2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 35 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Apr. 2008, people are continue quitting at a rate of 44,000 to 56,000 per day in April 2008.
- China: 35 Million Chinese Quit the Communist Party
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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Well-known Chinese writer Zhang Lin publicly declared his withdrawal from the Communist Youth League (CYL) August 20 during an interview with the Chinese Epoch Times (Dajiyuan).
Zhang Lin, a democracy activist from eastern China’s Anhui Province, had been serving a five-year sentence for an article he published on the internet in 2005. He was released from prison August 12 for health reasons.
During his time in prison, Zhang was unaware of the current campaign of quitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. During the interview of August 20, he publicly quit the CYL.
Mr. Zhang said he was greatly moved and inspired when he read the withdrawal statement of Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa. Mr. Li’s statement of withdrawal from the CYL had been published in the Chinese Epoch Times. Zhang gave the reporter his own statement as follows.
“My mother’s parents were landlords, and she was thus bullied [by the CCP], so I’ve opposed the Communist Party since I was little. I didn’t join the Red Guards or the Communist Young Pioneers.
“However, when I studied at Qinghua University, all of my classmates were members of the CYL or the CCP. I bowed to peer pressure and joined the CYL with an unclear mind. But I haven’t joined any of their activities; neither did I pay dues after a few months.
“I have been out of the CYL for many years, and I’ve bitterly hated the CCP. Even so, having been a member of the CYL and having taken the serious [membership] oath remains a stain on my life and troubles my conscience deeply. Therefore, I solemnly and publicly declare my withdrawal from the CYL and hereby draw a clear and distinct line between myself and all organizations and institutions of the evil CCP.
“I’m not only completely breaking off from the CCP, but will also fight against this devil to the end. Between the righteous and the evil, I will never hesitate to choose justice—no matter how great the price I must pay.”
Zhang said he believes that “only through a declaration of withdrawal from the CCP can one be saved, truly expel the evil spirit, and stand on the side [that is] blessed by God. If we believe in and choose justice and conscience, God will save us,” he continued.
“We must believe in God and trust ourselves to God. There will be a good future.” said Zhang……. (more details)
By Charlotte Cuthbertson, Epoch Times Staff, Aug 5, 2009 -
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr. Manfred Nowak (Via The Epochtimes)
No straight answers have been produced by the Chinese regime over the allegations of state-sanctioned organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, says Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.
“The Chinese government has yet to come clean and be transparent,” said Nowak in an interview with The Epoch Times. “It remains to be seen how it could be possible that organ transplant surgeries in Chinese hospitals have risen massively since 1999, while there are never that many voluntary donors available.”
The Chinese Communist Party has denied the allegations for three years despite several compelling investigative reports and several probes by the United Nations. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on truth, compassion, tolerance, and includes five sets of meditative exercises. In July 1999, the communist regime in China began persecuting people who practice it.
Investigative Reports
International human rights lawyer David Matas, and former crown prosecutor and member of parliament, David Kilgour, published their first report in July 2006, following up with a second in January 2007.
Major findings include 41,500 organs in transplants unaccounted for between 2001 and 2005. Transplants increased in parallel with the persecution of Falun Gong. In 2001 the amount of liver transplants in China numbered seven. By 2005 it had reached 2,168 for one hospital. The Chinese military is heavily involved in the transplant system in China, and the regime has admitted that the vast majority of organs for transplant come from executed prisoners.
“The explanation that most of these organs come from death row inmates is inconclusive,” said Nowak. “If so, the number of executed felons must then be much higher as so far assumed. I have asked the Chinese government to provide clarity and asked for precise data.”
The accusations remain, said Nowak. “They were denied, but the Chinese government has not invalidated them, but on the other hand they haven´t been proven either. This makes for a difficult dilemma—one that only be resolved if China is willing to cooperate. And that is what is lacking.”
United Nations Requests Ignored
Nowak has submitted two reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council formally requesting the Chinese regime respond to the allegations. The report states, in part, that, “The [Falun Gong] practitioners were given injections to induce heart failure, and therefore were killed in the course of the organ harvesting operations or immediately thereafter.”
“Nothing seems to have changed for the better,” said Nowak. “We lack exact statistics. I cannot say if the situation has changed since I left China. But I have no reason to assume anything has turned for the better, because I have not had any such hints. The majority of the inmates in these [forced labor] camps were Falun Gong members. And that is so frightening, because none of these people were ever given the benefit of a trial. They were never charged.”
“Bloody Harvest” outlines extraordinarily short wait times for organs in China—one to two weeks for a liver compared with 32.5 months in Canada (median wait for 2003) as a further incriminating factor. Kilgour and Matas also present self-accusatory material from Chinese transplant centre Web sites that advertise the immediate availability of large numbers of organs from living donors. Organ price lists were available on Chinese hospital Web sites.
The Kilgour-Matas report includes evidence from a hospital Web site (now removed), that claims, from “January 2005 to now, we have done 647 liver transplants—12 of them done this week. The average waiting time is two weeks.”
A chart also removed about the same time indicates that in 1998 the hospital completed only nine liver transplants—by 2005 it had completed fully 2248.
No Trials, Forced Labor Camps
In a 2005 trip to China that took Nowak 10 years of requests to the regime, he discovered that two-thirds of the torture cases reported in labor camps were Falun Gong practitioners.
