Transforming Closed Societies by Freeing the Internet
The Global Internet Freedom Consortium works to break through information blockades
By Michael YoungEpoch Times Staff Created: Dec 1, 2009 Last Updated: Dec 1, 2009
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Australia Network newshour's Jim Middleton speaks to David Matas, an international human rights attorney about, allegations that China is harvesting organs of executed Falun Gong practitioners.
The Largest Peaceful Movement in Modern China
Anniversary of its genesis marked by speeches in Flushing, Queens
Epoch Times Staff Created: Nov 26, 2009 Last Updated: Nov 26, 2009
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In 2001 Associate Professor Wu Xiaohua from Anhui Province was kidnapped from her home. She was illegally detained at the Anhui Province Female Labor Camp, and then taken to a mental hospital against her will.
Wu was targeted because she practices…
I am from Hong Kong and am now going to college in the US. I have always been more aware of, and care more about Chinese human rights issues than my peers, but it wasn't until I was 15, when I started practicing Falun Gong, that I began to dig deeper (much deeper actually) and started to do more about it instead of just learning about it. I now go to various social networking sites, forums, blog sites, etc. to raise awareness about the horrible things that the Chinese Communist Party does to its people. I also write and translate articles, and I have translated a documentary and checked the translation of a movie, both about the persecution of Falun Gong.
There is a man named Zhiwen Wang who has already spent over 9 years of a 16 year sentence in Qianjin prison - for being a Practitioner of Falun Gong. If you've never heard of Falun Gong - it's a meditation practice that focuses on three basic principals - truth, compassion, and tolerance.
China is in opposition to this meditation practice and all of it Practitioners, and continues to persecute innocent people who refuse to renounce their belief.
Zhiwen Wang is one of these innocent people.
On behalf of Zhiwen Wang and his family, I am asking you - my Friends and Family - to please sign the petition, so that Zhiwen Wang may be released from prison as soon as possible.
For video footage and more information about Zhiwen Wang, please visit http://www.FreeMyDad.org.
Your participation can change this man's life and make a difference!
Thank you for your time.
An Overview of Falun Gong and the persecution: Also known as Falun Dafa, Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that is Buddhist in nature. It consists of moral teachings, a meditation, and four gentle exercises that resemble tai-chi and are known in Chinese culture as “qigong.” The latter are a truly unique, and very much enjoyable, way to improve the health and condition of one’s body. At the core of Falun Gong are the values of truth, compassion, and forbearance (or in Chinese, Zhen, Shan, Ren). Falun Gong teaches that these are the most fundamental qualities of the universe itself, and takes them to be a guide for daily life and practice. By 1999 Falun Gong was reported to have grown to become the largest, and fastest growing, practice of the sort in Chinese if not world history. In just seven years since its 1992 introduction to the public, an estimated 70-100 million persons in China were by then making Falun Gong a part of their daily lives. Through consistent and dedicated practice, the students of Falun Gong comes to achieve a state of selflessness, greater insight and awareness, inner purity, and balance—the inner workings of what might be called true health. Ultimately he or she approaches what in the Asian tradition is known as “enlightenment” or “attaining the Dao” (or “Way”).
While Falun Gong aspires to inner transformation of the self, it nevertheless typically translates outwardly into positive change in the world, insofar as the practitioner becomes a more patient family member, a more conscientious employee, a more giving member of the community, and so on.
Falun Gong has thus been the subject of many citations, awards, and proclamations as conferred by government officials and a variety of organizations. Many who practice Falun Gong have been the recipients of service awards in their communities. The practice’s founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, is a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and was nominated by the European Parliament for the Sakharov Prize For Freedom of Thought.
By 1999, Chinese officials went so far as to quantify Falun Gong’s benefits, such as when one official from China’s National Sports Commission, speaking with U.S. News & World Report, declared that Falun Dafa “can save each person 1,000 yuan in annual medical fees. If 100 million people are practicing it, that’s 100 billion yuan saved per year in medical fees.” The same official went on to note that, “Premier Zhu Rongji is very happy about that.”
