More On China
Whereas little or no news has trickled out in regard to Dongzhou Town--the town in which thirty people were gunned down by Chinese police because of their protests over land seizures--there is this new report coming out of China, care of Reuters.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-01-06T140844Z_01_WRI650869_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-ACTIVIST.xml&rpc=22
A blind activist in China and his family have been placed under house arrest for four months and he was beaten by thugs when he tried to venture out, after exposing forced abortions in his home province on the east coast.
Club-wielding goons believed to be hired by local authorities have been posted outside Chen Guangcheng's one-storey brick home in Dongshigu, a farming village in Shandong province, since September 6 to prevent him, his wife and 71-year-old mother from leaving, Chen said.
"China is lawless," the 34-year-old activist told Reuters by telephone. "They're worried I will expose more of their crimes."
"Do (President) Hu Jintao and (Premier) Wen Jiabao know? If they know, why have they not done anything?" Chen asked.
Authorities have jammed signals to and from Chen's mobile phone but they could not block calls on Friday due to a power failure. His home phone has also been cut.
Up to 30 people have been guarding Chen's house in each shift round the clock. The only visitor allowed is Chen's older brother.
Chen and his family have survived on food bought by the goons, who have beaten him at least twice when he tried to leave his home. He was denied medical treatment.
The goons once dragged Chen's 30-year-old wife, who gave birth to a girl last July, back into the house when she tried to go out, he said.
Chen's whistleblowing prompted the government to sack and detain several officials in Shandong's Linyi city, state media have said.
But Chen said he has not heard of any punishment.
Officials from Yinan county, which administers Dongshigu, forcibly brought back Chen to his home from a hiding place in Beijing last September.
His freedom was restricted with officials accusing him of providing "intelligence" to foreigners about forced abortions and sterilization's as part of strict family planning rules.
Several civil rights campaigners have been either beaten or jailed in the past year.
Guo Feixiong, an adviser to a law firm, was released without charges in December after being held for more than three months for helping residents of Taishi village in the southern province of Guangdong vote out their elected chief over allegations of corruption. He staged a month-long hunger strike.
Another activist, Lu Banglie, was beaten by thugs last October when he tried to help a British reporter from the Guardian newspaper enter Taishi to interview villagers.
Taishi erupted in a confrontation between villagers and police last September. Villagers accuse local officials of selling off 2,000 mu of valuable land, while paying them few benefits.
This is a brutal, Communist regime. I cannot believe, nor do I understand, how the IOC came up with the idea that China deserved the Olympic Games. I am a swimmer, and a damn good one at that. When I was younger, it took up a good majority of my life. Now that I am in college, it has taken a backseat. I still swim, but not competitively. I do it to relax, to stay fit, and because I am part fish. (That last one comes from my brother.)
If I were a potential Olympian, and had the opportunity to go to China, I would have to seriously consider not going. It was wrong for Pres. Carter to boycott the Olympics in 1980; that punished the athletes that had worked their entire lives for a once-in-a-lifetime shot at winning Olympic Gold. But I am saying that as an individual athlete, I would have to weigh that decision. I am not someone who believes in China as it stands today. I dislike Communism a great deal, and that is exactly what China is. They are repressive, abusive, and do not care for the inherent human rights that everybody should be entitled to around the world. (And no, I am not referring to the UN's definition of "human rights." They cannot abide by what they have defined.)
But this is what China does. They do it all the time, and the world rarely hears about any of it. It is time to cut this nation off. All support, money, aid, whatever, should be cut off. I know that people will suffer, and that does hurt me. However, I see no other recourse for the brutality of this regime. Allowing some capitalism into thier borders is a nice thing. Freedom, once let in--even in tiny amounts--can eventuall bring the regime down. By cutting off all reltations to China, cutting off all support and/or aid, will speed up this process. We need to come to terms with this: they are the last major Communist regime left in the world. It is time to end it.
North Korea is nothing along the lines of what China is. Kim Jong-Il is a sawed off, nutty little dictator that barely has relevance in the world, and only gains attention when he rattles his short, nuclear saber.