Falun Gong practitioners are put into forced labor camps, said Nowak. “In the same way the officials deal with prostitutes or with those that exhibit ‘other socially damaging behavior.’ One can say that a relatively big part of the inmates in these camps are Falun Gong persons. It definitely is one of the largest groups.”
Nowak said the number of practitioners in China is huge. “In spite of the persecution [it] has not diminished, but increased,” he said.
“Genocide has a specific background—ethnic, racist, or religious discrimination; in this case it could be religious discrimination. “[What the regime is doing] amounts to a systematic repression of a specific group of people for religious/political reasons, although the Chinese leadership has always denied this to be a religious movement.”…… (more details fromThe Epochtimes)
Numbers are symbols; they represent anything and everything. But they also hide what they represent, like a mask. In ten years, the names of over 3,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been collected; they are the names of people who have been killed through torture by Chinese authorities. But, how many more people simply disappeared after the persecution began? And what is the connection to China’s booming organ transplant industry. Though the truth is still unknown, the evidence points to a disturbing conclusion about the new China, and of what the rest of the world is willing to ignore. In this original investigation, NTD attempts to discover: ‘what happened to the people who disappeared?’
NEW YORK – Despite a common narrative among many journalists that Falun Gong has largely been “crushed” (a narrative championed by the Chinese Communist Party), the degree to which Falun Gong is targeted by Green Dam demonstrates that the group and its adherents’ resistance remain one of the single biggest concerns of the CCP leadership.
According to an analysis of Green Dam’s key word libraries, 2,700 keywords are related to pornography sites, while 6,500 keywords are related to “politically sensitive” topics – a majority of which are Falun Gong (report). If, indeed, Falun Gong is “crushed,” why does it remain one of the largest targets of censorship by the CCP? The following are the top four reasons.
(1) Hiding crimes against Falun Gong adherents, especially in lead up to July 20th Anniversary
Over the past ten years, Falun Gong adherents have been systematically subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture and killings in forced labor camps and “re-education” centers throughout China, abuses that legal experts have qualified as crimes against humanity. These large-scale rights abuses that have been well documented by the Falun Dafa Information Center, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. Yet, state-controlled media inside China block all objective coverage of Falun Gong, and access to objective information over the Internet is also blocked by China’s nationwide “Great Firewall.”
Always sensitive to anniversaries, it is likely the rush to have Green Dam installed by July 1st is in part an attempt to stifle Internet activity prior to July 20th – the tenth anniversary of the launch of the campaign to “stamp out Falun Gong.”
(2) Blocking Falun Gong-related publications that expose the history and inner-workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
After several years of appealing directly to the senior CCP leadership to allow adherents to freely practice their beliefs, it became clear that the CCP would not change its policy of persecuting Falun Gong. Furthermore, its propaganda efforts against the practice achieved some success in bending public opinion against Falun Gong both inside China and abroad. Therefore, the only avenue available to Falun Gong activists to peacefully end the persecution was to lay bare the true history and nature of the CCP so people could break free from its propaganda and assess the persecution of Falun Gong in an objective manner and within an historically accurate context.
As a result, Falun Gong practitioners in China not only expose the abuses against them, but also regularly distribute writings analyzing and dissecting the CCP’s history and inner workings. Principle among these writings is the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, published by the Epoch Times, which has become one of the most widely sought-after publications inside China and has sparked a wave of symbolic denunciations of the CCP. Judging by studies of CCP censorship and blocking technologies (Open Net Initiative report / Green Dam analysis), the Nine Commentaries, are among the publications most feared by the CCP.
(3) Stifling Falun Gong practitioners’ industry-leading Internet freedom software
In recent years, a group of Falun Gong engineers formed the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (website), which developed what has become the single most successful technology in allowing users inside China, Iran and other countries to break through government-installed firewalls and freely access websites on the Internet (New York Times report). A key component of Green Dam’s capabilities is to disable vital programs of this Internet freedom technology, such as Freegate. On Tuesday, the Global Internet Freedom Consortium announced the release of “Green Tsunami,” an “antidote” to Green Dam (press release).
(4) Countering Falun Gong practitioners large-scale grassroots print shops
Falun Gong adherents constitute millions of Internet users inside China. Most of these Internet users download materials to be used by a massive network of 200,000+ underground print shops throughout China At such sites, practitioners print and distribute leaflets, newsletters and other material exposing the abuses against Falun Gong as well as disseminating publications such as the Nine Commentaries.
Chinese government websites indicate that the CCP has made it a priority to stamp out this widespread “underground media” and adherents known to be involved in such activities have been sentenced to prison terms in recent months (news / news). Green Dam as a means of monitoring usage and cutting off access to Internet sites that provide content for these print shops is a potentially vital tool for the CCP to identify, shut down, and limit the influence of such sites.
Government insider turned dissident writer Jennifer Zeng asks whether 2008 will be remembered as the year the CCP started to lose its stranglehold over China
(cont’d)
Millions of Internet users renounce the (Communist) Party
While governments of Western countries, including Australia, still fail to appreciate how fragile the communist regime really is, more and more people in China are awakening from their previous delusions about the Party.
On the Internet, more than 44 million people have already publicly renounced the CCP and its related organisations, while many so-called ‘naked’ officials are busy transferring their money – and sending their wives and children – overseas in anticipation of having to leave the country in a hurry one day.
Official figures show that at least 4000 suspected corrupt officials have already fled China, taking with them more than five billion yuan ($1.1 billion), but it’s not only low-ranking officials who are leaving the country.
