Thursday, December 15, 2016

Attempts to Silence Miss World Canada Anastasia Lin Give More Attention to Her Message

“The fact that this is happening in Washington, D.C., a city that most associate with freedom, is particularly alarming.”  
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Miss World Canada Anastasia Lin at an event in her honor at The Spoke Club in Toronto on Dec. 15, 2015. (Matthew Little/Epoch Times)
Anastasia Lin is known as fearless, feisty, and ferociously articulate in matters concerning the Chinese regime’s abuse of human rights—in particular, the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience.
The Chinese communist regime appeared to take issue with the reigning Miss World Canada’s criticisms and blocked her from entering China for the 2015 edition of the competition, which was held in southern China. To make up for it, the Miss World organizers allowed Lin to again represent Canada when the beauty contest headed to Washington, D.C., this year.
In the lead-up to the pageant, however, Lin was silent, a stark contrast to her vocal, high-profile activism; she had even visited the Dalai Lama this March, just months earlier.
Epoch Times recently learned through friends of Lin that pageant organizers had, until Wednesday, Dec. 14, declined to grant her permission to speak to the media, and had threatened her with disqualification if she did, per a clause in the contract between contestants and the Miss World Organisation.
The move garnered widespread media attention and unflattering commentary on the beauty pageant organizer. Late in the day on Dec. 14, after articles appeared in major media in multiple languages around the world, the ban blocking Lin from speaking to reporters was apparently lifted and Lin spoke to The New York Times.
When reached via text message that night and asked if she could now speak to media, Lin replied with a smiley face emoji and said an interview could be set up through the official Miss World press contact.
The prior decision of the Miss World organizers to effectively censor Lin in the capital of the United States, seen as a bastion of democracy and freedom, brought them unwelcome attention and raised Lin’s profile considerably.
Afraid of a Beauty Queen
Lin, 26, won the 2015 Miss World Canada competition by campaigning on human rights issues, and almost immediately became a victim of the Chinese regime’s rights abuses herself: Lin’s father was and continues to be harassed by Chinese security officers over her advocacy, and she was later denied entry to China for the Miss World finals.
“Ask the Chinese government why it is afraid of a beauty queen,” Lin told reporters in Hong Kong on Nov. 25, 2015, where she made a last-minute effort to board a plane to the Miss World contest venue in Sanya, Hainan Province. “Ask them what kind of precedent this sets for future international events.”
An email request to the Miss World Organisation for an interview with Lin went unanswered; several media outlets had also reported a lack of response from the organization.
Pageant staff had been actively monitoring and vetting Lin’s meetings and appearances.
A Miss World official accompanied Lin when she met with David Saperstein, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, on Dec. 9. The State Department was asked not to post a tweet of the meeting.
Recently, Lin was whisked away by pageant staff after they spotted her speaking to the Boston Globe‘s Jeff Jacoby in the hotel lobby where the contest is being held. The Miss World Organisation, which controls all media interview requests with contestants, has allowed at least three other contestants—Miss World Germany, Miss World Myanmar, and Miss World Thailand—to speak to the press.
Also, Lin originally couldn’t attend the U.S. premiere of “The Bleeding Edge,” a film she stars in, according to event organizers Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. On Dec. 14, the date of the screening, Miss World Organisation CEO Julia Morley told Hollywood Reporter that Lin had “always been free” to attend the screening. A representative for Lin confirmed that she will be present for the premiere.
In contrast, there were no concerns over Lin’s attendance at the United Kingdom premiere of “The Bleeding Edge” at Speaker’s House in Parliament this September. The film, which dramatizes forced organ harvesting and the Chinese regime’s advanced surveillance systems, was directed and produced by Leon Lee, the winner of a prestigious Peabody Award for a documentary on organ harvesting.
Lin’s being censored by Miss World is an example of “the extension of China’s influence well beyond its borders … and how desperately China wants to prevent people from speaking out and exposing the truth on human rights generally, and particularly on the issue of organ harvesting,” Benedict Rogers, a friend of Lin and deputy chair of the U.K. Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, said in a phone interview.
“The fact that this is happening in Washington, D.C., a city that most associate with freedom, is particularly alarming.”  
A History of Censorship
In censoring Lin, the Miss World executives appeared to be safeguarding their business relations with their sponsors, who are largely Chinese companies.
In the past, many Western companies, particular tech giants like Google and Yahoo, have been known to conduct censorship on behalf of the Chinese regime.
This phenomenon appears to be ongoing. Facebook employees recently revealed that the social media company is creating a “China censorship tool” as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to break into the Chinese market. “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Zuckerberg reportedly told employees.
Western companies might not be aware that what the regime wants more often than not serves to help the Chinese Communist Party better control and suppress the Chinese people.
“Sadly, too many people in the Western world are willing to kowtow to China, and allow Anastasia be silenced,” Rogers said, speaking earlier in the day before the ban was lifted.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2016

