Conscience Foundation: Forget Not the Beijing Olympics' Victims
(Clearwisdom.net) The following article was prepared by the Conscience Foundation, an
organization created, according to its mission statement, to wake people up from
the worldwide decline of conscience, to defend the right to conscience, and to
stop the crimes against conscience. The views expressed are those of the
Conscience Foundation and do not necessarily reflect the position of the
Clearwisdom website. For further information, visit http://www.consciencefoundation.org/ It is now clear that the Beijing Olympics Games did not help to improve human
rights in China. On the contrary, unknown thousands of innocent people have fallen victim to
the Beijing Olympics. Knowing that it had the Olympics secured, the Chinese
regime not only refused to honor the promise it made to improve human rights
when it bid for the 2008 Olympic Games (1) but it used the Olympics' security as
a pretext to apprehend, torture, and murder people who had already suffered
prolonged human rights violations in China. One group of victims that the Chinese regime particularly targeted in the
year leading up to the Beijing Olympics is Falun Gong practitioners.(2) The
Chinese regime has consistently denied persecution of other groups, but has
publicly vowed to "eradicate" Falun Gong. In April 2007, a secret
document of the Public Security Department listed Falun Gong among 11 groups
that were to be monitored and prohibited from attending the Olympics.(3) In
February 2008, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX
Olympiad issued an internal instruction to "strictly monitor and control
Falun Gong." Following these instructions, Chinese authorities all over the
country intensified the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In the following pages, we document the names and details of the arrest of
over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in the name of the Beijing Olympics'
security. To fit within a reasonable space, we provide only a small number of
the descriptions of how these victims have been violently and even fatally
abused in custody. Because of the Chinese regime's restrictions on the flow of
information, the atrocities are feared to be much worse. The report can be found
at: http://www.falunhr.org/reports/PDFs/BeijingOlympicsPersecution.pdf The incarceration of Falun Gong practitioners was not at all to keep them
away from the Olympics; it was to coerce them into renouncing Falun Gong. To
that end, all of the arrested Falun Gong practitioners were severely tortured;
some were beaten to death hours after their arrest. When their family members
asked for their release, the authorities replied, "After the
Olympics." However, large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are still in
custody, long past the Olympics. It should be clear from this report how the Beijing Olympics was used by the
Chinese regime to intensify its persecution of Falun Gong. The same Olympics
tragedies have happened to others, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians, and
human rights lawyers and defenders. In presenting this report, and the evidence that it contains to show the
deterioration of human rights in China, we remind those who rationalized
rewarding the Olympics to Beijing as an opportunity to help human rights in
China that they have a responsibility to come to the rescue of those who
suffered the consequences of their failed rationalization. This failed Olympics rationalization is but the latest entry in the long list
of similarly failed rationalizations of the U.S. and the West's policy of
economic engagement with Communist China..(4) There have been numerous so-called
opportunities over the past twenty years to help China to improve its human
rights, yet with the passing of each opportunity, more victims have fallen to
the Chinese regime's human rights violations. Meanwhile, the makers of the
engagement policy have simply walked away from the victims and moved on to the
next "opportunity." Human rights improvement requires having a heart for the victims, a sense of
responsibility, and the courage to stand up for what is right, rather than the
excuse of so-called opportunities. By repeating the same failure in China's human rights and continuing to
profit from these "opportunities" for financial gain, the economic
engagement policy has become modern democracy's worst example of hypocrisy. The
complete lack of accountability also makes it modern democracy's worst example
of irresponsible politics. It may therefore be fitting that beyond the Beijing Olympics there is no
opportunity in sight to "help" improve the human rights situation in
China. Instead the U.S. and the West are supplicating China to help them
financially in the current deep financial crisis, as evidenced by the recent
pleading of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for China to continue buying
U.S. debt. Going further than President Clinton's delinking of human rights from
trade with China, Secretary Clinton has openly delinked human rights from all
China policy, stating that "those issues" can't interfere with our
more important goals, that "our economies are so intertwined," and
that, "We are truly going to rise or fall together. We are in the same boat
and thankfully we are rowing in the same direction." Secretary Clinton is candid in openly admitting what human rights really
means to the U.S.'s China policy, an inconvenient interference with other more
