Category: China

U.S. Congressmen Defend the Right to Religious Freedom in China

“Shanghai Petitioner Poisoned by Authorities, Husband Says”
— Epoch Times reports on Ms. Zhou Minzhu:
— “Both Mr. Tang and Ms. Zhou are members of the Chinese League of Victims, a Hong-Kong-registered society of people with grievances against the Chinese authorities.”
— “She was arrested shortly after returning and taken to Shanghai’s Huangpu District Detention Centre, where she was told that if she didn’t withdraw from the Chinese League of Victims, she would be sent to a labor camp.”

Google China chief quits suddenly after months of clashes with censors
— Telegraph reports:
— “The head of Google in China, Kaifu Lee, has quit the company abruptly after several turbulent months of clashes with the Chinese government.”
— “‘My next move is to create a platform for young Chinese. I want to be actively involved in the work and to have full control of it,’ he wrote, on his popular blog.”

Communist China: Zhou Yongjun’s case reviewed by John Kusumi
— Tiananmen Square Persecution Continues, Over 20 Years Later

China Support Network’s John Kusumi:

— “We have at hand an issue — inattention to which demonstrates how the international community has sunk to lows of being inattentive to China’s human rights crisis and the plight of China’s pro-democracy movement, which garnered so much sympathy in the wake of 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre. Indeed, for the first decade after Tiananmen, Western news organizations constantly featured Chinese dissidents, abuses committed by the regime there, and high profile cases of prisoners of conscience. Then, for the second decade after Tiananmen, Western news largely did a 180-degree turn, and while prisoners of conscience continued to suffer, newscasters themselves seemed to have no conscience.”

— “The Tiananmen crackdown is not over. The case of Zhou Yongjun is particularly galling because it can represent the entire Tiananmen Square student movement. Why? Because as the first student leader actually elected to lead the Autonomous Students’ Federation of Beijing Universities, Mr. Zhou already once did represent the entire Tiananmen Square student movement.”

— “What happened, and continues to happen, to Zhou is emblematic of China’s handling of political dissidents from 1989 all the way up to the present day. Zhou is now in his third stint as a political prisoner in Mainland China. Twice before, he was arrested and imprisoned.”

— “He was first arrested by Chinese authorities soon after the massacre of June 4, 1989. The international community raised pressure for his release, which happened in 1991 after about 1.5 years’ imprisonment. In 1992 he made his way to Hong Kong and in 1993 he resettled in the United States. He became a legal permanent resident and also applied for citizenship. He now has two children who are U.S. citizens.”

— “In 1998, he attempted a return visit to China, was arrested in Guangzhou, and became a political prisoner for the second time. He was sentenced to three years in a laogai (‘reform through labor’) camp. He was released about six months early in 2001, because the Chinese government was bidding for the Olympics to be awarded to Beijing. By making a token release of political prisoners, Beijing was able to display a fakey, staged impression of ‘human rights improvement.’ Zhou then returned to the United States in 2002.”

— “Now, he is in his third stint as a prisoner of the Chinese government. Homesickness and his ailing father led Zhou to attempt another return to China in September, 2008. He was detained by Hong Kong immigration authorities as he attempted to enter Hong Kong from Macao. At that point, he could have been turned away just like other dissidents. (Yang Jianli and Wuer Kaixi have also tried to re-enter China recently, and they were put onto airplanes that returned them to Taiwan.) Instead — and unlike their handling of other dissident cases — the Hong Kong immigration authorities turned him over to Mainland police.”

— “To enter China, Zhou had obtained a Malaysian passport which bore the name Wang Xingxiang. Authorities in China have charged him with “financial fraud,” solely on the basis of a letter that is alleged to be from Wang Xingxiang to Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong requesting to withdraw money. Zhou has made it clear that he did not author that letter, but it is the basis for the Chinese regime to continue to hold him now.”

CHCA President, Pastor “Bike,” Issues 4th Open Letter to President Hu Jintao
— PDF of letter

Communist China: “Organ trafficking flourishes. The government tries to regulate it.”
— Asia News reports:
— “The issue of organ transplants in China has two major problems. First of all organs transplanted are mostly taken from people condemned to death, often without their consent or without that of family members. Secondly, very often the transplants are carried out to supply foreigners who can pay handsomely for the organ and the operation, but penalizing the local people in need of a transplant. Until two years ago, the cost for a kidney transplant was 62 thousand dollars, for the heart it was 140 thousand U.S. dollars.”

Communist Chinese Regime Blacklists 247 Dissidents
— NDTV reports:
— “Zan Aizong is a well-known Chinese blogger who’s sometimes critical of the Communist Party. In 2006, he was arrested and fired from his job as the Zhejiang bureau chief of the Chinese Ocean News for writing an article that exposed the forced demolition of a Christian church building.”
— “Well now the regime has labeled him a dissident—adding him to a secret media blacklist and shutting down his blog.”
— “The blacklist was created by China’s Propaganda Ministry. It contains the names of 247 so-called dissidents that Chinese media are now forbidden to interview or write about.”
— “Chinese news service Boxun.net reports that the media have been ordered to copy the blacklist by hand—making sure there’s no electronic record.”

Communist China: Secret CPC Directive Calls for the Dismantling of Six House Churches in Beijing

Communist China: Devoid of democracy, Beijing urges attention to petitions