s birthday, November 18.

Hong Kong newspaper The Apple Daily reported that Beijing ordered no official memorial service from the government was to be conducted. Hu’s family, including his eldest son Hu Deping, went to Jiujang City, Jiangxi Province where Hu is buried, for a quiet ceremony which has taken place for the past 20 years.

Hu’s cemetery has also become a sensitive place in the past 20 years, a worker at the cemetery said. Despite that, each year many people, including central and local officials, have visited the cemetery to pay tribute on the anniversary of his death.

The report also quoted from an insider that Hu’s family has been disappointed by the current party leader Hu Jintao. He was absent during the 2005 memorial, the only high profile ceremony conducted by the regime. Hu Yaobang is known to have been the driving force behind Hu Jintao’s political success.

CCP Tightens Security and Censorship

Tiananmen Square closed at 6 p.m., much earlier than the regular closing time. Many more security in uniform and plain clothes policemen were present at the public gates and subway entrances. Random checks were more frequent on April 15. Meanwhile, activists have either been under supervision or detention. According to Agence France-Presse, 52-year-old human rights activist Qi Zhiyong, who was disabled during the June 4 massacre, was detained by Beijing police in the morning of April 15. Dissident writer Jiang Qishen also experienced increased scrutiny by his hometown police.

Many Web site postings were deleted, and yet many Web users still publicized their online memorials with numerous messages. In regard to the responses from both the regime and the public, Professor Du Guan, former Director of Research at the Central Party School and a member of the think tank during Hu Yaobang’s and Zhao Ziyang’s leadership, indicated that Hu’s anniversary has become ultra sensitive for the regime; his death directly led to the student democracy movement and the June 4 Massacre. He believes that if Hu’s historical position is confirmed by the regime, it means the CCP needs to readdress the Tiananmen Square Massacre. “This is something impossible for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” he said.

Professor Du stated that the CCP is very short-sighted. “The June 4th movement is the pioneer of Chinese democracy. The CCP should pay back for the June 4th massacre and Hu Yaobang’s death.”

- The Epochtimes: Former CCP Leader’s Memorial Day Becomes the Party’s Taboo

Hong Kong students urge China to “rectify” June 4 stance

Reuters, Fri Apr 17, 2009 -

HONG KONG, April 17 (Reuters) – A poll of Hong Kong students has found China should be held accountable for its military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Beijing’s Tiananamen Square in 1989 in which hundreds were killed.

Ahead of the key 20th anniversary of the crackdown on June 4th, the University of Hong Kong held a three-day campus-wide referendum on whether China should “rectify” its verdict that the June 4 protests were counter-revolutionary and be held accountable for the event it described as a “massacre”.

Only 19 percent of the roughly 10,000 undergraduate student body cast votes in the poll that ended on Thursday, but 93 percent of them supported the move, the university’s student union said.

The student union called the result a “momentous landmark” after recent signs of indifference and on-campus tensions in Hong Kong between democratic-minded students and conservative elements wanting to tone down the criticism of Beijing, particularly among students from mainland China.

“Twenty years on from Tiananmen, the students of the University of Hong Kong have not forgotten,” it said in a statement.

The demonstrations that drew more than a million people on to Beijing’s streets are now a fading memory, and the killings are still taboo in mainland Chinese media.

The formerly British-ruled Hong Kong has remained the only city on Chinese soil where annual June 4 vigils, remembrances and protests are tolerated.

Jenny Ngai, the union’s acting external affairs secretary, said that while the turnout rate was “not great”, the vote sent a strong signal to society that Hong Kong’s students, unlike those silenced by authorities on the mainland, would continue to speak out.

- Reuters

China’s plan fails to address many serious and on-going human rights violations

Amnesty International, 14 April 2009 -

The Chinese authorities have released a National Human Rights Action Plan that, in some areas, includes concrete targets for 2010.

Amnesty International has welcomed the plan, saying that it signals the growing importance the Chinese authorities place on the protection of human rights and adherence to international human rights standards.

The organization said that the targets, if achieved, would be important steps forward for human rights, but pointed to major gaps in the plan.

“The emphasis is on economic, social and cultural rights at the expense of civil and political rights,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director. “But it should be clear that the Chinese people can’t enjoy one set of rights without the others.”

The action plan fails to address many serious and on-going human rights violations in China.

These violations include the harassment, detention and imprisonment of human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience who have been targeted solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression; censorship of the Internet and other media; and the continued use of forms of administrative detention, including Re-education Through Labour, which deprives individuals of their liberty for up to four years without the opportunity for a fair trial.

In several areas of civil and political rights, for example on death penalty, eradication of torture and freedom of religion, the new proposals simply repeat existing laws and policies that have failed to adequately protect human rights.