important goals, yet it is sobering to see the top diplomat of the leader of the
free world avow such a Faustian contract to rise or fall together with the most
tyrannical regime of the world. Such a pledge is a betrayal not only to human
rights, but to the very core of American values. Had America's Founding Fathers
cast aside "those issues" like unalienable rights, America would not
have been conceived in liberty but remained intertwined with Great Britain. Had
President Lincoln refused to let "those issues" like equality
interfere with other "more important" goals such as avoiding a war and
preserving a much more intertwined economy, the Union could just "rise or
fall together" with the South, and there would be no President Obama. However, more is at stake. Few may have noted how closely the collapses of
Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, AIG and others followed on the
heels of the Beijing Olympics to bring about the present financial crisis, and
fewer may have considered that these scourges were not coincidental. Throughout
history people with demonstrably higher moral standards have been more
introspective in enlightening to the significance of tribulations. President
Abraham Lincoln, in another mightier scourge, noted that the powerful interest
of slavery was somehow the cause of the Civil War, and that both the North and
the South at some point had contributed to the prolonging of that interest -
"To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for
which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government
claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of
it." Even when the Civil War came, most looked for "a result less
fundamental and astounding." Lincoln, however, saw that "The Almighty
has His own purposes," and that if God willed that the Civil War continue
"until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years
of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.'" The U.S. and the West's economic engagement policy with China may be less
overt than the old slavery but no less immoral, for behind the pretext of human
rights improvement is the profit from outsourcing to China's modern slavery.(5)
The Chinese regime not only entices the U.S. and the West to outsource to its
modern slavery, but also bankrolls American consumers to buy China's cheap
slave-labor products by lending money to the U.S. through bond purchases. If the
profit extracted from America's old slavery had to be wiped out through the
Civil War, could the financial gains extracted from China's modern slavery at
the expense of the Chinese people's worsening rights be treated differently and
written off by selling more bonds to China? If the current financial crisis is a
warning of our moral decline in profiting from China's modern slavery, what
might be at stake in continuing down this wrong path? Needless to say, it is
when a country is less inclined to believe in higher principles that its
officials will consider to "rise or fall together" with a godless and
criminal regime. But will the higher principles be less true just because we
believe in them less? Will God be less just merely because human beings become
less spiritual and more material? It may be expedient and even tempting to remain silent to the Chinese regime's
human rights abuses in exchange for some financial gains, but, wittingly or
unwittingly, those who place lining their pockets over values are themselves
victims of the Chinese regime's crimes against conscience.(6) Falun Gong
practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians, and human rights lawyers and
defenders have been victimized and lost their freedom because of their refusal
to conform to the abusive regime, but those who choose to be in the same boat
and rise and fall with such an abusive regime have lost their conscience. In presenting this report and asking the free world not to forget these
victims, we hope the free world may come to see its own falling victim to the
Chinese regime's crimes against conscience. This report is also a tribute to
Falun Gong practitioners' courageous defense of human conscience. They are a
beacon to us all. Many Falun Gong practitioners in China have risked all to
expose the violations they or fellow practitioners have suffered. Their reports
must not be taken lightly, lest the values of hope, courage and human beings'
most fundamental right to conscience be forsaken. It is our earnest hope that in
helping them the free world will find its way back to the true spirit of
humanity. 1 Liu Jingmin, Vice President of the Beijing Olympic Bid, said in April 2001,
"By allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help the development of
human rights." 2 United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China Annual Report
2008, Page 143 3 http://chinascope.org/main/content/view/339/148/ 4 "Enticement and Engagement" from Falun Gong, Humanity's Last
Stand, Conscience Foundation, 2006, Page. 21 5 "Enticement and Engagement" from Falun Gong, Humanity's Last
Stand, Conscience Foundation, 2006, Page. 23
These people have committed no offense. The majority of them were abducted when
the police broke into their homes. Many were taken from their work. Some middle
school and high school students were arrested in their dormitories and
classrooms. They could not possibly threaten the Olympics from where they were
arrested; many were hundreds or thousands of miles away from the venue.
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