Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
Enver Tohti was a surgeon in a hospital in Xinjiang, in the northwestern part of China, when, in June 1995, he was instructed by his superior to prepare for an adventure — surgery in the field.
In the morning, when the doctor and his team arrived at their destination, he realized they were at “the Western Mountain Execution Grounds, which specialized in killing political dissidents.” Read the rest of this entry »
Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are said to die each year in China. Evidence reportedly indicates these prisoners are also victims of having their organs harvested by force. Calls for action are being voiced from various corners of the world. Read the rest of this entry »
I have taken my first steps into “Body Worlds,” an exhibition at Vienna’s Museum of Natural History, and it has sparked a memory. The room where I am standing—dark, somber, strangely hushed—exhibits fetuses at various stages of development, placed on blocks that evoke a pagan circle of standing stones. The show’s mastermind, German doctor Gunther von Hagens, has suctioned all the liquid and fat from the small bodies and filled the soft tissues with hard plastic through his ingenious process of “plastination.” Usually, if you see a fetus in a museum, it is floating in a jar of liquid and is red or yellow and translucent. These bodies seem to be flat gray, and that is what ignites the flashback, a surreal freeze-frame of my son, born a month prematurely by C-section: As the medical staff pulled him out of my wife’s womb, just for a second, his flesh looked gray. Read the rest of this entry »
[Leonidas Donskis, EP Human Rights Subcommittee Member]:
“People who are behind this are criminals. This is a crime against humanity.”
At this hearing (Religious Persecution by China: A Horror Story)—held at the European Parliament in Brussels on January 29—doctors, politicians and human rights defenders discussed how prisoners of conscience in China are persecuted, tortured, and in some cases, killed for their organs. Read the rest of this entry »
Former police chief and deputy mayor of Chongqing Wang Lijun made a surprising and hasty visit to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in February, making international headlines. What Wang said to U.S. consulate officials, however, remained mostly confidential.
Sources told Bill Gertz, a national security reporter, that Wang handed U.S. officials key information about Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang’s planned coup against Xi Jinping, the heir apparent of the Chinese Communist Party. It was also rumored that Wang attempted to defect and sought protection from U.S. officials.
A well-placed source has now told The Epoch Times that Wang gave U.S. officials confidential documents containing critical information about top communist officials’ involvement in the persecution of Falun Gong. The source said Wang provided details about organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners in China’s network of military hospitals, prisons, mental hospitals, and labor camps. Read the rest of this entry »
(Epochtimes) A peaceful movement that encourages renunciations from the Chinese Communist Party now counts 100 million Chinese—that is one in every 13 Chinese people—as its participants. The show of mass defiance is unsettling to the largest political party in the world.
“Having 100 million Chinese people withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party is an occasion to celebrate and a historic milestone in Chinese history,” Yi Rong, chairwoman of the New York-based Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party, said at a press conference. Read the rest of this entry »
(Taipei Times)– Despite economic growth, the condition of human rights in China is still very bad — especially when it comes to the persecution of religious and minority groups by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — participants at a conference on human rights in China said yesterday, calling on Taiwanese to pay more attention to human rights issues in China.
“Taiwanese are not paying enough attention to issues related to human rights and democracy in China, and I think the first thing we can do to help China democratize is show more concern,” said Maysing Yang (楊黃美幸), deputy executive director of Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a sponsor of the conference organized by the Association for Free Communication. Read the rest of this entry »
The two authors of the book Bloody Harvest, who were also 2010 Nobel Peace Prize nominees, attended the launch for the Chinese translation of Bloody Harvest, held at the Legislative Yuan (the national legislature) in Taiwan on June 28.
Each of the two authors, David Kilgour, who was the former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), and David Matas, the award-winning international human rights lawyer, spoke.
David Kilgour said that since 2006 he and David Matas had traveled to four continents and more than 40 countries, breaking through various obstacles to collect evidence, and arrived at the conclusion that large-scale live organ harvesting from Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners did happen and continues even today. Read the rest of this entry »
Remarks presented during the Conference of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) on Sept. 30, 2010 at the Palais des Nations, United Nations Complex in Geneva.
Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) is a spiritual discipline which seeks to improve body, character and ethics. It contains features of traditional systems, like Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism), combined with a set of gentle exercises. Its core principles are “truth, compassion and forbearance”, which echo those of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other faiths. It today has practitioners in numerous countries.
