Saturday, August 23, 2008

Falun gong & Groupthink


Oppression is the same whether it occurs to silence a protest against the WTO or G8 summits, or whether its goal is to silence Falun Gong protesters from questioning or defying the Communist Party's decisions. Oppressian does not favor one nationality or one country over another; throughout history, both large and small countries have been ruled by elites to the detriment of minorities (or the majority) of their population.

It is as though the saying, 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' is proved countless times over every continent and throughout every age. I am not happy about this. What does seem to accompany oppression in every instance is groupthink. Groupthink tends to bring up visions of Human Resource manuals for corporate training; but, is an equally applicable term to political mindsets. Groupthink can be 'right' wing or 'left' wind, capitalist, socialist, communist or within any group that validates itself through repeating its familiar montras over and over to itself to the exclusion or tolerance of any other points of view.

Every once in a while, a person breaks free from the tyranny of groupthink and wakes up to a different reality. The story below is of such a man; a policeman commanded to deal with Falun Gong protesters in 1999 in China. His insights are simple but compelling and very much like those of American policemen who broke from the ranks of the 'blue code' of silence. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this post below; if you are so inclined to research this, please leave me a comment below as I would be very interested.


In His Own Words: Hao Fengjun Explains Why He Escaped from China, Part I
By Hao Fengjun
Special to The Epoch Times
Jun 09, 2005


Editor's note: Hao Fengjun, 32, a former police officer of the 610 Office of the Tianjin Bureau of State Security, sought political asylum in Australia after he fled China in February, 2005. He left his work because he no longer wanted to be involved in the persecution of Falun Gong and other religious groups. Encouraged by the recent events related to the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" and Chen Yonglin, Hao decided to step forward and tell the public the truth. The following is a transcript of Hao Fengjun's words about why he chose to escape from China.

1. Family Background

I was born late in China's Cultural Revolution. My father was a construction worker and my mother a housewife. I have an elder brother. My father was the only bread winner in the family. My childhood memories were full of political purges and earthquakes. The only good times I could remember were when I played in the mud and had water-fights with the other kids. Fortunately, my loving parents always taught me to be optimistic about the future, gave me moral instruction and told me what is really important in life. They also told me that I should have courage to face any difficulties and be positive in anything I do. My parents paid a lot of attention to the nurture of a child's character by teaching us to be honest, righteous, modest, kind and brave. My growing years were profoundly influenced by my parents and I did well in school.

I had been fascinated by many professions, foremost among them was that of police officer. I wanted to make my contribution to society by fighting the bad guys and crime, and protecting people. I had worked to achieve that goal! In 1985, I got into Nankai High School, one of the five elite high schools in Tianjin City, through a competitive exam after finishing my grade school, and I chose to focus on the humanities.

The June 4th incident that shook the world broke out between the spring and summer of 1989 when I was a junior in high school. News about the student movement in Beijing spread to my school, and we began to care about the situation in Beijing and the students there. One day, led by our homeroom teacher, we took to the street in support of the college students in Beijing. The flyers I took and read while walking in the parade shocked me. I learned from those flyers the notorious acts of corruption by our country's political leaders at various levels.

For instance, Deng Xiaoping's son Deng Pufang held the post of president of China's Federation of the Handicapped; another of Deng's son, Deng Zhifang, was the board chairman of China Northern Inc. (an arms dealer), and so on. Watching the dialogue between China's then premier Li Peng and college students on TV, I felt the questions raised by the students were indeed realistic. Though still in my formative years, I already saw a lot of social ills including graft, disparities between the rich and poor, and favoritism. What those college students stood for reflected exactly how I had felt and inspired my sympathy with the students' just actions and my desire to fight for democracy and against corruption. Then, the central government silenced the whole incident with guns.

I learned afterwards that the personnel files of the college students would include records of their involvement in the June 4 demonstrations, and these students, after graduation, would have to find jobs themselves. Since no one dared to take them, they had to support themselves by doing odd jobs.

2. The Conflict between My Dreams and Reality

I got into the Tianjin Nankai University and became a student in the law department in 1991. Upon graduation in 1994, I was assigned to work in the Tianjin Public Security Bureau. One
year of ideological and legal education in addition to military and submission training [training that makes one get used to obeying the order of higher authorities] left in the minds of college graduates that "the organs of the public security are violent apparatus in the state based on people's democratic dictatorship, and the tools serving the Party." We learned, after the brainwashing, to obey orders without asking why. I finished the basic police training at the end of 1994 and was assigned to the anti-riot team of the Heping branch of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, where I worked for two years.

When I started out, I had wanted to get rid of gangsters and protect people, and arrested some suspects of murders, robberies, and drug trafficking. Meanwhile, many things that happened illogically during work hurt me profoundly. Take for example a case that took place in 1996. I got a report that someone was stabbed at Fulihua Entertainment Center. When we arrived there, we saw the injured man, stabbed four times and bloody, lying on the floor of the center's lobby surrounded by six security guards in black suits.

Before I had a chance to ask about what had happened, the guards asked me to take the victim to the police station for detention. I felt both insulted and puzzled. And then my boss, Zhao Shaozhong, came and also ordered me to take the victim away, first for treatment in a hospital and then for detention. I'd rather have vanished into thin air at that moment! Was I still a police officer charged with the responsibility of protecting people? No way!

I didn't learn the truth until later. Fulihua Entertainment Center was run by Liu Li, sister of Liu Ying who was a standing member of the city committee of Tianjin and Party chief of Heping District. It is well known that China, a socialist state, claims not to allow the existence of brothels. But it's an open secret that Fulihua Entertainment Center was a whore house with patrons like Gao Dezhan, then the Party chief in Tianjin (later removed from the post for visiting prostitutes), and some high-ranking officials from Beijing and dandies of central leaders.

I didn't have the heart to arrest the victim and asked my boss, Zhao Shaozhong, to let others take over. The victim was really held under police custody for 15 days for disturbing public order.

Actually, the victim had come to Fulihua Entertainment Center for his daughter, a college student who had gone back home every weekend until nearly half a year before. His daughter's classmate told him that she worked as a bar girl and even a prostitute at Fulihua Entertainment Center after class every day and he could find her there. This case was a blow to me and I felt confused about my future. I didn't know how to be a good person and a good policeman at the same time.

3. The Persecution of Falun Gong

In 1999 the well-known April 25th incident broke out. The direct cause for this event happened in Tianjin City. As a policeman serving the people, I witnessed the whole event.

At the beginning of April, we received a notice from higher authorities "To be secretly cautious of the scheme of Falun Gong."

On April 11, 1999 an issue of a magazine for youth published by the Tianjin College of Education published an article attacking Falun Gong and its founder. The author of this article was He Zuoxiu, who was a member of an institute affiliated with the institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was one of a few radicals in China who opposed Falun Gong and qigong. Those radicals regarded all the supernatural phenomena of qigong practices as anti-science, superstition and deception. He claimed that Falun Gong caused mental illness, and said that Falun Gong was similar to the Boxers, who tried in the late 1800s to overthrow the government.

He Zuoxiu's article greatly hurt the hearts of the Falun Gong practitioners. Therefore, some practitioners went to the Tianjin College of Education and other related governmental agencies to tell the facts.

At that time all of us were informed by the Tianjin Public Security Bureau to come to the site promptly and to provide traffic control, block any news reports and surround Falun Gong practitioners on the spot. On April 23, over three hundred riot police were redeployed to this
area; they beat up and arrested forty-five Falun Gong practitioners. Some practitioners from the crowd went to the Tianjin municipal government directly. The city officials said they could not solve this problem. To do so, the practitioners should go to Beijing. The Falun Gong practitioners had to go to Beijing on April 25 and appeal to the higher authorities to solve the problem.

At that time, when I came to the site in order to do my job, the scene in front of me made me feel at a loss. I absolutely didn't expect the congregated Falun Gong practitioners were going to strike the Tianjin College of Education with lethal weapons in their hands. Instead, they were all the ordinary civilians, former employees who had been laid off and had no money to pay for their medications, and the aged. I myself wouldn't have had a single thought of hurting them. However, the scene didn't last for a long time.

