Sushil Seth is right on the mark by saying that China lives in a “make-believe” world (“Tibet: China’s make-believe world,” page 8, April 8).
Two key words to come to mind: engineering and brainwashing. Looking through the communist party’s lens, one cannot fail to see why the year 2001 was a fabulous year for the Chinese government, seeing as they look at things in such a devious way.
It was in 2001 that China gained access to the WTO, thus gaining world recognition and a big nod from world leaders. And it came as no surprise that it was also in 2001 that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave Beijing the Olympic Games — the ultimate handshake.
That very same year, allegations spread that Falun Gong practitioners were being butchered for their organs, with some citing as many as 40,000 unexplained organ transplants from practitioners kept as livestock and killed on demand, their organs sold to the elite.
Although there is a new set of regulations to gloss things over, it is suspected that this macabre practice is continuing unabated.
Beijing has repeatedly ordered police to crush the Falun Gong spiritual group and last but not least, in February an order was issued to evict 43 categories of “undesirables” before the Games.
Sadly enough, very little has been said in media reports about China’s disappeared, along with the persecution of Falun Gong which is one of the worst atrocities happening inside China today.
Outside China, many glitches are surfacing — there is Beijing’s past and recent attack on Tibet, its support of the murderous regimes in Sudan and Myanmar, along with constant threats of war against Taiwan and its “colonization” of Africa.
But now that things have reached a boiling point over the crackdown on Tibet, one would think that politicos — and especially the IOC — could no longer ignore that there is something really wrong with China. Or can they?
As Beijing shows its true face through its propaganda, there is still cause for alarm: We are running out of time.
I’m afraid that if the free world doesn’t take action now, we will take a step backward for humanity and one forward for Beijing’s dictatorship. Can we let this happen? It’s not too late for people of conscience to do the right thing before August and give the people of China more than just a dream of human rights — let’s give them the real thing.
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
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed