Spanish judge to quiz China officials over Tibet

AFP, May 5, 2009 -

MADRID (AFP) — A Spanish judge said on Tuesday he intended to question eight Chinese leaders as official suspects in a case of genocide in connection with a crackdown on unrest that erupted in Tibet in March 2008.

National Court judge Santiago Pedraz sent a letter to Chinese authorities formally requesting permission to travel to China to question the eight, including Defence Minister Liang Guanglie and Minister for State Security Geng Huichang.

“Given the cordial relations between our two respective countries, I hope that you will respond favourably to my request,” he wrote referring to a bilateral justice cooperation agreement signed in 2005, according to a court document obtained by AFP.

The suit was filed against the Chinese leaders in July 2008 by a Tibetan rights groups, the Tibet Support Committee, and accepted by the court the following month just days before the opening of the Beijing Olympics.

It “denounces the new wave of oppression that began in Tibet on 10th March 2008, and just goes to prove that acts of genocide continue to be committed against the Tibetan people”.

It also “denounces China’s manipulation of the global war against terrorism in its attempt to justify and cover up crimes against humanity committed against the Tibetan people”.

Unrest in Tibet erupted on March 14 last year after four days of peaceful protests against Chinese rule.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says 203 Tibetans were killed and about 1,000 hurt in China’s crackdown. Beijing insists that only one Tibetan was killed and has in turn accused the “rioters” of killing 21 people.

The crackdown sparked international protests that dogged the month-long global journey of the Olympic torch in April.

The judge said that if the accusations made in the complaint are proven, they would constitute crimes against humanity under Spanish law.

“The Tibetan population would appear to be a group that is persecuted by the cited authorities for political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or other motives universally recognised as unacceptable under international law,” he wrote.

Spain has since 2005 operated under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”, a doctrine that allows courts to reach beyond national borders in cases of torture, terrorism or war crimes.

Other Chinese officials named in the suit were Communist Party Secretary in Tibet Zhang Qingli, Politburo member Wang Lequan, Ethnic Affairs Commission head Li Dezhu, People’s Liberation Army Commander in Lhasa General Tong Guishan, Public Security Minister Meg Jianzhu and Zhang Guihua, political commissar in the Chengdu military command.

The suit against the eight is an extension to another complaint filed by the Tibet Support Committee in 2006.

That suit accuses Chinese leaders, including former president Jiang Zemin and former prime minister Li Peng, of torture and crimes against humanity as well as genocide allegedly carried out in Tibet during the 1980s.

The National Court has been hearing that case since June 2006.

Beijing has condemned the accusations of genocide in Tibet as slander and it has accused Madrid of trying to interfere in its administration of the Buddhist Himalayan region.

China has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after sending troops in to “liberate” the remote region.

- AFP

Canadian Minister supports building memorial to Victims of Communism in Ottawa

eesti.ca, 12 Dec 2008 -

Tribute to Liberty, a recently established Canadian organization, whose first project is to have a permanent memorial built in Ottawa commemorating the Victims of the Crimes of Communism, held a pre-Christmas event for representatives of Canada’s ethno-cultural communities on Wednesday, December 10th, at the Faculty Club, University of Toronto. In attendance were members and friends of the Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Armenian, Cuban, North Korean, Chinese, Ughur, Tibetan, Mennonite, Muslim and Estonian communities, including Honorary Consul Laas Leivat.

Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism the Hon. Jason Kenney sent greetings offering his support and the support of the Government of Canada to this project.

Minister Kenney first brought Canadian government support for Tribute to Liberty into the public forum in his remarks on November 28th at the International Forum: My People Will Live Forever in Kyiv, Ukraine commemorating the 75th anniversary of Holodomor. In Kiev, Mr. Kenney spoke about why the Canadian Parliament and Government established a Ukrainian Famine and Genocide Memorial Day earlier this year. In his remarks he quoted Prime Minister Stephen Harper as follows: “remembering those who died, and why they died, is our best hope against history repeating itself.”

Mr. Kenney went on to say:

“This also explains our Government’s decision to cooperate in the creation of a Canadian monument to the victims of communism, to be established in our nation’s capital, Ottawa. It will stand as a lasting place of sacred memory to the millions whose lives were taken by a brutal, utopian ideology during Holodomor, and throughout what Pope John Paul II called “the Century of Tears.”

The Tribute to Liberty Board will be establishing a Community Advisory Council early in the New Year, to raise awareness about the project and begin a broad fundraising initiative. Reet Marten Sehr, member of the Canadian Estonian community, is a Board member of Tribute to Liberty.

Here are Minster Kenney’s remarks as sent to Tribute to Liberty:

December 9, 2008

Greetings from the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

Although I cannot be with you, I would like to extend my warmest greetings to those attending the Tribute to Liberty Christmas Party. On behalf of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the members of Tribute to Liberty for spreading awareness about the many great historical injustices perpetrated by Communist regimes.

I was proud to be a member of the parliament that unanimously voted to recognize November 22nd as Ukrainian Famine and Genocide Memorial Day. Recognizing the Holodomor, and other such atrocities, as acts of genocide, expresses the fundamental values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law that all Canadians embrace. By increasing awareness of historical injustices and atrocities, we are able to help ensure that they will not be repeated. I hope that you can take this opportunity to reflect on the meaningful work that Tribute to Liberty has undertaken so far.

Thank you for your efforts in shining a light on these dark periods of history that have affected so many.

Sincerely,

The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

- eesti.ca

CNN Caught In Genocidal Correctness: China’s Falun Gong Organ Harvesting Confirmed

By John Kusumi, China Support Network, August 25, 2008-

Folks, CNN is now caught in its worst nightmare, and I can’t even gloat. It’s tragic and it may cause lost sleep, the blame game, finger pointing, internal review, infighting, or worse. Congressional hearings may be in order, as an outside investigation.

Ordinarily, I seem to be glib while I kick the news media, as has become my habit in copies of my internet column. (The media? Aren’t they the bent, craven, depraved crew of sock puppets, managed by a corrupt cabal? And of course, I work on a book manuscript called Genocidal Correctness….)

Well, something is qualitatively different today, and I take no pleasure in saying “I told you so.” The key man who now occasions the disgrace of CNN (and the rest of America’s MSM) is an individual named Lu Guoping. And, two more essential names in the story are David Kilgour and David Matas.

The occasion is to the disgrace of the media, because it is proving a central theme in my book: Genocide has been occurring in China, and America’s MSM has been sweeping it under the rug. Somehow, I was thinking that my book might be fought off when released, as if it were a proposition simply from the temerity of John Kusumi. However, it now appears that my ringing indictment will also stand as a record of (unfortunately true) history.

The larger matter – that perhaps 40,000 people are dead – will be documented by many historians, and will stand as a black mark against the regime of Communist China, which is the first villain in this case.

As an aside, journalists pride themselves because they file “the first draft of history.” What they too often forget is that historians file the later drafts of history, without the pressure to be politically correct in contemporary context. Historians can say things that, apparently, journalists can’t.

It’s time to review the crime, and the response – or lack of response. The crime is the forced harvesting of vital organs from prisoners of conscience – Falun Gong practitioners – in the gulags and prison system of Mainland China. These people, who shouldn’t even be in prison to begin with, lose their lives in a process of organ harvesting, and the organs are transplanted into paying customers.

They may even still be alive as the organs are removed – they are selected, as healthy specimens, for just-in-time execution. It’s diabolical. It combines theft with murder with profiteering. Capitalist types could note that it monetizes Falun Gong persecution. This is organized, systematic, machine-like evil through deliberately chosen policies of the Chinese government. The only comparable evil might be Nazi Germany’s medical experiments, performed on unwitting prisoners in World War II.

There is plenty of gravity to this matter if it sinks in that this is real – a confirmed crime against humanity that may still be in progress. And, it happens in a context that has also gone unreported – the crackdown against Falun Gong in China. To be fair, it was reported back in 1999 when it began. To be accurate, it dropped out of the news after, late in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed a “free trade” deal with China.

As an aside, when did Bill Clinton ever say that we should be “trading away” our concern for human rights? He didn’t! The deal was ostensibly about trade, and was not about human rights, per se. I believe that news media behavior was decided at the news media level, not the White House. In other words, sociopathic managing editors made their call and took the trade deal “to the next level” of sanitizing China’s public image. If it were mine to arrange, I would have Nuremberg-style trials for Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather – accessories to genocide, each.

Let’s look beyond my aside, so that we can lay out a time table of notable occasions in my narrative.

Before the Organ Harvesting story

* 1999: Falun Gong persecution begins. Media covers it. Then, White House signs trade deal.

* 2000: Ted Koppel has three guests for it, and zero against it. Congress passes the trade deal.

* Each year since: News media dodges many stories emerging from the Falun Gong crackdown.

* 2003: This author gives a speech and coins the term “genocidal correctness.”

* 2004: Anti-communist Falun Gong related newspaper, the Epoch Times, debuts in English.

* 2005: People begin quitting the Communist Party in droves. CNN dodges the story.

The Organ Harvesting story

* March 9, 2006: The Epoch Times breaks the story of forced organ harvesting at a facility called Sujiatun (in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China).

* Shortly thereafter: A military doctor of Shenyang military zone corroborates the horror and indicates that a network of 36 facilities participate.

* April 4, 2006: The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) is launched.

The heckler on the South Lawn of the White House and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer

* April 20, 2006: With an Epoch Times press pass and on the South Lawn of the White House, Dr. Wenyi Wang becomes the “Rosa Parks” of this cause, by shouting at the U.S. and Chinese Presidents who were meeting together, “Stop the killing!”

* April 21, 2006: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room has Wenyi Wang as a guest. On the way in during the elevator ride, Blitzer’s producer coaches and warns Wang: “Don’t talk about organ harvesting!” On TV, Blitzer proceeds to act like a school headmaster, scolding Wang as though the only story was her disruption at the White House. She was there with a message. CNN didn’t get the message – although they knew enough to say “shush” about that message just before the on-camera appearance.