After two or three days of confrontation with the Falun Gong practitioners, the police started to clear the field. No matter how old or how sick the practitioners were, all of them were forcefully taken away from the site. A few critical members were brought to police stations for checkup and registration. Later on, I found that for all those registered Falun Gong practitioners, their behaviors would be recorded in their personal files permanently, which would affect them and their family members in the future regarding all social services.

I also knew that on that day, they had installed video cameras secretly on the surrounding high buildings of Tianjin College of Education, and tape-recorded all of the more than 5,000 Falun Gong practitioners on the spot.

After April 25, 1999, the Chinese government enhanced the work of collecting facts and information on Falun Gong and prepared fully for the persecution of Falun Gong. At that time, the functional departments in the Public Security Bureau and the Religious Affairs Department of the National Security Bureau all immediately became involved. In July, the higher authorities passed down a piece of news of that Falun Gong was going to be banned on July 18. They also informed us that the news was going to be broadcast by CCTV.

Later on, it is said that due to the disagreements among the higher authorities, the news wasn't publicized. Before July 20, my workplace organized people from different levels and ranks to hold meetings and set forth and made firm our understanding of ideology. In those meetings, a few words of an oral order from the General Secretary of the CCP (Jiang Zemin) were passed down to us, claiming that we shouldn't wait any longer to ban Falun Gong, and neither should we focus on solid evidence to do so. Otherwise, Falun Gong will ruin the Party and the nation, etc. On July 20, the news of the crackdown on Falun Gong was finally broadcast by CCTV, and my workplace organized everyone to watch it. From then on, I came to know Falun Gong.

At around eleven o'clock on the evening of July 20th, I was staying at home when my pager rang and I was called to attend a meeting at the police station. We were told that there would be many Falun Gong practitioners appealing the next day. The authority ordered us to stay overnight at the police station. Before five o'clock in the morning of the next day, we arrived at the location where we were assigned to be on duty: the front gate of the Communist Party Committee at Tianjin.

Policemen from our station were grouped into two teams and sent to the Communist Party Committee and the government building. One team was dressed in police uniforms to show they were on duty. The other team was dressed casually, so they could seize the opportunity to mix in the crowd, and, when the time was right, create negative effects.

At the same time, the authorities required us to be strictly disciplined and secretive. We were ordered to completely distance ourselves from the Falun Gong practitioners. At eight o'clock, many practitioners arrived at the Communist Party Committee and the Municipal Government. They lined up in two lines and waited to appeal. They asked why the city
government banned Falun Gong. A leader from the appealing office of the Party Committee came out and told the policeman in charge, Mr. Zhou Lanshan, that they would not communicate with the practitioners. The committee member said to Zhou, first, try to persuade the practitioners to leave. If they still would not leave, then use force.

I didn't execute the orders. Instead, I talked to a few practitioners who had come to appeal but had been forcibly taken to the Party Committee backyard. We chatted for a while. Our conversation topics ranged from human life, reality and society to health problems. That was the first impression I had about Falun Gong. On that day, several dozens of trucks carried away Falun Gong practitioners and dispersed them. We punished the main "leaders" of the group for disturbing social security.

The period after July 20 involved both public and underground registration and investigation in the city. The authority required every police station to register and report on Falun Gong practitioners (with emphasis on collecting data on participants in the events on April 25, July 20 and July 22). The authorities also demanded Falun Gong practitioners write a "guarantee letter" saying they would never practice Falun Gong again. Anyone who refused to write the letter would either be sent to education classes that were established by local governments, or be punished for disturbing social stability.

The Falun Gong practitioners who were registered or family members of the practitioners registered would have their rights deprived in many aspects, including university entrance, employment, children's military assignments and pension, etc. They were put under great hardship. Some work units would even fire anybody who had been categorized as a Falun Gong practitioner.

After July 20, to ensure the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic of China would be safe and stable, Tianjin City launched a mass arrest of Falun Gong practitioners. This action was plotted by the first sector of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau (the political and security sector). A few days before the National Day, many Falun Gong practitioners across the country voluntarily went to Beijing to appeal, but were repatriated on a large scale. At that time, because the arrested Falun Gong practitioners refused to reveal their names and where they came from, the Central 610 Office was furious.

The Central 610 Office ordered local 610 Offices to allocate Falun Gong practitioners to each district according to population size. Several hundreds of practitioners were allocated to the Tianjin Public Security Bureau. The Public Security Bureau then allocated practitioners to each district station. Each district station then allocated practitioners to each local police station for investigation. Each local police station sent over somebody to claim practitioners as if claiming cattle. Whichever police station the practitioners were allocated to, the police station officers would collar practitioners with hemp ropes and force them to kneel down.

There were three female practitioners brought back to my police station. They were in their forties and fifties. All three were interrogated by our criminal investigation team. In the next couple of days of interrogation, I could hear extremely tragic crying and screaming every time I went to work. I later heard from a colleague that they received orders to use all means to force Falun Gong practitioners to reveal their names and family addresses.

During the period of Chinese New Year of 2000, in order to strengthen control over Falun Gong practitioners and prevent them from appealing to Beijing, work units, neighborhoods and police stations were ordered to set up brainwashing sessions and open "education classes." Falun Gong practitioners were forced to listen to brainwashing materials together at one place. They must also pay a "study fee." I expressed my dissatisfaction to some governmental officials. I said outlawing Falun Gong was a waste of manpower, material resources and financial resources. They only wanted to be healthy and good people. Why couldn't you let them practice?

Passively Became a Staff in the Bureau of State Security, Started Facing People with Different Beliefs

In October, 2000, to strengthen political stability, the Central Committee of the CCP decided to raise the administrative power of the Political and Security Department in each Public Security Bureau over the country (i.e., the No. 1 department in the Tianjin Public Security Bureau) to sub-bureau level, and combined it with the local 610 Office to formed the current Bureau of State Security.

What is ironic is that although the newly formed bureau has an administrative power of a city bureau, very few wanted to join it. At that time, a tragedy occurred. The bureau requested each branch in the Public Security Bureau to use a computer program to randomly draw names from the roster. Whoever who was selected by the computer must report to the newly formed bureau. Otherwise he would be counted as quitting the job. Unfortunately, I was pulled out by the machine and had to join this bureau that nobody wanted to work with.

In order to support my family, I started working for the newly formed Tianjin Bureau of State Security until February, 2005 when I managed to escape from China. I was in charge of Falun Gong issue, and dealt with other Qigong sects that were labeled cults by the Chinese government.

Later, on October 3, 2001, the Network Monitoring Team of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau discovered that some Falun Gong practitioners surfed oversea Clearwisdon.net by breaking the firewall blockage. They passed this information to police in the 610 Office of the Bureau of State Security. The Falun Gong Investigation Team in the 610 Office was in charge of this case. They asked the No. 1 division (the investigation department) of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau to provide support on monitoring, tracking, secret searching, and secret arresting of Falun Practitioners. At the end of the year, this "103 " case was listed as a special case by Chinese Ministry of Public Security.

My Heart Sunk to the Bottom Witnessing the Miserable Experience of an Innocent Mother and Daughter

In the beginning of 2002, they authority started arresting people involved in the “103” case. In one day, 79 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested and other two escaped. One of the escaped practitioners was a 13 year-old girl named Xu Ziao. This girl’s mother, Sun Ti, was arrested and little Xu hence became homeless at the age of 13. One night in Feb 2002, I received a call asking me to go back to work and accompany a Falun Gong practitioner to see a doctor. I rushed to work and drove with a female officer to the prison of the Nankai Branch of Tianjin Public Security Bureau. When we arrived the prison located at Erwei Rd., Nankai District, I saw Sun Ti sat on a table in an interrogation room. Sun’s eyes were so swollen because of the beating. The police who interrogated Sun was Mr. Mu Ruili, captain of the 2nd division of the 610 Office of the Bureau of State Security. Mu was holding a steel rod (0.6 inch in diameter) with screw thread stained with blood. There was a hi-voltage electric baton sitting on the table. As we entered the room, we asked Mu to leave. Sun burst into tears and was going show us the injuries. I volunteered to leave the room since she was a woman. Sun stopped me and showed me her back. I was terribly shocked. Almost her entire back turned black and there were two cuts about 8 inches long with blood coming out.

