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法轮功学员的故事 Stories of Falun Gong Practitioners

Showing posts with label World News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World News. Show all posts

Saturday, June 3, 2017

3 vicious persecutions that are still happening in China today

Mainland China is the site of some of the largest and most brutal human rights abuses. Chinese of faith have been persecuted since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949.

They have been arrested, tortured, put in labor camps as prisoners of conscience, and even mass-murdered for their organs.


Credit: The Center for Justice and Accountability – CJA.org

Tibetan Buddhism

Tibet was part of the last Chinese dynasty, but exercised rights of self-rule until the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. The persecution of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan culture began on July 10, 1950 when troops from the newly-formed communist China occupied parts of the region and defeated the local military forces.

Tibetan monks beaten in the streets. Image: Daily Motion
By early 1957, the Tibetan government had rebelled because of the CCP’s harsh religious and economic policies. The CCP is an atheist regime, but demands control over all religious groups.
To put down the rebellion, the CCP caused mass terror and destruction. Many Tibetan civilians were tortured and murdered, and the Chinese army destroyed buildings and temples. The daughters of Tibetans who expressed discontent were stripped and molested by Chinese soldiers. To humiliate Tibetan Buddhism, many nuns were gang-raped and both monks and nuns forced to marry in order to break their vows of celibacy.
Tibet was a severe victim in the Great Leap Forward campaign that resulted in the starvation deaths of tens of millions of people across China. As many as one million Tibetans perished because they were forced to abandon their traditional herding lifestyle and join inefficient communal farms.

Image by thetibetpost.com
During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Red Guards destroyed thousands of Tibetan monasteries. Only a few survived.
Today, the CCP still persecutes Tibetan Buddhists and enforces policies that discriminate against Tibetan people and culture. Some Tibetan dissidents have been killed for their organs to be harvested.

Chinese Christianity


Two crosses salvaged from the debris of a destroyed church are seen at the Bailu Township in Pengzhou, Sichuan Province, China, on May 31, 2008. (China Photos/Getty Images)
The CCP fears religion because it demands that the people place faith in the teachings of Marx, not gods. The Christians are no exception and were persecuted and murdered in large numbers from the beginning of communist rule. Today, the CCP only allows Christianity to be practiced by followers of CCP-controlled Protestant and Catholic Churches; it does not allow Chinese Catholics to recognize the authority of the Vatican.

A crane lowers down a cross from the roof of a church in Zheijang, China. At right, a toppled concrete cross lies on the ground. (YouTube)
Christians who choose to attend congregations not controlled by the CCP can be detained and sent to do slave labor. In 2014 over 2,000 church crosses were removed from churches in Zhejiang, usually under the excuse of violating building regulations. Priests have been detained and some of them tortured or killed in custody.
China Aid reported:
“In response to the growth of Christianity in China, the Chinese government has instituted various campaigns to persecute both house churches and government-sanctioned TSPM [‘Three-Self Patriotic Movement’] churches throughout China by harassing, abusing, arresting, and, in many cases, sentencing pastors and church members to prison.”
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Christians persecution in China
“It is fair to say that the rapid increase in the number of Christians in China over the past decade as triggered a unique sense of crisis within the CCP. As the Christian faith continues to grow in China, so does the number of Chinese citizens who embrace rule of law, oppose totalitarian governance, and support the expansion of civil society. As ongoing growth of house churches in both rural and urban areas is perceived by the CCP as a serious threat, the CCP’s suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, Islam in Xinjiang and surrounding areas, and Falun Gong practitioners persists.

Falun Gong

Chinese people have practiced meditation and spiritual cultivation for thousands of years. In the 1980s, China experienced its qigong boom, with millions of people doing traditional exercises such as Tai Chi.
Falun Gong, a practice with ancient roots, was introduced to the public in China in 1992. Because it was free, easy to learn, and effective in improving physical and mental health, it gained an estimated 100 million adherents in just seven years. The Chinese government supported Falun Gong because it taught its practitioners to apply the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance in everyday life.

More than 10,000 people practicing Falun Gong before the Changchun Culture Palace. (Minghui.org)
But some in the communist regime considered Falun Gong’s traditional beliefs and morality to be dangerous to the CCP’s power. Jiang Zemin, who was head of the Party at the time, directed state propaganda to slander Falun Gong and paint it as a dangerous cult. In July 1999, he ordered a nation-wide campaign to crush the peaceful, non-political practice.