The Kilgour-Matas report and CNN’s Anderson Cooper

* May 24, 2006: CIPFG seeks and obtains the help of Canadian public figures, David Kilgour and David Matas, to investigate the allegations of organ harvesting.

* June 17, 2006: While Kilgour and Matas were investigating, CNN’s Anderson Cooper did a report about “organ tourism,” about a California man who went to China for an organ transplant. Cooper did raise an eyebrow at China, saying that a prison population was “vulnerable.” But, he stopped short of mentioning Falun Gong, so there was no exposure of that persecution / crackdown campaign, and no indication that the organ sources may be prisoners of conscience.

* July 6, 2006: Kilgour and Matas issue the first edition of their report, later renamed Bloody Harvest. After looking over all available evidence they wrote, “the government of China and its agencies have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized involuntarily for sale at high prices.” They concluded “that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.”

The Kilgour-Matas report is the smoking gun. David Kilgour is a former Member of Parliament in Canada, and was Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific region. David Matas is an international human rights attorney. With their political and legal backgrounds, they would know better than to be casual or inexact with public statements. While they knew the stakes in international relations, and while they knew the enormity of the charges against Communist China, they nonetheless undertook to inform the world of their findings.

The Kilgour-Matas report was never debunked by the news media; however, for their own convenience reporters wrote that the entire organ harvesting story was discredited. Apparently, reporters will manufacture lies to suit their convenience and to preclude further research or writing. The Wall Street Journal printed this falsehood, but stopped before citing any source or basis. It’s akin to printing, “They say it’s not true.” That invites the question, who are “they”? Perhaps, do U.S. reporters have communist masters in Beijing?

What sociopathic reporters were doing was clearly an example of genocidal correctness and of making a choice to err on the side of death, rather than to err on the side of life. Their omission is now exposed, at least to history.

And at CNN? The release of the Kilgour-Matas report did not cause a ripple. The point being that Kilgour and Matas got the story, and CNN didn’t. For that matter, the American public was kept in the dark for the next two years.

Around the world, Kilgour and Matas got their points across. At the end of 2006, I analyzed their clip sheet, and I learned interesting things about where their publicity was (and wasn’t):

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (8), The Calgary Herald (6), The Globe and Mail (4), National Post (4), Ottawa Citizen (4), Sydney Morning Herald (4), CBC News (3), China Post (3), NZ Scoop (3), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (3), The Christian Science Monitor (3), The Ottawa Citizen (3), The Toronto Sun (3), Abbotsford News (2), AFP (2), Asia News (2), Canadian Christianity (2), Chronicle Herald (2), CounterPunch (2), Cowichan Valley News Leader (2), CTV (2), Free Market News (2), Langley Times (2), South China Morning Post (2), Taipei Times (2), The Halifax Daily News (2), The Leader-Post (2), The Vancouver Sun (2), Times Colonist (2), Victoria News (2).

The single-mention outlets are a wide variety, including the Times of India, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, the Chicago Tribune, the Irish Medical Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Times.

Who is missing from this list? United States opinion leaders are missing — the Associated Press, UPI, New York Times, and Washington Post. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CNN. There is no sign of these news outlets in the list. Should we write them off as anti-Falun Gong media? Or as closer to Jiang Zemin than to freedom and democracy?

That’s what I wrote at the end of 2006. Later I saw the Wall Street Journal refer, in passing, to the organ harvesting allegation as “discredited.”

Far from discredited, there is more to this story. Kilgour and Matas came out with a second edition of their report in January, 2007. And now, on August 22, 2008, they have come out with more highly damning evidence. What they have now is a video admission from Dr. Lu Guoping combined with a prior audio recording from the same doctor.

In the audio, the doctor admits that he and his colleagues went to prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for involuntary organ donations to be used in transplants. In the video, the doctor admits that he was the person interviewed in the audio recording.

The audio is part of a series of recordings, taken by investigators for Kilgour and Matas. They called hospitals throughout China, posing as relatives of patients who needed transplants. They asked the hospitals if they had organs from Falun Gong practitioners for transplant. The callers got recorded admissions throughout China that hospitals did have Falun Gong organs for sale.

The video is a documentary by Phoenix TV. Kilgour and Matas also note, “The video is being distributed by Chinese embassies and consulates; its authenticity is therefore endorsed by the Chinese government.”

The audio and video, taken together are “an undeniable, inculpatory admission of the harvesting of Falun Gong practitioner prisoners for profit,” according to the investigators.

These investigators hardly needed one more nail in the coffin, but they got it. We may consider it that the Chinese government is “busted” for the practice of Falun Gong organ harvesting.

And, who else is busted is CNN. Yes, Virginia, CNN had this story on April 21, 2006. If the story were well exposed, it would lead to the international community taking action to stop what is akin to a holocaust in progress. (The world swore, “Never again” after the Nazi holocaust….)

Rather than expose the story, CNN left space for the Chinese government to add two more years of killing into the record of history. When my book comes out, the ink will be dry on a true-life, morally reprehensible drama that matches my thesis—genocidal correctness—to a tee.

I take no pleasure in saying “I told you so,” but how well did I hit the mark? Yes in fact, they have been bent, craven, depraved, self-serving, shortsighted, and genocidally correct. And that’s only in the United States. In China, it’s been deadly. At many news outlets beyond CNN, there is a person who has had the job to circular file, or bury, story after story after story from the Falun Gong persecution. If this were the America of the 1990s, they would never have “just let go” the Falun Gong crackdown. But more recently, genocidal correctness became their M.O.; their standard procedure; business as usual in America’s hideous newsrooms.

Rather than “I told you so,” since I can just about say “checkmate,” instead I would prefer to say, “Game over.” Each newsroom is challenged to find a shred of integrity, and to do the right thing with this story. (The Kilgour-Matas report is at organharvestinvestigation.net.) Perhaps my prediction (first made in 2006) will come true:

Everyone else knows about China’s crimes against humanity; the last to know will be Brian Williams (NBC News anchorman) and Jacques Rogge (IOC President, who cannot be happy as this story tarnishes the Olympics).

- Original: China Support Network

International Rights Forum Plans Boycott of Beijing Olympics

By James Donald, Special to The China Post, Taiwan, Friday, February 22, 2008-

Speakers from international human rights organizations yesterday strongly denounced what they called “China’s evil communist regime” over its alleged human rights abuses. Some participants proposed a boycott of the Beijing Olympiad this August, while others said China’s tactics of discrimination have only worsened since it won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics.

Papers and speeches at the two-day forum continued today, with strong wording on China’s ruling party and treatment of its citizens. Authors presented papers such as “The Chinese Communist Regime Has Never Changed Its Evil Nature,” and “Influence of the Beijing Fascist Regime on Western Democracy and World Safety,” in support of boycotting the much-anticipated Olympiad.

Lai Ching-te, lawmaker and president of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG), expressed hope the 2008 Olympics would have the same positive effect on China’s government as the Seoul Olympics, claiming South Korea’s formerly oppressive and undemocratic regime was given the necessary pressure to make way for positive, multi-lateral political change.

“The Olympics gives us important leverage and a channel to push China to fulfill its promises on improving its human rights conditions,” said David Kilgour, former secretary of state for Asia-Pacific Affairs at the U.S. State Department, as he addressed the assembly.

Kilgour commended Taiwan for being “a very good example for China,” citing it as a positive democratic system.

He explained that these Olympic Games would provide an opportunity for the country to be exposed to new pressures from the international community, and to reform its practices.

Kilgour agreed with Lai, who is also chairman of the conference, in choosing not to bring up the topic of a boycott, although it was introduced in a short farcical film screened beforehand of an Olympic torch that is passed around a group of the world’s human rights organizations, in a marathon bid to boycott the Beijing games.

Along with some emotion-packed descriptions of the developing country — such as “evil,” “devilish” and “terror state” — frequent references were made to Beijing’s attempts to use the event to “paint a false image” of itself, as well as the 1936 Berlin Olympics under Hitler’s fascist regime.

In contrast, Kilgour said it was the responsibility of their forum to give a truthful and accurate portrayal of the wrongs done to undeserving people, such as the religious-political organization Falun Gong which indirectly sponsored the event.

Andrew Bartlett, a senator from Queensland, Australia, asked rhetorically, “What price do we put on a human life. What price do we put on freedom?” He meanwhile acknowledged the less-than-perfect record of his own country, whose Parliament’s first act was the racist “White Australia Policy.”

This policy, according to Bartlett “was directed at keeping people like the Chinese out [of the country],” as he went on to denounce the callous treatment of refugees from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq by the former Howard-government.

Those refugees, seeking safety and sanctuary from oppressive regimes such as the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, Bartlett said, were shipped to the remote Pacific island of Nauru before being sent back to the country they had fled, and forced to fend for themselves.

However, Bartlett argued that “we owe it to those in China who are subjected to these abuses” to put pressure on the Communist Party to make a stand for human rights.

President Chen Shui-bian, although not present at the event, sent a message of support and congratulations to participants for “helping to pursue democracy and human rights for a better world.”

- Original report from China Post: Rights forum plans boycott of Olympics

‘people are being killed for their organs’ while China ‘hosting an event to promote peace’

European politicians are expressing their concern about China’s appalling human-rights record ahead of the Beijing Olympics

From blog of Will Buckley, The Guardian, February 17, 2008-

On 1 January this year Torsten Trey, chief executive director of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, sent a letter to, among others, Steven Spielberg and George W Bush. He wrote: ‘It is reasonable to say that in China organs are removed from executed prisoners as well as from living, non-consenting donors, in particular from practitioners of the peaceful meditation movement Falun Gong. As medical doctors, we are extremely concerned about these practices.’

On Tuesday, at a meeting in London, European Parliament vice-president Edward McMillan-Scott expanded on those concerns. ‘They are hosting a sporting event intended to promote peace and at the same time people are being killed for their organs,’ said Trey. ‘It is outrageous. Once you are a prisoner of conscience you are outlawed and lose any rights. You are just a body mass.’