After a while, Zhao Yuezeng, the Assistant Director of the Bureau of State Security and the Director of the 610 Office, came. To my surprise, Zhao ordered me not to mention this to anyone and asked me and the female officer to take Sun to the infirmary of the prison. For the next 30 days, we had to apply medicine on Sun. Almost everyday I heard Sun asked about her daughter’s whereabouts and told us how Falun Gong practitioners are good people. I heart was shattered into pieces. I knew Falun Gong practitioners are good people and I cared about her daughter even more. A 13-year-old girl who lost her parents and couldn’t even go to her relatives (all her relatives were monitored), how could she find food and a place to sleep? I regretted I didn’t stop this from happening. My heart became anxious and heavy and I cried.

I often dreamed about what happened to Sun and Xu and the miserable scene I witnessed, and I lost sleep. I was in a total despair about China’s future and my future as a police.

Later I heard that Sun Ti was sentenced to 7 to 10 years and I am not sure whether she is alive now or not. My Sympathy For An Old Scientist Started It All

It was just after the 2004 New Year, in Tianjin State Security Bureau where I serve received a special assignment. Four or five policemen, led by 610 Office chief Shi He, went to Shijiazhuang city in Hebei Province to handle a "special" case.

After they had returned, I saw a white-haired, elderly man hanging from handcuffs in the interrogation room. I later learn that he was Jing Zhanyi, a high level official in Hebei province. After the interrogation, a reporter from China Central Television came to interview Jing Zhanyi. The plan was to show the world how much this official regretted his involvement with Falun Gong.

I was outside the door that day while the interview was being carefully conducted. I heard the Deputy Director of the State Security Bureau, Zhao Yuezeng, told Jing Zhanyi that they would reduce his sentence if he was willing to recite some lines that they had prepared for him, otherwise he would be charged with treason and face either a life sentence or execution by firing squad.

The poor old man complied with their requests and went on TV to criticize Falun Gong with their words. Afterwards, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The reporter saw me as she was leaving the interview and asked me for my comment, probably wanting to gather some supporting statements. But to her disappointment I told her, "Aren't these lies?" I walked away leaving her standing there, shocked.

My comment to that reporter brought me enormous trouble. Two days after the incident, Deputy Dirctor Zhao Yuezeng came to me and asked what I had meant by "lies". Without mincing my words, I asked him, "Why did you threaten Jing Zhanyi?" He pounded the table and claimed that I was revolting.

I knew in my heart that to fight him is like throwing an egg at a stone, so I kept silent. He said that I should think the matter through and write a formal self-criticism statement before returning to work.

I was thus kept in solitary confinement in a cell at Tianjin Public Security Bureau 7th Division, where there are solitary confinement cells specifically for policemen. The moment I walked into the cell I was in total despair.

That was the first and only time I have been locked up in a cell. The ten square meter cell has no windows. A light hangs from the ceiling by a cord and stays on 24 hours a day; the toilet in the corner emits a constant foul stench. February was extremely cold in Tianjin, but the cell had no heating.

I lived for nearly a month in these conditions. When I walked out of the cell, my ears and hands had been damaged by the freezing temperatures and my hands were swollen like steamed buns, while my ears constantly emitted pus. During those 30 days, I wasn't even once allowed to call my family. I was tormented mentally and physically by those people to the brink of collapse.

Even then, I did not say or write one word of repentance. Finally one day I was released without given any reason. Later I learned that they were trying to keep the incident low-key, fearing that I might expose their torture of Falun Gong practitioners and other scandals.

After my release I was moved to the mail room, delivering newspapers and mail and doing various chores, until I fled abroad. My fiancée suffered greatly while I was in solitary confinement. She sensed that something was wrong, but when she, my mother and my brother called the office looking for me they told her that I was on a business trip. I was heartbroken when I heard this. They are so deceitful that they would even lie to the family of their own officers! What would they not do? Where is justice?

My Escape To Freedom and Democracy

In China, police officers are not normally allowed to go abroad. If they go abroad, they must do so after a secret-preservation period, which, for an officer in the State Security Bureau, is at least five years following his resignation. Otherwise, one is treated as committing treason. Therefore, getting a passport for me became a major problem since I did not want to alarm my work unit. I approached a friend who changed my work unit details on my household registration document, and I thus smoothly obtained a passport.

In February 2005, I finally obtained an Australian travel visa. I began to prepare things. I got to Beijing airport at 9am on February 14 and took a flight on the same day to Shenzhen, intending to go through the customs and get to the Hong Kong side at 6:30pm.

While waiting to go through the border controls at Shenzhen, I was afraid of being searched, because I had with me a large number of files saved in my MP3 player containing information about the organized persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese government. I called my family to say that if I did not phone by 7:30 pm, it meant that I had failed to pass the border controls, and was in danger.

It was with trepidation that my fiancée and I boarded a flight from Hong Kong to Australia. We landed with indescribable relief, on February 15, on such a land of beauty, freedom and democracy.

My work unit has now realized that I've gone missing, and they have begun to pressure my family to convince me to return. They promised that "everything will be taken care of" if I would go back to China. The most wicked is that they also deceive and threaten my fiancé's family. I know we mustn't return. They will use the most despicable methods in dealing with us.

I have sent the work unit a letter of resignation, but they refused to accept it and chose to fire me instead. They also threatened my fiancé and myself, through our families, "not to speak nonsense", or things could happen to our families in China.

Neither my fiancée nor I can phone our families, because the telephones are tapped. The only way that I can communicate back home is to call my brother at his office. On the phone, my brother never talks about the family situation and only tries to comfort me by saying that things are going well. However, I know that they are facing difficulties and danger. It makes me apprehensive that I have brought this kind of hardship to our two families. I've no way of knowing if we will ever meet again.

Inspired By the Nine Commentaries and Chen Yonglin I Decided To Step Forward

I know for certain that the Chinese government will never leave my family or myself alone. Since coming to Australia I have read the Nine Commentaries and been deeply moved. Among the articles and events mentioned in Nine Commentaries, some I have seen and others I have not. But ordinary Chinese citizens would not be able to see such articles. The Nine Commentaries expose the dark aspects of China which are all facts. After reading the Nine Commentaries, I had the urge of stepping out.

A few days ago, at a memorial rally for the June 4th massacre, I learned that Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese Consul General in Australia, stepped out publicly to expose Chinese government's infiltration abroad. I was deeply inspired. I thought that Chen Yonglin as a diplomat of the Chinese Communist regime had made such a (brave) choice; I felt proud for him and I decided to step out to support Chen Yonglin with my action.

I am joyful that I've found my coordinates for life again. I firmly believe that the pursuit of justice is a perpetual goal of my life.

I thank my family and my fiancée's family for giving us courage and strength. I also thank all the kind-hearted people who have helped us.

My Sympathy For An Old Scientist Started It All

It was just after the 2004 New Year, in Tianjin State Security Bureau where I serve received a special assignment. Four or five policemen, led by 610 Office chief Shi He, went to Shijiazhuang city in Hebei Province to handle a "special" case.

After they had returned, I saw a white-haired, elderly man hanging from handcuffs in the interrogation room. I later learn that he was Jing Zhanyi, a high level official in Hebei province. After the interrogation, a reporter from China Central Television came to interview Jing Zhanyi. The plan was to show the world how much this official regretted his involvement with Falun Gong.

I was outside the door that day while the interview was being carefully conducted. I heard the Deputy Director of the State Security Bureau, Zhao Yuezeng, told Jing Zhanyi that they would reduce his sentence if he was willing to recite some lines that they had prepared for him, otherwise he would be charged with treason and face either a life sentence or execution by firing squad.

The poor old man complied with their requests and went on TV to criticize Falun Gong with their words. Afterwards, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The reporter saw me as she was leaving the interview and asked me for my comment, probably wanting to gather some supporting statements. But to her disappointment I told her, "Aren't these lies?" I walked away leaving her standing there, shocked.

My comment to that reporter brought me enormous trouble. Two days after the incident, Deputy Dirctor Zhao Yuezeng came to me and asked what I had meant by "lies". Without mincing my words, I asked him, "Why did you threaten Jing Zhanyi?" He pounded the table and claimed that I was revolting.

I knew in my heart that to fight him is like throwing an egg at a stone, so I kept silent. He said that I should think the matter through and write a formal self-criticism statement before returning to work.

I was thus kept in solitary confinement in a cell at Tianjin Public Security Bureau 7th Division, where there are solitary confinement cells specifically for policemen. The moment I walked into the cell I was in total despair.

That was the first and only time I have been locked up in a cell. The ten square meter cell has no windows. A light hangs from the ceiling by a cord and stays on 24 hours a day; the toilet in the corner emits a constant foul stench. February was extremely cold in Tianjin, but the cell had no heating.

I lived for nearly a month in these conditions. When I walked out of the cell, my ears and hands had been damaged by the freezing temperatures and my hands were swollen like steamed buns, while my ears constantly emitted pus. During those 30 days, I wasn't even once allowed to call my family. I was tormented mentally and physically by those people to the brink of collapse.

Even then, I did not say or write one word of repentance. Finally one day I was released without given any reason. Later I learned that they were trying to keep the incident low-key, fearing that I might expose their torture of Falun Gong practitioners and other scandals.

After my release I was moved to the mail room, delivering newspapers and mail and doing various chores, until I fled abroad. My fiancée suffered greatly while I was in solitary confinement. She sensed that something was wrong, but when she, my mother and my brother called the office looking for me they told her that I was on a business trip. I was heartbroken when I heard this. They are so deceitful that they would even lie to the family of their own officers! What would they not do? Where is justice?

My Escape To Freedom and Democracy

In China, police officers are not normally allowed to go abroad. If they go abroad, they must do so after a secret-preservation period, which, for an officer in the State Security Bureau, is at least five years following his resignation. Otherwise, one is treated as committing treason. Therefore, getting a passport for me became a major problem since I did not want to alarm my work unit. I approached a friend who changed my work unit details on my household registration document, and I thus smoothly obtained a passport.

In February 2005, I finally obtained an Australian travel visa. I began to prepare things. I got to Beijing airport at 9am on February 14 and took a flight on the same day to Shenzhen, intending to go through the customs and get to the Hong Kong side at 6:30pm.

While waiting to go through the border controls at Shenzhen, I was afraid of being searched, because I had with me a large number of files saved in my MP3 player containing information about the organized persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese government. I called my family to say that if I did not phone by 7:30 pm, it meant that I had failed to pass the border controls, and was in danger.

It was with trepidation that my fiancée and I boarded a flight from Hong Kong to Australia. We landed with indescribable relief, on February 15, on such a land of beauty, freedom and democracy.

My work unit has now realized that I've gone missing, and they have begun to pressure my family to convince me to return. They promised that "everything will be taken care of" if I would go back to China. The most wicked is that they also deceive and threaten my fiancé's family. I know we mustn't return. They will use the most despicable methods in dealing with us.

I have sent the work unit a letter of resignation, but they refused to accept it and chose to fire me instead. They also threatened my fiancé and myself, through our families, "not to speak nonsense", or things could happen to our families in China.

Neither my fiancée nor I can phone our families, because the telephones are tapped. The only way that I can communicate back home is to call my brother at his office. On the phone, my brother never talks about the family situation and only tries to comfort me by saying that things are going well. However, I know that they are facing difficulties and danger. It makes me apprehensive that I have brought this kind of hardship to our two families. I've no way of knowing if we will ever meet again.

Inspired By the Nine Commentaries and Chen Yonglin I Decided To Step Forward

I know for certain that the Chinese government will never leave my family or myself alone. Since coming to Australia I have read the Nine Commentaries and been deeply moved. Among the articles and events mentioned in Nine Commentaries, some I have seen and others I have not. But ordinary Chinese citizens would not be able to see such articles. The Nine Commentaries expose the dark aspects of China which are all facts. After reading the Nine Commentaries, I had the urge of stepping out.

A few days ago, at a memorial rally for the June 4th massacre, I learned that Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese Consul General in Australia, stepped out publicly to expose Chinese government's infiltration abroad. I was deeply inspired. I thought that Chen Yonglin as a diplomat of the Chinese Communist regime had made such a (brave) choice; I felt proud for him and I decided to step out to support Chen Yonglin with my action.

I am joyful that I've found my coordinates for life again. I firmly believe that the pursuit of justice is a perpetual goal of my life.

I thank my family and my fiancée's family for giving us courage and strength. I also thank all the kind-hearted people who have helped us.

Additional info:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/07/27/falun_gong/
http://www.usp.com.au/fpss/case-falun-gong.html
http://www.usp.com.au/fpss/case-falun-gong.html
http://nomoreccp.wordpress.com/2008/04/27/was-falun-gong-getting-political-or-was-it-defending-itself-from-persecution-a-two-sided-story/
http://www.zhuichaguoji.org/en/index2.php?option=content&task=view&id=149&pop=1&page=0

Lucid Comments - Georgia

The comments section after an article is for me the most honest indicator of the bias of the publisher. In comments, one can see the type of readers using the site, their intelligence and level of analysis. Also, other aspects not included in the article are brought to light, including critical insights.

On occasion I learn much more about a subject from the comments, than from the original article. Below, I have posted some uniquely lucid comments found while reading background material on the Georgia-Russia conflict. http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2008/08/georgia-russia-ukraine-cheney

Of course, these comments are chosen through my own bias.

taghioff.info
14 August 2008 at 13:49

I am sure the EU must take a very, very dim view of the US playing electoral poker in its vicinity.

Is this not a very good reason that the EU should have its own military force and own military alliance apart from NATO, since its interests, in terms of defence, now diverge so strongly from those of the US?

Surely Georgia and the Ukraine are countries that one day might join the EU (though probably not very soon) so American intervention here is ultimately very destabilising for Europe.

The other option is for the EU to ask for NATO to be put under control of the UN Security council, but with no countervailing military power in the world, pigs will fly before that happens...

writeon
15 August 2008 at 17:13

There are some very "interesting" and telling attitudes revealed in some of the above comments towards the inhabitants of South Ossetia, which verge close to something very unpleasant indeed and explain how a regime that purports to embrace freedom and democracy and respect for human rights, can launch such a brutal and deadly attack against it's own people.

This is because the people being bombed and bombarded in South Ossetia aren't really "true" Georgians at all, they are legally foreigners, with no right to self-determination within Georgia or settle there, only in Russia, because they are aliens!

Apart from the absurdity of this kind of argument and it's almost total lack of any real foundation in international law relating to the treatment and status of ethnic minorities, it's also morally repugnant. That people who have lived in a region for centuries can suddenly be arbitrarily defined as "alien" and unwanted, and that this then is used as justification for bombing them, reminds one of some of the darkest periods in European history.

The Caucasus in a patchwork quilt of differing peoples. Peoples with there own histories, languages, cultures, songs, myths, poetry, heroes and illusions. It's also an region where rival empires have confronted each other for thousands of years, much like the Balkans.

This rich cultural tapestry should be a source of pride and strength, but these cultural and etnic differences can also easily exploited and perverted by unscrupulous politicians, which light the torch of nationalism not to lighten our way in the darkness, but as a weapon to burn down the homes of the "others".

At the same time as they use, abuse and prostitute national symbols and feelings, they also make power grabs that have distinct aims, mostly robbing their own ethnic group that they say they care so much about. Nationalism seems to be cover story designed to obscure the fact that they are robbing the treasury and steeped in corruption.

Who really gains from the fighting and destruction? It certainly isn't the ordinary people, who are duped into believing, and killing and dying, for a myth or an illusion, the myth of the pure nation state where one can be "free" and the others, those who one believes are responsible for all ones woes, have been excluded, dominated or "taken care of" in some other way.

Perhaps the biggest lie of the last hundred years, certainly the bloodiest, and most dangerous, has been the lie about the importance of "blood" and "land" and the illusion that the creation of an ethnically "pure" state was the answer to all ones problems. Just give us our own country, no matter how small, no matter the cost in blood and destruction, and the land of milk and honey is just around the corner. What childish rubbish! Only an idiot or a person totally lacking in knowledge could believe such a fairytale. Yet people are fed this nationalist nonsense, over and over again, by corrupt leaders, and they die and kill for a lie.

