Fa Rectification

Our Thoughts and Actions Are Being Watched

2006-05-15T00:08:00.000-07:00

Our Thoughts And Actions Are Being Watched (audio)

What Is Benevolence

2006-05-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

What Is Benevolence (audio)

Woman's Precept

2006-04-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

Being Respecful, Gentle and Agreeable Is The Most Important Rite and Duty For Women (audio)

Being Respectful, Gentle and Agreeable Is the Most Important Rite and Duty for Women

(Clearwisdom.net) Ban Zhao, also known as Ban Huiban, was a historian and literary figure in the Eastern Han Dynasty of China (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.) In her 70s, she finished writing the first complete book in China about the etiquette standards for women, Nu Jie (or Women's Precepts). In the book, she explained the meaning of the Four Womanly Virtues - disposition, speech, form and skill. Her work has had an extremely profound and lasting influence in history.

In Women's Precepts, she pointed out that "being respectful, gentle and agreeable" is the most important rite and duty for a woman. Only when the mutual complementary factors of yin and yang between the husband and wife are respected can their relationship become harmonious and perfectly satisfactory.

She stated in Women's Precepts that the nature of yin and yang are different, and therefore man and woman's behavior should be different too. Yang is characterized by strength, and yin is characterized by delicacy. Therefore, while a man is honored for being strong and robust, a woman is considered beautiful for being gentle and delicate. That's why there is an old saying, "Having a son strong as a wolf, and yet one still fears he will be too weak; having a daughter shy as a mouse, and yet one still fears she will be too aggressive." Nothing is more important than being respectful in a woman's self-cultivation. Being gentle and agreeable is the key to not becoming too forceful and aggressive. Therefore being respectful, gentle and agreeable is the most important rite and duty for a woman.

Being respectful requires patience and persistence. Being gentle and agreeable requires tolerance. One who is respectful of others over a long period of time knows when to stop before going too far. One who is tolerant is good at being respectful and submissive.

If the husband and wife are overly intimate, and do not leave each other, but cling to each other under the same roof during their entire lives, then the longer this takes place, the easier it is for them to treat each other without proper respect. As soon as improper intimacy occurs, their speech will go beyond the proper limit. As soon as speech goes beyond proper limits, bold unrestraint will follow, and thoughts of insulting the husband will be bred. This is a result of failing to stop before going too far!

Actions can be right or wrong, and speech has merits and demerits. The woman who thinks she is right finds it impossible not to argue, and the person who is in the wrong finds it impossible not to defend himself. As soon as arguments and refutations take place, an angry mood will prevail. This is a result of failing to be respectful and submissive to the husband!

If a woman does not stop insulting her husband, then blame and scolding will follow. If the angry mood does not stop, then physical abuse will follow. As husband and wife, the couple should harmonize their relationship with mutual respect and goodwill, and cooperate well with mutual intimacy and love. With physical abuse, where are rite and duty? With blame and scolding, where is intimacy and love? Without love and observance of propriety, the husband and wife are not far from divorce.

First published in English at http://www.pureinsight.org/pi/index.php?news=3528

Posting date: 4/13/2006
Original article date: 4/13/2006
Category: Open Forum
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/8/24/108946.html

2006 New York Parade Theme - Sujiatun Concentration Camp

2006-04-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

2006 New York Parade Theme - Sujiatun Concentration Death Camp (photos)

2006 New York Parade Theme - Celestial Band

2006-04-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

2006 New York Parade Theme - Celestial Band (photos)

Movie Critics - The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian

2006-04-08T02:28:00.000-07:00

Movie Critics - The Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

2006-04-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

Asia Cast - April 3, 2006

2006-04-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

April 3, 2006 (audio)

A blast at a Chinese explosives plant killed at least 20 workers while another eight died when a firecracker factory blew up.

Of the 11 other people at the explosives plant when a packing workshop blew up, two were injured and the rest were missing.

The plant was in Zhaoyuan, a city in eastern China's Shandong province.

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Early election returns in Thailand show voters are divided in their support for Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The Prime Minister has made gains in the north of the country, but abstentions outnumber ruling party votes in the south and in the capital, Bangkok.

Analysts say that in the absence of opposition candidates, who boycotted the polls, the biggest challenge for Mr Thaksin is the abstention vote.

He has promised not to take office if he fails to get 50 per cent of the vote.

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Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian is due to hold a rare meeting with the leader of the main opposition party.

The talks are likely to be dominated by a controversial multi-billion dollar arms deal with the US.

The Nationalist Party or Kuomintang has blocked the deal in parliament for the past year.

Washington is keen for Taiwan to proceed so as to keep pace with China's military build-up in the Taiwan Strait.

Monday's meeting between the two leaders will be their first since Mr Ma won the chairmanship of the Nationalist Party last August.

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The Indonesian President says he regrets Australia's decision to grant temporary protection visas to a group of 42 separatists from Papua.

However, he says he still wants a good relationship with Australia.

In a statement broadcast live from the Presidential Palace, he also called for a halt to what he called the present "cartoon war" that he said was indecent, abusive and could provoke strong emotions.

He said while the relationship with Australia was going through difficult times, it did not mean solutions could not be found, given good intentions, faith and certainty about the partnership.

But he said Indonesia would not tolerate elements from other countries including Australia if they supported separatism in Papua province.

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The East Timorese Government has launched an ambitious program to reduce poverty, with its success hinging on a plan to treble economic growth.

Poverty is entrenched in East Timor, particularly in rural areas.

High population growth of 3 per cent and a rapidly growing labour force has added to the problem.

The Government's proposed solution is to lift economic growth to between 7 and 8 per cent a year by 2010.

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The frontrunner to replace Japan's prime minister has suggested that he will visit the controversial Yasukuni war shrine if elected.

Shinzo Abe also rejected a Chinese offer to hold talks with current Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi if he stopped visiting the shrine.

Mr Koizumi has been to the shrine five times since he took office in 2001, provoking China and South Korea.

They are angry as the shrine honours more than 1,000 war criminals.

Among those honoured at the Yasukuni shrine, where Japan remembers its war dead, are 14 Class A criminals executed by the Allies after World War II.

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Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says he believes the United States has become intoxicated by its power and should not impose its will on others.

Mr Gorbachev has told Time magazine US talk of pre-emptive strikes and of ignoring international legal obligations and the United Nations Security Council is leading towards what he terms a "dark night".

He also says he believes some people may be pushing President George W Bush in the wrong direction.

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Scientists have found humpback whales in the Pacific have not recovered from commercial whaling.

They are also concerned future Japanese whaling could harm humpback whale populations.

Scientists from the International Whaling Commission are meeting in Hobart, Australia this week to discuss what has happened to humpback numbers since commercial whaling ended in 1973.

