BootsnAll Travel Network



Human Rights In China

Yesterday, as Bob and I stepped out the door of the Thai Consolate on E 52nd St. where we were applying for our visas to Thailand, we were met by about 50 Chinese people holding up banners condemning the beating of Falun Gong practitioners by police in Thailand last week. As I reported in an earlier blog, China is sending out agents to other countries to monitor the activities of not only mainland Chinese but also Chinese citizens of other countries. But we were surprised that Thailand of all countries would apparently support China in this horrendous persecution of such an innocuous activity.

Falun Gong claims it is a form of meditation with gentle exercises that cultivates inner balance by teaching truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Falun Gong is becoming wildly popular in China and in over 60 countries worldwide. Practitioners claim that Communist Party head Jiang Zemin, fearing that Falun Gong’s widespread popularity will overshadow his own legacy, has ordered the traditional Chinese practice “eradicated.” This means that 100 million citizens are apparently cast as criminals. In the past five years, up to one million people, practitioners claim, have been illegally detained, with many tortured in slave-labor camps, psychiatric hospitals and prisons. More than 1,060 are confirmed dead with the actual number estimated to be more than 10,000. Practitioners are fined, fired from jobs, denied graduation, forced to divorce and flee their homes.

All Chinese press is state-controlled and people are told that the meditation is evil and drives people crazy. A couple years ago, Bob and I ran across a young girl who was waiting on us in a restaurant in a small southern town who was horrified that I thought Falun Gong was not dangerous!

Dr. Charles Lee, an American citizen was sentenced in March 2003 to three years in prison for planning to broadcast information on state-run TV about the persecution of Falun Gong. Dr. Lee has been subjected to force-feeding, brainwashing, beatings and slave labor, and denied contact with friends, family and U.S. consular officials. (http://rescuecharles.org).

US businesses and government officials supportive of Falun Gong have also been pressured and intimated to the extent that on Oct 4 2004, in response to the many cases of harrassment and violence by Chinese agents on U.S. soil, The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 304 that said “The Government of the People’s Republic of China should immediately stop interfering in the exercise of religious and political freedoms within the U.S. such as the right to practice Falun Gong, that are guaranteed by the US constitution.

The NY Times runs stories, many front-page, almost daily about human rights abuses in China. Today, we read about one lawyer, Gao Zhang, who travels the country filing lawsuits over corruption, land seizures, police abuses and religious freedom. His opponent is usually the same: the ruling Communist Party. As a result of his successes, he has had his license revoked and has finally fled to the hills of Shanxi where he is persuing another case against the party on behalf of Falun Gong practitioners.

Yesterday on the front page was an article about the sleepy fishing village of Dongzhou, just 125 miles north of Hong Kong, the scene of a deadly face-off between protesters hurling homemade bombs and the police gunning them down in the streets. The article says “many facts remain unclear about the police crackdown” on a Dongzhou demonstration on Dec 6 protesting against the construction of a coal-fired power plant that the villagers knew was not approved by the central government. Residents say police fired into the crowd of demonstrators killing 20 or more people. But one thing is certain: The government is doing everything possible to prevent witnesses accounts of what happened from emerging by offering people money to keep quiet.

“Rural confrontations are increasing in China as local authorities confiscate land for construction of factories, power plants and other projects,” says the NY Times.



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