Nationalism isn't a blessing, it's a curse, and we've had way too much of it in Europe. We've almost drowned in rivers of blood, and for what exactly? For whose real benefit and profit? Certainly not the unhappy dead!

Fortunately in Western Europe, finally after so much war, slaughter and wasteful destruction, we appear to have tamed the monster of brute nationalism. We didn't have much choice as we'd almost destroyed ourselves in two terrible, barbaric and insane wars.

It would be tragic if the people in the Caucasus learnt nothing from our suffering and history. First one has to reject unconditionally the use of violence and military force to settle ethnic differences on all sides, and people have learn to negotiate and compromise. What they can't be allowed to do is go to war. Instead of the great powers selling arms and training new armies in Georgia and elsewhere, they should do the opposite. Fighting wars should be made as difficult as possible and economic sanctions should be imposed on any country that uses violence to compel any ethnic group to remain part of a central state.

My personal feeling is that the United States is using Georgia for its own purposes and doesn't give a damn about the Georgian people or how much they suffer or bleed. The US government doesn't care about "democracy" or "freedom" for the Georgian people, God they don't even care about these things for their own people in the United States, so why would they care about foreigners? The Americans want Georgia as a stepping-stone or military base on their way towards the energy reserves of the Caspian Basin, nothing more. The ordinary Georgians mean nothing to men like Bush. The Georgians have value only as long as they serve a usful purpose for the American ruling elite. This is the harsh truth about the nature of imperialism and how great powers regard their vassal states. Pawns have little value in the Great Game. The sooner the people of Georgia realise this and learn to live together imperfectly, the better in will be for them.

ikotubo
14 August 2008 at 13:59

Mr Gleny's article demonstrates the dangers we all face when power is given to a bunch of lunatics and ideological fantasists - even in a so-called democracy like the United States.

Douglas Chalmers
14 August 2008 at 17:24

The West, or rather the USA and its neocon lapdogs, has pretended that some kind of old Cold War tank battle could be fought and won and that would be the end of it. Forget it!

Treating Russia like another Iran or Pakistan is buying trouble. America has been doing that since 9/11 but the NATO countries are having to 'take delivery', uhh. Half of Europe will freeze in the dark this winter if they don't learn to be polite.

The days of gunboat diplomacy and forcing terms of trade onto others is now over. Russia has aligned itself with China and India and the Shanghai Co-operation Group will supersede the IMF, etc etc. The balance of power has shifted along to the side of USA's creditors.

'taghioff.info' makes an interesting point about the EU but they have actually been following an expansionists agenda themselves for some time. They must give up their dreams and illusions about their missile shields too. Being friendly with your neighbors is important.

With global warming and climate change upon us, continuing to play the old "great game" of Machiavellian politics is childish when more extensive co-operation is needed. Fighting over shrinking resources is also fatal in the nuclear age.

The West can't just pretend that Georgia is another Tibet and rant and rave endlessly. Both are dishonest and ploys to continue the illusions of faded empire and delusions of the now spent "American century". International affairs can no longer be entrusted to the thugs and crooks of the world's military-industrial complexes.

Sasha
15 August 2008 at 07:52

Message form Russia.

I'm russia nad really proud that at alst we kicked this fu..r Saakashvili ass, belive me everyone hates him in giogjia and you know why. I'll tell you. Giorgia is for 99% percent is Christians only 1% are muslims, so he represents this very small group of people, he is a muslim.... all those electionsthat there were are totall fake.. lots of places for elections never at all were opened esprsially far away from Tbilissi..

Russia becomes stronger and stronger and 99% in russia very happy about that.

writeon
15 August 2008 at 21:46

This legalistic approach is tangentally interesting and mildly entertaining, but hardly relevant to the current situation on the ground. It reminds me of the endless debates in the medieval church about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, or whether Jesus Christ was an aristocrat or a commoner.

In the world we live in now, since the destruction of Yogoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the neutering of the United Nations; there really is no international law left standing that's any use anymore. When one systematically shreds and shows contempt for international law, as the United States has done repeatedly, one can hardly appeal to international law without raising howls of laughter. Even the Americans, who think of themselves as exceptional, cannot have it both ways, but of course this is what they demand. They want to dictate and define what parts of international law apply in various circumstances, and they reserve the right to pick and choose which parts international law are "relevant", only that international law doesn't apply to them and cannot be used against them. The hypocracy and double-standards involved in this perverse attitude are obvious and absurd.

The point is that powerful nations, great powers can really do whatever they want regardless of international law, this is the reality of the situation. The entire concept of international law, is in itself, highly debatable and controversial. Today, international law is a device used by powerful countries to punish weaker countries and stigmatize them for propaganda purposes.

For example, it is almost impossible to contemplate the United States allowing one of it's generals or politicians to be tride for their various war-crimes and crimes against humanity, even though there is a veritible mountain of evidence against them, such trials are for the weak and the vanquished, not the powerful and strong.

You go into great detail in relation to the law yet your interpretation of Georgian law is highly debatable and interpreted in partisan fashion which wouldn't stand up to qualified rebuttal in a court of law, something I have no intention of getting into here.

You do seem, in my opinion, to illustrate an attitude towards the people of South Ossetia which is disturbing in its implications. You mean that they have voluntarily chosen to change their nationality and alligance and consequently have not rights, human or otherwise inside Georgia anymore, that they have almost become outlaws with all that implies.

I've questioned your interpretation of Georgian law, which I find flawed and illogical, your partisan twisting and interpretation of international law in relation to the rights of ethnic minorities of whatever nationality, is even more problematic and just plain wrong, though it is, perhaps unintentionally, highly informative.

My main point is that the hapless Georgian people have been led towards disaster by a crazed and corrupt ultra-nationalist gang, who are basically puppets of the Americans, who couldn't care less about what happens to the Georgians as long as they are usful in their struggle with Russia. What's ironic is the gang in charge of Georgia are backing the wrong horse. The United States is an empire that is on it's way down, whilst Russia is a power with a future. When the United States is finished with Georgia it wil be abandoned like a used Kleenex.

writeon
16 August 2008 at 08:51

MichaelP.

In the words of a famous proverb; you can't see the wood for the trees.

Great and powerful nations, like people, do not generally observe laws that constrain their actions and interests. They use the "laws" as they see fit. International law is really a system of conventions that nations agree, up to a certain level, to abide by.

The Big Problem currently is that the United States has systematically undermined international law, a whole raft of treaties, demands exceptonal treatment for itself, and has emasculated the United Nations. The United States has also become a very and openly agressive state, ready to invade weaker states to pursue its national interests. One can substitute the words "freedom 'n' democracy" for "oil and gas" and that is basically the rationale behind their actions.

What this means is that the entire structure of international law has been undermined and has lost the minimal importance it had. Clearly other nations have watched and learnt from the Americans. The Russians certainly have. The American idea that they can dictate and define what international law is and who has to obey it, is, hypocritical, absurd, arrogant and counter-productive.

The current crazed gang which is leading Georgia towards disaster, seems to believe it can turn Georgia into a valuable and indispensible ally of the United States, similar to Israel. I believe this is a fundamental miscaculation and mistake which the Georgian people are going to pay a very high price for, whilst the leadership will go into exile and enjoy their millions in the sun.

writeon
16 August 2008 at 15:32

Mostly I feel sorry for the ordinary people in the Caucasus and Georgia who are caught-up in a deadly "game" between great powers, like two monsterous devils playing chess with real people on the board.

The Georgian people are being used by the Bush administration, and the Georgian government is perfectly content to allow their people to suffer, die, bleed and serve the interests of a foreign power. This I would argue is really a form of high treason or treachery, serving a foreign government before one's own people. But then this is the traditional role of the vassal state leader, to betray his own and serve his imperial master. Some of these "leaders" so stupid and ignorant of the obscene game they are merely pawns in, that they appear to actually believe their own nationalist rhetoric, that they are saving their countries, whilst in reality they are leading them towards disaster and destruction.

writeon
16 August 2008 at 17:48

While I'm at it perhaps the "pawns" in the game would be better off breaking out of their allotted roles and chalenging the very "rules" of the game itself? Given the utter contempt their, oh so patriotic, leaders really have for them, maybe they should rise up like a mighty wind, and instead of killing each other turn their anger on their real enemies, their masters, sitting way behind the lines, manipulating, pulling the strings, making all the money. Smash the board, wipe out the squares, turned the whole damn thing over and start again!

writeon
17 August 2008 at 22:06

Countries, states, great powers, are not people, they don't have "friends". Turkey is not a "friend" of Georgia and will not be using its large army to help its little "friend" against the big, bad, bully to the north.