Later that evening Spielberg resigned as artistic director for the Beijing Olympics. There was no connection between the two events – Spielberg, after all, cited China’s failure to put pressure on Sudan to ease the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, not transplant trading, as the reason for his decision – other than that the staging of the Olympics in Beijing means that China will be examined more closely and more critically than ever before.

There are plenty of areas of concern. Also speaking on Tuesday was Annie Yang. ‘On 1 March 2005, without any legal procedure, I was arrested at home and sentenced to two years in a Chinese labour camp,’ she said. This was for being a practitioner of Falun Gong, an organisation that is part Taoist, part Buddhist, and that flourished in the wake of communism before being banned as ‘an evil cult’ in 1999.

In an effort to make Yang renounce her beliefs, she was forced to survive on 500ml of water a day and half a slice of Chinese bread. She was also tortured. ‘They made you sit with your knees closed, your feet closed, your back very straight and your hands on your knees for 20 hours without closing your eyes. No one dared look at me. Only this one woman waved at me and she has now been tortured to death.’

Yang, an antiques dealer, recanted and four months later was asked by the authorities if she wanted to be a spy in London. She declined the offer.

Anne Holmes, from the Free Tibet campaign, said that ’silence is the cost of doing business in China’. Silence, in particular, about what is happening in Tibet. ‘There are some monks who must be protected and others who are invisible,’ she said, comparing the country to Burma. China’s influence is so great over Tibet and around the world, she says, that ‘Belgium no longer welcomes the Dalai Lama’.

China, in contrast, welcomes transplant tourists – it is alleged that 40,000 unexplained operations have been conducted in recent years. Also present on Tuesday was Professor Tom Treasure, a noted heart-transplant surgeon, who wrote an essay last year for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine entitled ‘The Falun Gong, organ transplantation, the holocaust and ourselves’. In this he noted that waiting times for such operations in China were a mere one to two weeks and the cost under a tenth of what is charged in the United States. He also drew attention to the fact that, on being incarcerated, members of Falun Gong are blood-tested. This is unlikely to be for their own good, but is most helpful if you are looking for a blood-group match for organ donation.

As McMillan-Scott pointed out: ‘What makes it even more ghoulish is that the Falun Gong are regarded as good quarry because they neither smoke nor drink.’ Transplanting the organs of executed criminals is one thing, but using the organs of the living one hoped belonged in science fiction.

McMillan-Scott has long campaigned against human-rights abuses in China. He last visited the country in May 2006 and ‘all the reformists I had contact with have been arrested, and at least three of them tortured’. Last August he talked from the same meeting room in which we were sitting to eco-dissident Hu Jia in Beijing by live phone link. On 29 January Hu Jia was convicted of subversion.

‘There are 1.3 billion Chinese, most of whom are desperately unhappy living under a corrupt, arbitrary and paranoid regime which is dangerous to them,’ he says. ‘It is a terror state.’ Particularly if you are a practitioner of Falun Gong. ‘They have been subjected to systematic repression,’ says McMillan-Scott. ‘Falun Gong are to the Chinese what the Jews were to the Nazis. And that’s an understatement.’

Perhaps. One way in which they are being treated worse is that they are prohibited from competing in the Games. Hitler, in contrast, allowed one half-Jewish fencer to represent Germany and excluded the rest. Helene Mayer won silver in the individual foil.

Comparisons with Berlin have seen Beijing labelled the Genocide Games. This term is somewhat melodramatic, although it does remind one of Chairman Mao’s massacre of 70 million of his citizens during the Cultural Revolution. It is a reminder that worse things happen behind closed doors than partially open ones and, grim and nasty as life is in China, it may be less grim and nasty than it was. In part, this is because of the Olympic Games. Playing host means you are open to scrutiny and Tibet, Darfur and transplant tourism are subjects up for discussion.

Limited aims may be achievable and last year the number of transplants decreased considerably following the passage of the Human Organ Transportation Act.

There is, however, only limited leverage that can be exerted because the total boycott the admirable McMillan-Scott demands is just not going to happen. This is because the Olympic Games, like US vice-president Dick Cheney, are more about commerce than politics. The defining modern Games, after all, came in 1996 when they shared a home with Coca-Cola. Once the sponsors take over, they become indelibly corporate. Spielberg and a few others excepted, the capitalist West will flock to Beijing to do what it always does – shift product.

- Original from Will Buckley’s blog at The Guardian

Oscar-winning Director Steven Spielberg Boycotts China 2008 Olympics

By Bob Tourtellotte and Paul Eckert, Reuters, Tue Feb 12, 2008-

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg withdrew on Tuesday as an artistic adviser to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing over China’s policy on the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual,” Spielberg said in a statement issued on a day when Nobel Peace laureates sent a letter to China’s president urging a change in policies toward its ally Sudan.

“At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur,” he added.

China is a leading oil customer and supplier of weapons to Sudan and is accused by critics of providing diplomatic cover for Khartoum as it stonewalls international efforts to send peacekeepers into Darfur.

In April, Spielberg wrote a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao adding his voice to the chorus of people who have protested China’s involvement with the Sudanese government over the crisis in Darfur. At that time, Spielberg had asked to meet with Hu, but the president failed to respond.

In his statement on Tuesday, Spielberg said Sudan’s government shouldered the bulk of responsibility for “these ongoing crimes” in Darfur but said China “should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there.”

Earlier on Tuesday, nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates — including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and Jody Williams — sent a letter to Hu urging China to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing Sudan to stop atrocities in Darfur……. (more details from Reuters: Steven Spielberg quits as adviser to Olympics over Darfur)

Group of Nobel Laureates Press China Over Darfur

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent, Reuters, Tue Feb 12, 2008-

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urging the Beijing Games host to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing its ally Sudan to stop atrocities in Darfur.

“As the primary economic, military and political partner of the Government of Sudan, and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China has both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a just peace in Darfur,” said the letter.

“Ongoing failure to rise to this responsibility amounts, in our view, to support for a government that continues to carry out atrocities against its own people,” said the letter, released on a day of events by the Save Darfur Coalition.

The letter was signed by Nobel Peace laureates Bishop Carlos Belo, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams and Jody Williams. Other signatories included politicians, Olympic medallists and entertainers.

U.S. actress Mia Farrow, who has spearheaded the coalition’s global campaign to press China to change its policies in Sudan, gathered a crowd outside the Chinese mission to the United Nations in New York as she tried to deliver the letter.

“China hopes that these games will be its post-Tiananmen Square coming out party. But how can Beijing host the Olympic Games at home and underwrite genocide in Darfur?” she said, and stuffed the letter under the mission door after her knocks went unanswered.

In more than four years of conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes, according to estimates from international experts. Khartoum says 9,000 people have died.

“HIGHER CALLING OF HUMANITY”

The letter to Hu acknowledged Chinese support for a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the deployment of a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force to Darfur.

“However, we note with dismay that the Chinese government worked to weaken the resolution before it passed,” it said. The letter said China doubled its trade with Sudan in 2007 and continued its military relationship with the African country…….(more details from Reuters)

Rabbi: Jews Must Lead Condemnation of China Over Organ Harvesting

by Hillel Fendel, Israel National News, 29 Jan 2008-

(IsraelNN.com) Rabbi David Druckman, the Chief Rabbi of the northern city of Kiryat Motzkin and an outspoken opponent of Land of Israel withdrawals, says Jews must take the lead in condemning China for its murder of prisoners of conscience in order to harvest their organs.

“The atrocity is so great,” Rabbi Druckman says on a recently released video, “that there are simply no words to express it. From a certain standpoint it is even worse than what the Nazis did… to cut organs from people under the cover of medical help for other people is simply astonishing and shocking from every human vantage point.”

“It is especially incumbent upon us as Jews to lead the campaign that expresses total disgust at this phenomenon,” Rabbi Druckman says. “Especially us, the Jewish Nation, that suffered the crimes of the Nazis, may their names be blotted out, and those of the Communists under Stalin – who can stand by and comprehend the world’s silence at all this?”

Israeli Petition Against Chinese Cruelty

Three months ago, over 220 Israeli rabbis, academics and politicians signed a petition calling for an end to the atrocities taking place in China. Among the signatories were 8 Knesset Members (Hendel and Levy from National Union, Melchior and Cabel from Labor, Kachlon of Likud, and Oron, Gal’on and Vilan of Meretz).

Over 40 rabbis signed, including Rabbis Chaim Druckman, Shlomo Aviner, Yuval Cherlow, Shmuel David of Afula, as well as Temple Mount loyalist rabbis, Moshe Feiglin and leaders of his Jewish Leadership group, and more.

Chinese Torture

China is accused of holding thousands of political prisoners without trial, beating and torturing people who protest being thrown out of their homes, employing slave labor for their mass manufacturing industries, and more. Among the most persecuted groups are the Falun Gong, which numbers at least 70 million members in China alone. Tens of thousands of practitioners of the Falun Gong system of meditation and character-building are ruthlessly persecuted by the government, including having organs removed from their bodies while still alive.

The CIPFG – Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China – has begun a campaign against holding the 2008 Olympics in China. “It will be a stain on the history of the Olympic Games and a disgrace to mankind if these games and these crimes against humanity are held at the same time in China,” the organization states.

In the video-taped speech, Rabbi Druckman says that one of the seven Noachide commandments that the Jews are bidden to disseminate in the world is not to murder: “We as Jews must therefore stand at the front lines of this war, and employ every possible tactic in order that the world expunge atrocities such as this.”

“When there is evil in the world,” he continues, “every person with a human conscience, and every person with intelligence, must protest against it… Jewish Law requires of us to spread values of faith in the Creator and of maintaining the human image throughout the world. The same Torah that tells us to keep the Sabbath and to eat only Kosher food, also requires that we influence all of mankind – as is written, ‘From Zion shall go forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem.’”