Scientists estimate whales are coming back to Australia's east coast but smaller stocks in the Pacific are not recovering as quickly.

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Pope Benedict XVI has paid tribute to what he has described as the immense heritage left by his predecessor, John Paul II, who died a year ago today.

Commemorations are also being held in Poland, the late pope's homeland.

For many, John Paul II was regarded as the father figure of the nation.

He was not just a spiritual or moral leader but a man who inspired them to defeat communism.

Meanwhile, a senior Vatican cardinal has said there will be no rush to beatify Pope John Paul II.

Proof of one miracle attributed to John Paul II is required before he can be beatified, the first step to sainthood.

A second miracle attributed to his intercession with God would be necessary for full sainthood.

Just a month after that, the new Pope Benedict XVI dispensed with the normal five-year waiting period which traditionally must pass before a process of beatification can even begin.

The Diocese of Rome promptly announced the cause of beatification of John Paul II on June 28.

Asia Cast - April 2, 2006

2006-04-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

Asia Cast April 2 (audio)

Freed American hostage Jill Carroll has disavowed critical statements she made about the United States, saying she had been forced to make a propaganda video.
In the video made before her release and posted on a jihadist Web site that also showed beheadings and attacks on American forces, Carroll denounced the U.S. presence in Iraq and praised the militants fighting American forces there.
Carroll, who was abducted in Baghdad on January 7 and released 82 days later on Thursday, said in her first public statement since leaving Iraq that her captors forced her to make the video during her last night of captivity.
Wearing a traditional Islamic head scarf, Carroll looked relaxed in the broadcast that has drawn criticism from some conservative commentators, describing U.S. policy in Iraq as built on a "mountain of lies" and saying U.S. President George W. Bush "doesn't care about his own people".
She said at least two false statements about her had been widely aired: that she refused to travel and cooperate with the U.S. military and that she refused to discuss her captivity with U.S. officials. She said that neither is true.

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A Shanghai woman who went on a hunger strike in support of an outspoken human rights lawyer and other activists, has been released after more than a month in detention, a human rights group said.
Mao Hengfeng said she had suffered physical and mental abuse during her detention, which began on Feb. 13 when police put her under residential surveillance on suspicion of "causing a disturbance in a public place", Human Rights in China, said late on Friday.
Mao, who was freed on Wednesday, told the group that she had been held in a Shanghai apartment. "I was kept confined to one or two rooms, and even had to ask permission to go to the bathroom."
Prior to her detention, Mao had taken part in a nationwide hunger strike in support of human rights activists including lawyer Gao Zhisheng.
Gao has defended dissidents and protesters and recently helped organise a rolling hunger strike to protest over police harassment of political activists.

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Britain's Jack Straw flew in secret into Baghdad today in a dramatic bid to break a deadlock over forming a unity government that can halt a slide to civil war.
A day after senior figures in the ruling Shiite Alliance bloc broke ranks and turned publicly on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Dr Rice and Foreign Secretary Straw will certainly add to the pressure on the controversial premier to step aside.
The chill was palpable when Dr Rice and the embattled Mr Jaafari exchanged small talk on a rainstorm raging outside as reporters looked on. The smiles were frosty, and the body language awkward.

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Beijing and Tsinghua universities are famous for their high academic standards in China and globally. However, some recent policies by the school administrators have caused locals to call the two prestigious universities "academic shopping centers." People said after China's economic reform turned "nine hundred million of the one billion people in China into businessmen," Chinese universities have become businesses as well.
It was reported that the famous Weimin Lake on the Beijing U campus now looks like a public park, and the "triangle of land" where students normally hold events looks like a marketplace. On weekends and holidays the campus is full of cars and merchants from the outside, and loud hawking is nonstop. Student lovers complain that it is hard find a quiet romantic spot.
It was reported that merchants can get onto the campus as long as they know someone in the campus security department. As to cars, as long as the car is expensive enough, it can be driven onto the campus without the driver being questioned.

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A prominent Singapore opposition leader said on Sunday authorities had stopped him from leaving the country and impounded his passport as he had failed to draw up a plan to pay libel damages to two former premiers.
Chee Soon Juan, secretary-general of the tiny Singapore Democratic party, was leaving for Turkey on Saturday to attend the World Movement for Democracy conference when he was stopped by immigration officers at the airport.
The Immigration and Checkpoint Authority could not be immediately reached for comment.
The High Court declared Chee bankrupt in February for failing to make libel payments of S$500,000 ($308,500) to former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong in a case dating back to the 2001 parliamentary elections, when he questioned their use of public funds.
Singapore laws bar bankrupts from travelling overseas, but lawyers said Chee's case was unusual as applications to travel are frequently granted when proper documents are provided.
Chee is the Singapore government's most acerbic critic and has had several run-ins with the People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965.

Editor - Jay Nordlinger of National Review Online - March 30, 2006

2006-04-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

A Place Called SujiatunAre they killing Falun Gong, for their organs?
There is a horrifying story going around the world: In the northeast of China, thousands of prisoners are being held, so that they can be killed for their organs. The prisoners are practitioners of Falun Gong, the meditation-and-exercise system. The facility at which they are being held — called a "concentration camp" or a "death camp" — is at Sujiatun. Chinese human-rights activists believe that this name should cause the same shudders as Treblinka and the others.

