Category: China

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500

November 5, 2009

Dear President Obama,

The China Support Network is aware that you will visit China soon. We are a human rights group with a long history of solidarity with Chinese dissidents and their pro-democracy movement seeking reform in Mainland China to include freedom, democracy, and human rights.

Our work began in 1989, as American college students witnessed the eye-popping atrocity of Tiananmen Square’s crackdown and massacre, by troops of the Communist Party, which still runs China today with no freedom, no democracy, no human rights, and no accountability nor justice for the victims of that among other crackdowns.

A current of thought says that U.S. politicians lose sight of the forest for the trees. They get lost in the weeds of issues. What happens if we step back and look at the top line of Mainland China’s experience under the Communist Party-led regime founded by Chairman Mao?

When the Maoism has passed, the history will be written. And, history will neither be kind to that regime, nor to the pliant Baby Boomer Presidents of the U.S. who turned a blind eye and gave Chinese Communists a nod and a wink to tacitly bless their disregard of human rights.

When the history is written, the reign of Maoism – including three recent successors to Mao – was the world’s largest humanitarian disaster ever, anywhere, bar none. For the number of untimely deaths caused by the regime, credible estimates range from 65 million to 80 million dead.

That is larger than the death toll of World War II. The Chinese Communist regime is the world record holder in mass murder. As we observe this situation and the unforgiveable U.S. China policy which followed Tiananmen Square, there is a lack of situational awareness that smacks of George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina.

Observing the scene, one might conclude that at the U.S. White House, there is no such thing as a humanitarian emergency; and that in U.S. newsrooms, there is no such thing as a humanitarian emergency. But, history knows, and history will tell.

Will you appear on the right side or the wrong side of history? Will Wolf Blitzer appear on the right side or the wrong side of history?

The tenures of yourself and Blitzer reflect either an absence of situational awareness, or a deliberate choice to feign an affected nonchalance. That is to say, a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a choice to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil may in fact be willful on your part. However, you each have ongoing tenure, hence may yet appear on the right side of history.

We urge you to do so, and to stop the trade deficit which the U.S. runs with Communist China. When the Maoism has passed, the Chinese leaders must answer for genocide and crimes against humanity. And the indifferent leaders of the Western world will need alibis or plausible deniability, lest history record them as accessories during the fact of genocide.

You will soon visit China. If you follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton, you may be wheeling and dealing to enlarge, rather than reduce, the U.S. trade deficit which robs the U.S. economy of jobs and purchasing power. That trade deficit ought to be categorized as a crime against the American worker, while it also finances genocide and crimes against humanity at the other end of the trade.

Again, we urge you to reduce and then eliminate the trade deficit. The health of the U.S. economy requires at least balanced trade, if not a surplus.

Do we want a Reaganesque, “Tear down this wall” speech? –It would be a step in the right direction.

Short of that, we urge you to speak up for prisoners of this cause. Zhou Yongjun and Liu Xiaobo are leaders from the Tiananmen Square action, again suffering deprivation of their liberties — over 20 years after that historic occasion. When in exile, Zhou is based in California, has U.S. permanent residency, and applied for citizenship. He has two U.S. citizen children.

Wang Bingzhang is the father of the China democracy movement overseas and referred to as China’s Nelson Mandela figure. When in exile, Wang is based in New York, and he has four U.S. citizen children who have not seen their father since 2002.

Gao Zhisheng is an attorney famous for taking on cases of the persecuted (e.g., Christians and Falun Gong practitioners) and referred to as China’s Conscience. The regime has vengefully persecuted Gao in reply, and he disappeared on February 4 of this year. His wife and two children fled to safety in the United States.

President Obama, reunite these families! It’s the right thing to do; it would be a step in the right direction; it would give Wolf Blitzer something to talk about; and thereby enable his redemption.

The China Support Network has its own message that might be delivered to China, that “All Maoism must cease immediately!” Thank you for taking in our missive. May God bless America and China both.