In 2005, Chen Yonglin, consul for political affairs in the Chinese consulate in Sydney, defected. This year two high-profile Party cadres, Xin Weiming, Deputy Head of Luwan District of Shanghai, and Yang Xianghong, Party Member Secretary of the Lucheng District of Wenzhou City, did likewise. They both disappeared while visiting France in October.
Many people, including a large proportion inside the CCP, no longer doubt that the Party boat is sinking. The question is, of course, how many more people must suffer prior to its ultimate demise? (End)
* Jennifer Zeng’s biography, Witnessing History – One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong, is published by Allen & Unwin.
CHICAGO— Chicago saw its first show of the Divine Performing Arts 2009 World Tour on Saturday afternoon, while temperatures in the city rose to the mid-50F, nearly 70 degrees higher than last week.
Mr. Stuart, owner of a construction company based in Wichita, Kansas brought his family to see the show after it was highly recommended by a tour guide from a large credit card company.
“Just awesome, just awesome!” said Mr. Stuart, saying the show was very interactive with the screen and the performers.
Mr. Stuart’s daughter Ashley, who is 12 years old and has been taking ballet for nine years, said she really liked the show a lot, especially the dancing. Her favorite was the opening act The Five Millennia Begin and The Monkey King Triumphs.
“I would definitely come to see the show again.”
Memories of Tibet
Ms. Bansa, who owns a day care center in Roger’s Park area of Chicago, said she wished she had been able to bring all one hundred and one children at her center to see the show.
Having traveled to Tibet with her husband, she said she really appreciated the Dance of the Snow-Capped Mountain, adding, “All the dances and the beautiful costumes just bring back memories for us. The mountains and the peace.”
Based in New York, the DPA was founded in 2006 with the purpose of rediscovering the true cultural heritage of China.
The DPA New York Company will hold one more performance in Chicago, at 2pm Sunday December 28.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Divine Performing Arts 2009 World Tour.
Paper prepared by Hon. David Kilgour, J.D. for An International Forum on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Garden Villa Hotel, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, 11 December, 2008 – (cont’d)
UN Committee Against Torture
The Chinese government should listen to the appeals of the world community and take effective action both to stop human rights violations and to punish those, including party members, who perpetrate them. One such appeal was issued last month by the United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT), which demanded that China’s party-state “immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture and used for organ transplants and take measures, as appropriate, to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.” The statement was made in the committee’s concluding observations on the Convention against Torture and the experience in China. It can be found at <www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/docs/CAT.C.CHN.CO.4.pdf>.
“The Government of China should do what the Committee recommends. Failure to conduct or commission an independent investigation on organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners would put China in violation of its international obligations under the Convention against Torture, which the Government of China freely signed and ratified”, said David Matas, my co-author of a report of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. It is rare for the UN system to call the Government of China to account for its human rights violations. The Committee against Torture must be commended for its willingness to confront directly the very real human rights problems the Government of China has posed to the world.
The Committee considered the China compliance report in Geneva for three days only last month. It had a briefing session on November 6th with non-governmental representatives, which David Matas attended. The first report of Matas and myself on organ pillaging from Falun Gong practitioners was released in July 2006 and a second version in January 2007. It is available on the Internet at www.organharvestinvestigation.net
The Beijing party-state, of course, rejected both the CAT report and our independent report without making a single substantive point on its side of the controversy. As the Chinese Medical Association (CMA), which has certainly not been independent from the Party since 1948, agreed with the World Medical Association earlier this year before the Beijing Olympics not to allow any further ‘organ tourism’ within China, the conclusions in both reports would strongly appear to have been admitted by the CMA as in reality a branch of China’s regime. There are now about 52 pieces of evidence on our report website indicating that this grotesque commerce is occurring on a large scale across China.
The killing without any form of prior trial of thousands of Falun Gong citizens of China in order to sell their vital organs often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries is unimaginable to most people around the world today. One of Canada’s national dailies, the Globe and Mail, weighed in editorially on the UN Torture report recently: “… the full police-state playbook is in evidence… People trying to come to Beijing to petition the authorities for redress of their grievances may disappear into secret centres – ‘black jails’ – without review by a judge. Even on death row, prisoners are subject to abusive conditions, such as being shackled 24 hours a day. And there are continued reports that organs are harvested from the executed without their prior consent, or their family’s.” (to be cont’d)
By Li Zhen, Epoch Times Staff, Nov 28, 2008 -(cont’d)
Mrs. Helga Truepel has her photograph taken with Shanghai petitioners at lawyer Zheng Enchong’s home. (The Epoch Times)
Member of the European Parliament Helga Truepel met with renowned Chinese human rights lawyer Zheng Enchong at his place of residence in Shanghai on November 25.
The CCP Should be Held Responsible for the Tibet Issue
When Truepel told Zheng that the European Parliament was in support of the Dalai Lama, Zheng gave his committed stance on the issue.
“I am a lawyer, said Zheng. “I know that in 1954 the CCP and the Dalai Lama reached seventeen agreements. Who tore up the agreements first? It was Mao Zedong, former CCP leader. According to the agreements, the social system in Tibet was to remain the same. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marched into Tibet only for defense. But after 1959, the CCP forced Tibet to change its social structures, which caused the Dalai to flee from his hometown. It is the CCP that broke the agreements.”