I cannot say whether this story is true; I can say that one ought to pay attention.
Of course, "organ-harvesting" is a very familiar story: The PRC has been doing it, with prisoners, for many years. In 2001, the U.S. Congress held hearings on the matter, which caused a sensation. But the sensation died down, as sensations tend to do. Organ-harvesting has gone on, with no negative consequences for the Chinese government.
Organ-selling is a huge business for the Chinese. You can obtain organs in China as you can nowhere else: any type, and very speedily.
The subject of organ-harvesting has been revived by the discovery of Sujiatun. I will not attempt to do justice to this story in this space (as though justice could be done). I will mainly direct you to the website of the Epoch Times, and specifically to its archive on Sujiatun: here. The Epoch Times is an international newspaper whose reason for being is to tell the truth about China. Media in China itself, of course, are government-owned or -controlled.
I also wish to direct you to an article by the tireless Bill Gertz of the Washington Times: here.
How do we know about Sujiatun? Mainly through two witnesses, indescribably brave. One is a woman whose husband was a doctor who took part in the organ-harvesting; the other is a Chinese journalist, long based in Japan, who investigated the matter. Both are now in the United States, in hiding, in fear of their lives. I talked to the journalist, by phone, on Monday morning.
First, a further word about the woman: You can read an Epoch Times interview with her here, and a follow-up story here. They will give you all the details a human mind can take, and probably more. In brief, her husband became deranged by his work, unable to go on. The wife did not intend to step forward as a witness, but concluded that she had no choice.
I will indulge in just a few details. The woman's husband said to her, "You don't understand my suffering. Those Falun Gong practitioners were alive. It might be easier for me if they were dead, but they were alive."
The woman also said this, to the Epoch Times: "Some poor farmers from nearby places were hired to work in the boiler room. [This served as the crematory.] They were penniless when they first came. . . . But they could scrape up some watches, finger rings, necklaces, and so on. The amount is not small."
Finally, she said, "I would like to expose this to the international community, so those who are not yet killed can be saved. Also, I would like to expose this as an atonement for my family."
Now to the Chinese journalist: His name is Jin Zhong — or so he calls himself for the purpose of media reports. I spoke to him when I was meeting with some Falun Gong activists in a New York conference room. One of them, Charles Lee, was recently released from a Chinese prison after three years' confinement. He was tortured, and I will be writing about him in the next issue of National Review. Dr. Lee is a U.S. citizen, by the way.
And, in a strange twist, he bore witness to organ-harvesting, while a young medical researcher in China, years ago. Prisoners would be shot in the back of the head, and their bodies would be hustled to a waiting van. There, doctors would extract their organs; Charles Lee served as an assistant, holding the instruments. Sometimes, the prisoners seemed not quite dead, he says.Before Dr. Lee and I talked, I was able to interview Jin Zhong by phone, using an associate of Dr. Lee's as a translator.
For an extended report on Mr. Jin, please see this Epoch Times article. I will say simply that he found out about Sujiatun when he was investigating SARS, and the extent of the Chinese government's cover-up of that problem. Some local officials let slip information about the Falun Gong camp, and its purpose. He could not believe what he was hearing: It was too horrific, too inhuman. But he pursued the story, and confirmed that what he had heard was true.
I ask Mr. Jin whether the officials felt guilty about this murder and organ-harvesting. He says, "Not at all."
Mr. Jin soon attracted the attention of the police, and was twice detained. He says he was tortured, while in detention. He managed to return to Japan, and then come to the United States. His family remains in Japan, and he says they have received death threats. Obviously, he fears for his own life here in America. PRC agents have never been respecters of national territory.
For those who care, Mr. Jin is not himself a Falun Gong practitioner. (Neither is the woman whose husband performed organ-harvesting.) "I'm not even interested," says Mr. Jin. But he is interested in humanity, and in justice. He says, "I trust that the CCP [the Chinese Communist Party] will try to kill me," for telling about Sujiatun. His life would have been far easier if he had kept quiet, but his conscience would not allow it.
I compliment him on his bravery. He says, "You're a journalist. You wouldn't have done any differently, in my position." I reply, "I can only hope that that is so."
Is the U.S. government aware of Sujiatun? Mr. Jin says he has informed interested congressmen and their aides. And friends of human rights in the media are weighing in. Peter Worthington concluded a piece in the Toronto Sun this way: "China's use of prisoners as guinea pigs, or as a supply to meet world demand, makes Nazi medical experimentation seem almost benign by comparison."
No one should bet that Sujiatun will penetrate the world's consciousness. Governments everywhere are keen on smooth relations with the PRC; media, even in free countries, seem to want to help them. The reluctance of major newspapers and TV networks to report on atrocities in China is a sad subject.
And I recall what Robert Conquest, the great analyst of totalitarianism, once told me: The world has seldom wanted to believe witnesses. Ten, 20, or 30 years later, maybe, but rarely sooner.
Testimony out of the early Soviet Union was scoffed at; these were "rumors in Riga." Tales of the Holocaust were Jewish whining. When escapees from Mao spilled into Hong Kong, they were "embittered warlords." When Cubans landed in Florida, they were "Batista stooges." And so on.
There is an extra incentive to look away from persecution when the victims are Falun Gong. Many people are suspicious of these meditators and slow-motion exercisers, with their strange philosophy. And massive Communist propaganda against them has not been without an effect. Western business leaders see Falun Gong standing in their way, or at least irritating them.
I have no idea what will happen to Jin Zhong, or to the wife of the doctor, or to the prisoners who remain in Sujiatun. It may well be that, with some international attention, the Chinese government will Potemkinize the place. They have done as much before, as have many governments like them. And it could be that people will simply not care about Sujiatun, no matter what is proven.
My main hope, at the moment, is that readers will glance at the reports I have mentioned, especially those in the Epoch Times. Because, sometimes, the unthinkable needs to be thought about, just a bit.
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Asia Cast - April 1, 2006

2006-04-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

(To listen on-line please tick 'Sound of Hope Radio' Asia Cast.)
Chinese police have vowed to clamp down on pipeline oil theft, even threatening to impose the death penalty.
According to police, oil theft cost the industry more than 1bn yuan and led to 2,877 arrests.
While increased police surveillance had almost halved the number of thefts, a significant number of thefts were also going unnoticed, particularly in the Chinese countryside.
The majority of crude oil thieves are farmer peasants in the impoverished and remote regions, who earn a third as much as their city dwelling counterparts.
One popular method used to steal oil involves thieves building a hut and then drilling into oil pipes beneath the building.
China already has almost 30,000 kilometres of pipelines, which will be extended in the near future.
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The leader of Japan's main opposition party, Seiji Maehara, has said he will resign following a scandal over a false accusation against the ruling party.
Last month the opposition admitted that allegations made by a Democratic Party of Japan MP - that the son of a ruling party member was linked to a disgraced company - were untrue.
The party has already apologised over the incident.
Mr Maehara told officials at a meeting on Friday that he was stepping down to take responsibility for the scandal.
Other senior DPJ officials, including Secretary-General Yukio Hatoyama, also planned to step down, according to party officials.
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has acknowledged that the United States has made thousands of tactical errors in Iraq.
But she pleaded that the US and British invasion of Iraq three years ago be judged on its strategic goal, to oust dictator Saddam Hussein to pave the way for democracy.
Dr Rice made her remarks on the first day of a three-day stay in Blackburn, England, where her British counterpart Jack Straw is the local member of Parliament, and where 20 per cent of the population adhere to the Muslim faith.
Protesters shadowed her around the old Industrial Revolution mill town, denouncing US and British policy in Iraq as she visited a high school and the Blackburn Rovers football team.
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US President George Bush has offered aid to Iranians struck by a devastating earthquake, which has killed at least 70 people and injured 1,265.
The powerful earthquake struck western Iran yesterday, heavily damaging villages in Lorestan province.
Iranian officials say the magnitude 6.0 earthquake has damaged 330 villages.
Meanwhile, Mr Bush has renewed condemnation of the Iranian government's nuclear activities, which the US and its allies believe hides an attempt to develop an atomic bomb.
The US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany have been holding talks this week on what action to take if Iran ignores UN Security Council demands to halt uranium enrichment in 30 days.
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A Hong Kong legislator has filed a complaint with the local privacy commission against the Internet company, Yahoo, alleging that it helped Chinese officials convict a dissident journalist.
Hong Kong legislator and lawyer Albert Ho told reporters Friday he filed a formal complaint regarding the case of journalist Shi Tao.
Shi was sentenced to 10 years in jail last year on charges of revealing state secrets.
Chinese officials cited an e-mail message he sent in 2004 that made public a government order barring Chinese media from marking the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said last year his company was complying with Chinese law when it handed over information that led to the imprisonment of Shi.
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At least 57 people have died after a crowded pleasure boat capsized in the Gulf off the coast of Bahrain.
Most of the passengers on board when the two-deck Arabic dhow keeled over were foreigners from a construction firm enjoying an evening dinner cruise.
The confirmed dead include 17 Indians and 12 Britons, Bahrain interior ministry officials have said.
At least 67 people were rescued from the al-Dana vessel, which capsized in calm seas not far from the shoreline.
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China says it regrets the United States and European Union's decision to take a dispute over car parts to the World Trade Organization.
The U.S. and E.U. accuse China of violating WTO rules by giving its domestic carmakers strong incentives to use a higher amount of Chinese-made parts.
U.S. and European carmakers say the Chinese practice makes their cars less competitive on the Chinese market.
China is trying to prevent foreign domination of its auto industry and wants to give more opportunities to its own smaller, less developed companies.
China would like to encourage the development of its own auto parts suppliers so that eventually they can hope to have a major domestic, purely domestic, automobile manufacturer
China's Commerce Ministry on Friday issued a brief statement saying it regrets the U.S. and EU action, and says it is studying the matter seriously.