In China, where it first became public in 1992, Falun Gong grew within seven years to 70-100 million practitioners by the government’s own estimate. Some Communist party leaders in early 1999 reacted negatively at seeing citizens from all walks of life, including party members, engaging publicly in a form of exercise, which had a belief system behind it different from Marxism-Leninism. The exercises, moreover, could be done anywhere at any time, singly or in groups, indoors or outdoors. The amorphous nature meant it was impossible for the party-state to control it.
The first vilification of Falun Gong by Party elements seeking to ban it in 1999 led to protests by practitioners, mobilized through cell phones and Internet coordination. A large protest at party headquarters in Beijing enraged then party-state leader Jiang Zemin. For him and others, banning and persecuting Falun Gong became official violence easier to get away with than doing the same to other spiritual communities because Falun Gong in China often lack Western connections. The incitement to hatred against them across China in Party media since mid-1999 has had many tragic consequences, most notably the widespread commercial trafficking in their vital organs. Read the rest of this entry »
MONTREAL – March 8, 2010 – David Matas, a member of Rights & Democracy‘s Board of Directors, is on the longlist for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his work investigating the alleged killings of Falun Gong followers for their organs in China.
Mr. Matas was nominated along with former Member of Parliament David Kilgour by federal MP Boris Wrzesneskyi and Balfour Hakak, Chair of the Hebrew Writers Association. Mr. Matas and Mr. Kilgour have issued three reports together on the alleged harvesting of organs from imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners. Their latest report, « Bloody Harvest : The Killing of Falun Gong for their organs,» is available online at http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ .
“David Matas’ work reminds us that the road to peace and human rights for all is one that is pitted with incredible cruelty and injustice,” said Aurel Braun, Chair of Rights & Democracy’s Board of Directors. “We are indeed fortunate to have his talents and experience at the service of the Board. ”
Each year, around 200 candidates are submitted to the Norwegian Nobel Committee by individuals qualified to nominate, including members of government, past Laureates and university professors in related fields. The names are normally kept secret for 50 years. A shortlist will be determined over the course of March and the winner will be announced in October. The official presentation of the prize takes place on December 10, International Human Rights Day, in Oslo, Norway.
Rights & Democracy also welcomes the nomination of Chinese human rights defender, Liu Xiaobo, author of the call for democratic reforms in China known as Charter 08. Mr. Xiaobo, who was condemned last December to 11 years in prison on charges of subversion, was nominated by 90 Parliamentarians from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The nomination is further supported by two former Peace Prize laureates, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, as well as former Czech President, Vaclav Havel, and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, Herta Muller.
Editorial, The Winnipeg Free Press, Canada, Feb. 20, 2010-
Many Winnipeggers could not pick David Matas out of a crowd. His relative public obscurity at home, however, belies the man’s international profile for work that has garnered him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The breadth of Mr. Matas’s human rights work has taken him far afield — into the world of international courts, United Nations missions and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals — and into the homes of children plugged into virtual relationships where Internet predators lurk. A founding member of Beyond Borders, he helped fight for the tougher child exploitation laws in Canada.
Much of his work has been championing the rights of immigrants and refugees, battling the abuses and legal chasms that catch up the innocent and controversial alike. One client, Vancouverite Lai Changxing, has been called China’s most wanted man. The reputed billionaire is accused by the Communist government of building his fortune on smuggling and on bribing officials. Lai is a lightning rod for those who see Canada’s lax immigration law providing safe haven for criminals. Undaunted, Mr. Matas argues Lai could not possibly get a fair trial in a country where officials have publicly stated he deserves the penalty of multiple deaths.
It is Mr. Matas’s work with former MP David Kilgour on the persecution of the Falun Gong adherents in China that brings him now to the notice of Norway’s Nobel Committee. They have been co-nominated for their 2006 independent investigation of allegations the Chinese state’s abuses, imprisonment and torturing of adherents had extended to organ harvesting — resulting in the prisoners’ deaths — to serve transplantation tourists.
The Nobel Peace Prize is a bit battered of late. Never granted to Mahatma Ghandi, the world’s most famous peace activist, it was the source of wide-spread derision in December when it was bestowed on Barack Obama. The U.S. president, barely minted, was honoured for strengthening international diplomacy and for his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Even Mr. Obama was surprised.
Mr. Matas faces long odds in getting to the podium at the end of the year. His nomination, however, returns a small measure of gratitude to a humble and deserving man. It may help raise the esteem of the Norwegian prize a notch.
Shen Yun, a show that has been called by professionals as “State of the arts”, “mind-blowing”, ”first class”, “the best”, “the top”, “perfection”, “out of the world” and “beyond all-beyond”, now is traveling in about 20 countries, 100 cities around the world.