Today Falun Gong is practiced freely in more 70 countries around the world, with clubs and associations existing in a range of cities, companies, universities, and other settings. Regrettably in China, its country of origin, it is banned since July 20th, 1999, and is subject to well-documented egregious human rights violations. The scale and scope of abuses taking place make this possibly the largest religious persecution in the world today. One basic explanation for the seemingly irrational campaign is the proclivities of China’s atheist Communist Party (the CCP), which fears all groups outside its control – particularly ones that subscribe to a different ideology. The Party has tried several times to eradicate all expressions of religion from China. To this day Roman Catholics, many Protestants, and Tibetan Buddhists cannot worship freely in China and are at constant risk of detention and torture. By 1999, Falun Gong became a natural target as it was the largest - and fastest growing - spiritual group in China with 100 million practitioners nation-wide, according to Chinese Government reports at the time.
Others have noted that the decision to launch the campaign is linked to former-Party head Jiang Zemin’s "fear" and "jealousy" of Falun Gong. According to analyst Willy Lam, Jiang has been seen as "using the mass movement to promote allegiance to himself." Sources cited by the Washington Post, state that, "Jiang Zemin alone decided that Falun Gong must be eliminated," and "picked what he thought was an easy target."
Perhaps the most prominent feature of the campaign has been its prevalent use of extreme torture. Torture of Falun Gong adherents has been documented in each of China’s provinces, in jails, labor camps, brainwashing centers, and schools in China’s big cities, small towns, and villages.
Popular torture techniques include shocking with electric batons, burning with irons, tying the body in painful positions for days, force-feeding saline solutions through a plastic tube inserted up the nose, and prying out fingernails with bamboo shoots, to name a few; rape and sexual torture of the Falun Gong in detention are prevalent as well.
To date over 3,000 deaths have been documented, as well as over 63,000 accounts of torture. An estimate of the real figure puts the actual death toll in the tens of thousands.
The Party’s ultimate solution for the vast number of incarcerated Falun Gong adherents, however, is much more terrifying. According to current and former hospital employees, the Falun Gong have been used in reverse organ-matching – they have been killed by the thousands so that their organs can be used for on-demand transplants. Livers, kidneys, hearts, and cornea are removed from the living, anesthetized Falun Gong adherents with matching blood-types and sold to Party officials and other desperate-yet-wealthy individuals from China and abroad. Undercover investigators’ phone calls to Chinese hospitals have caught doctors boasting about this practice on tape. In 2006 Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former secretary of state for the Canadian government on Asian-Pacific matters David Kilgour wrote an investigative report on the matter: http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ For more information, please see my pictures and videos. How You Can Help: Many people still do not know about Falun Gong and how practitioners are being tortured and killed in China. Many more have no idea that an insidious persecution targeting practitioners is taking place outside of China, especially in the United States and other countries with economic ties to China. Please inform your friends, family, and colleagues and ask them to discuss this issue with their associates.
Hello Stephanie,
How are you? And thank you for your invitation to your created group.
I hope that you will enjoy your student and peace activities.
I, of course, must struggle for my academic activities.
See you!
Shigeru
it,s big problems in my country and all the world can,t speak , 12000000 refugees can,t return to the villiges in palestine when the some of bad jews take the land and make occupation in palestine an…
Started by majed abusalama. Last reply by John Nunez Oct 29.
Many people feel that killing convicted murderers will satisfy their need for justice and/or vengeance. They feel that certain crimes are so heinous that executing the criminal is the only reasonable response.
I think that permitting premeditated murder is totally unacceptable, even if committed by the state.
Capital punishment lowers the value of human life as seen by the general population and brutalizes society. It is based on a need for revenge.
Ciao
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Se siete interessati a vomprare i miei quadri click:
http://myworld.ebay.it/katyasannastore
Hugs
Katya
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A lot of love from Italy,
Elisabetta
peace
p trilla
"YES"
Just saying hi. Miss you. Hope to hear good things from you.
How are you? And thank you for your invitation to your created group.
I hope that you will enjoy your student and peace activities.
I, of course, must struggle for my academic activities.
See you!
Shigeru