Cuba is hardly a Communist giant, and Castro will not last much longer. He is bolstered by Hugo Chavez, from Venenzuala, and Evo Morales, recently elected president of Bolivia. But these tin-horn, third world dictators will not last long, and certainly not against America. And if either one is thinking they can pull a 1960's Cuba, and go for nuclear weapons, think again. We ran a blockade against cuba then, and they are not going to want to push us now.
China is all that remains of the great Communist experiment, and even they had to bow to free markets. Granted, it is not completely free, but it is a step that now China cannot stop, nor can they control. In the case of this activist, this is one step of freedom he thought he could get away with. China does not like it's secrets getting out, and their avid embrace of abortion is one of them; especially forced ones.
Yesterday, Thomas slapped Michael Hiltzik around, again, when Mr. Hiltzik decided to take swipes at a blogger that we read. We like Patterico, and Mr. Hiltzik was just plain wrong in his attack. Patterico pointed to two posts that Mr. Hiltzik put up in response to Patterico. Thomas addressed the first one, brilliantly. The second one was a bit more complex, as it was specific items. As I scrolled down through it, I noticed that he brought up the Barbara Demick North Korea piece entitled "North Korea Without the Rancor." I covered this story. Many bloggers did because it literally was a puff-piece.
She included no disclaimer in the piece, and reported everything the "North Korean businessman" said. Thomas read it, and picked up on a couple of things in the piece. His reaction? "The guy's a spook; definitely black propaganda." Mr. Hiltzik took exception to people getting upset about the piece, but the simple fact of the matter is this was obviously a piece of propaganda to change the views of North Korea in the West. When she asked him about human rights abuses, he claimed there were none, and only "social agitators" were put in jail, and they were always treated "fairly." How fair are the forced abortions in the North Korean gulags? Are those the same fair abortions that go on in China?
The existence of China, as it stands right now at this time, makes me sick. Oppression is rampant in that country, and the people are made to suffer. Are there those that believe in the Communist system? Of course there are; we have people in this nation that believe in that system. That would be the Left. Not quite as brutal and repressive as those in China, but one that would definitely rip away our rights because they believe we have too many as it is right now. But in China, it sounds like there are a lot more that stand against Chairman Mao's little red book, and his little red vision than those that support it.
The Bunny ;)
Whereas little or no news has trickled out in regard to Dongzhou Town--the town in which thirty people were gunned down by Chinese police because of their protests over land seizures--there is this new report coming out of China, care of Reuters.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-01-06T140844Z_01_WRI650869_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-ACTIVIST.xml&rpc=22
A blind activist in China and his family have been placed under house arrest for four months and he was beaten by thugs when he tried to venture out, after exposing forced abortions in his home province on the east coast.
Club-wielding goons believed to be hired by local authorities have been posted outside Chen Guangcheng's one-storey brick home in Dongshigu, a farming village in Shandong province, since September 6 to prevent him, his wife and 71-year-old mother from leaving, Chen said.
"China is lawless," the 34-year-old activist told Reuters by telephone. "They're worried I will expose more of their crimes."
"Do (President) Hu Jintao and (Premier) Wen Jiabao know? If they know, why have they not done anything?" Chen asked.
Authorities have jammed signals to and from Chen's mobile phone but they could not block calls on Friday due to a power failure. His home phone has also been cut.
Up to 30 people have been guarding Chen's house in each shift round the clock. The only visitor allowed is Chen's older brother.
Chen and his family have survived on food bought by the goons, who have beaten him at least twice when he tried to leave his home. He was denied medical treatment.
The goons once dragged Chen's 30-year-old wife, who gave birth to a girl last July, back into the house when she tried to go out, he said.
Chen's whistleblowing prompted the government to sack and detain several officials in Shandong's Linyi city, state media have said.
But Chen said he has not heard of any punishment.
Officials from Yinan county, which administers Dongshigu, forcibly brought back Chen to his home from a hiding place in Beijing last September.
His freedom was restricted with officials accusing him of providing "intelligence" to foreigners about forced abortions and sterilization's as part of strict family planning rules.
Several civil rights campaigners have been either beaten or jailed in the past year.
Guo Feixiong, an adviser to a law firm, was released without charges in December after being held for more than three months for helping residents of Taishi village in the southern province of Guangdong vote out their elected chief over allegations of corruption. He staged a month-long hunger strike.