Sourcing of organs from prisoners is done without their consent. Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu in Guangzhou in November 2006 said in a speech, “too often organs come from non consenting parties”. At the time of the announcement of an organ donor pilot project, Huang indicated that executed prisoners “are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants”. This principle, that prisoners are not an acceptable source for organs, is followed by the Transplantation Society and the World Medical Association. So what is the rule of law world going to do about the party-state’s abuse of global transplant ethics? Our report and book have a long list of recommendations, but, given the shortness of time, I’ll mention here only two.
One is extraterritorial legislation. The 2007 policy giving priority to Chinese patients has cut down on transplant tourism to China, but such legislation would be a useful statement of universal principle. The sorts of transplants in which the Chinese medical system engages are illegal everywhere else in the world. But it is not illegal for a foreigner from any country to go to China, obtain a transplant which would be illegal at home, and then return home. Foreign transplant legislation everywhere is territorial; it has no extraterritorial reach. Many other laws are global in their sweep. For instance, child sex tourists can be prosecuted not just in the country where they abuse children, but often at home as well. This sort of legislative sanction does not exist for transplant tourists who pay for organ transplants without bothering to determine whether the organ donor has consented.
A second recommendation is that any person known to be involved in trafficking in the organs of prisoners in China should be barred entry by all foreign countries. (to be cont’d)
NEW YORK, January 24, 2010 – Shen Yun Performing Arts regrets to inform that seven sold out shows in Hong Kong have been cancelled due to Hong Kong authorities’ last-minute denial of entry visas to several of our key production staff.
The shows were scheduled to play at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts’ Lyric Theatre January 27-31. But on January 21, the Hong Kong Immigration Department refused to give seven of our company’s core production team members entry visas. The reason given by Hong Kong immigration is that these production jobs could be filled locally.
However, as had been clearly explained to Hong Kong authorities, these production members are an integral part of Shen Yun. Our production staff are highly trained in Shen Yun’s specific artistic requirements, which are exceptionally technical and detailed. They cannot be replaced and the show cannot go on without them.
Although the visas were applied for on October 13, 2009, the denials came only three days before our departure. As Hong Kong authorities refused to change their decision after repeated requests, we have been forced to cancel the shows.
Shen Yun Performing Arts is a New York-based company that held its first tour season in 2007. Our mission is to revive China’s artistic traditions and spiritual heritage that thrived before decades of suppression. Our shows have been warmly embraced by millions of audience members of diverse backgrounds.
At the heart of our production is classical Chinese dance, along with vocalists, a live orchestra that combines Chinese and Western instruments, and colorful hand-made costumes. Our dances portray traditional legends like that of Mulan or Yue Fei, as well as events in present-day China, such as the story of Falun Gong. By artistically depicting these stories on stage, we aim to breathe new life into the spiritual essence and values of China’s divinely inspired culture.
The Chinese communist regime has been seeking to interfere with our performances for years by trying to pressure officials and theaters to cancel our shows.
We regret that the Hong Kong people are denied their right to see Shen Yun Performing Arts and understand that this incident constitutes a violation of Hong Kong people’s freedom. We hope the people of Hong Kong who treasure their freedom will urge the Hong Kong government to undo this mistake.
We are grateful to the thousands of Hong Kong people who were looking forward to seeing our performance. We look forward to returning to Hong Kong for shows on an even larger scale soon.
The issue of refusal of visas by Hong Kong authorities to 6 production staff of New York based Shen Yun performing Arts company, which caused the company’s show canceled, deepens local people’s fear of losing their freedom so quickly, and warns international societies of doing business in Hong Kong.
The Epoch Times reported that, Hong Kong’s Immigration Department informed the show’s organizers on Jan. 21, 6 days before the opening of the show, that six production staff for the show would be denied entry, saying they could be replaced by Hong Kong local workers.
A spokesperson for the show organizers, Kan Hung Cheung, remarked that the six production staff played irreplaceable roles in the performance, including lighting, sound effects and technical backdrop. “A complete staff is essential to any performing arts group. This is just common sense,” Mr. Cheung said.
Hong Kong public figures have criticized the decision, claiming that it was a result of political pressure from Beijing- Shen Yun’s artists include practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned and persecuted in China.
Hon. Albert Ho Chun-yan, chairman of the Democratic Party (Hong Kong) and legislative council member, condemned Hong Kong authorities for what he believed was their following Beijing’s orders to suppress freedom of expression in Hong Kong. He demanded an explanation for how it would be possible for the show to find replacements in Hong Kong within ten days, but the Immigration Department did not respond.