Asia Cast - March 31, 2006

2006-04-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

(To listen on-line please tick 'Sound of Hope Radio' Asia Cast.)
The leader of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party says it is willing to discuss dropping its long-standing pro-independence stance if Beijing also drops its "one China" principle.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said earlier this month that Beijing would talk to the DPP or anyone else in Taiwan, as long as they were committed to the "one China" principle, which holds that the self-ruled island is part of mainland China.
The DPP chairman rejected the demand, saying dialogue must be based on an equal basis and in-line with democratic principles.
Although the DPP's charter sets Taiwan independence from China as its goal, the chairman says the DPP is open to any form of relations with China.
But the decision lies with the island's 23 million people, not Beijing.
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China has said it will spend more than $1.2bn cleaning up the Songhua River along the Russian border after it was polluted by toxic chemicals last year.
Water supplies were cut off to millions of people following the benzene leak.
The clean-up plan will fund more than 200 projects designed to reduce industrial pollution and improve sewage treatment and water quality.
November's spill strained relations with Russia and focused attention on pollution problems in China's rivers.
About 3.8m people in the northern Chinese city of Harbin lost their water supplies for up to five days after 100 tonnes of benzene and nitrobenzene leaked into the Songhua.
The spillage was caused by an explosion upstream at a PetroChina chemical factory in the north-eastern province of Jilin.
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South Korea has lodged a protest against a Japanese school textbook's description of a dispute between the two nations.
The reference is among changes to textbooks ordered by Japanese education authorities.
Japan's Education Ministry instructed the publisher of a high school textbook to change its description of a territorial dispute over a group of islands, known as Dokdo by South Korea, and as Takeshima in Japan.
The draft said the islands sovereignty was in dispute, but the ministry changed that to say the islands were Japan's but were also claimed by Korea.
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Australia is to break the link between key economic sectors, to start formal negotiations with China on a free trade agreement .
The offers on goods and agriculture will start before work on services and investment.
China and Australia have had four rounds of negotiations on the scope of a bilateral free trade agreement and are slowly moving to the formal stage of exchanging detailed offers and demands.
To get progress, Australia is to break the link between the four main sectors.
The shift is a win for China, which originally wanted to do a deal on goods before even talking about services - the strategy it used in free trade talks with South-East Asia.
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Japan says its whaling program will not be influenced by research the Australian Government claims shows whaling for scientific purposes is a sham.
Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell yesterday released a study showing it was not necessary to kill whales for scientific purposes.
Senator Campbell said the study showed whaling was counter-productive.
But the spokesman on whaling for Japan's Fisheries Agency, says although he has not seen the study, he does not expect it will change Japan's view.
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Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has launched a scathing attack on a UN envoy who criticised the government's record on human rights.
Yash Ghai said on Tuesday that Cambodia's government was not committed to human rights, and power had been too centralised around "one individual".
Hun Sen said Mr Ghai was "deranged" and should be sacked by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Mr Ghai, a Kenyan lawyer, completed a 10-day fact-finding tour of Cambodia on Tuesday.
He said the Cambodian government was "not very committed to human rights".
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Iran's ambassador to the United Nations nuclear watchdog says Tehran will not suspend uranium enrichment work, which can produce fuel for power plants or bombs, as demanded by the UN Security Council.
The Council had unanimously adopted a 'presidential statement', calling on Iran to freeze its enrichment work.
Iran says it only wants nuclear technology for electricity generation but Western countries fear it wants nuclear weapons.
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Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has blasted Western critics of his controversial policies and rights record, and vowed he will never retreat or surrender to a "neo-colonialist" onslaught.
Mr Mugabe, 82, has been in power since Zimbabwe won its independence from Britain in 1980.
He is accused of plunging the nation into political and economic crisis by seizing white-owned farms and destroying the key agricultural sector, rigging elections and waging a violent campaign against the opposition.
Mr Mugabe says his Government has been targeted by Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, for empowering Zimbabwe's black majority and for resolutely defending its political rights.
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A report by more than 50 charity groups says the rate of violent deaths in northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq.
It says nearly 150 northern Ugandans die every week due to the rebellion waged by the group the Lords Resistance Army.
The United Nations coordinator for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, says the Ugandan Government must act to stop further bloodshed.
Mr Egeland calls the war one of the world's most neglected humanitarian disasters.
One study last year estimated that 1,000 people died every week in the north as a result of poor living conditions.