Truepel remarked that she was surprised at Zheng’s open attitude on the Tibet issue. Zheng said that many people hold similar viewpoints in China, but there are no channels available for them to express their opinions.
Falun Gong Broke Through China’s ‘Berlin Wall’
When Zheng was asked how he was still able to know current news, he explained that although the CCP has completely suppressed freedom of information, Falun Gong practitioners had developed software to break through the blockade, enabling Chinese people to look at overseas news.
“The Berlin Wall in China collapsed. Falun Gong did it. They have provided us this special software, gifts from the Gods,” said Zheng.
Confirming the Quitting the CCP Movement
Zheng told Truepel about his story. Although he used to follow the CCP, he recently made a declaration of withdrawal from the Communist Young Pioneers and the Communist Youth League.
During the meeting Zheng opened his window and showed Truepel a wilderness of slum areas. “Five million migrant workers in Shanghai cannot afford to live in a ground level house, so they have to stay in these rickety chambers. It is the situation of China`s human rights. I hope you also visit Anhui, Sichuan and Henan Provinces for more information about human rights for China’s peasants.”
The 58-year old Zheng has advised more than 500 families displaced by Shanghai`s urban redevelopment project on their rights to fair compensation. In 2003, he was able to successfully initiate a public trial against Shanghai real-estate tycoon Zhou Zhengyi.
That same year, Zheng was sentenced to three years in prison under a trumped up charge of “betraying state secrets.” Since his release in 2006, he has been kept under house arrest and intense surveillance by the police.
Spiritual awakening engulfs China, 45,000,000 Chinese people have quit the CCP’s organizations
Editorial, The Epoch Times, Nov 20, 2008 -
In November of 2004, The Epoch Times published a series of articles titled The Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party (The Nine Commentaries), sparking a spiritual awakening in today’s China.
Humanity’s Greatest Fear Has Always Been The Fear Of Fear Itself
The Nine Commentaries has impacted people on many profound spiritual levels, and has revealed to the Chinese people the truly evil nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As a result, more and more Chinese people have quit the CCP, its Communist Youth League, and its Young Pioneers Team. The psychological burden caused by the evil party has been lifted from people’s shoulders. The number of withdrawal declarations registered on The Epoch Times website has surpassed 45 million.
As a matter of fact, people today publicly condemn the CCP, criticize corrupt party officials and even gather in front of government office compounds shouting slogans such as “Down with the Communist Party.” Such activities have never occurred previously under the CCP’s dictatorship.
The Nine Commentaries have exposed the brutal dictatorship under which the Chinese people were forced to live since the CCP came to power in 1949. The facts quoted in the commentaries tell the story of the real life experiences of suffering and torture of the Chinese people under the CCP. The simple language and logic of these articles have incredible strength. Today, the continued evil activities of the CCP only corroborate the critiques of the commentaries and the lies of the party.
The Nine Commentaries Has Become a Spirit Awakening Movement in Which Tens of Millions of Chinese Participate
Since the publication of The Nine Commentaries in November 2004, 45 million Chinese have renounced their membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations on the Tuidang (“Resigning the Party”) website. The Nine Commentaries has flooded China in a short period of time, forming a massive wave of people quitting the CCP.
“Having been deceived by the CCP over the years, I became a member of this evil party. I am fortunate that I have been awakened by The Nine Commentaries and realized that the CCP is the most inhumane power in the history of mankind. It retains its hold on power by using violence to create fear in people. It plunders the wealth of others and controls the minds of its people. I am almost 50 years old. I’ve gone through almost all of the disastrous events since the CCP came to power in 1949. Every fact cited in The Nine Commentaries is true. I regret that I ever joined the party. I now solemnly declare that I quit the CCP.”
The above is a message left by Xian Zheng on the Tuidang website on April 14, 2005. Around thirty to forty thousand similar statements are posted on the website everyday. This event has become an unchangeable tide of history even though the CCP has put tight controls on the Internet and made every effort to suppress the volunteers who work at the Quit CCP Center.
Chinese people, from big city dwellers to the villagers, from the masses of workers, farmers, intellectuals to high-level CCP officials, from state-owned companies leaders to the heads of the 610 organizations (an organization formed to persecute Falun Gong practitioners), have renounced the CCP after they learn about its true evil nature by reading The Nine Commentaries. The book is being discussed and passed on voluntarily by millions of Chinese people. The story of The Nine Commentaries can be found written on the RMB (Chinese currency), utility poles and walls, covering all over the vast land of China.
The Nine Commentaries are not just nine editorials anymore. They have become a spiritual awakening movement in which tens of millions of Chinese voluntarily participate. It not only set off the wave of quitting the CCP, but also illuminated the sky of darkness under which the CCP had forced the Chinese people to live. The fear tactics carefully orchestrated by the CCP for years are gradually diminishing.
Chinese people voiced their discontent on blogs when the uprising took place in Wongan County of Guizhou Province this June. They wrote: “Expel the CCP, Revive traditional China.” “Believe ourselves and rebuild our new Great Wall. Drive the Communist Party back to Siberia, Russia.” “Love the people, not the party.” “Down with fascism. Freedom belongs to the people.” These simple words foretell the complete abandonment of the CCP and the gradual awakening from the CCP’s ideological lies. We are witnessing the beginning of a new era!