“Hong Kong has suffered too much suppression on political, cultural, and media issues in the past decade or so”, said by Democratic Party’s former Sai Kung District council member Lam Wing-Yin. “All these will eventually make Hong Kong deteriorate to become one of China’s regular cities.”
The above report shows, international societies have to face a fact that doing business in Hong Kong- like the US-based the Shen Yun Performing Arts does, may get political repression under different names, and cause business failure as a result.
The show, produced by Shen Yun Performing Arts, a leading classical Chinese arts company, has traveled to over 20 countries, 100 cities around the world in past years, and been seen live by million people.
Then what’s the show about? what does people around the world say about the show? Following videos can give an answer.
HD Video: Highlight of Shen Yun show 2010
HD Video: Feedback from audience around the world about the Shen Yun show
Hong Kong public figures have criticized the decision, claiming that it was a result of political pressure from Beijing. Shen Yun’s artists include practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned and persecuted in China, and its performances include artistic representations of Chinese citizens standing up to end the persecution in China.
Six days before the show’s debut, scheduled on Jan. 27, Hong Kong’s Immigration Department informed the company that seven production staff would be denied entry, saying they could be replaced by Hong Kong local workers. Later, one of the staff members was granted entry after the presenter made repeated entreaties for a reevaluation.
Kan Hung Cheung, a spokesperson for the organizers, remarked that four of the six production staff played irreplaceable roles in the performance, including lighting, sound effects, technical backdrop. Their roles were specified in the visa application, he said.
“A complete staff is essential to any performing arts group. This is just common sense,” Mr. Cheung said. “It is obvious that the Immigration Department denied their entry because Beijing wants to interfere with the show.”
The show’s organizers, the Hong Kong Falun Dafa Association, and local bureaux of New Tang Dynasty Television and The Epoch Times, said that the Hong Kong government must “bear the consequences” of the decision. “Unfortunately the Hong Kong government has chosen to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party to stop the show,” Mr. Cheung said. “We strongly protest this.”
Hon. Albert Ho Chun-yan, chairman of the Democratic Party (Hong Kong) and legislative council member, condemned Hong Kong authorities for what he believed was their following Beijing’s orders to suppress freedom of expression in Hong Kong. He demanded an explanation for how it would be possible for the show to find replacements in Hong Kong within ten days, but the Immigration Department did not respond.
District Council Members Voice Indignation
Some of the council members in different districts of Hong Kong have already bought Shen Yun tickets and were looking forward to the show, they said.
Hong Kong’s Wong Tai Sin District Council member Chui Pak-Tai condemned the Hong Kong government along the same lines as Albert Ho. “The Hong Kong government is so incompetent,” he said. “They have shamed Hong Kong. Their dirty tricks are just appalling.”
The Democratic Party’s former Sai Kung District council member Lam Wing-Yin said he was concerned over Hong Kong’s independence from China as shown in the apparent political interference in this case.
“China promised that Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years,” he said, referring to the 1997 pact between Britain and China when Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule, which stipulated that Hong Kong would remain under the British system of governance for 50 years. “Nothing in our life here should have changed, including our freedom, culture and art,” Lam said. “Exactly because of this we can demonstrate that China is making progress and opening up, and Hong Kong can continue to be a unique place in the world.
“But unfortunately over the past decade or so, Hong Kong has suffered too much suppression on political, cultural, and media issues,” he said. “All these will eventually make Hong Kong deteriorate to become one of China’s regular cities.” He said that Hong Kong people expect China to show progress through preserving Hong Kong’s democracy, freedom and human rights.
Senior Journalist Expresses Concern
Well-known senior journalist Ching Cheong said the Hong Kong government’s actions were unfortunate. “Hong Kong has been a place where legal entrance and exits are protected, and we Hong Kong people should cherish such freedom,” said Ching, who was jailed for over three years in China for “revealing state secrets” to Taiwan. “I do not want to see such freedom being interfered with by political forces,” he said.
Mr. Cheong urged Hong Kong citizens to pay attention to the incident.
By Erich Bachmann, Epoch Times Staff, Updated Jan. 20, 2010 –
BERN, Switzerland—“There is an all too prevalent sense that human rights violations [in China] are so massive and so far away that nothing can be done about them,” said David Matas, accepting the 2009 Human Rights Prize from the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in Switzerland over the weekend.
David Matas and David Kilgour were co-recipients of the prize for their “unceasing work” on investigating and raising awareness of state-sponsored organ trafficking in China, particularly from imprisoned practitioners of the Falun Gong meditation practice.