Great powers don't have permanent friends, they have only have permanent interests, and their own interests come first. Great powers use smaller nations and when they no longer find them useful, they are caste aside. Empires as large, rich and powerful, like the United States, don't have "allies", they don't need them. What they have is states that serve their interests to varying degrees or one doesn't, then one is effectively the enemy of the United States and then one had better watch out.

The world functions pretty much like the movie "The Godfather" only on a even bloodier and bigger, global scale. For centuries the West, in its accendancy, has resembled a group of Mafia families carving up "territory" between them.

The European Union is an attempt to replace the rival Mafia clan model with something else, to stop them launching eternal "turf wars" over territory, wars that risk burning everything down so there is nothing left of any value to fight over anymore.

Russian tanks are not going to role over the borders of Germany heading for the English Channel, not only would this be insane, it would, more importantly, be unproductive and unprofitable. Who would then buy Russia's oil and gas? It makes no sense for kill one's best customer. Why bother to take over Western Europe with tanks when one can just buy it?

Germany is building a longterm strategic alliance with Russia not confronting Russia. In the last couple of years alone German exports to Russia have boomed, Russia is now one of Germany's best markets. The Russians have the money and Germany has the manufactured goods. The idea that Germany would sacrifice it's relationship to Russia for Georgia is ridiculous. This is not the way the world works, at least not as long as one can keep the nationalist lunatics and their dangerous mythology under control, which is fundamentally what the European Union is all about.

Europe can become even wealthier and successful in an integrated economic partnership with - Russia, which has a vast storehouse of resources which we need. However, the United States doesn't want this mutually beneficial relationship to happen, because this will mean Power moving away from the United States and towards Europe and Russia.

The United States is trying to split Europe in two, it has mobilized it's most loyal vassal states; notably Great Britain, Poland, Georgia, in a cold war aimed at Russia, talk to people in Bruxelles in private, off the record, and they will tell the same basic story. A new cold war aimed at Russia isn't in Europe's interests, but it is in the interests of the United States. At least that's the attitude of powrful groups in the ruling elite, the most ignorant, the most nationalistic, the most dangerous.

The desire to confront Russia is also echoed in right-wing nationalist groups in some parts of Europe, though especially in "new europe". These groups don't have much else to sell but the nationalist myth and Russia is an easy target for them. But none of this has anything to do with democracy, or freedom or human rights. It's about power and wealth and who has it and who doesn't.

What's gratifying is that there are powerful elements in the European elite; in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Holland, Sweden, who realize what's happening and why, and have no intention of joining the American confrontation crusade against Russia. A crusade that will eventually lead to war. A war fought in Europe, wiping out Europe once and for all.

Friday, August 22, 2008

War Crimes and the Hague: a moot process.

Georgia and Russia are now going to duke it out in the International Court of Justice, each accusing the other of 'war crimes'. Ostensibly, this will take months to investigate on the ground, with Human Rights Watch observers getting an earful from both sides. In the end, there will likely be a stand off as both parties have incidences which they cannot justify.

This seems rather like the Judge Judy type of infraction when one considers the horrendous violation of human rights committed by the USA in Iraq. The Bush Administration has smugly redefined torture so that none of it's atrocities are war crimes; not the horrible pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib, not the 'rendition' flights kidnapping prisoners all over the world, not the years of incarceration and torture of 'detainees' at Guantanamo, not the displacement of four million Iraqi citizens, not the bombing and destruction of irreplaceable historical sites in Iraq, not the rape and murder of an entire family in Haditha, to name but a few of the horrors USA troops have visited upon innocent people, guilty only of trying to live.

If any country should be the focus of the Hague Court, it should be the USA. There is a good reason why the Bush Administration refuses to recognise the authority of the international war crimes court; it is the most guilty of all. Is there a person in the world, besides Americans and their neo-con buddies, who does not know this? Yet the media conveniently ignores this elephant in the room.

This of course does not take into account the million of people who have suffered and died as a result of America's corporate imperialism in Central America, South America, Indonesia, Africa
and Central Asia. First come the American corporations looking for resources; next comes the American military to guarantee access. This story has been repeated for a hundred years of USA's 'foreign policy' in dozens of countries. In each case, the gullible public is flooded with propaganda about the spreading of democracy and USA championing it. If the measure of democracy is what America has, then the rest of the world had better take a pass.

The real reason for this debacle in Georgia is an oil pipeline. All the world leaders know this: how many people realize this when they are reading the fairytale propaganda the media feeds us about democracy? WW3 is coming up surely; but it is not about democracy, it is about the rights of oil companies like BP and Exxon, Shell to politically occupy countries where they have laid pipelines. It's just 'good business'.

The problem is that the human cost of this 'good business' is tremendous. Real people have suffered, starved, been maimed, lost family and homes to implement the long term business interests of the Oiligarchy which now runs the USA. These corporations are now multi-national and can sustain loss on one continent while tapping into new markets on another. The suffering of any given people, be it Americans at the gas pump or Iraqi women and children, homeless or dead, is just the cost of doing business for these masters of the universe.

It is unimaginable that many people still think Georgia-Russia is about democracy and war crimes. To a great extent, this view is force fed to the people, as journalism, a term which today has become synonymous with corporate and government 'public relations'. People get to read the version of events they are meant to read to manipulate public opinion, while the powers that be can comfortably assume most people are too busy to research issues for a truer perspective.

They say the first casualty of war is truth; forgetting that is a critical mistake. This ought to be listed amoung the war crimes under jurisdiction at the Hague. When Europe and the USA start huffing about war crimes, perhaps they had better start with their own first. George Bush is guilty of so many war crimes that directly violate the Geneva Convention, it would be too lengthily to enumerate them here. It hardly seems relevant to examine Georgia-Russia claims with the overwhelmingly atrocities of the Americans in Iraq.

People of the world are getting smarter, and hopefully, Americans will. Bush has lied about every issue he has taken a stand on since he was elected, from WMD in Iraq to denying his own countries National Intelligence Estimate, which clears Iran of any intentions to produce nuclear weapons. And what kind of lie is this 'Mission Accomplished' rhetoric? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The way the world can tell if Bush and Rice are lying, is if their mouths are moving.

If the International Court of Justice cannot condemn the worst perpetrators of war crimes, the Bush Administration, then is has no moral standing to judge or condemn any other country. Worse than that; it is moot.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Chinese Capitalism and Globalisation


PAUL JAY: Welcome back to our series of interviews with Naomi Klein. Hi, Naomi.

NAOMI KLEIN: Hi.

JAY: So the argument, I think, if we were sitting down with some of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, they might make is that what's the alternative to this hard-centralized party? Look what happened to the Soviet Union. That if we didn't have this kind of surveillance and this kind of strong leadership, what you would have is the falling apart of the country, the mafia-ization of the country; corruption would run rampant; China would break off into little fiefdoms. If they wanted to give a bit of a Marxist spin to the defense, they would say that Marx and Engels teach you need to exhaust capitalism before you get to socialism, so that's what we're doing. Of course, I never read in Marx and Engels that you should allow multimillionaires into the party. But, at any rate—.

KLEIN: And open Hooters bars in Shanghai, all on the road to socialism.

JAY: But what's your answer to that, that without this, they'd be looking at a capitalist anarchy, rather than at least a planned capitalism.

KLEIN: I think it in many ways is where I think a lot of societies are leading, including Russia. I think that same argument was made by Putin in Russia and why Russia has steadily been becoming more authoritarian. And my feeling, when I was in the Pearl River Delta, which has always been the laboratory and always sort of further ahead. My feeling when I was in the Pearl River Delta, which has always been the laboratory for these ideas—this was where capitalism was allowed on a test basis in 1979 and where now probably half or three-quarters of everything we own is made.