“We have to get our outraged objections, as people and as Jews, out to the world in every way possible… In this age of media, there are many methods, such as the torch passing through the countries of the world and will soon get to our region as well, ending with a giant rally here in Israel [on Feb. 18 - ed.]. It is obvious that we all support this initiative and welcome it. We must also do whatever will result in a sharp condemnation of these animals that are doing these things in China. This will help raise the standard of the entire human race in the world, and the more the world improves and becomes more gentle, this will bring us closer to the Redemption and the arrival of the Just Redeemer.”

Religious – Not Just in Dress, but in Thought

“I believe that behind the description we carry of ‘religious people’ there is also real content – not just outer covering, but a genuine way of looking at the world… Certainly this is so in the Jewish faith, whose teachings about ethics and kindness have no rivals… Certainly one who sees himself as a religious person, not just in title but in essence, must join up with activities of this type.”

- Original report from Israel National News

Rights Group Criticizes Corporate Sponsors of 2008 Beijing Olympics For Staying Silent on Darfur Killing

By Alex Villarreal, VOA News, U.S, 28 November 2007-

Washington- Human rights advocates say China is not doing enough to address the crisis in Sudan’s troubled region of Darfur. One group is calling on corporate sponsors of the 2008 Olympic Games to push China to do more. But as VOA’s Alex Villarreal reports from Washington, their responses have also drawn criticism.

U.S.-based advocacy group Dream for Darfur says corporate sponsors of the Olympics in Beijing have failed to do their part to pressure China to ensure peace in Darfur.

The group issued a report card Monday grading the companies’ responses to the Darfur crisis after asking them to take a stand. Sixteen out of 19 sponsors failed or got Ds, including Microsoft, Panasonic and Visa. General Electric earned the highest grade, a C-plus.

Ellen Freudenheim conducted research for the project. Speaking to reporters via teleconference, she said the majority of Olympic sponsors are condoning the violence in Darfur by staying silent.

“If there’s a genocide and you’re involved with a government that’s actively enabling that genocide, you, too, are silently complicit if you don’t at least raise the issue,” she said.

Dream for Darfur graded the companies using a range of criteria, including whether they contacted China or the International Olympic Committee, donated aid to Darfur or appointed a point person on Darfur.

Several companies, including Visa and General Electric, sent response letters to the campaign saying they found it inappropriate to take action. They said the correct platform for the Darfur issue is at a United Nations and government level.

But American actress Mia Farrow, chair of Dream for Darfur’s advisory board, said businesses are responsible, too.

“This is blood money,” she said. “You know, I think they should step up and do the right thing. And they have a unique position here with the Olympic games, a unique point of leverage. And I think unless they use it to their utmost, then they will have failed in a profound, profound way. Then shame on them.” …… (more details from VOA News: Rights Group Criticizes China for Failure to Act on Darfur)

THE UKRAINIAN FAMINE OF 1932-33, THE HOLOCAUST AND THE FALUN GONG IN CHINA

Notes for Remarks by Hon. David kilgour, J.D, International Symposium on the Crimes of Communism, Kiev, Ukraine, November 14, 2007-

David Matas and I are pleased to be back in Ukraine for the first time since your December 2004 runoff election, when both of us were among the more than one thousand Canadian election observers of your noted-around-the-world presidential election.

The voting stations observed by the international team I was part of were near Luhansk, a 15-hour train ride from Kiev and close to your border with Russia. There were many memorable moments during those days that December, including the genuine appreciation of many residents that observers from abroad were present, but one voter in his eighties will never be forgotten. He came up to some of us at a polling station and said, “When I was a small child, I watched both my parents die of starvation in front of me.”

Famine of 1932-1933

Your fellow citizen was, of course, referring to the terrible Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933, which took millions of innocent lives, not because there was any food shortage, but because the Communist dictator Joseph Stalin wanted to exterminate many of your farmers and their families to overcome widespread resistance in this country to his collectivization of agriculture. Food was exported from Ukraine by Stalin’s henchmen even as millions of your fellow citizens starved to death.

Far away in Edmonton, Canada, we residents, led by our neighbours of origin in Ukraine, unveiled near our city hall a number of years ago a monument to the victims of the Ukrainian Genocide or Holocaust. There have been many estimates as to the number of millions of victims, ranging up to ten million, but, whatever the most accurate number, this crime against humanity was simply unspeakable and must never be forgotten.

One reason there is still some doubt at least outside Ukraine about the numbers of deaths in those fateful years lies in the gross irresponsibility of most Western journalists, who visited Ukraine during the famine and chose not to report on the human catastrophe they observed. Walter Duranty of the New York Times, dean of the foreign press in Moscow at the time, appears to have been among the worst in putting misplaced loyalty to Stalin ahead of his duty to his readers and profession, but he was hardly alone. One journalist who did report accurately on what was going on, the late Malcolm Muggeridge of Great Britain, lost his job for doing so.

The Holocaust

A decade later, in December, 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill learned from Jan Karsky of the Polish resistance that thousands of Jews were being rounded up and sent in cattle cars to the death camp at Belzec in eastern Poland. Churchill used Karsky’s report to persuade the Allies, including the Russians, to condemn “a bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” in Germany.

Time unfortunately does not permit me to go into the Holocaust here more fully. Let me only say that the world will never know how many lives might have been saved if the hideous details of both genocides had gotten out sooner. Many observers-including this one- will say that enough was known soon enough about both catastrophes, but, as in the later cases of Rwanda and Darfur, the problem was the absence of robust political will. Tragically, human dignity was not universalized then or now.

Falun Gong in China

This brings me to the independent report which David Matas and I did on what is still happening to the Falun Gong community across China and the importance of raising public awareness about it worldwide in the months prior to the Beijing Olympics in August, 2008. We concluded to our horror that since the latter part of 2000 the government of China and its agencies have murdered thousands of Falun Gong practitioners across China without any form of prior trial, and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money, often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries.

Virtually no independent person we know who has read our report, which is available in 18 languages at www.organharvestinvestigation.net, is not convinced of the validity of our dismaying conclusion.

None of these deaths would be occurring if the Chinese peoples as a whole enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the equal worth and dignity of each one of them. Most human beings across China appear to have no more importance to those still monopolizing power there than does the natural environment, work safety, the lives of African residents in Darfur or Buddhist monks and democracy protesters in Burma. It is the combination of totalitarian governance and ‘anything goes’ capitalism that allows this new form of evil on the planet to continue across China today.

The propaganda phase of the regime’s war began in mid-1999 against a then estimated 70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners across China. The party-state media demonized, vilified and dehumanized them in a manner somewhat similar to that used by the government of Rwanda against its Tutsi community prior to the genocide there in April-July, 1994. Both nationals and some outside China were thus persuaded to think of the community as disruptive to social harmony and even somehow less than human.

Health in China

When observers understand the present state of public health across China as a consequence of three decades of ‘pollute anything’ capitalism for water, soil and air and the condition of the once-vaunted health care delivery system, they are better able to understand the context of our report. Consider only two of the observations made by journalists Joseph Hahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times this past summer: only one per cent of China’s city dwellers are breathing air considered safe by the European Union; last spring a World Bank study concluded that air pollution is causing premature deaths in the 750,000 persons range a year. The two also noted that many experts have concluded that China “…cannot go green without political change.”

On the health care delivery system, my primary source is The Coming China Wars by Peter Navarro, who has a PH.D in economics from Harvard, has published six other books and is a professor at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California. Navarro concludes that the health care system has collapsed: “…sick people are forced to pay for their health care upfront. Those lacking the means to pay are cast out of hospitals and left to die an often slow and painful death. A big part of the problem is the cost of medical insurance-$50 to $200 per year-in a country where the annual per-capita income for the vast majority of the population remains well below $1,000.”

With this melt-down of the health care systems, coupled with continued totalitarian governance, I think you can better understand the context for organ pillaging during the past six years. Between 1980 and 2004, the central government also cut funding for health care by more than a half. Doctors, hospitals and pharmacies were converted to “profit centres” and expected to finance their activities through patient fees.
New Organ Transplantation Policy

The Chinese Medical Association recently agreed with the World Medical Association that it will no longer take organs from executed prisoners, presumably including Falun Gong ones, even conceding that international pressure before next year’s Olympics in Beijing was the motivation. The CMA’s vice-chair, Chen Zhonghua, admitted: “China is worried that if it doesn’t take a stand on this some countries may use this issue as a pretext to boycott the Games.” Whatever the motivation, it is a step in a more human direction, although many of us would like to know if the pledge has any legal consequence. Will it bind military surgeons, who are doing many of the transplantation operations (we’re told that it doesn’t)? Will the new policy be abandoned for the huge profits to be made from organ pillaging once foreigners leave Beijing next August?

David Matas and I have spoken in various countries to some of the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners sent to forced labour camps since 1999, who managed to gain release from both the camps and China itself. They speak of working without pay in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily, making export products, ranging from chop sticks to garments to Christmas decorations for multinational companies from the West. This is corporate social responsibility?

“Naming and Shaming”

What can we all do to stop organ pillaging? Emails to MPs, friends and blogs will certainly keep the pressure on the party-state in Beijing. ‘Naming and shaming’ the regime with placards in front of its embassies and consulates ought to be effective in the months before next summer’s Olympic Games. As the world observed in the case of ‘Magnificent Mia’ Farrow’s comment about “the Genocide Olympics”, the Hu-Wen government in Beijing really listens when the success of its Games can be brought into issue. Let’s use ‘Bloody Harvest’ placards too. Let’s also support the Global Human Rights Torch relay when it continues to more than 100 cities on five continents. You can get more information about the relay at www.humanrightstorch.org.

Conclusion

The people of Ukraine and the nine other countries represented at this symposium do not need a Canadian to tell them what they lived through under the Communist genre of totalitarianism. Let me therefore close with a list of only some of the more glaring crimes and other failures of Communism in Europe:

* The abuse and much worse of tens of millions of innocent families during almost half a century.

* Continuous economic failure.

* The persecution of faith communities, little realizing that they would play a major role in its eventual downfall.

* Causing proud and hard-working farm producers to give up working their soil by forcing them into collectives, which seized both their land and animals.