Since 2006, the two Canadian lawyers have been traveling the world meeting with government officials, medical professionals, and human rights groups about the “dismaying” results of their investigative research. Research following 52 lines of evidence led them to the conclusion that since 2000, the Chinese regime has been using healthy Falun Gong prisoners of conscience as living organ banks—many recipients being foreigners buying organs in China.
Kilgour said only Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps and prisons are systematically blood-tested and physically examined.
“This testing cannot be motivated by concerns over the health of practitioners because they are also systematically tortured,” he said……. (more details from The Epochtimes)
2009 marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party by The Epoch Times. The editorial series has inspired a global movement to renounce membership from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Despite the CCP’s efforts to block Chinese people from accessing the booklet and to give harsh sentences to those who distribute it, slogans for quitting the CCP can be seen everywhere in China, including on paper currency. Once taboo, now more and more Chinese people have secretly or openly renounced the CCP. As of Dec. 20, 2009, more than 65 million Chinese had renounced the Party and its affiliated organizations.
In an embarrassing incident for authorities, the Jinzhou Evening News, a state-run daily, inadvertently gave the movement excellent publicity. In the corner of an image on its front page celebrating 60 years of communist rule, scrawled in small but visible characters on a bike rack, were eight characters saying “Heaven condemns the Communist Party; denounce it and be blessed.” When authorities found out what happened the paper was taken out of circulation and the Web site temporarily shut down……. (to be cont’d)
An eyewitness has recounted in vivid detail the story of a woman in China—a high school teacher in her 30s—who was detained, tortured, raped, and finally operated on to extract her organs while she was still alive.
“I have witnessed all these with my own eyes, but I regret that I didn’t take any photos,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
It is the first time investigators have spoken to an eyewitness in a case of harvesting organs from a living Falun Gong practitioner.
A 30-minute interview, in two separate conversations, was carried out by an investigator from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), and a recording is available on its Web site.
The events took place in 2002, and investigators located the policeman only this month.
According to the English transcript, the witness worked for the public security system of Liaoning Province in 2002 and said he himself had participated in torturing and interrogating Falun Gong practitioners “many times.”
No Anesthetics
On April 9, 2002, two military surgeons came to the makeshift “black jail,” a small hotel rented as a “training center,” according to the witness. One of the military surgeons was from the General Hospital of Shenyang Military Region of People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and the other one was a graduate of the Second Military Medical University, he said. They took the woman to a hospital.
“At that time, we had been interrogating and severely torturing her for about a week,” he said. “She already had countless wounds on her body. Also, [we] used electrical batons to beat her. She had already become delirious.”
“Prior to this, she suffered even greater humiliation,” he said. “Many of our policemen were perverted. They were using pincers and other equipments that I don’t know from where they got them, to molest her. I have witnessed all these with my own eyes. … She had some good looks, relatively beautiful, (so the policemen) were raping her. … This was far too common.”
The policeman said he was on armed guard duty in the room while he watched the surgeons cut the woman’s chest open while she was still alive. No anesthetics were used, he said.
“They cut her chest with a knife,” he said. “She shouted ‘Ah’ loudly, saying ‘Falun Dafa is great.’”
“She said, ‘You killed me, one individual.’ [I think] it roughly meant, ‘You killed one individual like me. Can you kill several hundred million of us, people who are being persecuted by you for our true beliefs?’
“At that moment, that doctor, that military surgeon, hesitated. Then he looked at me, then at our [policemen’s] superior. Then our superior nodded, and he continued to do the veins. … [Her] heart was carved out first, next were the kidneys. When her cardiac veins were cut by the scissors, she started twitching. It was extremely horrible. I can imitate her voice for you, although I couldn’t imitate it well. It sounded like something was being ripped apart, and then she continued ‘Ah.’ After that, she always had her mouth wide open, with both her eyes open wide. Ah … I don’t want to continue.”
The organ harvesting took place in an operating room on the 15th floor of the General Hospital of Shenyang Military Region, the witness said. It began at 5 p.m. and lasted 3 hours…….(more detailsfrom The Epochtimes)
Status of Chinese People 
(video) Shen Yun in Asia 2009 (2)- Taiwan: Reviews, Comments and Feedback from Audience
Posted by Author on March 12, 2010
Video length: 11’02”
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Related:
– (video) Shen Yun in Asia 2009 (1)- Korea, Japan: Reviews, Comments and Feedback from Audience
– (video) Shen Yun in North America 2009 (1)- USA: Reviews, Comments and Feedback from Audience
– (video) Shen Yun in North America 2009 (2) – Canada: Reviews, Comments and Feedback from Audience
– Review (video): Shen Yun Performing Arts’ Chinese Dance and Music Show
– Shen Yun review (video 2): Chinese dance and music
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