前所未有的邪惡迫害 ─滅絕人類的善性


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2010年諾貝爾和平獎候選人加拿大人權律師大衛.麥塔斯(David Matas)與「美國醫師反對強制摘取器官組織(DAFOH)」執行長托斯坦.特瑞(Dr. Torsten Trey)醫生共同編著的《國家掠奪器官:器官移植在中國被濫用 的黑幕》在2012年出版之後獲得世界各地來自醫學界、法律界及政界的正面迴響。人們在震驚之餘開始關注中共活 摘器官的真相,並且在全球各地,包括歐美國會在內,舉辦揭露及制止中共活摘器官的研討會、聽證會等活動;中國民眾甚至冒著危險在中國大陸發起制止活摘暴行的簽名義舉。然而,中共活摘器官的暴行至今仍在持續中。
探究中共活摘器官暴行持續至今的根本原因,在於中共對法輪功學員進行滅絕性的迫害不止。中國的法輪功學員成為了中國大陸最大的器官供應庫、被活摘器官的最主要的受害群體。中共對於法輪功的迫害只要一天不停止,活摘器官的暴行也不會結束。
托斯坦.特瑞醫生因此邀請法輪功人權活動家朱婉琪律師共同編著一本深入探討活摘器官的根源問題「迫害法輪功」的書。兩位編者邀集了世界各地長期關注法輪功受迫害情況的知名學者專家、議員、律師、醫師及人權活動家從政治、社會、經濟、醫學、法學、媒體、文化等不同面向來探討及分析中共前黨魁江澤民發起鎮壓法輪功的這場迫害對於21世紀人類各個層面的影響。
讀者可從歐洲、美洲及亞洲的19位作者的客觀分析及論述中了解到,「迫害法輪功」並非只是一場針對法輪功團體成員的迫害,剝奪的不只是上億法輪功學員的基本人權,這場恐怖迫害的進行、持續及蔓延嚴重荼毒了人類的良知和善性,崩解了人類道德的普世價值 ,對人類的影響超乎想像,而世上每一個人其實都被捲入這場前所未有的邪惡迫害之中。
這本書命名為「前所未有的邪惡迫害」是準確而嚴肅的召喚人類的良知來面對及結束21世紀最沉痛的人權災難。
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1305121921312100【九评之五】评江泽民与中共相互利用迫害法轮功

[VIDEO] 连环画音像片:评江泽民与中共相互利用迫害法轮功

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Li Zhensheng’s Singapore Debut at 5th SIPF – Witness : The Archive of Cultural Revolution

At ‘Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution’, a public talk held at The Arts House on Sept 11, former photojournalist Li Zhensheng shared his insights on the most devastating period in Chinese history.
Li Zhensheng, a photojournalist for the Heilongjiang Daily in the 1960s, became the premier documenter of the Cultural Revolution. He was born in Dalian, China, in 1940. (Courtesy of Li Zhensheng, Singapore International Photography Festival 2016)

“My teacher told me that a photographer should not only witness history, but also record the true history.” – Li Zhensheng, a former Photojournalist

Born in Dalian, China, in 1940, Li Zhensheng, a photojournalist for the Heilongjiang Daily in the 1960s, risked his life to record the gruesome reality behind China’s most catastrophic political movement, the Great Cultural Revolution.
The wave of red terror, which shattered families and demolished ancient buildings, was orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and spread throughout China from 1966 to 1976 under the rule of Mao Zedong. The number of unnatural deaths during this bloody calamity was conservatively estimated at 7.73 million, according to the award-winning ‘Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party’
(http://www.ninecommentaries.com/).
Instead of solely photographing the ‘glorious’ moments of the Cultural Revolution, which could appear in newspapers, Mr Li audaciously snapped images that framed a sombre account of this bloody 10-year revolution and stashed the negatives in secrecy underneath his desk. He thought: “Someday, people might want to see the light.”
These grim images of violent scenes, which allude to the dark side of the Cultural Revolution, were deliberately obscured from the public during the revolution.
Mr Li became the premier documenter of the Cultural Revolution, and his historic photographs have been exhibited worldwide. In Singapore, his exhibition run from Sept 10 till Oct 29 at The Arts House at The Old Parliament.
“My teacher told me that a photographer should not only witness history, but also record the true history,” he said.
In Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution’, a public talk held at The Arts House on Sept 11, Mr Li shared his insights on this tumultuous period in Chinese history.