‘Give Me A Lever Long Enough And A Fulcrum On Which To Place It And I Shall Move The World
The famous words of the ancient Greek scientist Archimedes apply perfectly for the current situation in China. The Nine Commentaries are becoming the spiritual fulcrum of the Chinese people. They are moving a dark empire based on the violence and lies of communism. They are hoping for a brand new world with brightness, sincerity and tolerance.
Till today, more than 45,800,393 Chinese people have announced on the Quit CCP Website that quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations.
Here’s a snapshot of the numbers showing on the Quit CCP Website :
Snapshot: More than 45 million Chinese people quit the Communist Party
It says:
- 45,800,393 Chinese people quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations since Dec. 3, 2004.
- 1,004,093 people already quit in this month.
- 51,951 people quit yesterday
The massive wave of Chinese people quitting the CCP was triggered by the publication of a series editorial articles — The Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party (The Nine Commentaries) — by the overseas Chinese language newspaper The Epochtimes, in November 2004.
People are quitting at a speed of 50,000 to 60,000 per day in recent months, according to the Quit CCP Website .
Reason for quit
At their statements posted on the Quit CCP Website, many people stated that they became realize the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party, which is never changed- violence and lying- and the crimes the CCP did in the past and in the current make no reason for people to stay further inside the organization- conscience makes people keep distance with the CCP.
CCP’s crimes and abuses mentioned in the statements including but not limited:
- killed 80 million Chinese people in less than 60 years
- Tiananmen massacre of student, Beijing, 1989
- Torture and killing of Falun Gong members, from 1999, ongoing
GENEVA (AFP) — A UN body has expressed deep concern over allegations of widespread torture in China and called on the country to fully probe rights abuses.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture, meeting in Geneva, also revisited the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, urging the government to grant reparations and investigate the crackdown.
“The committee remains deeply concerned about the continued allegations, corroborated by numerous Chinese legal sources, of routine and widespread use of torture and ill treatment of suspects in police custody, especially to extract confessions or information to be used in criminal proceedings,” it said in a report released Friday.
It hit out at “continued reliance on confessions as a common form of evidence for prosecution, thus creating conditions that may facilitate the use of torture and ill-treatment of suspects,” quoting the case of dissident and human rights militant Yang Chunlin.
The committee also criticised China’s handling of its relations with the Tibetan Autonomous Region, noting there had been “longstanding reports of torture, beatings, shackling and other abusive treatment, in particular of Tibetan monks and nuns.”
No inquiry had been carried out into the arrests, firing on crowds of peaceful demonstrators, torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment during the recent repression in Tibet, the experts noted.
Regarding the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown, the committee said China “should conduct a full and impartial investigation” of the events.
It added that Chinese authorities should “provide information on the persons who are still detained from that period” as well as “offer apologies and reparation as appropriate and prosecute those found responsible for excessive use of force, torture and other ill treatment.”
More generally, the committee pointed to “reports of abuses in custody, including high numbers of deaths… Reeducation through labour for individuals who have never had their case tried in court, nor the possibility of challenging their administrative detention,” and secret detention facilities.
The UN experts expressed concern about the fate of Hu Jia, like other human rights backers the victim of harassment and violence committed by thugs who were unofficially recruited by the authorities.
The Committee Against Torture mentioned allegations of removal of organs from members of the Falun Gong sect for transplant. The special UN rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak was quoted as saying that “an increase in organ transplant operations coincides with the beginning of the persecution of (Falun Gong practitioners).”
The committee was also concerned about the fate of North Korean refugees who were turned back at the border despite the risk that they would be subjected to torture in their own country.
Finally, the committee said it was worried about the conditions of people on death row who were chained day and night and whose organs could be removed for transplant after their death without their prior consent, according to information received by the experts.
Earlier this month, the committee’s chief rapporteur Felice Gaer had accused the Chinese of not providing sufficient information.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang denied this and said earlier this month that “it is China’s consistent stance that we oppose torture.”
Gaer had said China had been unwilling to release data on individual cases by invoking its State Secrets Act to withhold information.
From Citizen Lab’s special report Breaching Trust, it’s easy to find out a fact that the reason of China’s concern of Skype messages is because of its concern of the big wave of “quit the CCP” movement, which is known by many Chinese but ignored or self-censored by western medias.
Let’s have a look at some of the paragraphs in the report:
“Many of the politically sensitive messages logged by TOM-Skype make reference to the The Epoch Times and Falun Gong linked campaign that encourages Chinese citizens to quit the Chinese Com-munist Party (CCP).
“In 2005 the “Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP” was set up to encourage Chinese citizens to quit the CCP. This campaign uses “[t]elephone, mobile phone text messages, chat-ting online” to contact Chinese citizens and provide them with information that is critical of the CCP and highlights the persecution of the Falun Gong.
“This campaign has made extensive use of Skype including Skype “public chats” and SkypeCast.
” While the campaign uses Skype extensively, they also warn users of the filtering capabilities of the Chinese version distributed by TOM-Skype. However, many users contacted by members of the cam-paign are using TOM-Skype, resulting in numerous logged text chat messages on TOM-Skype servers in China.
“In fact, they are quite open about exactly who they are and what they are doing. Thus it is
trivial to identify users associated with the campaign.