“For China’s human rights action plan to have real impact on the ground, authorities will have to take concrete steps that will meaningfully improve life for the people,” said Roseann Rife. “These include steps to address specific civil and political human rights violations such as those highlighted in concluding observations and recommendations of UN human rights monitoring mechanisms and treaty bodies.”

In November 2008, an expert from the UN Committee against Torture noted serious discrepancies between legislative protections against torture and their implementation on the ground.

As a signatory of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and a party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, China has an obligation to protect the civil and political rights enumerated in these treaties.

Amnesty International reiterated its call for the Chinese authorities to ratify the ICCPR, which China signed in 1998. The Chinese authorities have repeatedly stated their intention to ratify.

- Amnesty International: China’s new human rights plan emphasizes economic rights at expense of civil liberties

International reporter in China: Democracy slaughtered in Tiananmen Square in 1989

Jon Swain in Beijing, via Timesonline, UK -

I WITNESSED the sickening reality of murderous repression last Friday morning and checked my watch. It was 11.42am, five days after the People’s Liberation Army launched its devastating assault on Tiananmen Square.

Then, the soldiers stabbed and slashed at students and onlookers with their bayonets, shot them with their pistols and rifles before tanks mangled their bodies in an act of barbarity that will be remembered as one of the darkest days in China’s history.

More than ever last Friday morning, Beijing was a city of anguish and fear. Troops and secret police were out in force to arrest anyone suspected of involvement in the pro-democracy movement.

CCTV, the state television network that just a week before had been broadcasting honest news about the pro-democracy demonstrations, was again fettered, giving telephone numbers for people to denounce and rat on “counter-revolutionaries”. In a grim exercise in propaganda it showed pictures of people being led away to confess their crimes.

With the hardliners of the Communist party under Deng Xiaoping, China’s senior leader, relentlessly gathering power this was, above all, a moment to remain inconspicuous.

For one young man whose world had collapsed on bloody Sunday in Tiananmen Square, the struggle against oppression went on despite the reign of terror. He fearlessly rode his bicycle out of a side street on the east side of the square, waving a red student protest banner in a lone act of defiance against the crackdown.

He was only in his twenties, dressed in slacks and a white shirt. As he emerged onto the main Boulevard of Eternal Peace, two armed policemen seized him and tore the banner from his hand.

There was no struggle and no time to cry for democracy or liberty. With sickening thuds, truncheon blows rained down on the young man in full view of a gathering crowd. He was dragged to an army tent beneath the high red walls of the Forbidden City. From there came a single shot.

A few in the crowd shouted angrily. Abrupt orders to disperse, backed up by a menacing wave of rifles, stilled the dissent.

By such an event one knows that China has reverted to a police state, its ideal of more democracy crushed. The People’s Liberation Army is supposed to love the people, but since the massacre a week ago its soldiers, with rare exception, have been behaving like a foreign army of occupation.

After the slaughter, western diplomats say the army now arouses as much dread and hatred as the Gestapo did in occupied Europe. At a bus stop in the centre of the city on Friday a man said: “This is a fascist state. If we had guns we would overthrow it now.”

The trigger-happy soldiers, who had gunned down people with abandon throughout the week, had by Saturday occupied positions across Beijing. “They have a knife at the city’s very throat,” said an attendant at one leading hotel. “I was in Tiananmen on Sunday morning and my best friend was killed.”

Estimates of western intelligence officials range from 3,000 to 7,000 dead and 10,000 wounded. It seems bizarre, but the first event that led to the bloodbath was a traffic accident. Until that moment, despite the imposition of martial law, both sides had shown remarkable restraint.

Then a police vehicle crashed into cyclists, killing at least one. As word of the accident spread, it generated fresh anger and revitalised the flagging protest movement.

Many atrocities were committed by troops that night. A western military attaché told how a young mother in the Avenue of Eternal Peace had pleaded with the troops to shoot her but spare the baby in her arms. A soldier bayoneted her to death.

One had only to stroll through a residential area of Beijing yesterday to gauge the revulsion for the regime. A statue to youth and vitality was garlanded with wreaths in memory of residents who had been cut down by the army. They included a six-year-old girl and a member of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament.

Pinned to a wreath was a simple statement: “June 4, the darkest day in the history of the motherland.”

Jon Swain was international reporter of the year in 1989

- Timesonline: From The Archive: Democracy slaughtered in Tiananmen Square

China: Public Officials On Trial for Using Young Girls As Prostitutes

Central News Agency, Via The Epochtimes, Apr 11, 2009 -

TAIPEI— On April 8, the Xishui County People’s Court in China’s Quizhou Province held a non-public trial involving a case about public officials who used young schoolgirls as prostitutes. The matter was notorious enough to be talked about in the whole country. Seven suspects, including five public officials, appeared in court for the trial.

The trial was not made public because the case involved both minors and personal privacy. Even so, hundreds of angry people gathered outside the courthouse during the trial. The court has decided to choose a date to adjudicate the case.