Asia Cast - March 30, 2006

2006-04-01T21:49:00.000-08:00

(To listen on-line please tick 'Sound of Hope Radio' Asia Cast)
American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is joining foreign ministers from five other major powers to discuss a future strategy on the Iran nuclear issue.
The meeting in Berlin comes a day after the U.N. Security Council called on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.
Ms Rice and ministers from Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia will discuss what to do if Iran does not comply.
Iran says its nuclear programme is being developed for peaceful purposes and has refused to stop its activities.
The Security Council vote was taken shortly after a statement was agreed by the five permanent members - the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia - after weeks of wrangling.
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Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister says it is still not clear which authorities will investigate the shooting of an Australian resident in Iraq.
The Department of Foreign Affairs saysseventy-two-year-old Professor Kays Juma, , was shot and killed at a checkpoint in Baghdad last Saturday.
Reports suggest a security guard fired on a vehicle belonging to Professor Juma close to an entry point to the city's Green Zone.
Professor Juma is an Iraqi man, with an Australian permanent resident's visa who lived in Baghdad for most of the year with his Australian wife.
The Australian Embassy in Baghdad is seeking advice on who is responsible for investigating the incident.
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Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor, the third most wanted war criminal in the world has been transferred to the United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone.
Mr Taylor was flown to the court after being taken into UN custody in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
He was repatriated from Nigeria on Wednesday, hours after being caught trying to escape custody - ending his exile of nearly three years there.
The former president is wanted by the Sierra Leone tribunal for his alleged role in the state's brutal civil war.
He faces 17 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and is accused of backing rebels notorious for mutilating civilians.
He is accused of selling diamonds and buying weapons for Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels, who were notorious for hacking off the hands and legs of civilians during their decade-long war.
Tens of thousands of people died in the interlinked conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
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In Australia it’s been revealed a mentally ill man, who is dependent on insulin, has been held in immigration detention for six years.
The man who is known as Mr X, says he is from Bangladesh, but his home country has declined to recognise him and Australian authorities have refused to grant him a protection visa.
The man arrived in Australia in 1999 and has been in detention ever since.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has recommended that Mr X should receive a permanent visa and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says she will make a decision soon.
************************
The Western Australian mining town of Karratha on the north-west coast of Australia looks set to be spared the full force of tropical cyclone Glenda.
The category 4 storm, packing winds of up to 235 kilometres an hour, should cross the coast at Mardi station, midway between Karratha and Onslow, sometime tonight.
The storm, one of the most powerful cyclones to hit the region in many years has already dumped more than 90 millimetres of rain in the past 27 hours, causing widespread flooding.
More than 500 people have already been evacuated from low-lying areas in Karratha.
****************
Meanwhile estimates are firming of the insurance industry impact from cyclone Larry in far north Queensland.
It is now being described as a "moderate insurance event".
Cyclone Larry made landfall ten days ago.
But ratings agency Standard & Poors now estimates the insured losses at between $300 million and $400 million.
However, Larry's total cost is also put at $1.5 billion, but much of the sugar and banana crops were uninsured.
*******************************
Japan says its whaling program will not be influenced by research the Australian Government claims shows whaling for scientific purposes is a sham.
Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell yesterday released a study showing it was not necessary to kill whales for scientific purposes.
But Hideki Moronuki, the spokesman on whaling for Japan's Fisheries Agency, says although he has not seen the study, he does not expect it will change Japan's view.
The issues are set for another airing at this year's meeting of the International Whaling Commission at the end of May.
The IWC is still assessing the first phase of Japan's whaling program which plans to harpoon more than 900 whales, including endangered fin and humpback species.
**************************
Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has launched a scathing attack on a United Nations envoy who criticised the government's record on human rights.
The envoy, Yash Ghai said on Tuesday that Cambodia's government was not committed to human rights, and power had been too centralised around one individual.
In an angry responseHun Sen said Mr Ghai was "deranged", should be sacked by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and that other UN rights staff in Cambodia were just "long-term tourists".
This year Hun Sen has filed, and subsequently dropped, defamation charges against about a dozen government critics.
Cambodia’s opposition leader last year was also sentenced to 18 months in prison for criminal defamation, although he was granted a royal pardon a month ago.

Gao Zhisheng's Comments On Sound Of Hope Radio

2006-03-30T21:52:00.000-08:00

Gao Zhisheng's Comments on Sound of Hope (audio)

There is absolutely no doubt that Sound of Hope plays an indispensable role in today’s Mainland China. Many people in China do not have access to the internet, thus listening to radio broadcasts has become the only way for them to obtain information. A large number of them are the listeners of Sound of Hope’s broadcast. Right now, once you mention Sound of Hope, many common folks will say “I know, I know Sound of Hope”. For example, for the thousands of people who recently joined the hunger strike in Shanxi province, when asked how they obtained the information of the relay hunger strike, they told you directly: “We listened to the Sound of Hope Broadcast; we heard the news from Sound of Hope”. It is the same situation in Anhui Province. A group of people joined the relay hunger strike from Anhui. I asked them the source of their information. They said: “We heard the news from Sound of Hope and we want to support you”.

That is to say, the broadcast of Sound of Hope is the voice of freedom, and its impact should never be underestimated in deed, and in terms of the public awakening to the awareness of civil rights protection and the nature of barbaric dictatorship of Chinese communist regime.

Even for the general movement of civil rights protection in China, not specifically about the hunger strike, Sound of Hope’s broadcast is vital. For example, last year a farmer from Shandong province visited my law firm. He told me that in his village what people most often listen to VOA and Sound of Hope. The Chinese communist regime will be of no use at all after its collapse; since it is inhuman it is doomed to have no future.