* Criminalizing talk about representative democracy in order to protect incompetent, violent and otherwise criminal dictatorships.

* Communism twisted the noble concept of human equality into a shield for the special privileges of party officials, the nomenklatura.

* Communism removed all rights of workers’ unions, including the right to exist in any meaningful form and to bargain collectively, demonstrating that nowhere where it governs does it care about the rights of working people.

* It destroyed any concept of the rule of law and independent judges.

* It turned art and culture into a sterile propaganda, thereby forcing many artists and writers into exile.

The general conclusion for all of us wherever we live today seems clear: if human dignity is finally to become indivisible everywhere around the world, the remaining Communist and other authoritarian regimes must be replaced by governments of, by and for their peoples.

Thank you.

- Original speech from David kilgour’s website

Whither The Party-state in China Abroad and At Home? Speech by David Kilgour

Excerpts from an address by Hon. David Kilgour, J.D, Speakers Series, St. Mary’s University College, Calgary, (Canada), September 27, 2007-

WHITHER THE PARTY-STATE IN CHINA ABROAD AND AT HOME?

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
Calgary, September 27, 2007

We Canadians respect and like the people of China for many reasons, including their courage, success with agriculture, culture, hard work and love of education. It is no accident that more than one million Canadians of origin in the Middle Kingdom are reportedly our most highly-educated cultural community. It was an honour to represent those of them living in southeast Edmonton in our national Parliament for about 27 years.

Our differences are with the unelected government of the PRC and its international and domestic policies and not with the human values of the vast majority of Chinese nationals. Paradoxically, it is the friends of the Hu-Wen government who are the China bashers today as they fail to differentiate that government from the real China. The Chinese deserve the right to elect their governments in fair and free elections.

Roles Abroad

Canadian and other media outside China have begun to focus on Beijing’s destructive roles in a number of countries. Thanks to books such as James Mann’s The China Fantasy, key components of the longtime consensus among many Fortune 500 executives, sinologists, politicians and diplomats are being ‘mugged by reality’.

Mann concludes that the party-state in China undermines human values abroad wherever it can get a foot in a door. In the case of Zimbabwe, for example, he reminds readers that it gave Robert Mugabe a honourary degree, economic aid and helicopter gunships despite heading a most brutal regime. For Uzbekistan, when President Karimov ordered a murderous crackdown on protesters, Beijing supported him.

With Russia, during the 1991 coup attempt by military and intelligence officials against Mikhail Gorbachev, China’s government-owned media gave extensive and positive coverage to the plotters, barely mentioning Boris Yeltsin or his democratic allies, and was disappointed when the coup attempt failed.

‘Bloody Burma’

Many Canadians are watching with horror the unfolding situation in Burma. The Nobel Peace laureate and democracy advocate Aun San Suu Kyi has reportedly now been thrown by the generals into prison after spending most of eighteen years under house arrest after she and her National League for Democracy won a fair and free election. Seven unarmed persons were killed last night; more than a hundred were injured; two hundred were arrested. Buddhist temples are being ransacked and monks beaten.

Permit me to focus briefly here only on the various attempts by the government of China to oppose the most recent effort by the peoples of Burma to achieve the rule of law, democracy and national reconciliation. Its efforts to shore up the generals’ junta have included:

Using its permanent veto at the UN Security Council to keep the ongoing Burma tragedy away from the Security Council agenda for more than 15 years. When it finally reached the Council last November, the China representative worked hard to remove it quickly, while providing no help to the long-suffering peoples of Burma;

In January, it vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on the generals to cease persecuting minorities and opposition leaders;

This week, it managed to prevent the Security Council from imposing sanctions of any kind on the junta or even condemning the use of force in Rangoon, allowing the Council only to express “concern”; and

Having its diplomatic envoy in Burma say after meeting the Foreign Minister there recently that Beijing wants “a democratic process that is appropriate for the country.” The current government of China clearly opposes democracy in any country.

As another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jody Williams, pointed out yesterday, Beijing’s longstanding support for the military junta includes modernizing their army and providing weapons valued at $1.4 billion. Its concern about what is happening in the country currently is really about how its role there might affect its Olympic Games.

In addition to the “Genocide Olympics” in respect of Darfur and the “Bloody Harvest Games” because of its treatment of Falun Gong practitioners, the world now has the “Burma Junta Olympics” to ponder in deciding if it really wants to attend those games. What else will arise between now and next August?

Darfur

The government of China’s interference at the Security Council in respect of Burma is similar to its ongoing efforts there in respect of shielding another military regime in Khartoum. The modus operendi is the same: feign concern about the ongoing loss of civilian lives out of real concern about possible negative fall-out for the Olympic Games, while ensuring that as little as possible is done to block the ambitions of two bloody regimes with which the government of China does much business and has much in common.

Over the past decade, the government of China has provided Sudan’s Bashir government with more than $US 10 billion in commercial and capital investment, mostly for oil investments, with crude oil comprising virtually all of Sudan’s exports and much of it going to China. Approximately seven percent of China’s oil imports currently come from Sudan. According to one source within Sudan, up to 70 percent of the Sudanese government’s revenues from oil are spent on arms, a good deal of them from China. Nick Kristof of the New York Times has reported that the government of China has built four small arms factories in Sudan.

A key service provided to Bashir’s government is using China’s permanent veto at the UN Security Council to protect the Sudanese regime from any robust peacemaking initiatives while the slaughter in Darfur continues. Only following Mia Farrow’s op-ed piece in March, 2007, which accused the government of China of assisting in genocide, did China’s UN representative join in the Security Council initiative to send 26,000 police and soldiers to Darfur.

The specifics of UN Security Council resolution 1769 passed this summer demonstrate how well Beijing continues to protect Khartoum: The hybrid UN/African Union force will have no authority to seize weapons from belligerents, thus probably making it impossible to control the Janjaweed and other militias that have been slaughtering African Darfurians; there is no provision for sanctioning the government in Khartoum in the probable event that it refuses to comply; the watered down command-and-control provisions will inevitably create problems between the African Union commander on the ground in Darfur and the UN Department of Peacekeeping in New York… (to be cont’d)

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WHITHER THE PARTY-STATE IN CHINA ABROAD AND AT HOME? (cont’d)

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
Calgary, September 27, 2007

Oppression within China

According to Freedom House, fully half of the world’s populations living in “not free” conditions are in China. Free countries are defined by Freedom House as ones where “there is broad scope for open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civil life and independent media…Chinese citizens do not have the ability to democratically elect their leadership or to participate in any political activity outside what is prescribed by the Chinese government. Basic civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, religion and even personal autonomy are highly restricted.”

The same study notes that the government of the PRC imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the world over the past eight years. Only last year, Hu Junta’s government silenced the media with new regulations, which jailed outspoken writers and restricted coverage of breaking news. The media across China are now barred from criticizing senior party leaders or their policies, and ones who do not play along on party news content are harassed, fired or jailed. As someone noted, the only thing readers can believe in most dailies in China is the date.

The government of China spends huge sums of money and deploys tens of thousands of police to block citizen access to websites and in monitoring their emails. The foreign companies and consultants who assist them in building and maintaining this “Golden Shield” are violating many of the principles of free speech and corporate social responsibility.

The Chinese penal code currently prescribes capital punishment for 65 offences, including “undermining national unity”. The official number of executions in 2005 was 1770 persons- 81% of the known world total. It was probably much higher in number. One must, however, give credit to the government for directing in 2006 that all death penalty appeals must be heard in open court. I’ll come shortly to another kind of execution in China for Falun Gong prisoners of conscience-virtually none of which are ever convicted of any offence or go near any court.

Tibetan Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and practitioners of other religions face harassment and much worse. The religious freedom recognized in the constitution is given little heed in practice, with only party-managed spiritual groups being fully tolerated. In Tibet, for example, photos of the Dalai Lama can lead to imprisonment; only boys who sign declarations denouncing him can become monks. In Xinjiang, the predominant Muslim Uighur people have been severely persecuted on the pretext that some are terrorists.

Thousands of North Koreans have fled into China to escape food shortages, religious persecution and the terrible conditions of large forced labour camps. The government of China, however, forcibly repatriates such refugees, well-knowing that they face prison, torture and possible execution because it is a capital offence to flee the Hermit Kingdom. This violates a 1951 UN Convention and its 1967 Protocol that guarantees protection for refugees, both of which were signed by China.

Recently, I saw a photocopy of the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, done by the Canadian John Humphreys in 1946. The adopted version, also accepted by China, outlines each individual’s right to freedom of assembly, speech, thought and other rights. Until all the citizens of China enjoy these basic dignities, all thoughtful persons must continue to protest. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. said it best, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The number of public demonstrations by aggrieved Chinese citizens is growing. The public security ministry admits that that there were 87,000 “public order disturbances” in 2005, up from 74,000 in 2004 and 58,000 in 2003. Their major cause, as Freedom House notes, is the “confiscation of land without adequate compensation, often involving collusion between local government and developers…Environmental destruction as a direct result of rapid development has also been a source of mass protest.” I might add an obvious point here that China’s use of coal and other energy sources is highly inefficient: for every thousand units of energy, China produces only US$ .70 in additional GDP whereas Japan in contrast adds US$ 10.50.

Gao Zhisheng and family

There are many families who should be mentioned when individual cases arise concerning the dismal state of human dignity across China, but in view of Goa’s recent re-arrest in Beijing permit me to identify him and his wife as genuine national heroes. David Matas and I have nominated him for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize as a figure in the Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclev Haval and Aung San Suu Kyi tradition.

Gao’s recently-published outside China, A China More Just, is as interesting as it is courageous. His parents were so poor that they lived in a cave in rural China. After his father died, Gao had to fend for himself from the age of fifteen. After serving in the army, he studied law by correspondence and managed to pass the practice examination. From the start, he donated part of his time to helping clients fighting injustices and was later named as one of China’s best lawyers. When, however, he attempted to defend a Falun Gong practitioner, the government closed down his office and swarms of police began to harass him, his wife and two children constantly.