“我是全球退党服务中心的义工
(I am a global service centre for volunteers to quit the party [machine translation])
” Without further testing we are unable to conclusively determine that the objective is surveillance rather than filtering. However, we do know that regardless of the process the full messages are being logged and could be used for surveillance. Moreover, many of these messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting that there may be criteria, such as usernames or who one has chatted with, or particular public chats, that determine how fine-grain the logging should be.”
According to the “Quit the CCP” website (in Chinese), there are more than 43 million Chinese people announced publically to quit from the Chinese Communisty party and its affiliated organizations.
Michael Learmonth , Silicon Alley Media, August 25, 2008-
One of China’s biggest fears going into the Olympics was that the event would give a bigger megaphone to banned groups, such as the Free Tibet movement and the Falun Gong religious sect.
China appears to have done a thorough job of suppressing overt protests — and even restricted access to Web sites for visiting journalists — but it appears Falun Gong has managed to use the newfound focus on China to their advantage.
The group had 13 videos among the top 100 most-viewed during the first week of the Beijing Olympics, netting 3.5 million views. And it had four videos among the top 100 the following week, netting 1 million views. That’s according to TubeMogul, which tracks video views across 20 sites, including YouTube, Revver, Dailymotion and Metacafe.
It’s the first time Falun Gong has any video in the top 100 since TubeMogul started keeping track in 2006, and until opening day of the Olympics Falun Gong videos had netted a mere 95,000 views. What changed? Hard to say; a PR push could have helped, as could paid promotion on some sites. It also helps that the videos make sensational claims, including this “news” report on organ stealing in Chinese labor camps.
Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour and David Matas, a human rights lawyer, on August 22, 2008, released a new letter, describing new evidence about continued murder of Falun Gong practitioners in China for their organs.
By Ben Bendig, Epoch Times Staff Aug 24, 2008 -
New evidence of the Chinese regime’s practice of harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners has come to light through the admission of a Chinese doctor.
An audio recording of the doctor admitting to having taken part in harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners, together with a state-endorsed documentary in which the same doctor acknowledges taking part in the conversation, is “an undeniable, inculpatory admission of the harvesting of Falun Gong practitioner prisoners for profit,” say David Matas, a human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state (Asia Pacific), in a letter released yesterday.
Matas and Kilgour had their investigators call Chinese hospitals inquiring about organ transplants, specifically if they could get organs from Falun Gong practitioners, the rationale being that Falun Gong practitioners are healthy, owing to their practice.
In one case, Dr. Lu Guoping at Minzu Hospital of Guangxi Autonomous Region said that his hospital used to have organs from Falun Gong practitioners, but didn’t any longer. Here is a portion of the transcript:
“Caller: …what you used before, were they from detention centers or prisons?
“Lu Guoping: From prisons.
“C: Oh, prisons. And it was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners, the healthy Falun Gong right?
“LG: Right, right, right. We would choose the good ones, because we will assure the quality of our operations.
“C: That means you choose the organs yourselves?
“LG: Right, right, right.”
He later referred the caller to a hospital in Guangzhou, saying that this hospital would have Falun Gong organs.
Where the new evidence comes to bear is that in a documentary released by Phoenix TV, Lu Guoping admits to having received the call, and also to referring the caller to a Guangzhou hospital.
However, he denies what he said, stating in the interview, “I told her [the caller] I was not involved in the surgical operations and had no idea where the organs come from. I told her I could not answer her questions. She then asked me whether these organs come from prisons. I replied no to her in clear-cut terms.”
When shown a transcript of the interview on the video, Dr. Lu claims that it is a distorted version of the conversation. However, the documentary makes no mention of an audio recording, and no explanation for how the recording could have his voice saying some things that he admits, and other things he denies saying. Matas and Kilgour, in their report of the new evidence, make the point that the documentary suggests an altered transcript, but because there is no mention in the documentary of the recording, the recording itself is not being disputed.
Matas and Kilgour sum up the evidence: “So here we have on our recording an admission from a doctor that he and his colleagues used to go to a prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. He does not just say that someone else did this. He says that he and his colleagues used to do this themselves. Moreover, we have a further admission that the voice we have on our recording is the voice of the very person our recording says he is.”
One particularly damning aspect of the documentary is that it is available through Chinese consulates and embassies.
“[C]onsequently,” Kilgour and Matas state in their letter, concerning the documentary, “it has the sanction of the Government of China. The admission is, accordingly, one which is sanctioned and approved by the Government of China and can not credibly be denied by the Government.”
Kilgour and Matas have been investigating claims of Falun Gong organ harvesting since 2006. Some of evidence includes 40,000 transplants that have taken place in China with donors unaccounted for, since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. Additionally, waiting times for organs in China are on the order of weeks, while in Western countries, the wait can be months or years.
Matas and Kilgour’s letter, along with links to the Phoenix TV video (with English subtitles), Chinese and English-language copies of the transcript of the conversation with Dr. Lu, and the audio recording of Dr. Lu, are available at: http://organharvestinvestigation.net/Dr.Lu-Voice-Recording/
42 million people have withdrew from the CHinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations till today, the statistics show on the Quit the CCP Statement Website (in Chinese).
42 million people have withdrew from the CCP and its affiliated organizations as shown on the Quit the CCP website
Jennifer Macey, The World Today program, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Austrlia, Tuesday, 12 August , 2008-
ELEANOR HALL: China’s human rights record is again under scrutiny, this time at an International Transplantation Congress in Sydney. A Canadian human rights lawyer says he has new evidence of forced organ removals from prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners in China.