JAY: So they would say the alternative is capitalism and anarchistic capitalism, rather than the planned capitalism. Number two, they might argue that you need to have this planned capitalism to sort of exhaust itself, and then you can transition in a planned way to some form of socialism, 'cause they still claim to have that as an objective.

KLEIN: Well, I don't think they're transitioning to any kind of socialism, and I think we should just sort of take that out of the discussion. I mean, they are the most successful capitalist economy in the world. And to me the question is: what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of efficiency and in the name of economic growth? Because by those measures, China is the most successful economy in the world right now by the measures that we use in our own countries. And so, to me, my interest in this model is that I see it as a warning. I see it as actually the global trend. I mean, you know, you're talking about Russia, and it is true that Russia had a democratization, opening-up period and a very anarchic economic reform process. China's response to that was, "We're not going to have the democratization. We're just going to ram through the reforms, and as brutally as we want." And the Tienanmen Square Massacre created a terrified population for many, many years, where they were able to socially re-engineer a communist country into a capitalist one, and have people just accept that because they had seen that this is a government that is willing to roll tanks over their elite university students. So imagine what they would do to factory workers.

JAY: And what you're suggesting is, instead of Rupert Murdoch's vision of his satellites and televisions bringing democracy to China, China's in fact going to be exporting this what you called Web 2.0 communist capitalism to us.

KLEIN: Well, what I see is that China is becoming more like us, the West, in many ways, and we're becoming more like China in many ways. And I wouldn't say that we are the same society yet, but what we see are these sort of steady trends, and a kind of an odd sort of meeting in the middle, where they embrace the side of our society of extreme consumer capitalism, and our leaders start to embrace many of their tools of social control—indefinite detention, loss of civil liberties—that their leaders are embracing. And I think the more successful China is, the more persuasive this argument becomes. Absolutely. India gets beaten up all the time by business people who are working in China and India, and going, "Look, it's a hell of a lot easier to do business in China." Well, it is. But the question is: what are we willing to sacrifice in the name of efficiency and growth?

JAY: One of the things that didn't get exported in globalization and in the Chinese model that does exist in the United States, still, to some extent, was antitrust legislation. They used to do all these labor-free market reforms in these countries in Latin America, and in Mexico, I guess, is the best example, where you introduce all kinds of market reforms without any antitrust legislation. And I wonder if you think perhaps the Chinese model and some of these other models are going to put pressure on the North American model to weaken antitrust legislation, under the argument, "We need big, state-defended monopolies to compete with theirs."

KLEIN: On any standard we see that downward pressure—environmental standards, labor standards, antitrust. Absolutely. And it's the story of globalization is multinational businesses being able to pit governments against each other or say, "We'll relocate completely."

Naomi Klein - China 2

PAUL JAY: Welcome back to the next segment of our interviews with Naomi Klein. Naomi, we saw this tremendous explosion of celebration at the Olympics, fireworks and such, and as close to, perhaps, a Big Brother society as one could imagine. And then we see this sort of image of millions and millions of people marching into consumer paradise, led by a benign leadership—you worry about consuming; we will worry about the politics. But if it's all so harmonious, just why are there so many cameras and so much security? So talk a little bit about the real state of conflict in China. And why is there such a security apparatus?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, the Chinese leadership is incredibly worried about unrest. That's the emphasis on harmony is a response to the fact that this has become an enormously unequal society. And it's a very precarious political situation, because you do still have a political leadership that pays lip service to the idea of equality, and it calls itself a communist party. So it is a very precarious situation. Now, surveillance has always been a huge part of the communist system in China, of people keeping under control. But as China has transitioned into this booming capitalist economy, it has had to displace millions and millions of people. A hundred and thirty million Chinese people are classified as migrants, migrant workers, which means that they had chosen to leave their rural communities to look for work in cities like Shenzhen or Guangzhou, or they were forced to leave because their community was just leveled by the state and turned into a new shopping mall, a new highway. So this presents a challenge for social control, because when people are living and rooted in their community, then you have all the usual party structures that keep an eye on you. There's the old lady down the street who's actually keeping track of the last time somebody had their period, and whether or not they're adhering to the one-child policy or not. I mean, it's that level of nosiness. But that level of nosiness requires knowledge of your neighbor. It requires that sort of gossip that is so familiar.

JAY: And maybe a certain amount of buy-in for the reason for doing it.

KLEIN: Buy-in, yeah, but also it does require kind of a tight-knit community and a culture of snitching. The fact that there are 130 million people roaming China looking for work has broken down that system of social control and snitching, because when you are an economic migrant and you're going to a new city, nobody knows you and nobody can keep an eye on you. So replacing this system of snitching has been a technological upgrade, where the Chinese regime has embraced all of the technologies of the so-called war on terror, like biometric identification, facial recognition software embedded in network CCTV cameras. And all of this is very familiar, because we're seeing it in Dulles Airport. We're seeing it in the streets of London, where we're seeing it with the increased use of GPS. So all of these technologies have been normalized in the post-September 11 context.

JAY: And there was a regulation against American countries selling this type of police technology to China.


KLEIN: There is a regulation. After the Tienanmen Square Massacre, Congress made it illegal for US companies to sell police equipment or technology to China, any equipment that could be used for policing, because the police in China were seen as a repressive force, and there was no way of knowing whether, you know, you could sell them fingerprinting technology, and that could be used to fingerprint student demonstrators and send them into the gulags. So that's why the laws were on the books. What's interesting is that at the time—this was 1990—they came up with a list of all of the possible police equipment, and that list really hasn't been kept up to date. So all of these very high-tech sort of post-9/11 technologies are slipping in, really, through loopholes. It's not clear at all that it is legal, but one example, which I found when I was researching this in China recently, was that on the list you have fingerprinting technology—you cannot sell it to China. But L-1, which is a very large Homeland Security contractor in the United States, has been selling to Chinese companies facial recognition software, which is the ability to make a print of someone's face and run it through surveillance cameras. Now, that was in the realm of sci-fi in 1989 when the Tienanmen Square Massacre happened. And so it's sort of traveling through this loophole. But I think it's quite deliberate that that loophole has been allowed to stay as open as it has. The Olympics has been the mother of all loopholes, and that's because in the name of Olympics security, in the name of securing the games for international VIPs like George Bush, in the name of making it safe for international athletes, in the name of fighting terrorism, all of this equipment has been flooding in with seemingly no regulation at all.


JAY: Yeah. I think you quote the number $12 billion spent on security.


KLEIN: Well, this is the new disaster-capitalism trough. You know, Iraq was the trough for awhile. The Department of Homeland Security has been a pretty good trough. Building Fortress Europe has been a good trough. And what I mean by public money that is just transferred to private corporations in the name of fighting an endless war on terror. And we see it in this feeding frenzy around the world. The Green Zone is sort of, maybe, the epicenter of this feeding frenzy. But China is the new trough, because basically what the government in Beijing has said is, "We will spend whatever it takes to secure our country, and we want the latest technology and the best toys." So, you know, I interviewed an executive in Guangzhou, who works for one of the big security contractors, named Abell Technology, and he said, you know, "London is so dated. London is ten years ago. We are the future."
Right? And, you know, they see themselves as really wanting—the Chinese government really wants to show that when it comes to surveillance, just like it comes to everything else, they are ahead of the West. So they are saying, "We're not doing anything different than London is doing with their cameras, and we're not doing anything different than George Bush is doing with his Patriot Act, but we're going to do it more and we're going to do it better, because we're China and we do everything better.

JAY:In the next segment of our interview, let's explore further why there are such intense levels of security in China. Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Naomi Klein.

Naomi Klein - China 1

Naomi Klein on the Olympics

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR: Welcome to our first in a series of interviews with Naomi Klein. Welcome, Naomi.

NAOMI KLEIN: Thanks, Paul.

JAY: The fireworks have been bursting at the most expensive opening to an Olympic ceremonies in history. Just what is being celebrated? You've called what's happening in China the communism. What do you mean?