In August 2006, Gao was arrested and he was eventually convicted of “subversion”, bringing a three-year sentence suspended for five years and a suspension of political rights for one year ( i.e. until after the Games are over next summer). Earlier this month, he released a statement (available at david-kilgour.com under ‘Gao solemnly denies all charges’) in which he explains why he signed a confession. Perhaps even more disturbing than what the police did to him to obtain it is what they did to his wife and two young children. On Sept. 22 nd, Gao released a statement to members of the American Congress (also available on the website.)

Falun Gong

Following an independent investigation, David Matas and I concluded to our horror that since the latter part of 2000 the government of China and its agencies have murdered thousands of Falun Gong practitioners across China without any form of prior trial and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries.

If any of you doubt the weight of the cumulative evidence in our report, you can access the revised version at david-kilgour.com. Most who have read are convinced of the dismaying validity of our conclusion. Some in national governments of varying political colours, who are no doubt privately persuaded, unfortunately choose to say otherwise in public because to concur that such crimes against humanity are continuing in China would presumably require some different bilateral policies with the party-state in Beijing.

None of these deaths would be occurring if the Chinese people as a whole enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the intrinsic worth and dignity of human beings. Most lives in China have no more value to those in power than does their natural environment, work safety, consumer protection, health care for farmers, or the lives of African residents in Darfur or Burmese nationals. In my judgement, it is the toxic and lethal combination of totalitarian governance and virtually ‘anything goes’ capitalism that allows this situation to continue across the Middle Kingdom today…

Conclusion

Challenging the government of China over its partnership roles in Sudan, Burma and elsewhere probably offers the best hope to save civilian lives internationally. The key task is to inform widely about the government of China’s actions.

What would happen, for example, if Canadians of varying ages and backgrounds were to demonstrate in front of the Chinese consulate in Calgary, declaring with banners and placards that the government in Beijing must be held accountable for its complicity in the Darfur genocide and violence in Burma? What if such demonstrations are continuous, and grow, and spread to China’s missions in other countries? What would happen if everywhere Chinese diplomats, politicians and business people travel they are confronted by those who insist on making it an occasion for highlighting China’s destructive roles internationally and at home? To succeed, the campaign must be creative and focused. It must take advantage of every means offered through electronic communications.

The general lack of effective advocacy initiatives has not been lost on Khartoum’s génocidaires. Despite the enormous and consequential successes of the American-led divestment campaign, pressure must be ratcheted up even more. Other Canadian and European companies should follow the lead of Germany’s Siemens and Switzerland’s ABB Ltd., who have both suspended operations in Sudan. Let’s demand the same thing for Burma? Why would the government of Alberta agree recently to sell blocks of oil sands land to a Chinese oil company with close links to the government? The task is daunting but fully achievable, given the moral passion and creative energies of the Darfur and other advocacy communities.

Finally, the last words of the preface from The New Chinese Empire ( 2003) by Ross Terrill of Harvard University, who has spent his life studying and writing about the country: “One day the Communist regime in Beijing will pass away, in part for the reasons Suharto fell, in part for the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed, and we should be prepared…for the dangers and opportunities of that moment. The War on Terrorism has sharpened the issue of democracy in world affairs. Ultimately, terrorism is the antithesis of freedom and accountability. In between lies dictatorship. The 21 st century seems likely to be less kind to dictatorship than was the 20th century.”

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
Calgary, September 27, 2007

- Original article from David Kilgour’s website

Fight For Falun Gong a Legacy to Holocaust, Says Matas

By Sonya Bryskine, Epoch Times Australia Staff, Sep 30, 2007-

In the world where torture, forced labour camps, child slavery and ethnic cleansing are still as prevalent as they were last century, our fight for survival may hinge on just a few people in “power”.

But Canadian lawyer and Holocaust expert David Matas disagrees. He says human rights are not the domain of specialists, but belong to everybody.

A Jew and a devoted campaigner for the “underdogs” of society, Mr Matas draws his inspiration from his roots.

“As a child I was very much struck by the Holocaust. I wanted to do something about it. My contact with human rights gave me a way of doing it,” says the 64-year-old Oxford University graduate who for the last four decades has worked for the rights of Colombians, Turkish Kurds and Nigerians to name but a few. For the last year he has lobbied for the persecuted Falun Gong practitioners in China.

“What I’ve been trying to do is a learn lessons from the Holocaust and apply them as a legacy to the victims of the Holocaust,” he continued.

So why would a Jew take on the mission to defend the rights of millions of people in China – a country just as foreign to him as Israel would be to the average Australian? The answer, he says, is simple: “Because we are all human beings.”

“The Falun Gong, in my view, are victims of bigotry. If you look at what’s being said, it’s prejudice against the group. If these sorts of things were said against the more traditional victim groups – the Jews, the blacks – people would jump on it right away.

“But I’m amazed at the way people are insensitive to a group when it’s prejudice to a group to which they’re not familiar,” said Mr Matas, referring to the spiritual discipline that draws its roots from ancient Buddhist and Taoist traditions, but has been under harsh repressions since 1999.

Crossing Boundaries

Named as the “man of the year” in 2006 by the Brotherhood Interfaith Society in Canada, Mr Matas knows how to cross boundaries—religious, ethnic and even geographic.

In the last year, he has traveled to over 40 countries. He has spoken to more politicians than a diplomat would and has given hundreds of interviews to media across Europe, North America and Australia. His goals are simple—to end forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, a crime he branded as a “new form of evil” after compiling an independent report into the allegations with a long-time friend and Canada’s longest serving politician, David Kilgour.

The 40-page revised document titled Bloody Harvest was released in January this year. After months of investigation, which included making undercover calls to Chinese hospitals and speaking to numerous eyewitnesses, the Canadian team concluded that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been and are being killed for their body parts to service the lucrative organ trade in China.

Mr Matas clearly states that he is not a Falun Gong practitioner, has never studied Falun Gong texts and is proud of his Jewish heritage. However, he is angered by the fundamental lack of freedom of belief in China.

“To me it doesn’t really matter who they are. They are people who have a belief and should be free to do, believe what they want and practise that belief.”

Scapegoats of society

So why in the world would the Government of China go after, more than any other target group, a bunch of innocents who do nothing more than exercise and meditate, asks Mr Matas. The answer, says Mr Matas, lies not with the victims, but with the perpetrators.

To understand anti-Semitism, one must look at the anti-Semites, not the Jews, he explains. “To understand the victimisation of the Falun Gong does not require knowledge about the Falun Gong; but it does require some appreciation of the Communist Party of China”. The regime, he said, must have a scapegoat on whom it can lay all its misfortunes.

Just like the Jews were made the scapegoats under the Nazi dictatorship, Falun Gong practitioners are being demonised by the Chinese Communist regime.

According to Mr Matas, this alone is enough for him to stand up and say that the Chinese regime is not fit to hold the 2008 Olympic Games.

“Falun Gong and many others cannot compete in Olympic sports, cannot coach or train Olympic athletes, cannot even sit in the stands and watch the games. This deterioration in the run-up to the Games has led to an understandable call for boycott of the games.”

However, the fight for Falun Gong has not ended with the investigations into organ harvesting, says Mr Matas.

“Beyond [organ harvesting], I would like to see the end of the persecution to Falun Gong. Beyond that, I would like to see the end to the Chinese Communist Party rule in China. “Beyond that, I would like to see the end to all human rights violations around the world…”

- Original report from the Epochtimes

Renowned Chinese Attorney’s Open Letter Urges U.S. Congress to Address China’s Human Rights

By Yi Ping, Epoch Times Staff, Sep 23, 2007-

WASHINGTON, D.C.— In the afternoon of Sept. 20, 2007, members of the U.S. Congress, Canadian, and European Parliaments attended a press conference at the Rayburn House Office Building to support China’s human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng.

Attorney Gao, known as “China’s Conscience” and author of A China More Just, recently wrote an open letter to members of the U.S. Congress and the Senate. In his nine-page letter, Gao included first-hand information, documented data, and evidence of Beijing’s brutal suppression of human rights.

(photo: Attorney Gao Zhisheng in September 2007)

Gao expressed his deep concern about the upcoming Beijing Olympics and urged the U.S. Congress to pay attention to the continuous human rights violations in China.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a member of the U.S. Congress and the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and David Kilgour, former Canadian Member of Parliament and Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), were at the press conference. Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice President of the European Parliament, called into the conference to express his support for Gao.

‘The Persecution of Falun Gong Is the Worst Disaster to Human Nature in This Era’

Gao said in the letter: “I have written a lot about the Falun Gong issue, as the persecution of Falun Gong is the worst disaster to human nature in this era. … Millions of people were illegally detained in countless brainwashing camps established in every corner of China by the notorious 610 Office, an agency founded to implement the persecution of Falun Gong. Such brainwashing camps require very simple admittance procedures, while the methods used to ‘educate’ the practitioners are shockingly cruel.

“Tens of millions of people have been persecuted in various forms. A large number of children have been expelled from school only because their parents practice Falun Gong. Some of the children were left alone or even homeless after their parents were arrested. (Since last August, my daughter has met many such children who lingered at the gate of her school. The children, though homeless, came up to my daughter to express their condolences and support. Our hearts ached for these children.)”

In the letter, Gao cited one of his own investigations. Liu Boyang, who was 28 years old and had a medical degree, and his mother were both Falun Gong practitioners. They were tortured to death in the same building in less than 10 days after being arrested. Gao reported legally acceptable evidence that he had collected as an attorney.

Gao said, “The eight-year-long suppression of Falun Gong is by far the most long-lasting and the most serious human rights disaster in China and in the world. This is why I emphasized this at the beginning of this letter.”

Communist Party’s Olympics: A Thorn in the Human Conscience

Gao said: “From the application to the hosting of the Olympic Games, the Chinese communist regime has treated the entire process as an important political task. Everything related to the Olympics is regarded as a political issue and a ’supreme political task’ to ensure that every need of the Olympic Games is met. This is a simple and commonly recognized fact in China.

