I strongly disagree with Charles Liu's views about Falun Gong muddling facts (Letters, Dec. 29, page 8).
Why is Beijing's abysmal track record in the spotlight lately? It is not surprising, especially with the news of Beijing officials profiting from live organ harvesting from Falun Gong members. Investigative reports maintain that it has been going on since 2000.
The world response to what Kilgour-Matas have condemned has been encouraging, with a recent hearing in a US Congressional sub-committee and Amnesty International's New Zealand branch calling for further investigation.
The Taiwanese, Finnish and Australian governments, as well as the European Parliament, have backed the allegations. But so far China hasn't granted permission to any international observers to probe the allegations. On the contrary Beijing arrested and silenced the human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng (高智晟), who extended an invitation to the Kilgour-Matas research team.
For such an abhorrent practice to be allowed to take place in the 21st century is unacceptable. By all means, China should be held accountable for such crimes against humanity. In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics it would be in China's best interest to live up to the promises they made to secure the games -- that is, to improve their rights record.
With the recent shooting of Tibetans at the border, intensified crackdown on human rights lawyers along with tightened Internet and press censorship, not to mention widespread corruption, China's rights record is in decline. It is clear that this long list of violations, including organ harvesting, has put Beijing apologists on the spot leaving them with very little to say.
Marie Beaulieu
Victoria, Canada
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
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