David Matas says Chinese hospitals perform 10,000 organ transplant operations each year and that many of the recipients are foreigners. As Jennifer Macey reports, he’s now calling on the Australian Government to do more to stop the practice.
JENNIFER MACEY: China performs an estimated 10,000 organ transplant operations each year more than any other country in the world except for the United States. But China has no formalised system of organ donations and human rights groups say the short waiting times and availability of organs in China raises serious questions about their source.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch first reported 10 years ago that the majority of these organs come from prisoners. Now Canadian Human Rights Lawyer David Matas says among the prison population, it’s now members of Falun Gong who are being increasingly targeted.
DAVID MATAS: China’s source of organs for transplants is almost entirely from prisoners according to the Deputy Minister of Health it’s 95 per cent, according to other statistics it’s 96 per cent. So it’s almost entirely forced organ harvesting. And there’s two sources – it’s prisoners sentenced to death and Falun Gong practitioners.
JENNIFER MACEY: Mr Matas says hospitals and prisons have arrangements to split the profits made through organ transplant operations, often to foreign patients. He says the prisoners are killed after their organs are removed.
DAVID MATAS: Basically they wait until there’s an order from the hospital, they will blood test the person, and then they inject the person with potassium, and then they put them into a van and the actual organ extraction is in the van, where the prisoner is killed through the organ extraction and then the body is cremated.
JENNIFER MACEY: Last year David Mr Matas and Canadian former secretary of state David Kilgour released a report investigating allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong members in China. Mr Matas concedes it’s difficult to find proof of this practise as China won’t release official statistics on executions or organ transplants
But he says he has new audio tapes of Chinese doctors admitting they have Falun Gong organs for sale.
DAVID MATAS: We had callers calling in to China pretending to be relatives of patients who needed organs and asking the hospital that they were calling for organs of Falun Gong practitioners on the basis that Falun Gong’s an exercise regime that practitioners are healthy and their organs are healthy. And we got admissions on tape throughout China and we’ve got the transcripts in our report and we’ve got phone records and we got the tapes from pick up to hang down.
JENNIFER MACEY: Dr Yuan Hong worked as a heart surgeon for ten years at a medical university hospital in north eastern China. He says it was an open secret at his hospital that prisoners organs were used in transplant operations for patients who had travelled from Japan.
YUAN HONG (translated): I start to notice these issues because one of the nurse wearing the army dress and then I also find an anaesthetist also wear the same clothes. So I ask him “why do you have to wear these clothes?” and then he told me, “we have to go to the place where people do executions, so we needed to transplant a kidney there.”
JENNIFER MACEY: So you knew of Japanese people who were coming to your hospital for organ transplants?
YUAN HONG (translated): Because foreigner came to our hospital to be treated. It’s a hot topic, so everybody knows.
JENNIFER MACEY: Jennifer Zeng is a member of Falun Gong who was offered asylum in Australia several years ago. In China she spent a year in a labour camp near Beijing. She says at the camp her blood was taken for tests and she underwent several health checks.
JENNIFER MACEY: Only Falun Gong practitioners were tested and get this physical check up. A lot of Falun Gong practitioners thought that Falun Gong got some special treatment, because they saw a physical check up after you were there for long years, it’s good for your health.
So they ask the police, ‘how about we pay for the physical check’ and the police clearly said no, it’s only for Falun Gong. So other prisoners even protested against it, they say, they are not treated fairly because they obviously didn’t know the purpose.
JENNIFER MACEY: Human rights lawyer David Matas says there’s a lot more the Australian Government could do to help stamp out the practice.
DAVID MATAS: The Government’s could introduce extra-territorial legislation so that transplant tourism can become a crime, the way now child sex tourism is a crime,.
ELEANOR HALL: Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas ending that report by Jennifer Macey.
A human rights lawyer from Canada has called on the Australian Government to ban transplant tourism.
David Matas is addressing the International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Sydney today, where he says he will present new evidence of forced organ removals from prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Mr Matas says he has audio tapes of Chinese doctors admitting they have Falun Gong organs for sale.
“We had callers calling into China pretending to be relatives of patients asking hospitals if they had organs of Falun Gong practitioners for sale on the basis that the Falun Gong is an exercise regime and they’re healthy, and therefore their organs are healthy, and we got admissions throughout China that yes, we have these organs for sale,” he said.
Mr Matas also says until recently, the main market for these organs was foreigners seeking cheap transplants.
“China still does not have a generation system for organs, does still not have a law allowing for the sourcing of organs from a brain dead cardiac alive, it still does not have a national organ distribution and sharing system, it’s still the overwhelming 90, 95-96 per cent of its organs are sourced from prisoners,” he said.
- Original: ABC News, Australia
By Gary Feuerberg, Epoch Times Washington, D.C. , Jul 20, 2008-
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is in a weakened state, and a new China—free and democratic—will soon emerge, according to the themes of the rally at the Washington Monument late in the morning on a very hot Friday afternoon, July 18.
The large rally marks the passing of 40 million people who have quit the CCP or its affiliations. The speakers came from the many organizations that have formed in opposition to the suppression of freedom in China and its neighboring countries, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
One of the banners said, “Support forty million people resigning from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Dr. Dawei Gao, co-founder and president of the Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) asserted that the natural disasters China is undergoing, referring to the earthquake in Sichuan, is an indication from heaven that the CCP is crumbling.