“It is plain as day to all Chinese people that, with a successful hosting of the Olympic Games, the communist regime is trying to prove to the Chinese people that the world still acknowledges the Party as a legal government despite all the tyranny and all the horrible crimes against humanity that the Party has committed during the past decades at the cost of at least 80 million Chinese lives.”

Gao also wrote in his letter: “Being Chinese, I cherish a profound love for my homeland and our suffering people. I also long to see the day when the Olympic Games are held in China. But when I remember the social environment of China, and how the Olympic Games will be used here, my conscience and sense of justice make my heart ache.

“As you know, today in China, those who connect the Olympics with human rights are immediately hunted down by the communist regime and its gang as ‘enemies of the state,’ ’sinners of the people,’ and ‘destroyers of social harmony.’

“We don’t support or pretend to support an Olympics that is used as a political tool. Nor can we support or pretend to support an Olympics that has no consideration for human conscience, justice, or morality.”

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Member of Congress and of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said at the press conference, “There are few in the world who are more acutely aware of Beijing’s severe shortcomings in the area of human rights than the famed human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Mr. Gao Zhisheng.”

“The regime in Beijing, rather than seeing the approach of the Olympics as a time for greater openness, sees it as a mandate for further control and repression of the Chinese people.

“I have joined my colleague Mr. Rohrabacher and others in the House in expressing our concerns over participation in the ‘Genocide Olympics’ by co-sponsoring House Resolution 610 which expresses ‘the sense of the House of Representatives’ that the United States Government should take immediate steps to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008 unless the Chinese regime stops engaging in serious human rights abuses against its citizens.”

A Question to President Bush *

Gao wrote in his letter: “When I finished this letter, I heard that President Bush had decided to join the Olympics next year. Pardon my manner here: I wanted to shout, ‘Mr. President, what are you doing?! Did you not see how President Reagan handled the 1988 Seoul Olympics?’ I want to remind my friends here as well; I hope my friends in Congress and in both the Senate and the House can establish merit for human civilization similar to the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

“Those struggling in the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] prisons, those crying from the torture inflicted by the CCP, those in hiding to avoid mistreatment need your help. When the CCP welcomes foreign dignitaries with cannons firing, the red carpet treatment, and champagne; when the skyscrapers in Beijing and Shanghai and dazzling lights create a scene of prosperity and peace; when you light candles; when you’re partying holding your cocktails or drinks, I wish you would think of those suffering people.

“May God bless America. May God give each person a sense of justice, duty, and firm determination, and may the light of freedom shine upon China soon. Let the evil have no place to hide. And may the mistreated no longer live in pain.”

Gao’s new book, A China More Just: My Fight as a Rights Lawyer in the World’s Largest Communist State , was recently published in English. In it he details his remarkable personal story, the suffering of Falun Gong and other groups, and why he went from having hope in China’s legal system to completely opposing the Communist Party’s regime, willing even to risk his life for justice.

* this subhead added by Chinaview

- Original report from the Epochtimes

Related:
- Leading Chinese Lawyer Urges Boycott of Beijing Olympics , Washington Times, September 21, 2007

Do Not Compete For the Blood-soaked Medals From Beijing Olympics: Chinese medallist

Speech by Huang Xiaomin, Chinese silver medal winner at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, September 16, 2007, in Paris, France, published on Human Rights Torch Relay website-

Please do not compete for the blood-soaked medals from the Beijing Olympics

 

Huang Xiaomin

Hello, ladies and gentlemen,

On the 9th of September a Human Rights Torch was lit in Athens marking the start of a global relay. Today, this torch comes to France. Because of my engagement with our team at a competition game, I cannot personally join the activities of the Relay. Please could all those friends attending accept my apology. I wish the activities of the Human Rights Torch Relay in France a complete success.

May I take this opportunity to appeal to all my colleagues working in the sports industry throughout the whole world. I say to you all, please do not join the Beijing Olympics under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) tyranny. Please do not compete for these medals. They are soaked in blood. An Olympics hosted by the tyrannical CCP is against the spirit of the Olympic Games and is a taunt to human justice.

The CCP has claimed that the Olympic movement in both a social and in a cultural context, is the soul of the Beijing Olympics. It has also claimed that it is a movement of culture based on humanity. However, the CCP’s actions and behaviour have been severely violating this same Olympic Spirit. Under the CCP’s tyranny, people have no freedom of speech, media, belief and assembly. They have no access to information or freedom of thought. Under the CCP’s control, China is in fact the largest prison in the whole world. It is worth paying special attention to the fact that the CCP is responsible for harvesting the organs of live Falun Gong practitioners. This has been exposed and verified. The CCP has refused to allow members of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) entry to China for the independent investigation of evil crimes that are unimaginable to human beings.

The CCP has shown no respect to the Olympic spirit. It has not changed its horrible human rights records even after it was given the authority to host the Olympic Games in Beijing. Rather, it has accelerated the persecution of human rights activists and continued to arrest Falun Gong practitioners on a vast scale. An Olympic Games run by the CCP therefore, will be an imprisoned Olympics, soaked in the blood of its victims. It will be an outright abuse of the Olympic spirit.

Dear colleagues in the sports industry, please do not ignore the CCP’s crimes. These include the genocide of millions Falun Gong practitioners. Do not strengthen the power of the CCP, which is the most evil regime in human history. Please do not compete for the blood-soaked medals from the Beijing Olympics.

I want to also appeal to the Chinese people to be clear-minded about the real consequences of the Beijing Olympics. After the Games in Beijing, can the huge population of unemployed Chinese people find jobs? Can those innocent children living in poverty return to their education? Can your family’s income be increased? Can those people whose houses have been forcibly demolished to make way for this sham obtain justice?

The answer is no, they cannot! The CCP’s 86-year history proves that it has never, ever considered the interests of our country and those of its people. Everything, including running the Olympic Games,that the CCP has done in its 86-year history is for hijacking and maintaining its own power. It can never, ever truly respect or promote the Olympic spirit. I therefore suggest that we wait until the CCP no longer controls China and to when the Chinese people have real equality, freedom and basic human rights. Only then can Beijing host the Olympic Games nobly and in fulfillment of the high aspirations of the real Olympic Games.

My appeal is for people with righteousness and justice in their hearts throughout the whole world to get together. Use this platform of the Global Human Right Torch Relay, which is launched by the CIPFG, to stop a repeat of the shame of 1936. An Olympic Games should promote peace, friendship, love and dignity. It should not let dictators polish themselves up to cheat the world and strengthen their dictatorship. What the CCP has done to the Chinese people is what it intends to do to all people throughout the whole world.

The Olympic Games can never co-exist with the crimes against humanity within China!

Friends who are involved in the Global Human Rights Rorch Relay, please give your best effort!

Huang Xiaomin,

Seoul Olympic Silver medallist (of Chinese woman swimming team)
& (Current) Sports coach in South Korea

16 September 2007

- Original report from HumanRightsTorch.org 

Leading Chinese Lawyer Urges Boycott of Beijing Olympics

By Bill Gertz, Washington Times, U.S, September 21, 2007-

A leading Chinese dissident called on Congress yesterday to lead an international boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympics because of China’s human rights abuses and support for rogue regimes.

Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer under house arrest in China, wrote in a Sept. 13 letter to Congress made public yesterday that “more and more Chinese people are speaking out against the coming Olympic Games in China, which they often refer to as ‘the bloody Olympics,’ and ‘the handcuff Olympics.’ “

Mr. Gao was scheduled to speak by telephone from China to a Capitol Hill press conference, but the phone connection could not be made. He was arrested last month and imprisoned and tortured by Chinese authorities who forced him to renounce his legal activism, which he later repudiated, David Kilgour, a member of the Canadian Parliament, told reporters.

Mr. Gao’s 16-page letter was released at the Capitol Hill conference hosted by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“The regime in Beijing, rather than seeing the approach of the Olympics as a time for greater openness, sees it as a mandate for further control and repression of the Chinese people,” Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen said.

“The Beijing regime seeks only a propaganda victory,” she said. “We cannot and must not provide it with such a victory.”

Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, are co-sponsoring a resolution calling for a U.S. boycott of the Olympics unless China halts its human rights abuses.

Mr. Gao stated in his letter that Chinese authorities recently began a widespread crackdown on the Chinese people as part of preparation for the August 2008 games. He said China today is facing a “human rights disaster” because of the repression.

“Under the name of securing a success of the Olympic games, all kinds of evils have been committed in broad daylight, including forced eviction, illegal arresting and persecution people who are petitioning authorities, and suppression of religious people,” he said.

Mr. Gao said the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP) is using the Games to gain legitimacy, despite its past and current history of repression. As many as 80 million Chinese died under the communist system in China in what Mr. Gao called “crimes against humanity.”

“Today the CCP is expanding its moral corruption strategy to the whole world,” Mr. Gao said. “If the Olympics are held by the CCP, it will mean the success of the CCP’s global moral corruption.”

Mr. Kilgour recently investigated China’s repression of the Falun Gong religious group, including what he called the “horrible” practice of harvesting body organs from imprisoned members of the Buddhist-oriented group that is opposing communist rule in China.

Edward McMillan-Scott, European Union parliament vice president, said by telephone from Europe that all nations and their leaders should boycott the 2008 Olympics because of Beijing’s support for genocide in Darfur, and its repression of Tibetan Buddhists, Xinjiang Uighurs, Chinese journalists and human rights and legal rights activists like Mr. Gao.

- Original report from WashingtonTimes.com : Chinese dissident urges boycott of Olympics

“Hand in Hand” with China, Canada Promotes New Version of 1936 Berlin Olympics: CIPFG President

By Clive Ansley, letter to Media With Conscience, September 18, 2007-

Canada/China Hand in Hand Olympic Countdown

Clive Ansley

While China has recently been the target of severe criticism, not only because of its unsafe exports, but also for its appalling human rights record, I would like to draw your attention to an atrocity still little publicized in this country.