Xishui County Party Committee member Li Ling said on Voice of America that the public officials who were involved in this case have either been dismissed, suspended or had their salaries suspended.

Guiyang City freelance writer Zeng Ning suggested that this case was just another symptom of the moral bankruptcy and rampant corruption seen in China today.

“Just look at how bad China’s current education system has become. Young girls were deceived by their teachers to be used as prostitutes for public officials. It seems that some teachers will do anything to profit from students and parents. I think this action should be condemned by society and those public officials should also be subjected to severe legal sanctions,” said Zeng.

Former “Bijie Daily” reporter Li Yuanlong said that with such a heinous crime, this case is supposed to be sent to an intermediate court rather than the Xishui County People’s Court. He suspects that some high-ranking authorities are protecting the defendants in secret. He also noted the manipulative, exculpatory terminology “visiting young girl prostitutes” being used in the trial and in the media.

Li believes that the terminology used in the case is not right. Officials are reported as ‘visiting prostitutes,’ which suggests that there is an adult voluntarily offering a service. In a voluntary situation with an adult there would be no charge, and such behavior should only be penalized by administrative means. However, Li points out that this case involves young girls who were used for sex against their will, which should be regarded as rape.

Beijing attorney Li Heping said that the rape of young girls is to be severely punished—commanding a sentence of at least three to seven years. “Raping a young girl could earn a sentence of over seven years in jail. A perpetrator could even be sentenced to death in more serious cases,” he said.

- The Epochtimes

China Blocks UN Censure for North Korean Missile Test

By Bill Varner, The Bloomberg, Apr. 10, 2009 -

April 10 (Bloomberg) – The U.S. and Japan failed to reach an agreement with China on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning North Korea’s missile test.

Meetings in New York since the April 5 launch yielded no consensus, with China blocking censure by the Security Council and rebuffing an appeal for “swift” action by Japan. There are no further meetings scheduled this week.

“If we don’t do something, the existence of the Security Council as well as the meaning of its resolutions become doubtful,” Shintaro Ito, Japan’s state secretary for foreign affairs, told reporters at the UN in New York. “This is a big test for the UN.”

Japan, the only country in the missile’s flight path, is seeking a resolution to “reinforce” previous UN measures that condemned North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test and missile launches. The international body at the time imposed sanctions that include a ban on the sale of missiles, warships, tanks, attack helicopters and combat aircraft.

Japan today extended its own existing sanctions on North Korea for a year and restricted cash transfers. Japan banned North Korean imports and barred its ships from calling on Japanese ports after Kim’s government in July 2006 test-fired missiles that fell into the Sea of Japan shortly after launch. Three months later, North Korea detonated a nuclear device.

Additional Sanctions

“We decided on the one-year extension and additional sanctions as a result of the missile launch,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters in Tokyo today. Lawmakers within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party pushed for harsher measures such as a complete export ban.

China this week signaled the nature of the impasse in the UN by reiterating its call for restraint. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said China has “taken note” of North Korea’s claim that it launched a communications satellite into space, without elaborating. The comment is at odds with the U.S. and Japanese contention that Kim Jong Il’s regime was attempting to test a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

“Some are talking about the launch of a missile, others about a satellite,” Ambassador Jorge Urbina of Costa Rica, a Security Council member, said. “The U.S. wants a strong statement, but it is very difficult to reconcile both positions.”

Preserving Leverage

Urbina said China wants to “preserve its leverage” in the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. Those negotiations, which also include the U.S., Japan, Russia and South Korea, stalled last year when Kim’s government refused to let international inspectors examine its nuclear reactor.

“The six-party talks proved effective in increasing understanding and trust among those involved and is an important platform to help realize a nuclear-free Korean peninsula,” Jiang said.

Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi of Libya, a Security Council member, said foreign ministers of the U.K., China, France, Russia and the U.S. didn’t agree on a UN reaction in talks over the past two days and there is “nothing on the table now.” Dababashi said the Security Council’s five permanent members might never agree on a response to the launch.

Possible Deal

French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert signaled a possible deal by saying a resolution that calls for the implementation of existing sanctions, which include a travel ban and asset freeze on officials of North Korea’s missile program. No one has ever been put on the list for such penalties.

“It was a little bit soft,” Ripert said of the enforcement of the prior sanctions.

China signaled in private talks that it might ultimately support such a resolution, Mexican and Costa Rican ambassadors on the Security Council said.

- The Bloomberg

China Firm Indicted in Financing Military Sales to Iran

By Colum Lynch, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, April 8, 2009-

NEW YORK, April 7 — A Manhattan grand jury on Tuesday indicted a Chinese executive and his company on charges of covertly using New York banks to finance the sale of tons of restricted materials to Iran, potentially supporting Tehran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs in violation of U.N. sanctions.