About 2000 people, many of whom were Falun Gong practitioners from around the world, attended. Afterwards, at noon, they marched to Farragut Square, led by a 200 member band in blue and white uniforms, while a rousing drum contingent in yellow and red ancient costume brought up the rear.
One banner said, “Stop CCP’s Tyranny / End CCP’s Nine Year Persecution of Falun Gong.”
An evening candle-light vigil for those killed by the regime and for those still held in labor camps and prisons capped off the day.
Perhaps the most dramatic moment came when Jun Wang, who is chairman of the China Democracy party World Union, announced that he had brought today the names—real names, not aliases—of 60 Chinese who had denounced the CCP. He was flanked by many of his supporters who each held their political party’s flag, modeled after the U.S. flag, with red and white stripes, and a blue section in the upper left corner with many stars surrounding one big star.
Also, very moving was the singing of Courtney Dove, whose song she composed, Tuidang, Set Them Free, is based on the Chinese word, Tuidang, for “withdraw.” One line from the song is, “too many people misled,” referring to the wholesale propaganda the CCP engages in by its control of the media.
Dr. Clive Ansley, a Canadian Human Rights attorney, who is the North American Chairman of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China, cannot understand why the Western media does not report on the persecution of Falun Gong, especially after the publication of Bloody Harvest by two Canadian attorneys, which gives “impeccable evidence” of the involuntary removal of vital organs of living Falun Gong practitioners.
A “direct” genocide is going on now, said Ansley, with perhaps 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners killed on the operating table.
“The authors David Matas—the leading human rights attorney in Canada—and David Kilgour, former Secretary of State for Far Eastern affairs—are unimpeachable sources,” Dr. Ansley said. “It is not coming from the National Enquirer or Fox News.”
President Bush’s plan to attend the opening ceremony was also criticized. “He missed a one-time opportunity,” said Mr. Karma Zurkhang, former chairman of Tibetan-American Association. He said that the best estimates are that about 1,000 Tibetans were killed during the March 14, 2008 protests and around 5,000 are being held in custody.
With China’s ascendency in world affairs and becoming an economic powerhouse and host of the 2008 Olympic Games, one might conclude that the rulers of China are secure in their position. But the speakers at this rally said the Olympics is just a show, like the Nazi’s 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the party structure is crumbling as the Chinese people learn about the history of the Party through the publication of the Nine Commentaries.
Another theme at the rally is that now we can imagine China without the CCP. This idea is a new one for most Chinese. For example, in the forced-labor camps where hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens are sentenced to labor without a trial, the CCP tries to indoctrinate their prisoners that China’s economic success in the world depends on the CCP, and that the two are inseparable. Even detainees learn to sing about this.
Media censorship from the regime is manifested most recently by pressuring the Eutelsat, a European satellite operator, which was conveying New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) signals to mainland China. NTDTV is the only Chinese language station that provides uncensored news to mainland China. Allegedly due to pressure from the regime, on June 16, Eutelsat cut off the station in the hope of courting favor with China just weeks before the Chinese Olympics.
But the 40 million people resigning from the CCP or its affiliates would seem to indicate that Eutelsat is placing itself on the wrong side of history, said Shujia Gong, a columnist for the Chinese Epoch Times. “It’s a clear signal that the Chinese people are repudiating the CCP.”
Referring to Eutelsat’s president and CEO, Guiliano Berretta, Mr. Gong said: “President Berretta is still trying his best to please the Chinese dictators by trading in Eutelsat principles of non-discrimination, equal access, and respect for media pluralism.”
Pointing out the elaborate precautions the Chinese communist officials are making in preparation for the Olympics, Mr. Gong says: “…you can hardly tell if it is for a Game or for a war! And clearly, these security measurements are not targeting the terrorists, but ordinary Chinese people! President Berretta, the CCP is on the brink of collapse!”…… (more details from The Epochtimes: DC Rally Celebrates a New China)
Review: China in 2008– the CCP started to lose its stranglehold (3)
Posted by chinaview on January 1, 2009
The Diplomat, Australia, 24-Dec-2008 -
Government insider turned dissident writer Jennifer Zeng asks whether 2008 will be remembered as the year the CCP started to lose its stranglehold over China
(cont’d)
Millions of Internet users renounce the (Communist) Party
While governments of Western countries, including Australia, still fail to appreciate how fragile the communist regime really is, more and more people in China are awakening from their previous delusions about the Party.
On the Internet, more than 44 million people have already publicly renounced the CCP and its related organisations, while many so-called ‘naked’ officials are busy transferring their money – and sending their wives and children – overseas in anticipation of having to leave the country in a hurry one day.
Official figures show that at least 4000 suspected corrupt officials have already fled China, taking with them more than five billion yuan ($1.1 billion), but it’s not only low-ranking officials who are leaving the country.
In 2005, Chen Yonglin, consul for political affairs in the Chinese consulate in Sydney, defected. This year two high-profile Party cadres, Xin Weiming, Deputy Head of Luwan District of Shanghai, and Yang Xianghong, Party Member Secretary of the Lucheng District of Wenzhou City, did likewise. They both disappeared while visiting France in October.
Many people, including a large proportion inside the CCP, no longer doubt that the Party boat is sinking. The question is, of course, how many more people must suffer prior to its ultimate demise? (End)
* Jennifer Zeng’s biography, Witnessing History – One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong, is published by Allen & Unwin.
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