I refer to China’s well-hidden eight-year persecution of Falun Gong — an atrocity unmatched even by the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. Mia Farrow and others have dubbed the 2008 Beijing Olympics the “Genocide Olympics” because of Beijing’s support for the genocide being perpetrated in Darfur by the Government of Sudan. While I do not quarrel with Mia Farrow’s stance, the supreme irony is that while she criticizes Beijing for the indirect support of genocide internationally, Beijing has been directly conducting a campaign of genocide against Falun Gong in China for the past eight years.

To date, three independent studies have determined that large numbers of Falun Gong prisoners are kept alive as unwilling organ donors, then killed on demand so that their organs may be harvested for international sale to wealthy patients in need of organ transplants. Killing on demand for organ theft is only one, though admittedly the most horrific, component of the genocide, which has been implemented against Falun Gong practitioners over the past eight years.

A massive propaganda machine supported by Communist Party controlled media, harsh internet censorship, a sham legal system, a network of prison and slave labour camps, abusive psychiatric hospitals, a Gestapo-like agency with unlimited power to oversee the persecution, and huge financial resources have enabled the Beijing Communist regime to continue its persecution unabated. These human rights violations are well documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights in China, Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada, the UN and others.

A 2006 Amnesty International report raised concerns that, “the official campaign of public vilification of Falun Gong in the official Chinese press has created a climate of hatred against Falun Gong practitioners, which may be encouraging acts of violence against them.” This is but one of many eerie parallels to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It is clear that China has not lived up to its promise to improve human rights when awarded the Olympics in 2001. In fact, the situation is substantially worse today than it was then.

To date, we have failed to persuade the Chinese regime to stop the persecution and free all prisoners of conscience; we therefore wish to focus the international Olympics spotlight on China’s own genocide by calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. We hope that the alternative global human rights torch relay that we launched on August 9 in Athens will provide the international community with the opportunity to join us in this Olympic boycott effort. (http://www.humanrightstorch.org/)

When the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald were exposed in 1945, decent people everywhere opined that the 1936 Olympics should never have been awarded to Berlin. “If only we had known!”, said many. Today, though there has been a regrettable lack of mass publicity to date, the knowledge, the research and the evidence is available. This time the world will not be able to say, “We had no idea that this regime we were showering with glory was contemporaneously implementing genocide and mass murder for the purpose of organ theft.”

It is most distressing that Canadian governmental bodies and other organizations are fully supporting the promotion of the 2008 Olympics right here in Canada through a series of cultural performances co-hosted by CCTV, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mouthpiece, and the CBC. Previous Olympics devolved into propaganda bonanzas for dictatorial hosts, such as the Nazis in 1936 and the Soviets in 1980, rather than promoting the universal celebration of peaceful competition and sport for people of all colours and creeds in accordance with the Olympic ideal.

Steven Spielberg announced recently that he’s considering quitting his advisory role in the Olympics if Beijing doesn’t soon address the issue of its support for the Sudanese government.

It’s not too late to join the chorus of voices calling for a boycott. Beijing cannot possibly expect to freely continue with rampant political oppression, mass executions, forced abortions, illicit organ harvesting, religious persecution and a slew of other human rights abuses. Perhaps with our combined efforts we can bring the true Olympic spirit to the Chinese people.

Sincerely,

Clive Ansley
CIPFG President
The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong

- Original from Mwcnews.net : Canada/China Hand in Hand Olympic Countdown, hint by CIPFG

David Kilgour: Organ Pillaging AND Olympic Games in China

Notes for Address by Hon. David Kilgour, New South Wales Parliament Auditorium, Sydney, Australia, September 7, 2007, published on David Kilgour’s website-

APEC

 

ORGAN PILLAGING AND OLYMPIC GAMES

David Kilgour

David Matas and I of Canada concluded to our horror following an independent investigation that since the latter part of 2000 the government of China and its agencies have murdered thousands of Falun Gong practitioners across China without any form of prior trial and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries, including APEC member countries. There is no indication that organ pillaging is on any agenda at the APEC heads of government and business meetings here this week.

If any of you doubt the weight of the cumulative evidence in our report, you can access the revised version in seventeen languages from the first item on the header page of david-kilgour.com. Virtually no independent person I know who has read it is not convinced of the dismaying validity of our conclusion. Some in national governments of varying political stripes, who are no doubt privately persuaded, unfortunately choose to say otherwise in public because to concur that such crimes against humanity are continuing in China would presumably require some different bilateral policies with the party-state in Beijing, quite possibly in respect of its Olympic Games in the summer of 2008.

None of these deaths would be occurring if the Chinese peoples as a whole enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the intrinsic worth and dignity of each one of them. Most human lives in China have no more value to those in power there than does the natural environment, pensions (only a fifth of workers have them), work safety, health care for farmers, or the lives of African residents in Darfur. In my judgement, it is the toxic and lethal combination of totalitarian governance and virtually ‘anything goes’ capitalism that allows this new form of evil to continue across the Middle Kingdom today.

One of the members of the Chinese delegation to the APEC conference now in this city is Commerce Minister Bo Xilai. Bo was governor of Lianong province when egregiously brutal tortures and murders of numerous Falun Gong practitioners took place. The Matas-Kilgour report quotes in appendix 18 a woman whose then surgeon husband removed the corneas from the eyes of approximately 2000 practitioners in a hospital in Bo’s province while he was governor. There are lawsuits proceeding against him in ten countries, including Canada, and I’m told that he is being served this week in Sydney for another begun in Australia.

The propaganda phase of the government of China’s war begun in mid-1999 against a then estimated 70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners demonized, vilified and dehumanized them in the state-controlled media. Many Chinese nationals and others outside China were thereby persuaded to think of the community as disruptive and tragically even somehow less than human.

As Ross Terrill of Harvard University’s Fairbank Centre for East Asian Research puts it in his thoughtful 2003 book, The New Chinese Empire: “The Fearful State in Beijing had transformed Falungong from a harmless, health-promoting lifestyle choice of millions of mostly older Chinese into a menace to the “stability and unity” of the Red Middle Kingdom. That loyal and quite senior members of the CCP, some in the army, police and air force, were among the Falungong membership did not undermine the imperative to stamp out a potential, if unwitting, philosophic challenge to the state.”

The phenomenon recalls the similarly inhuman media campaign unleashed by the government of Rwanda against the minority Tutsi community in that country prior to the genocide there between April and June, 1994

My own experience with Falun Gong practitioners in the almost forty countries David Matas and I have now visited, seeking to raise awareness about what is continues to be done to them in China in order to bring it to a full halt, has been overwhelmingly positive. They really do attempt to live their core principles of “truth, compassion and forbearance”, which are by the way shared by most of the world’s religions. I recall, for example, sitting in an Athens park a month ago with some of them when someone spotted a Euro coin on the ground. No-one would pick it up because the practitioners felt it was unearned and thus should be left where it was.

One wonders why is it that in only one of the seventy or so countries where practitioners live are they persecuted mercilessly by an unelected regime? Their huge and growing popularity among the Chinese people during the 1990s was clearly one reason, but another was no doubt that the values of those in power in Beijing are clearly at the opposite end of the ethical spectrum from their own.

There has been no independently-reported instance of a Falun Gong practitioner using violence to respond to police and other attacks by officials upon them since July, 1999. The UN Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Novak, concluded following his visit to China a year or so ago that fully two thirds of the persons being tortured across that country were Falun Gong practitioners. How can such a government be hosting next year’s Olympic Games?

Matas and I have spoken in various places to a small number of the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who have been sent to labour camps since 1999, who managed to leave both the camps and China itself. They worked in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay and little food, making export products, ranging from garments to chopsticks to Christmas decorations for multinational companies. As this constitutes gross corporate social irresponsibility; the CEOs of multinational companies using forced labour subcontractors within China should be held fully accountable.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote in Wealth of Nations that all business must rest on an ethical base and that all transactions must be fully voluntary. Where then is the basis for multinational companies in APEC member countries investing shareholders’ money in China today? What is the World Trade Organization (WTO) doing about such obvious violations of its rules by the government of China, contrary to solemn undertakings it made upon joining the WTO six years ago? How can multinationals subcontract for forced labour when only a little effort on their part would indicate that the prisoners of conscience manufacturing their consumer products have rarely been convicted of, or even charged with, any offence? Did we not recently celebrate the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery in countries like Britain?

Finally, for those who assert naively that they are not Falun Gong practitioners and thus have nothing to worry about in China, consider what Pastor Martin Niemoller said after his years in Hitler’s concentration camps ( I thank our courageous host here in this legislative building, Rev the Hon.Dr Gordon Moyes, MLC, for reminding me of this famous quote):

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

“Naming and Shaming”

What can we all do to stop organ pillaging? E-mails to MPs, friends and blogs will help. Probably ‘naming and shaming’ the party-state in Beijing with placards in front of embassies, consulates and events attended by Chinese officials offer the best leverage in the months leading up to the Olympic Games next August. As the world saw in the case of Mia Farrow’s ‘Genocide Olympics’ comment about Darfur, the regime does listen when the success of its Games might be in jeopardy. Let’s use some ‘Bloody Harvest’ placards.

People of conscience should come out to support the Global Human Rights Torch relay when it comes to more than 100 cities in 35 countries on five continents. You can get more information on the web at www.humanrightstorch.org. Thank you.

- Original report from David-Kilgour.Com : ORGAN PILLAGING AND OLYMPIC GAMES

New Zealand Human Rights Lawyer Calls to Boycott China Olympics

TVNZ, New Zealand, Sep 11, 2007-

International human rights lawyers are calling for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics over claims China kills Falun Gong practitioners to harvest their organs.

New Zealand human rights lawyer Richard MacLeod says next year’s Olympic Games are a prime opportunity for the world to take a stand.

He says New Zealander’s needs to take a lesson from the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

He says the world stood by and allowed those Olympics to take place when the world already knew about Nazi practices and we can’t let the same thing happen with China.

- Original report from TVNZ: Calls to boycott China Olympics