The persecution of Falun Gong started since July 20, 1999. Image: minghui.org
Police around China detained millions of Falun Gong practitioners, who became the biggest group of Chinese persecuted for their beliefs. Many were tortured to death in prison, or were forced to do heavy labor.

Practitioners of Falun Gong act out numerous torture methods employed on a widespread scale by Chinese officials against practitioners in China during an event in the U.S. (The Epoch Times)
Since 2006, human rights investigations show that the CCP has carried out widespread organ harvesting on Falun Gong prisoners while the victims are still alive. A report by former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann— collates publicly reported figures from hospitals across China to show what they claim is a massive discrepancy between official figures for the number of transplants carried out throughout the country. It is revealed in the report that the Chinese government, the Communist Party, the health system, doctors and hospitals are complicit.
“The Communist Party says the total number of legal transplants is about 10,000 per year. But we can easily surpass the official Chinese figure just by looking at the two or three biggest hospitals,” Human rights lawyer Matas said.

Falun Gong practitioners demonstrating a scene of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience by the Chinese Communist Party. Photo: Epoch Times.
“The Chinese government has been trafficking in organs for profit for far too long and we have strong evidence that Falun Gong practitioners were singled out for organ harvesting,” said Representative Chris Smith, who co-chairs the U.S House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In a statement released online, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former chair of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Chinese government’s “ghoulish and inhumane practice of robbing individuals of their freedom, throwing them in labor camps or prisons, and then executing them and harvesting their organs for transplants is beyond the pale of comprehension and must be opposed universally and ended unconditionally.”

Liberal MP Judy Sgro was one of several MPs who attended a rally on Parliament Hill on Dec. 9, 2015, and spoke in support of ending the campaign of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China that was launched in 1999. (Evan Ning/Epoch Times)
On June 13 of 2016, the US Congress passed Resolution 343 to condemn organ harvesting and call upon China to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. Similar resolutions have been passed in Europe and Israel.

Falun Gong practitioners hold a candlelight vigil in Guang Ming Park in Chungli, Taoyuan, Taiwan. Image: minghui.org

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WATCH CCP Brutal persecution of Falun Gong 中共迫害法輪功
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Monday, March 3, 2014

Ukraine’s Police Knelt Down to Apologize, While Chinese Dream of the Day

The gesture will go down in history, along with the deaths of 82 people and 678 injured, 449 of which were hospitalized after the bloody crackdown on Feb. 18.
Police knelt down asking forgiveness from protesters during a meeting in Ukraine’s city center on Feb. 24. The gesture will go down in history, along with the deaths of 82 people and 678 injured, 449 of which were hospitalized after the bloody crackdown on Feb. 18.
China’s netizens were shocked over the police kneeling and apologizing to the people. In China, people kneel down to the police, not the other way around.
On Feb. 24, Ukraine’s interim government issued arrest warrants for former President Viktor Yanukovych and other officials involved in the massacre of protesters.
Ava Krakow, acting Minister of the Interior of Ukraine, announced on Facebook that the council was dismissed and that the former president of Ukraine and many officials were being arrested for killing civilians who protested in the capital Kiev. During the meeting at the city center of Lviv, local policemen knelt down to apologize to residents for their participation in the crackdown, but they said that they were not involved in the violence.
Comments from netizens in China:
“It’s shocking!”
“There is hope for a nation that knows to repent.”
“Taking orders is OK, but one can always aim the gun an inch higher.”
“That is the consequence of picking the wrong side. Kneeling down to get off the hook is rather nice. I think those riot police have enough courage to be real men instead of being cowards in order to save their own skin. They are still valuable.”
“Will the day to apologize come to China?”
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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

A Poet’s Perspective on Bombing Syria


As you may have guessed, Tyria is an allegory for China and the tyrannical bloodstained Communist Party that’s hijacked China since 1949. Our close economic relationship with China undermines the U.S. government’s moral high ground and eats away at the integrity of our founding principles.

Now, if President Obama looks Joe American in the eye and says bombing Syria is the right thing to do, Joe may be somewhat puzzled. “Did I miss something or is this guy looking at me a shyster?” he might ask himself. “Can’t we just get along with Syria like we do with Tyria?”