Another activist, Lu Banglie, was beaten by thugs last October when he tried to help a British reporter from the Guardian newspaper enter Taishi to interview villagers.
Taishi erupted in a confrontation between villagers and police last September. Villagers accuse local officials of selling off 2,000 mu of valuable land, while paying them few benefits.
This is a brutal, Communist regime. I cannot believe, nor do I understand, how the IOC came up with the idea that China deserved the Olympic Games. I am a swimmer, and a damn good one at that. When I was younger, it took up a good majority of my life. Now that I am in college, it has taken a backseat. I still swim, but not competitively. I do it to relax, to stay fit, and because I am part fish. (That last one comes from my brother.)
If I were a potential Olympian, and had the opportunity to go to China, I would have to seriously consider not going. It was wrong for Pres. Carter to boycott the Olympics in 1980; that punished the athletes that had worked their entire lives for a once-in-a-lifetime shot at winning Olympic Gold. But I am saying that as an individual athlete, I would have to weigh that decision. I am not someone who believes in China as it stands today. I dislike Communism a great deal, and that is exactly what China is. They are repressive, abusive, and do not care for the inherent human rights that everybody should be entitled to around the world. (And no, I am not referring to the UN's definition of "human rights." They cannot abide by what they have defined.)
But this is what China does. They do it all the time, and the world rarely hears about any of it. It is time to cut this nation off. All support, money, aid, whatever, should be cut off. I know that people will suffer, and that does hurt me. However, I see no other recourse for the brutality of this regime. Allowing some capitalism into thier borders is a nice thing. Freedom, once let in--even in tiny amounts--can eventuall bring the regime down. By cutting off all reltations to China, cutting off all support and/or aid, will speed up this process. We need to come to terms with this: they are the last major Communist regime left in the world. It is time to end it.
North Korea is nothing along the lines of what China is. Kim Jong-Il is a sawed off, nutty little dictator that barely has relevance in the world, and only gains attention when he rattles his short, nuclear saber.
Cuba is hardly a Communist giant, and Castro will not last much longer. He is bolstered by Hugo Chavez, from Venenzuala, and Evo Morales, recently elected president of Bolivia. But these tin-horn, third world dictators will not last long, and certainly not against America. And if either one is thinking they can pull a 1960's Cuba, and go for nuclear weapons, think again. We ran a blockade against cuba then, and they are not going to want to push us now.
China is all that remains of the great Communist experiment, and even they had to bow to free markets. Granted, it is not completely free, but it is a step that now China cannot stop, nor can they control. In the case of this activist, this is one step of freedom he thought he could get away with. China does not like it's secrets getting out, and their avid embrace of abortion is one of them; especially forced ones.
Yesterday, Thomas slapped Michael Hiltzik around, again, when Mr. Hiltzik decided to take swipes at a blogger that we read. We like Patterico, and Mr. Hiltzik was just plain wrong in his attack. Patterico pointed to two posts that Mr. Hiltzik put up in response to Patterico. Thomas addressed the first one, brilliantly. The second one was a bit more complex, as it was specific items. As I scrolled down through it, I noticed that he brought up the Barbara Demick North Korea piece entitled "North Korea Without the Rancor." I covered this story. Many bloggers did because it literally was a puff-piece.
She included no disclaimer in the piece, and reported everything the "North Korean businessman" said. Thomas read it, and picked up on a couple of things in the piece. His reaction? "The guy's a spook; definitely black propaganda." Mr. Hiltzik took exception to people getting upset about the piece, but the simple fact of the matter is this was obviously a piece of propaganda to change the views of North Korea in the West. When she asked him about human rights abuses, he claimed there were none, and only "social agitators" were put in jail, and they were always treated "fairly." How fair are the forced abortions in the North Korean gulags? Are those the same fair abortions that go on in China?
The existence of China, as it stands right now at this time, makes me sick. Oppression is rampant in that country, and the people are made to suffer. Are there those that believe in the Communist system? Of course there are; we have people in this nation that believe in that system. That would be the Left. Not quite as brutal and repressive as those in China, but one that would definitely rip away our rights because they believe we have too many as it is right now. But in China, it sounds like there are a lot more that stand against Chairman Mao's little red book, and his little red vision than those that support it.
The Bunny ;)
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 12:28 PM
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