Category: Totalitarianism

Communist China: Lawyer Tortured for Defending Falun Gong Clients

Communist China: Lawyer Tortured for Defending Falun Gong Clients
— “Yet another human rights lawyer in China has been arrested because he has chosen to defend Falun Gong practitioners’ right to freedom of belief.
— “Attorney Wang Yonghang, who is from northeast China’s harbour city Dalian, has taken the defense for several Falun Gong practitioners. He insists on upholding his profession’s code of ethics, and has refused to yield to the regime’s unofficial policy, which has mandated that there be ‘no legal defense of innocence for Falun Gong [adherents].'”

Communist China: “Organ trafficking flourishes. The government tries to regulate it.”

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

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.”

Epoch Times Report: “Critical Essay Still Hot Topic in China”

Epoch Times Report:  “Critical Essay Still Hot Topic in China”
— Epoch Times reports:
— “State media refutes political essay, but interest only heightens”
— “A recent political essay that openly criticized the Chinese Communist Party has met with a stiff rebuttal in Chinese state media. Rather than dampening the effect of the original piece, however, experts say interest has only grown.
— “China News Service, the overseas arm of official Chinese communist media, attacked the article ‘The Ruling Party Must Establish Basic Political Ethics,’ claiming the dialogue the essay is based on was fabricated.”
— “Since the original essay was published on July 30 it has circulated widely online. Websites carrying the piece were later blocked, and commentary on the essay was deleted from online bulletin boards. Chinese authorities had remained silent on the issue until the recent editorial of August 17.”
— “The essay, suspected to have been written by Wan Li, former secretary of the Central Committee Secretariat and former Chairman of the National People’s Congress, argues that the Party’s rule is ‘illegal and unethical,’ and pins China’s apparent unrest over the years squarely on the communist Party.”
— “China News Service’s rebuttal, entitled ‘Fabricated Theories’ and written by someone identifying themselves as Yan Li, claimed that ‘Some old timers mentioned the essay to the veteran leader and his family. The answer they got was that there was no such thing, and that the essay was a complete fabrication.'”
— “The day after the letter was published The Epoch Times interviewed Bao Tong, one-time secretary of ousted Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang. He scoffed at the editorial, saying: ‘Who is Yan Li? A person who himself needs to prove his own identity. How can he step forward to clarify? He did not even dare to mention the words ‘Wan Li’ and only stated that the veteran leader denied it. Yet, there was no name. So his credibility, reliability, and authority are questionable.'”
— “Bao argues that the author’s failure to refer to any facts in refuting the rumors exemplifies the CCP’s apparent lack of confidence, and further demonstrates the significance of the original essay.”
— “The piece attracted the attention it did, Bao says, not solely because of the claimed authorship, but most importantly because it ‘fulfills society’s needs and exposes the real darkness in society.'”