By  | September 9, 2013
An engraving showing the child Astyanax thrown from the walls of Troy as his mother Andromache looks on. (public domain image/Wikimedia Commons)
The urge for civility in war is noble and worthy. In an epic poem written over 2,500 years ago, even Homer recounts a Trojan War where the two warring armies stop to allow each other to claim their dead. Leaving them out in the open would be a moral travesty.
That said, once the Greeks conquer Troy, dropping Trojan babies from the high walls becomes a common practice. We are left to suppose that moral warfare is a matter of perspective.
So too is President Obama’s appeal to bomb Syria for its use of chemical warfare both noble and a matter of perspective.
I am a traditionalist. So, if our leader gives the order to bomb or go to war, then I don’t see much point in doing anything else or griping. But the president has waded into the sticky and fickle territory of public opinion, perhaps because he owes so much to it. Thus, we are left with a matter of perspective: Why doesn’t the public feel the urgency and nobility in bombing some country out there called Syria that did bad things with bad weapons?
To that, I offer a narrative: Imagine that Syria had a neighbor. Let’s call it Tyria. Tyria has a really good relationship with the United States. There is free trade with few restrictions. We buy their stuff; they buy our stuff. It’s great.
But Tyria, it turns out, is a lot like its neighbor Syria. It’s not really democratic and squashes any serious democracy advocates. Tyria doesn’t use chemical weapons, usually just harassment, torture, or old fashioned murder. Also, unlike Syria, Tyria tortures and kills people frequently for their religious beliefs. Tyria has also admitted that it takes people against their will, steals their organs, and sells them for top dollar on the international market.
Now, if President Obama looks Joe American in the eye and says bombing Syria is the right thing to do, Joe may be somewhat puzzled. “Did I miss something or is this guy looking at me a shyster?” he might ask himself. “Can’t we just get along with Syria like we do with Tyria?”
As you may have guessed, Tyria is an allegory for China and the tyrannical bloodstained Communist Party that’s hijacked China since 1949. Our close economic relationship with China undermines the U.S. government’s moral high ground and eats away at the integrity of our founding principles.
This tyranny is much closer to home than Syria—just look at your “Made in China” toys, shirt, and computer. My advice to President Obama: As the leader of the free world, do whatever you must with Syria. But, remember the responsibilities, however inconvenient, that the title entails. If Joe American cries foul and says, “Hey you think I’m a schmuck?” then it’s probably because your iPod and his iPod are made in a far more tyrannical state.
Evan Mantyk is an English teacher in New York and president of the Society of Classical Poets.

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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

German Newspaper Points to Western Complicity in Organ Trade in China


In China, executed prisoners’ organs are removed and sold for transplantation, including into patients from the West. Western hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors support Chinese transplantation centres without asking questions, according to an investigative report in the German newspaper, Die Zeit.

The German-language report, titled “Herz auf Bestellung,” or “Heart to Order,” and written by Martina Keller, said it intends to expose China’s practice of execution on demand, and to shine a light on doctors who go against the ethics of their profession.

By , Epoch Times | September 2, 2013

A screen shot from the mini documentary, “Killed for Organs: China’s Secret State Transplant Business.” The German newspaper Die Zeit points to Western complicity in the ongoing organ pillaging in China. (Courtesy of NTD Television)
The West is deeply enmeshed in China’s questionable and lucrative organ trade, a major German newspaper says.
In China, executed prisoners’ organs are removed and sold for transplantation, including into patients from the West. Western hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors support Chinese transplantation centres without asking questions, according to an investigative report in the German newspaper, Die Zeit.
The German-language report, titled “Herz auf Bestellung,” or “Heart to Order,” and written by Martina Keller, said it intends to expose China’s practice of execution on demand, and to shine a light on doctors who go against the ethics of their profession.
As they maneuver on a narrow path “between co-operation and complicity,” participants become entangled by moral conflicts, professional ambitions, and money, with many preferring to remain silent about the issue, writes Keller.
“A human being dies, just in time, so that another can continue to live. In the Chinese transplant system, this is possible. In the name of progress, in the name of making money—including Western money,” states the report.
The article poses the question, “Where must the West draw its boundaries so as to not become an accomplice?”

Executed Prisoners

China holds second place in organ transplant statistics worldwide after the United States, “a fact that fills the government with pride,” writes Keller.
“More than 10,000 kidneys, livers, hearts, and lungs are being transplanted annually, [former] deputy minister of health Huang Jiefu—himself a transplant surgeon—wrote in the scientific journal The Lancetlast year. According to his statics, close to 60 per cent of these organs come from executed prisoners, an open admission that surprises,” states Die Zeit.
Until a few years ago, the government had dismissed as propaganda all foreign reports regarding questionable Chinese transplant practices, and the number of executions in China is a state secret.
“Insiders say that transplant hospitals work together with prisons and send out their own teams to harvest the organs. It cannot be excluded that doctors are participating in the execution,” the report states.