THE HIDDEN PHOTOS


These grim images of violent scenes, which allude to the dark side of the Cultural Revolution, were deliberately obscured from the public during the revolution.

SWIMMERS PREPARE TO PLUNGE INTO THE SONGHUA RIVER

WATCH: Part 1 – Li Zhensheng’s Public Talk (Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution) 
Swimmers prepare to plunge into the Songhua River to commemorate the second anniversary of Mao’s swim in the Yangtze River, on July 16, 1968. (Courtesy of Li Zhensheng, Singapore International Photography Festival 2016)
The above photo captured a team of swimmers reading Mao’s little red book before diving into the water. At that time, according to Mr Li, Mao was believed to “help and direct your swimming, so that you won’t get lost in the water”.
The audience laughed upon hearing this.
“Back then, you would probably be in trouble if you laughed about this,” said Mr Li with a serious expression on his face.
‘Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party’ explains that “the Chinese people have not only been deprived of freedom of thought, (but) they have also been indoctrinated with the teachings and culture of the Party”.

THE DESTRUCTION OF TEMPLE OF BLISS

WATCH: Part 2 – Li Zhensheng’s Public Talk (Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution) 
A scene of the Red Guards ransacking Jile Temple (Temple of Bliss) in 1966 (Courtesy of Li Zhensheng, Singapore International Photography Festival 2016)
The CCP’s Red Guards ordered three monks from Temple of Bliss to hold a poster board with these words: “What sutras? They are full of shit.” (Original photo from 5th SIPF 2016 – Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution
When the Cultural Revolution first began, Mr Li was very hopeful and enthusiastic as he believed it could help advance the development of culture. However, the event turned out to be beyond his imagination. An inordinate outburst of violence and struggle sessions occurred soon after the onset of this socio-political upheaval. What struck him, in particular, was the assault on the party leader of Heilongjiang, Ren Zhongyi, who was “an amicable man”.
According to the ‘Nine Commentaries’, “struggle” was the primary “belief” of the Communist Party to create terror and maintain its rule in China. Through terror, the “Chinese people tremble in their hearts, submit to the terror, and gradually become enslaved under the CCP’s control”.
Mr Li was also shaken by the destruction of temples.
The photo above shows the destruction of the famous Temple of Bliss located in Harbin city, Heilongjiang Province. The temple, which housed many cultural relics and was the biggest Buddhist temple built in modern times (1921), was wrecked during the Cultural Revolution.
“The Communist Party does not believe in God, nor does it even respect physical nature,” the ‘Nine Commentaries’ points out. The Cultural Revolution motto (“Battle with heaven, fight with the earth, struggle with humans—therein lies endless joy”) had caused the Chinese people to suffer enormous suffering and agony.
“How could they ruin this culture in the name of Cultural Revolution?” Mr Li thought.
After witnessing this appalling spate of attacks and destruction, Mr Li started having ambivalent feelings towards the Cultural Revolution.

PUBLIC SHAMING BY THE CCP’S RED GUARDS 

WATCH: Part 3 – Li Zhensheng’s Public Talk (Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution) 
Public shaming by the Red Guards in front of masses, 1966 (Courtesy of Li Zhensheng, Singapore International Photography Festival 2016)
Public shaming by the Red Guards in front of masses. (Original photo from 5th SIPF 2016 – Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution)
Public shaming by the Red Guards in front of masses. The victim was forced to wear a tall dunce hat with accusations written on it. (Original photo from 5th SIPF 2016 – Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution)
“Guess what was the placard made of?” Mr Li pointed to a photo on the screen and asked the audience.
The photo portrayed the humiliation of victims being criminalised during the Cultural Revolution. The victims were forced to hang placards around their necks, which accused them of being counter-revolutionaries.
“Cardboard? Wood?” the audience guessed.
“These are all answers from logical minds. In reality, the placard was actually made of metal attached with a metal string, which was tied to one’s neck. The accused had to struggle to hold the placard as it was heavy,” said Mr Li.
His words took the audience completely by surprise.
Next, Mr Li called attention to a photo showing a victim wearing a tall dunce hat with accusations written on it. When he was at the scene, he was baffled to see the accused standing straight, in a posture of subservience. To his amazement, he was told that bricks were hidden inside the dunce hat.
“They had to stand straight to support the bricks,” he said emphatically.