KLEIN: The communism, Stalinism, market Stalinism, authoritarian capitalism, I think this is an incredibly efficient, actually, a scarily efficient way of organizing society that's actually being celebrated here, which is a hybrid of some of the worst elements of authoritarian communism—mass surveillance of the population, total lack of civil liberties, lack of a free press, lack of democratic rights, authoritarian central planning, all harnessed not to advance the goals of social justice, even in name, although there may be some lip service still paid to that, but to advance the goals of global capitalism. So it is Stalinism meets global capitalism. And it works. China is the most successful capitalist economy in the world: 11 percent growth, year after year after year. It is the most successful economy in the world. And that efficiency, that success, is intimately tied, I would argue, to the suppression of democratic rights. It's not successful despite the fact that it's not a democracy, despite the fact that you don't have independent trade unions; it is successful in large part because of that, because workers can't organize independent unions, [coughing] because Beijing, if they want to build a new export processing zone or a new shopping mall or a new Olympic stadium, can just raise whatever they want to raise and build whatever they want to build and displace as many people as they want to displace.

JAY: Now, the counterargument would be that if you compare the development of China and India over a somewhat similar time period, especially since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, that this methodology of this authoritarianism with market capitalism has actually alleviated poverty in a faster rate than India has, that maybe people are willing to give up free speech and various things for a better standard of living. So the argument is is that it's been effective. The alleviation of poverty is progressing at a faster rate in China than in India. So what if people don't have some of these rights? They're kind of phony anyway in many of the countries that claim to have them.

KLEIN: Well, that's true. They are phony in many of the countries where we claim to have them. But, you know, in China, people haven't agreed to this. It's an authoritarian system—it's imposed on people. And there is a great deal of dissent in China; there's an incredible level of protest, actually, in China.

JAY: So, if these rights are relatively artificial or not as meaningful in some of these other countries, then maybe people are happy with the development in China.

KLEIN: Look, there is absolutely no doubt that many people have been lifted out of poverty in China. But the biggest challenge facing the Chinese government is the incredible levels of inequality in that country. And this is really the obsession of the central government, how to deal with the gap between the winners and losers of this economic model, which is, you know, not incidental. It isn't a question of just lifting everyone up; it is built into the model that when you raze a village, you create an army. When you raze village after village and displace community after community to build yet another export zone, yet another shopping mall, yet another highway, you create this massive population of internal migrants who are essentially—. It's really a system of two-tiered citizenship. The people who have residency in these booming cities, and the people who are part of the army of, really, the landless, the homeless, who come to cities like Shanghai, like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, looking for work. And in a sense they're almost like the Mexicans of China, the migrant workers, in the sense that the government has said, "We can't afford to give you the same rights as we give to people with urban residency.

JAY: I mean, I guess one indication that perhaps things aren't so harmonious as we're told is the extent of surveillance and the kind of money that's being spent on surveillance. And you make an interesting argument about this in a recent piece you wrote. Can you talk about the kind of collaboration, investment, of American intelligence apparatus companies and what's happening in China?

JAY: So one of the arguments will be that the splendor of the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games is really a symbol that this system works, and perhaps works even better than the kinds of democracies that we have, in that what they have is a wise, benign leadership, which in some ways, they would argue, is more responsive to the population, partly because they don't have elections to let off steam and they are worried about unrest. So what are we seeing in terms of the balance between political rights, democracy, and capitalism?

KLEIN: Well, it's definitely a tug-of-war, and there's definitely more freedom, more access to information, a level of access to information that would have been unheard of for an earlier generation. I mean, you're talking about young people now who've grown up online, who have their own blogs, their own websites, who are texting constantly, incredibly techno savvy, and there are some websites that they simply can't go to. So it is restricted, but they're still swimming in a sea of information that their parents never had access to. And they push, and then they get pushed back, and it's not clear who's going to win this war. But if we think of—but what's really struck me about the corporate media coverage of what's going on in China is that all the negatives of the system—the crackdown on activists, the lack of freedom of speech, the fact that journalists can't access the Internet in the ways that they're used to. There's the fact that there are 100,000 security officers just on Olympic duty. And to put that into perspective, the stadium itself, the Bird's Nest Stadium holds 90,000. So there's 90,000 spectators and 100,000 secret police keeping control of things in Beijing. So this is an incredible operation. But when you hear people like Lou Dobbs and other commentators talking about the problems in China, it's always red China, communist China, or the Chi-coms. And it's really this blast from the past of—you know, it's almost as if the Cold War never ended. And there's this amazing unwillingness to talk about what this is actually serving, because this isn't North Korea. It isn't about showing the strength of the benevolent leadership and the benefits of a communist system over a capitalist system; this whole infrastructure, this whole security, central planning, surveillance state that we're seeing now in China is in the interests of creating the ultimate consumerist, capitalist cocoon. And you see that so clearly in the context of the apex of our consumer culture, which is the Olympics. So it's the ultimate consumer cocoon for Coca-Cola, Mastercard, all of the Olympic sponsors.

JAY: In our next segment, let's talk about whether in fact the Chinese people want this corporate paradise, and if so, just why is there so much security? Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Naomi Klein.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Women of Iraq

U.S.-Occupied Iraq: Women suffer untold violence


by: isiria, in political structure, war and violence

The radio news magazine “Between The Lines” interviewed Yifat Susskind, communications director with MADRE, an an international women’s human rights organisation based in New York City. Yifat is also author of a report on violence against Iraqi women titled, “Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq.” The report, made public on March 6 at a meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations, exposes what it calls “the incidence, causes, and legalization of gender-based violence in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.”

violence against iraqi womenII.jpgThe situation for Iraqi women since that invasion four years ago has deteriorated dramatically by every measure of daily survival: lack of access to clean water, electricity, food, education and jobs. And, as a result of the absence of personal security, women have virtually disappeared from public life in Iraq - yet their disappearance has been barely noted by media coverage of the war, which is not surprising. Our male dominated societies impose violence on women not just through physical brutality but also in a very silent way that makes womens’ submission almost appear to be natural. Pierre Bourdieu called it ‘a symbolic violence’, “a violence that is hardly noticed, almost invisible for the victims on whom it is perpetrated; a violence which is exercised principally via the purely symbolic channels of communication and knowledge (or, to be accurate, mis-knowledge).” While Iraqi women suffer from rape, torture, abduction and murder, the media, ignoring their plight, exclusively focuses on crazed males on both sides playing deadly war games. And when it counts the dead, it only mentions the combatants; women and children literally are un-accounted for.

According to the report, systematic attacks on women and sectarian cleansing are deeply intertwined. One of the main support mechanisms for the violence is a constitutionally enshrined ‘gender apartheid’. Iraq’s constitution, scripted and enacted under the oversight of the U.S. occupation force, has created Sharia law inspired separate and unequal laws for men and women, purely on the basis of gender. And Sharia law also allows unelected, and in some cases self-appointed, people posing as religious authorities to determine the constitutionality of law, on the basis of sometimes very arbitrary and often quite reactionary interpretations of Islamic law.

Women, who under Saddam Hussein’s secular regime had a lot of freedom, access to education and a wide range of jobs, are saying across the board that their lives are much, much worse now than they were under the previous regime. For example, in much of Iraq so-called punishment committees of Islamist militias are patrolling the streets and attacking women who don’t dress to their liking. In a lot of places, they kill women who wear pants or appear in public without a head scarf. Most Iraqi women are virtually confined to their homes now, because of the likelihood of being beaten or raped or abducted in the streets. But it’s not only the radical fundamentalists terrorising women; cases are being reported of Sunni women raped by the U.S.-trained and sponsored Shia police. That of course is not surprising, given the U.S’. own terrible record of rape and gender-based torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq.

Finally, the report criticises the media, including the so-called alternative media for not listening to Iraqi women. Their voices have been shut out despite the fact that women comprise, as they do in many countries, over half of Iraq’s population. Listening to their plight would give us a much truer picture of what is really happening in that country, including that women’s human rights and democratic rights really go hand in hand. It would also show that the Bush led administrations of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’, for all their rhetoric, really have contempt for both genuine democracy and women’s rights.

The interview is available in RealAudio or can be accessed on the Between The Lines website.

Further links:

* “Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq Executive Summary,” MADRE report presented at the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations, March 6, 2007
* “Iraqi Police Commit Rape Armed, Trained, and Funded by the U.S.” by Yifat Susskind, www.commondreams.org, Feb. 22, 2007
* Madres Yifat Susskind: The context of the Iraqi rape allegations, Feminist Peace Network

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