Asia Cast - March 29, 2006

2006-03-30T01:14:00.000-08:00

(To listen on-line please tick 'Sound of Hope Radio' Asia Cast.)
China has said it will ban the sale of human organs from July in an attempt to clean up its transplant industry.
New regulations published by the health ministry require donors to give written permission and say transplants should be done only in specialist hospitals.
The move follows the deaths of several foreigners who travelled to China for transplants.
Correspondents say the measures fail to address a severe organ shortage which has spawned a lucrative black market.
It is estimated at least two million people in China need transplants each year but only up to 20,000 can be conducted because of the lack of organs, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Voluntary donations fall far below the level of demand because of cultural biases against organ removal before burial.
Human rights groups allege that many organs come from executed prisoners, including from those who may not have given their permission.
*****************Vietnam War veterans and activists from six countries are urging the US Government to compensate millions of people they say are victims of toxins in the military defoliant Agent Orange.
Three decades after the war ended, the US has yet to admit that the lethal chemical dioxin has harmed Vietnamese villagers and foreign soldiers through illness and birth defects.
No figures on human health defects have been universally accepted.
The two-day meeting has drawn veterans from Vietnam, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea to discuss the effects of the chemical that was used to strip away jungle cover and destroy enemy food crops.
**************UN health agencies have admitted that they had widely missed their goal of getting AIDS drugs to 3 million poor people by the end of this year but insisted the initiative had succeeded in many other ways.
By December 31, more than 1.3 million people in low- and middle-income countries had access to antiretroviral therapy.
The two agencies had aimed to reach three million out of the 6.5 million infected poor people who need the drugs.
Despite this setback and the many problems that persist, the initiative had transformed the war against AIDS.
It had tripled the number of poor people on antiretrovirals, saved hundreds of thousands of lives and laid down the foundations for saving many more in years to come.
************Three Indonesian Christians facing execution by firing squad within days have submitted a second request for a presidential pardon.
The three were found guilty in 2001 of murder, arson and several other crimes during sectarian violence in Indonesia's Central Sulawesi Province.
The Attorney-General's department said earlier it had planned to carry out the executions before the end of March.
Pope Benedict XXVI earlier this month sent a message of compassion to the men.
***************You’re listening to Asia Cast on the Sound of Hope Radio Network************A remarkable tale of survival at sea has emerged from the South Pacific, this time from Solomon Islands.
Two Solomon Islanders, who had been missing since January, have been picked up by a fishing vessel in Vanuatu.
The pair had intended to make a journey by motorised canoe on the island of Malaita but never arrived at their destination.
They have survived almost two months at sea, drifting hundreds of kilometres before being seen by the fishing vessel in Vanuatu's waters.
********The Australian Federal Government says China would not be allowed to transfer Australian uranium to other countries if an export deal goes ahead as expected within days.
The two countries are close to reaching agreement on the sale of Australian uranium, which is potentially worth billions of dollars.
Environmental groups are concerned China may use the uranium for its nuclear defence program or on-sell the material to other nations.
********
Former United States defence secretary Caspar Weinberger has died, aged 88.Mr Weinberger had been suffering from pneumonia and high fever for about a week.
He oversaw a massive US military build-up as former US President Ronald Reagan's defence secretary, and strongly opposed concessions to Moscow in arms control negotiations.
Mr Weinberger later became caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal that dogged the Reagan administration.
He resigned as defence secretary in 1987 and was later indicted on felony counts of lying to the independent counsel investigating the scandal.
He was pardoned by President Bush in 1992, days before he was to go on trial.
***********A group of 45 elderly Chinese who were forced to work as slave labourers in Japan during World War II have lost their bid for compensation.
A court in the Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka dismissed the men's lawsuit, which sought a total of 1bn yen in compensation.
The plaintiffs had also demanded a written apology in both Japanese and Chinese newspapers.
Japan's ties with China are already frayed after a series of disputes.
The two countries have clashed over access to energy reserves, as well Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where some war criminals are honoured along with Japan's war dead.
************Greenpeace has released data from satellite imaging that indicates that virgin forest covers approximately 55 thousand square kilometers of land in China, which represents only about two percent of China’s total forested area.
Liu Bing, the director of Greenpeace’s Forest Protection Project says the depletion is due to excessive logging in virgin forests.

Mr. Gao Zhisheng and Sujiatun Concentration Camp 2006

2006-03-29T22:54:00.000-08:00

Attorney Gao Zhisheng and Sujiatun Concentration Camp in China (audio)

(Listen On-Line Please Click Link 'Sound Of Hope Radio' Asia In-Depth.)
Special Report for NY English SOH Broadcast – March 26, 2006 Hello, this is Drew Carlucci with a special report for March 26, 2006. Today we bring you continuing coverage of Mr. Gao Zhisheng, the attorney who has emerged as one of China’s foremost activists in the struggle for democracy and human rights. We also have continuing coverage of Sujiantun Concentration Camp, where the harvesting of organs from live Falun Gong practitioners is big business for the CCP. Last fall, attorney Gao sent several open letters to CCP leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. Extremely troubling to him was the six-year persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. In one letter he wrote “This continuous, systematic, large-scale and organized persecution against Chinese people practicing Falun Gong” is a “barbaric atrocity”. Another letter documented accounts of torture experienced by Falun Gong practitioners in secret mountain chambers in northeastern China. Gao’s letters were met with silence and then oppression. His law firm was shut down; then his legal license was revoked. But he kept writing and joined the millions of Chinese who have quit the Chinese Communist Party. His family was placed under 24-hour surveillance by as many as 100 policemen; his 12-year old daughter was followed to school. In an interview with SOH, his wife had this to say:
“We all feel that the oppression is unbelievable. Why is this happening? Each petitioner has their own case, but our governments don’t offer solutions. We’re just trying to help out as individuals. Now the governments don’t even allow us to do that. This is why I feel Gao is in a very difficult situation. Why is it so hard to do anything good or just do our best in this country? Are they not human beings?
Beginning in late October, Gao and our child became the subjects of surveillance by the CCP. I discovered that they started first with our child on October 20th, then they followed us from work and finally from our home. They have continuously increased their efforts to oppress us, and now they even stalk us. One thing worth mentioning is that in the afternoon of the 29th, I had to stay late for work. It was well past five o’clock when they became impatient waiting outside of my office. They were so anxious that they started ringing the doorbell. They pressed so hard on the bell, it was like “Du…..” They were following me and even got very anxious about my getting off work late. They are just like hoodlums and rascals.”

On January 12, Gao was arrested, detained and released on the same day. Five days later he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when a car tried to run him over. His entire office staff has been arrested. Gao said, “In China today, the CCP’s oppression only leads to people’s awakening.” He says that the 100 days of monitoring him and his family is a failure, and that the CCP has not won anything but HE has gained something. He said that his little daughter has become mature during the savage oppression.

On Feb. 4, Gao launched a relay hunger strike. He started a 48-hour hunger strike and released the following statement, “As a human rights lawyer, I have to use this hunger strike to protest the CCP’s brutality. What a tragedy of this nation and in our time!”

“I feel so sad that many people who are on hunger strike are hungry, because I’m very hungry too. It is a tragedy of our time. When all legal means to protect human rights are prevented, we have to use our body as the last resort to protest the government’s brutality. We want to live with dignity.”
Clive Ansley, a Canadian lawyer who practiced law in China for 14 years, gave the following description of the Chinese Communist regime:

“The government of China today is a Fascist government. The dictionary definition of Fascism is essentially a brutal and absolute dictatorship carried out by an alliance of government, the military and big business. That’s exactly what you have today in China.”

At 6 a.m. Beijing standard time, March 11th, attorney Gao began his fourth turn in the Global Relay Hunger Strike. Since February 18th, Gao has been fasting every Saturday to support the hunger strike for human rights. At the same time on March 11th, people in twenty-seven provinces and cities across China began their own hunger strikes to show support for Gao. He told a reporter that on March 10th, several thousand staff members at a large company in Shanxi Province also participated in the hunger strike. He said the central theme is still to protest against the Chinese Communist Party’s organized criminal activities, the police and their criminal-like violence towards Chinese citizens.