HIS FIRST LOVE

Mr Li reminisced about his first love during the two-hour talk. The couple was acquainted with each other during their university days, but they broke up due to the revolution.
His girlfriend’s mother, a textile worker in Dalian, was accused of being a wife of a landlord. Tragically, this dignified, middle-aged woman became one of the first persons he knew to commit suicide during the Cultural Revolution.
“Her mother hung herself and lost consciousness. When she regained consciousness, she realised she had a watch. She left her watch to her daughter, and hit her head against the wall,” he said ruefully.
Overnight, his girlfriend was labelled one of the five ‘black elements’ – “landlord’s daughter”, which was a stigma at that time. His heart sank when his girlfriend approached him and suggested they broke up. She ascribed her ‘bad element’ as a hindrance to his career.

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

WATCH: Part 4 – Li Zhensheng’s Public Talk (Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution) 
In a twist of fate, he married Zu Yingxia, who was his colleague at Heilongjiang Daily.
Merely 10 months into their marriage, his wife was staggered when she received horrifying news about her father ending his own life. Her father, who was a low-level physician in a small township, was wrongfully accused of being a Japanese spy, for no reason other than the fact that he had cured a Japanese railway worker during the Japanese colonial period.
“They tried to make him confess. He succumbed to the inhumane torture and committed suicide,” Mr Li bewailed.
His wife cried her heart out throughout the night. The next day, she confessed to her work unit that her father had died of shame and she wanted to terminate her relationship with her father.
“My wife turned herself in and felt ashamed that she had betrayed the party and the people. That was the standard formula at that time if you had a family member who committed suicide,” explained Mr Li.
The ‘Nine Commentaries’ states that during the Cultural Revolution, “[if] a person committed suicide, he would be labelled as ‘dreading the people’s punishment for his crime’” and “his family members would also be implicated and punished”. Hence, “it was all too common that fathers and sons tortured each other, husbands and wives struggled with each other, mothers and daughters reported on each other, and students and teachers treated each other as enemies”.
The suicides – coming so quickly on the heels of one another – rattled Mr Li and made him waver in his support for the revolution. By that point, Mr Li was completely aghast at the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution. And that was the moment of truth for him.
In Mr Li’s opinion, those who committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution were “very courageous, because they were trying to defend their dignity”.

HIS CHINA DREAM


“I love China. I am using this method to show my love for my homeland. We should reflect on the true history, so as to prevent such tragedies from ever recurring.” – Li Zhensheng, a former Photojournalist

The Cultural Revolution was a dark period in China’s history, replete with paranoia, bloodshed, killings, grievance, loss of conscience, and confusion of right and wrong. Mr Li’s China dream would be that one day, he could hold his photo exhibition in China and share with the young people in China “the true history of the Cultural Revolution”.
“I love China. I am using this method to show my love for my homeland. We should reflect on the true history, so as to prevent such tragedies from ever recurring.”

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Some people may think that these brutalities belong to the past, and that CCP has changed. However, the savage persecution of Falun Gong – a traditional Chinese meditation practice that adheres to the principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance” – in recent years indicates otherwise.
The persecution of Falun Gong signals another oppression as vicious as the Cultural Revolution. CCP continues to use the same old methods of inciting hate and instigating violence against Falun Gong by “ruining their reputations, bankrupting [them] financially, and destroying [them] physically”.
Under the deceptive façade of the Chinese Communist Party, a state-run medical genocide has been carried out by the Chinese Communist Party since 2000, which may have performed up to 1.5 million organ transplants from unwilling live donors, mostly from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, according to a new China organ harvesting report published on June 22. [1]
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[1] Robertson, Matthew. “Report Reveals Vast State-Run Industry to Harvest Organs in China.” Epoch Times. 22 June 2016. http://goo.gl/Bd8MR3

