By Chen Zhenghong
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor under
the US Department of State recently issued its 2008 Annual Report on International
Religious Freedom. The report expresses concern about the lack of freedom of
belief in China, as it has done in previous years. The report points out that
the Chinese government continues to harshly repress religious groups, Falun
Gong in particular. Falun Gong practitioners are being arrested, with some dying
as a result of torture and maltreatment. The report has listed China as a “country
of particular concern” since 1999.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never accepted criticism of its human
rights violations from the international community, saying that such criticism
equates to interfering with China's internal affairs. It goes so far as
to issue dire warnings, even thinly veiled threats of economic retaliation,
to countries that dare to criticize it. Ironically, the CCP continues to boast
that “China is in its best period of human rights in history.”
Beijing Olympics Used as an Excuse to Step Up the Persecution of Falun
Gong
China's human rights record had been scrutinized by the world community
since the year 2000 when the CCP applied to hold the Olympic Games in Beijing.
China has not only failed to improve its human rights practices but instead
accelerated the persecution of Falun Gong in the name of “Olympic security.”
At least 8,037 practitioners were arrested in 29 provinces, municipalities and
autonomous regions in the 8 months leading up to the Olympics. More than 500
were arrested in Beijing and at least 30 were sentenced to forced labor without
trial. There are reports that practitioners were tortured to the point of disability
and even killed as a result of torture.
The CCP denies the stepped-up persecution, just like it covered up the seriousness
of the SARS epidemic in 2003. Many people, both inside and outside China, have
been deceived.
UN Human Rights Report Exposes CCP Lies
However, lies will eventually be exposed. Like the World Health Organization
exposing the CCP's lies about SARS, the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur
laid bare the CCP's lies and fabrications in its persecution of Falun Gong.
The United Nations Human Rights Council is the world's most authoritative
body on human rights, legislation and supervision. It consists of various mechanisms
on human rights including special groups and special rapporteurs on “freedom
of religious belief”, “violence against women” and “torture”. Every year, it
presents an annual report to the 53 member countries and 146 countries that
have an observer status, as well as non-governmental organizations. The persecution
of Falun Gong has led to more and more condemnations by these human rights rapporteurs.
In many reports, the persecution of Falun Gong accounted for the majority of
all cases. Special Rapporteur on torture Mr. Manfred Nowak said in
his report of March 2006, among all the cases of torture in China, the ones
performed on practitioners accounted to 66 percent.
As the No. 1 human rights violator in the world, the Chinese Communist Party
has tried to make the best use of this opportunity to export its lies and hatred
by doing anything possible to spread false information to UN officials, employees,
and representatives. In recent years, however, the Party's attempts have
met with complete failure, as Chinese representatives' speeches invoke
incredulous laughter for their obvious falsehoods. On the other hand, a peaceful
and resilient force has gained increasing recognition and has been embraced
on the world stage, that of the Falun Gong practitioners who have testified
during the world human rights forum and peacefully gathered outside the Human
Rights Conference in Geneva.
Special Rapporteur on torture Mr. Manfred Nowak wrote a widely quoted
report after a two week fact-finding visit to China. In his opinion, the combination
of deprivation of liberty as a sanction for the peaceful exercise of freedom
of expression, assembly, and religion, with measures of “re-education” through
coercion, humiliation, and punishment aimed at achieving an admission of culpability
and altering the personality of the detainee up to the point of even breaking
his will, strike at the very core of the human rights to personal integrity,
dignity, and humanity. It constitutes a form of inhuman and degrading treatment
or punishment leading to submissiveness and a “culture of fear,” which is incompatible
with the core values of any democratic society based upon a culture of human
rights. In the 2008 report, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or
Belief repeated, “We are highly attentive toward the continuous encroachment
of the religious freedom of Falun Gong adherents in China.”
US State Department Report: China's Human Rights Practices Continue
to Deteriorate
The US State Department issues an annual report on human rights conditions
in 196 countries around the world. China is one of the countries that has been
repeatedly criticized. China's human rights violations include surveillance,
harassment, detention and locking up religious activists, reporters and writers,
and the lawyers who try to defend them. Their families are often harassed or
detained. The report mentioned many times that as in previous years, the CCP's
“abuses included instances of extra-judicial killings, torture and mistreatment
of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrests and detention, lengthy incommunicado
detention, and denial of due process.”
In the 2006 Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,
the part about China was 85 pages long. The report held that China's human
rights practices were deteriorating. The CCP intensified its persecution of
Falun Gong and other organizations. Serious human rights violations were still
a common practice. It continued to restrict the freedom of speech and the freedom
of press and it also intensified the Internet blockade.
Opposition to the Persecution is Widespread Worldwide
Looking back over the last nine years, practitioners have spared no effort
in clarifying the facts, exposing CCP lies and persecution. Many people have
changed their wrong attitudes toward Falun Gong from the hatred and indifference
inspired by CCP propaganda to the sympathy, understanding and support engendered
by the truth. More and more government officials in Western society have stood
up and pressed the CCP to end its persecution of Falun Gong.
The US State Department passed House Concurrent Resolution 304 in October
2004. The resolution condemns the Chinese government's oppression of Falun
Gong in both the United States and China. It states that the Chinese government
should “cease using the diplomatic missions in the United States to spread falsehoods
about the nature of Falun Gong.” The resolution also calls for the release of
prisoners of conscience and an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
In 2006, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution that “condemns
the persecution of Falun Gong.”
During the second steering committee meeting of the Council of Europe in April
2006, eleven representatives of the Council raised a motion asking for a hearing
on the case which was recently exposed to the public regarding the Chinese Communist
Party's crimes of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners,
and demanded that the Chinese government open all labor camps to international
delegations to conduct independent investigations.
ESPN, a well-known sports website, reported in July 2008 that Swiss citizen
Erich Bachmann, a member of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of
Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) presented 1,215,793 petition signatures to the International
Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. In a six-month signature
campaign that spanned the globe, over 1 million people sent a message to the
Chinese regime to end its persecution of Falun Gong before the Olympic Games.
CIPFG also received more than 1,700 signatures from the elite of society,
half of whom are politicians, including 70 members of parliament from 14 countries,
218 members of local parliaments and 50 government officials, 346 from the education
and academic circles, and 324 from legal, medical as well as literature and
art circles. The signatures will also be presented to the UN Human Rights Commission,
the European Union, the European Parliament and noted international human rights
organizations, in hopes that the governments and parliaments around the world
will act in accordance with the popular will and help effectively end the persecution
of Falun Gong in China.
In recent years, the international community has increasingly opposed the
persecution of Falun Gong. This marks the beginning of the end of the persecution.
With more in-depth analysis, the people of the world will denounce the persecution
and bring it to a swift end.
Posting date: 13/Oct/2008
Original article date: 12/Oct/2008
Category: World News