During the days surrounded by plainclothes police, anyone who went to see him was taken away or arrested, including proxy lawyers. More recently, Gao received death threats from policemen.
Gao Zhisheng: At approximately 11 am, my wife shouted up from the entrance to my office, calling me to come downstairs quickly because the secret police downstairs were fighting with lawyer Li Heping. I quickly ran downstairs and saw two husky six-foot-tall fellows shoving lawyer Li Heping around in the foyer and attempting to take him away by force. When I pointed out to the thugs the illegality of their actions, one of them flashed an ID card at attorney Li. On it was written Beijing Police Station Officer Li Liang. Li Liang and his companions wanted to take me away forcefully as well. When I requested him to show me a legal document he looked surprised and answered: “Do you know who you are talking to? Who says we need a warrant? It is not necessary.”

During the whole time, Li Liang and his anonymous partner, who was over six feet tall, approached me closely. While Li Liang was wrestling with Li Heping, this other, with his face inches away from mine, threatened me many times. Then he said the following, which I found most interesting:”Gao, you must remember what I say today; you cannot remain this arrogant for long. In a few days we will bring you somewhere to talk and I will make you suffer horribly, so you must remember my words today!” From the way he gritted his teeth while he spoke those words, one could tell that here guarded me completely as his personal enemy although this was our first meeting, making me wonder whether to laugh or cry! Another plainclothes policeman came in right up to my face and said, “Let me tell you clearly, you will not remain arrogant for long. In a few days time when we meet alone somewhere, we will definitely treat you nicely.” Yet another secret police who was also well-built came rushing in. This fellow had a fat head with a thick face and wore a thick chain on his neck. He pushed his fat face close to mine and said to me fiercely, “Gao Zhisheng, you are going to die soon! Mark my words, you are nearing death! Who do you think you are? Even those on top have to listen to us; even Hu Jintao does as we tell him. We can create enough evidence in a day to arrest you a hundred times. Just wait and see. Very soon we will let you know who we are! Let me warn you one last time: you will die soon.”

Yet, despite these threats to his life, he continues to fight for justice. On March 18th, Gao wrote in his hunger strike diary – urging the UN and international organizations to investigate Sujiatun Concentration Camp, which was reported by the Epochtimes newspaper.
Sujiantun Concentration Camp
On March 9, 2006, the Epoch Times reported that a former Chinese journalist working at the Chinese embassy in Japan, revealed the existence of a concentration camp called “Sujiatun” in Shenyang city, Liaoning province, in northeastern China. He said “Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs, which are sent off to various medical facilities…organ sales are now a highly profitable business in China.” The concentration camp is underneath what used to be a hospital, and employs an "unusually large number of doctors" where Falun Gong practitioners have been detained, tortured, and harvested for their organs since 2001.
According to a recent article published by the Washington Times, the journalist, who goes by the pseudonym Jin Zhong to protect his identity, said he first learned of the harvesting operation between October and December and that the prisoners were Falun Gong practitioners.He said, "This is murder, and murder sponsored by a state. It must be stopped."The Washington Times also reported that while researching the Chinese government's response to SARS, Mr. Jin discovered the underground detention center where he said thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were being imprisoned. Mr. Jin stated that bodies of the prisoners were incinerated in the boiler room of the hospital and that boiler room workers had taken valuables from the dead and sold them. He said he has provided information about the Sujiatun organ harvesting operation to U.S. government officials, including members of Congress.
Mr. Jin held that his identity must be kept anonymous, after being threatened by Chinese government agents. He recently fled to the United States, where he hopes to seek political asylum.
The Chinese government has declined comment while Falun Gong practitioners have requested governments worldwide to begin an investigation. The subject of organ sales caught mainstream media’s attention last year when China officially admitted that organs for transplantation were from executed prisoners.
In a recent interview with Sound of Hope reporters, attorney Gao Zhisheng said, “Sujiatun concentration camp is reminiscent of a Nazi death camp. It is a must to conduct an investigation. The United Nations and international communities must take responsibility and must be sensitive to this issue. It is well known that the CCP is most capable of committing crimes and destroying evidence effectively. If it is delayed, the evidence will be destroyed, the CCP will do whatever it can to destroy the evidence; this would put more people at risk. This is a crime against humanity. All my three open letters can be counted as evidence. Any international organization can investigate this. I’m willing to lead them to the site for investigation.”
Since China’s illegal organ trade has been exposed in recent years, the United States Congress has held numerous hearings. According to transcripts dated June 27, 2001, from a State Department hearing entitled Sale of Human Organs in China, knowledge of the sale of human organs from executed prisoners in China has been reported by Hong Kong and London media as early as the mid-1980s. “We repeatedly raised this issue with high-level Chinese officials throughout the 1990s, pressing for changes in Chinese policy and practice, and urging changes in China’s legal and medical systems to ensure the protection of individual rights and the guarantee of due process. We consider organ harvesting from executed prisoners, without permission from family members, to be an egregious human rights abuse that violates not only international human rights law, but also international medical ethical standards.” (For more information, visit www.state.gov.)

In 2001, Harry Wu and Dr. Tom Diflo, experts on illegal organ transplants in China, both testified before U.S. Congress about such illegal practices in state-owned Chinese hospitals.
Wu, founder of the Laogai Research Foundation, has tracked media reports of people from all over Asia, traveling to China to take advantage of the abundant supply of organs from executed prisoners. In 2002, after more than 10 years investigation, he hosted and compiled 'An Investigative Report on China's Harvesting of Executed Prisoners' Organ'."
In an interview with NTDTV, Harry Wu was asked to comment on the widespread practice of organ harvesting in China. Wu believes the gruesome practice is allowed to proliferate in China because it is a behavior organized by the Chinese Communist Regime. He explains:
"On October 9, 1984, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Health, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs stipulated that executed prisoners' corpses and organs may be supplied for use under these 3 conditions:
1. No family members or anyone else takes back the corpse.
2. Prior personal agreement by the executed prisoner
3. Agreement by family members.
Any one of these 3 requirements is enough for the government. In practice, this means no matter what tactics the government uses, in the end it is enough to meet any of the 3 criteria.
In order to demonstrate prisoner agreement, if a prisoner presses his finger on an execution document during torture before the police, this constitutes an agreement. If family members must be paid off afterwards, this constitutes a 'family agreement'.
The first, most convenient condition is even more ridiculous. What does 'no one takes back the corpse' mean? For example, a certain laborer will be executed in Shenzhen, but his hometown is in Sichuan Province or this laborer is executed in Shanghai, and his hometown is in Hunan Province. His family members do not have enough time to rush there by train, so how could they take back the corpse? The government does not notify them either. This is called 'nobody takes the corpse.' This is easily orchestrated."
This investigative reporter listed many gruesome examples organ removal from still-living victims. But many Chinese medical personnel and even many ordinary people regard this as common practice. Harry Wu indicates it is all because the Chinese mentality has been twisted under the education of the Chinese Communist Party's brutal totalitarian rule into a special kind of thinking and culture."