The indictment, announced by Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, accused Li Fang Wei and his company, LIMMT Economic and Trade Co., of selling high-strength metals with military applications to subsidiaries of an Iranian military agency. Many of the items are on international control lists designed to restrict the export to select countries of technologies that can be used for military programs.

The case exposed a major gap in China’s enforcement of a web of international export controls and U.N. resolutions designed to prevent Iran from acquiring raw materials for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, according to arms-control experts.

The indictment charged Li and his company with 118 criminal counts of falsifying business records, saying the company “engaged in deception and fraud” and used “alias names and shell companies to deceive U.S. financial institutions into processing its international payments.”

“Sanctions are effective only if they are enforced,” said Morgenthau, who noted that Li is at large in China. “We may not be able to shut down Li’s factories, but we can shine a light on his conduct and the conduct of foreign banks that permit these types of operations to flourish.”

The Treasury Department sanctioned LIMMT in June 2006 for its alleged role in selling prohibited weapons parts and banned it from carrying out transactions within the U.S. financial system. Li’s customers included a number of subsidiaries of the Iranian Defense Industries Organization. The indictment describes several Iranian transactions involving those firms, including a June 2008 deal to sell 27 tons of extremely high-strength “maraging” steel rods to Amin Industrial Group for about $1.8 million. Li secretly channeled payments to customers through several American banks, including Bank of America, Citibank and J.P. Morgan Chase, according to the indictment.

David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert who assisted in the prosecution, said that it is impossible to say how Iran used the raw materials it acquired. But he said the steel can be used to fortify missile bodies, and another acquisition, tungsten copper plates, can be used in the manufacture of engine nozzles that shield a missile body from the intense heat of flames.

- Washington Post: Chinese Firm Indicted in Sales to Iran

Thousands of Workers on Strike for Over Seven Days in North China for Being Laid Off

By Gu Qinger, Epoch Times Staff Apr 9, 2009 -

For seven consecutive days, workers at the Yimian Group in Baoding, Hebei Province, have staged a large-scale strike. In order to prevent the new buyer of the company from moving out the equipment, several thousand workers surrounded the factory, and stood on watch day and night. According to workers on the scene, the strike was still going on as of April 3. Some workers have gone to Beijing to appeal for readdress of the injustice. Although the local  authorities sent an investigational group to the factory,  that didn’t remedy any of the issues.

Yimian Group is an old enterprise with a 50-year history. In 2003, the company had 9,021 employees. In 2004, in a re-organization,  all of its shares were sold to the Zhongce Group in Hong Kong. Subsequently, Zhongce Group established a specialized company called Asian Textile Enterprise. After this re-organization, a large number of workers were laid off, with only four thousand  being retained.

The reason  for this large-scale strike was because several thousand workers learned at the end of last month that the company has been secretly sold, but no workers had been told anything about it. Only about one hundred of the nearly four thousand workers will be retained to work at a new factory in Baoding county. The rest will all be laid off. Since last Friday, almost ten thousand workers, including those already retired from Yimian Group, spontaneously went to the factory to watch over the equipment.

The workers disclosed many illegal transactions before and after the reorganizations, including  severe loss of state-owned assets. They explained that after the reorganization five years ago, the promised $50 million investment in three years after the buy-off  was never made. For five years, the payment for employee compensation was delayed, and the retirement insurance also has not been  paid.

Workers stated that the factory originally had $700 million in assets, but now has nothing. The factory has been sold, and the money has disappeared. Now the new buyer and city government cannot or will not answer questions raised by the workers about these transactions.

One worker, Mr. Liu, told this reporter, “This strike has been going on for seven days. The bosses of the factory terminated the contracts with workers for no reason, and halted the production. The factory has been sold. Those  bosses swallowed up all the money, and now the workers have no way to make a living.”

Another worker said, “We are protecting the factory. The leaders planned to sell all the equipment, but the workers protected the factory. Everyone from eighty-year old retirees to young workers and old leaders all came out to ask for justice. Now is the peak time of the strike. Workers are especially angry.”

“Every day there are three to four thousand workers taking turns protecting the equipment, and preventing the buyers from moving the equipment,” he said.

Mr. Liu said, “The city government sent an investigation group to investigate and maintain  order. However, their true responsibility was to monitor the situation. There are many  plainclothes as well as uniformed police outside—nearly 200 to 300 people. We dare not to go in and out freely because we are afraid of being arrested. Now Baoding is blocking the  news of the strike, not publicizing anything.”

When an Epoch Times reporter called the city government of Baoding to inquire about the strike, a staff person there dismissed the call, saying that he is not aware of this matter and that any interview should be directed to the Propaganda Department.”

- The Epochtimes:  Thousands on Strike for Over Seven Days in Baoding, Hebei Province