Short Waiting Times

Patients from Western countries also get their new kidneys, livers, and hearts thanks to Chinese executions, the report claims.
Die Zeit conducted an interview with 63-year-old Mordechai Shtiglits from Tel Aviv, who flew to China in November, 2005 to receive a new heart at Shanghai’s Zhongshan hospital. There he met patients from Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong who were all waiting for new, life-saving organs.
“In China one gets a new heart in two to three weeks. If you are lucky, as Mordechai Shtiglits, it is even faster,” writes Keller. One week after his arrival in Shanghai, a Chinese surgeon told him he would get his new heart the following day, saying it came from a 22-year-old “donor,” the victim of a traffic accident.
The report claims that this situation is extremely unlikely, however. Although more than 60,000 Chinese people die annually in traffic accidents, Chinese doctors cannot know in advance when someone will die through an accident. In addition, China to this day doesn’t have a central system for rapid organ distribution.
Organ removal from executed prisoners is outlawed worldwide, according to Die Zeit—transplantation is based on the principle of voluntary donation. Prisoners, however, are not in a position to make a free decision. This is how the World Association of Doctors sees it, as does the International Transplantation Society.
Dr Jacob Lavee, director of heart transplantation at Sheba Medical Centre, took care of Mordechai Shtiglits for years before Shtiglits received his new heart in China. Lavee said he was almost out of hope for his patient. But when Shtiglits told him he was going to China to get a heart transplant in two weeks, Lavee smiled at him and said, “That is not possible.”
You can take a kidney or part of a liver from a living donor, Dr Lavee explained. “But when somebody gets a heart, it means someone else must die,” he told Die Zeit.
The article quotes New York ethicist Arthur Caplan, a contributor to the book State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China: “Prison authorities have to specifically search for potential donors, test their health, blood, and tissue type, and execute them while the tourist is in China. That is simply killing on demand.”

Falun Gong

Organ trafficking that is tolerated by a government is frightening, as are executions that supply the material for transplantations. But it is not all—there is another, even worse suspicion. Canadian lawyer David Matas and David Kilgour, a former Canadian Secretary of State, both nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, have meticulously gathered facts since 2006.
The two Canadians have tried as far as possible to keep everything in their research independent of statements made by Falun Gong practitioners, according to the Die Zeit article. They gathered not only material about Falun Gong prisoners who were medically examined in prisons, disappeared without a trace from camps, or whose corpses were missing body parts. They also interviewed foreign patients who received kidney or liver transplants in China.
They’ve even succeeded in questioning former accomplices about organ removal from Falun Gong prisoners. And they documented phone calls by investigators, who posed as patients or their relatives inquiring at Chinese transplantation centers and institutions about the availability of Falun Gong organs—Falun Gong practitioners are regarded as particularly suitable donors, while other prisoners are frequently infected with Hepatitis B.
They also cite a March 2006 phone conversation with Zhongshan Hospital, four months after Mordecai Shtiglits received his new heart there, Die Zeit reports. To answer the question of the caller on whether organs from Falun Gong practitioners were being transplanted, a doctor responded: “Ours are all of this type.”
Keller’s article quoted Manfred Nowak, Professor of International Law at the University of Vienna and UN Special Rapporteur on Torture until the year 2010, as saying that the allegations of the two Canadians are “well-researched and very serious,” and an important indication is the strong increase in the numbers of transplantations in China coinciding with the persecution of Falun Gong.
On behalf of the United Nations, Nowak sent an urgent call to the Chinese government to provide accurate information regarding the sourcing of all the transplanted organs. According to Nowak, China has rejected all accusations as propaganda, but never explained them.

Western Collaboration

“Elsewhere in the world, such announcements raise horror,” reports Die Zeit. “But what almost nobody knows is that the West is deeply enmeshed in the Chinese system.”
Pharmaceutical companies supply the Chinese market with anti-rejection medication, and carry out transplantation research that most likely uses organs from executed prisoners. Western hospitals and doctors support Chinese transplantation centers without asking questions, Die Zeit reports.
Western advisors of the Chinese government purport to help advance change in China’s transplantation practice, while at the same time pursuing financial interests in China.
Automobiles from the West are being outfitted as so-called ‘execution-mobiles’. A Chinese car dealer, for example, offers a European-brand van on the internet that is equipped with medical monitoring and infusion apparatuses—a grisly symbol of the hand-in-hand co-operation between executioners and doctors, reports Die Zeit.
With such entanglements, many Western participants prefer to be silent.