Thursday, September 29, 2016

A Scientist Finds Salvation

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A Canadian reader, Jan, introduces a new spiritual practice, Falun Gong, to our ongoing series. He’s been a practitioner for 16 years and “came into my spiritual path in a most unexpected way”:
I grew up as a Catholic, though really only in the most basic sense of the word. Early on I tried to be a proper Catholic, was an altar boy, but I met with what I saw as sufficient hypocrisy in the church (no need for details here) that I proudly declared myself an agnostic in my teens. I came to see religion as a tool for powerful people to subjugate the masses.
I decided that science would be enough as a worldview, a paradigm. I dabbled in Daoist Tai Chi a bit, but purely for purposes of relaxation.
I studied to become a biologist, with particular interest in ecology, evolution, and conservation. I imagined myself becoming a professor. Things were going well. I was blessed with generous research scholarships. I made excellent contacts in my areas of interest, established great collaborations, found ideal field sites. What really interested me was non-Darwinian models of evolution. For my doctoral studies, I did field research in Madagascar to study apparent hybridization between different species of lemur.
Returning from the field, I began to feel weak, depressed, and after some time, my ability to do simple things progressively degenerated. Working with micro lab tools became progressively more laborious and difficult. I thought I was overworked, but no amount of sleep would help.
One day, running to catch a street light, my legs stopped working properly, and I barely made it to the other side. I checked myself into the university hospital.
I was diagnosed with Guillain Barre Syndrome. My immune system was attacking my peripheral nervous system, and I was slowly losing control. Having found a rare neurological disorder, doctors kept sending interns and residents to me to attempt a diagnosis. I wasn’t getting better or worse, but there was no known treatment. The day I checked into the hospital I also discovered that I had a parasitic worm infection, and later, mono. Basically, my body was toast.
A tough six months followed. I watched my career disintegrate. The academic partnerships I had developed evaporated, and I could no longer teach effectively. My already rocky romantic relationship further suffered.
I returned to my hometown, where my mother encouraged me to try “alternative therapies.” I did, but none were effective. So I went back to my university town. There, in a smoky coffee shop, I met an old acquaintance who had explored numerous Eastern disciplines. He gave me a DVD, saying that what was on it helped him recover from chronic fatigue syndrome, which he had experienced some years back.
I’ll never forget watching that video for the first time. It was a video introducing the exercises and meditation of Falun Gong—a style of Chinese yoga rooted in Buddhist principles, also known as Falun Dafa. After half an hour of trying to mimic the slow-moving exercises on the video, I started to feel better for the first time I could remember. It was really an indescribable feeling—my heart, body, and mind were all singing.
I read an introductory book of the Falun Dafa teachings, though many of the references to Chinese qigong and folk traditions were at first difficult to understand. All I knew was that, as I was learning these exercises day after day, I was feeling better. At some point, I realized that my reflexes had returned (reflex loss is a common symptom of Guillain Barre).
Some months into it, I went for a checkup with my neurologist. I’ll never forget her words: “Congratulations. You’re in complete remission. I have no explanation, but keep doing whatever you’re doing.” I did, and didn’t really look back.
There were some curious side effects, however. Within about a week of starting, I started hating the taste of cigarettes. I was never a heavy smoker, but I enjoyed the social aspect, and it was consistent. Some time later, I experienced the same thing with alcohol. As it happens, both these states are described in Falun Gong’s seminal book of teachings, Zhuan Falun. As a Buddhist school teaching, Falun Gong encourages the abandonment of unhealthy addictions and attachments. I was fascinated, because it wasn’t something I really expected or necessarily wanted to happen.
One night while meditating, I experienced what really set me on the path of Falun Dafa. I had the proverbial experience of having my whole life flash before my eyes. I’d read about such things, but it’s really difficult to imagine until you experience it. Basically, I saw vignettes from my life, step by step, from an early age. I experienced this as one would a film, I suppose, yet at the same time, time it was moving very quickly; I was able to see a lot of my life in a matter of minutes.
But it was odd: It was clearly my life, yet it wasn’t somehow how I remembered it. Not exactly. Mid-way, it dawned on me: It was my life seen through my mother’s eyes. It blew my mind. I cried for several hours.
My mother and I had a complicated relationship. We loved each other, wanted it to work, but we couldn’t be in the same room without tension for more than 15 minutes. With this experience, I really, for the first time, understood her, understood her trials and tribulations, understood what her pains and motivations were.
I also knew how to fix our relationship. The next time I was back home, I was able to initiate mending process in a matter of 24 hours. Not perfectly, of course, but the relationship became something completely different: fully loving and respectful.
I knew then that I had found something deep and profound. I understood from Falun Gong’s teachings that cultivation was a path of constantly getting rid of attachments, and of gaining a broader and broader, more tolerant and compassionate perspective of the world. Here I saw it manifest in my life in reality. Initially, I was physically healed, and now, I saw I was able to change behavioural patterns that didn’t think I had the power to change. With this, I decided to commit to the discipline.
It’s fascinating that many of the issues I’d had with organized religion are absent from Falun Gong. Collecting money? Forbidden, according to one of the few strict rules. Hierarchy? None, amazingly. One can only measure one’s progress against the teachings and against oneself, not against others. Taking others as role models is not an option, nor is imposing on another how they should behave.
Studying the teachings, I saw myself becoming more truthful, compassionate, and tolerant day by day. (Truth, Compassion and Tolerance are the core tenets of Falun Dafa.) I came into it being enthralled by physical healing, but what I found along the way was something much deeper—spiritual healing, and dare I say, in a sense, salvation.
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