Harry Wu spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp. He says the common practice is to execute the prisoner with a shot to the back of the head, remove his organs, and transport them to nearby hospitals.
Dr. Tom Diflo, director of kidney transplantation at New York University Medical Center, has researched illegal organ transplants in China. His findings confirm those of Wu.
In an interview with SOH, Dr. Diflo recounted his story:
I had encountered some Chinese patients who had gone to China, and they came back with kidneys. And when I asked where they came from, they said, “oh, my cousin”, or something like that. But some of them told me they had bought the kidneys from executed prisoners. So, that got my interest. And I started investigating it. So it was my interests in that and my investigating, that I eventually met Harry Wu, from the Laogai Research Foundation, and he got me to testify in front of Congress on that day in 2001 about this practice and what I thought about it.
The problem was, these organs were being taken from prisoners who were executed and they were taken from the prisoners right after execution and transplanted. Although the government said this was something they got consent for, that the prisoners agreed to it beforehand, or the families consented, the evidence was overwhelming that there wasn’t any consent involved. Certainly the execution dates are scheduled around the time of when people are wanting to get their transplants and things like that. My opinion is that it’s terrible. That it’s ethically and morally reprehensible. They’re taking the organs from the prisoners without their consent, without the consent of the families, they’re violating their bodies. And this is all a purely a cash business. It’s meant to raise money for the hospitals, for the doctors, and for the system.
When asked about the Sujiatun Concentration Camp, and on the recent discovery of Falun Gong practitioners having their organs removed while they are still alive, Dr.Diflo had this to say:
”If in fact they’re taking organs out of living people, purely for the purpose of transplantation without consent, that’s even more of a human rights horror than the prisoner situation. The non-consensual taking of organs out of people is perhaps the great violation of their human rights that I can think of”.
And finally, when asked whether he believed that the Chinese Communist Regime was suppressing information on the widespread practice of organ selling in China, Dr. Diflo commented:
“It certainly appears to me that any information like that, the government likes to keep under wraps, like the AIDS epidemic that happened in China because of the pooling of blood, they really minimized that for years and it blew up in their face. But it would not surprise me, knowing what I know about the Chinese government, it would not surprise me if they were suppressing that information, and if they're pulling organs out of people. I'm sure they don't want anyone to know about it”.
In an article dated March 15th, the Epoch Times reported, “The lack of transparency in the Chinese Communist regime’s criminal justice system, the secrecy that surrounds prison executions and the removal of organs make actual documentation of the practice difficult.” However, several eyewitnesses have reported on this human rights violation. The article further reports, “in June 2001, Wang Guoqi, a Chinese former military physician, offered chilling evidence to the US Congress of how he had to harvest organs of more than 100 executed prisoners. In one case he had to skin a shot victim’s body while the man was still alive. Skin is particularly “valuable” for its use in burns victims. Dr. Wang, who at the time was seeking asylum in the U.S., alleged that corneas and other body tissues were removed for transplants, and said his hospital, the Tianjin Paramilitary Police General Brigade Hospital, sold body parts for profit, reported the Guardian.”
Confirming earlier reports on the existence of the Sujiatun Concentration Camp, on March 17th, 2006, the Epoch Times reported that a former employee of the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine revealed that “the Sujiantun Concentration Camp in China was indeed part of a hospital. The concentration camp has engaged in taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners when they were still alive and selling the organs. Since 2001, the concentration camp has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, and removed kidneys, livers, and corneas. After the organ removal, the practitioners were thrown into an incinerator, which was converted from a boiler. Their ashes were dumped together with burned charcoal. No Falun Gong practitioners have ever left the camp alive.”
Subjects of live cornea removal are mainly the elderly or children.
The witness further explained that many of the victims were illegally detained with neither an arrest warrant nor identification as to who these people actually were. “About three-quarters of the 6,000 people died after their hearts, kidneys, corneas, or skin was removed; their bodies were then burned. This witness, whose family member participated in the removal of Falun Gong practitioners’ organs, said that approximately 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners remain in the hospital. She was afraid that the authorities would kill all of them to destroy evidence.”
Also coming forward, according to NTDTV, a former CCP spy-turned-informant substantiated reports that the Sujiatun labor camp is kept completely sealed from the public and under tight security. He concur ed that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners known to be detained there are being kept for their organs. The agent also validated earlier reports of detained Falun Gong practitioners being shipped to Sujiatun from other camps in China. The agent wishes to remain anonymous for security purposes.

A representative for a U.S. based human rights group called The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) had this to say on Sujiatun:

In our initial investigation, there truly exists a large "organ market" in Sujiatun, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China. It is a systematic procedural practice, which includes building the death camp, detaining the "suppliers," (living Falun Gong practitioners,) matching Falun Gong practitioners' organs with people who need them, surgically removing the organs, eliminating the victims' bodies, and setting up the hospitals that use these stolen organs.

And in one of the grizzliest stories to surface, from the website, Clearwisdom.net, it was reported that a few doctors conducted live experiments on the prisoners, and some high-ranking CCP officials requested to have the prisoners’ brain matter sent to them as nutritional supplements.Regarding the horrific Chinese organ harvesting trade, Canadian attorney, Clive Ansley, who spent 14 years practicing law in China, gives his opinion of the communist government’s policy towards human rights and rule of law.

“One of the most fundamental goals of Chinese government policy today is specifically to prevent the slightest improvement in human rights or in the rule of law because the rule of law means the end of the rule of communist party. The two can’t coexist. So every organ, every agency and every organization in China is simply a puppet for public display controlled by a puppeteer from behind and out of sight. A hundred percent of media, all the formal institutes of government, the police, the courts, so called labour unions, so called chamber of commerce, the arm forces, and then extra-legal groups such as the 610 office in charge of persecution of Falun Gong no legal bases at all dictating government’s policy. There is no doubt at all that history will condemn this government’s murderous record.”

Believing that the crimes committed by the Chinese communist regime will eventually be brought to justice, Attorney Gao Zhisheng had this to say, "The CCP is doomed to lose this battle of good against evil. Why? Because the weapons that determine the success of this combat are morality and righteousness. Evil and violence cannot exterminate righteousness."
This was a special report for Sound of Hope Radio. I’m Drew Carlucci.

Movie Critics - House of Flying Daggers

2006-03-29T00:25:00.000-08:00

Another movie you must see.

Movie Critics - Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

2006-03-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Two Thumbs Up.

A Movie You Must See.