Drug Companies

According to a presentation in Madrid by former Chinese deputy minister of health Huang Jiefu, organ transplantation experienced a remarkable upturn, saying kidney transplants increased between 1997 and 2005 from 3,000 to 8,500 per year, livers from two to approximately 3,000. The boom was possible in part thanks to new and better medications.
They are medications that come from the West, Die Zeit said.
The Swiss company Sandoz has supplied China since the mid 1980s with Cyclosporin A, which is vital to the survival of transplant patients. Roche and Novartis, who now own Sandoz, as well as Japan’s Astellas, now sell their anti-rejection drugs in China, according to Die Zeit. At the latest, since 1994, these corporations were able to know about the accusations against China: At that time the NGO Human Rights Watch published a detailed report, Die Zeit said.
At the End of 2005 Roche even began producing their drug Cellcept in China. During a grand opening celebration at their plant in Shanghai, according to a report in the Handelsblatt, Roche chief Franz Humer defended their decision why, of all places, Cellcept should be produced in China: In contrast to Japan, there were no ethical or cultural inhibitions in China against the transplant medical field, Die Zeit said.
The Western pharmacological industry is also responsible for research studies in China, Die Zeit said. Research journals have published nine clinical studies of around 1,200 transplantations in which the companies Wyeth and Pfizer from the U.S., Novartis and Roche from Switzerland, and Astellas from Japan have tested their transplant drugs. Altogether, these companies have collaborated with 20 hospitals in China for these studies.

Training Chinese Surgeons

In the journal Liver Transplantation, Huang Jiefu wrote that “whole transplantation teams from the PRC” have received their training abroad. He himself perfected his abilities in Australia.
Some Australian medical centers, meanwhile, have put requirements in place when training Chinese surgeons, writes Keller. For example, Dr Stephan Lynch at the Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane asks applicants to supply a written assurance by their clinic directors, or someone responsible in the provincial government, that the acquired abilities will not be used in transplant programs that use executed prisoners as donors.
However, German doctors are less scrupulous, Die Zeit reports. The German Heart Centre in Berlin, where nearly 2,300 hearts have been transplanted since its founding in 1986, works together with more than 30 hospitals in China, including transplantation centers. In 2005, the personal assistant to medical director Roland Hetzer proudly reported on Radio China International about their strong co-operation.
At the opening of a heart surgery conference in Shanghai in May, 2012, Hetzer announced: “More than 500 doctors…from China have participated in our work in Berlin over the years. Some of the surgeons have completed an entire five-year training. They all have done good work after returning to their homeland,” Die Zeit quotes.
Keller provides another, different interpretation: “Put another way: In Germany, Chinese doctors get the tools that allow them to transplant organs from executed prisoners in China—the tools for human rights abuses.”
Liu Zhongmin is one of the surgeons who has worked in Berlin for several years, Keller writes. He is now the executive director of the Chinese-German Heart Institute in Shanghai, which was founded in 2000 by the German Heart Centre and the Shanghai East Hospital. The hospital is the German’s closest co-operation partner in China.
Liu’s qualifications are listed on the website of the Heart Institute: He is responsible for clinical research into “heart transplantation, artificial heart, and combination heart-lung transplantation.”
In total, how many hearts have been transplanted at the Chinese-German Heart Institute? What is the source of the organs? To these questions posed by Die Zeit, Liu did not reply.
Weng, Hetzer’s long-time representative, and now a senior physician at the German Heart Centre, is, like Liu, an executive director at the Chinese-German Heart Institute. Several times a year, he travels to China, according to Die Zeit.
He, too, failed to answer questions from Die Zeit. As did Hetzer.

Stopping the Organ Trade

Since Mordechai Shtiglits returned from China, Dr Jacob Lavee has been active politically in seeking to stop more Israeli citizens from obtaining hearts in China, Keller writes. In 2008, a transplantation law was enacted in the country to prohibit medical reimbursement for transplants received in foreign countries if organ trade was involved. Since that time, no patients from Israel have gone for organ transplants to China.
Dr Lavee told Die Zeit that he has been subjected to online abuse for having blocked patients from going to China.
“About this accusation, I am very proud,” Lavee said. But he has not reached the end of his mission because international organ tourism to China continues, even as the Chinese leadership is—officially, at least—trying to reform, he told Die Zeit.
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