every thursday, the team here at surrealistic sharks will be schooling you on some aspect of art, philosophy, psychology, morality, music, pop culture, sports, and hundreds of other subjects. the school of sharks must be considered as nothing more than a primer. one of the most essential tenants of s.h.a.r.k. philosophy is that self-education is the only true form of education.

this week, i will be schooling you shark pups on the influential New Zealand record label Flying Nun.

Flying Nun was formed in Christchurch, New Zealand by a local record store owner Roger Shepherd. Though a small independent label, Flying Nun quickly gained national then international notoriety as they introduced the world to the so-called Dunedin sound culminating in the classic Dunedin Double EP. Though the company eventually approached bankruptcy and founder Roger Shepherd has since left, the Flying Nun namesake is still alive.

A huge part of the label’s early success was the work of Chris Knox (of Tall Dwarfs fame) to introduce local bands to Roger Shepherd, and Shepherd’s willingness to support his artists desires to remain in control of their own music. One of the first true do-it-yourself labels, Flying Nun artists had complete control of their songs, records, sound, and album art. This freedom (many of the artists had nothing approaching an official contract) ultimately undid the once fledgling label, but along the way created to one of the most influential, innovative, and productive periods in rock n’ roll.

Below, I have provided links to several of the label’s prominent artists as well as excellent documentary highlighting the label from its earliest days until the present.

Tall Dwarfs – “Meet the Beatle”

The Clean – “Tally Ho!”

David Kilgour – “The Waltz”

The Chills – “Satin Doll”

Jean-Paul Sartre Experience – “Shadows”

Headless Chickens – “Juice”

The Verlaines- “Baud to Tears”

The Bats – “Satellites”

Check out these full albums courtesy of beautiful musicblog Biannual Haircut. Be sure to download and listen to there completely brilliant summer playlist before its over.

The Verlaines – Juvenalia pt. 1 / pt. 2

The Clean- Compilation dl

The Great Unwashed- Collection dl

Flying Nun Heavenly Pop Hits, pt. 1

pt. 2

pt. 3

pt. 4

pt. 5

pt. 6

pt. 7

pt. 8

pt. 9

By Hon. David Kilgour, via mwcnews.net, July 17, 2009

Falun Gong As Decade Long Victims of Rule by Terror

Media Conference , 130s Centre Block, House of Commons
Ottawa ,16 July 2009
Hon. David Kilgour

Almost exactly ten years ago, the party-state in Beijing launched its campaign against a government-estimated 70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners. The then determinedly-non-political Falun Gong, which is an exercise community with a spiritual component, soon became the latest in a long list of  ‘enemies of the party’.  Atrocities against Falun Gong supporters continue today across China.

Reigns of terror against Party-selected groups and persons  have occurred periodically since Mao Zedong seized power in 1949. In the name of revolution, millions were starved to death, for example, in the Great Leap Forward of 1958; countless others were tortured, abused, executed and deprived of basic human dignity.  Probably very few Chinese citizens have been treated more brutally than the Falun Gong.

Organ pillaging from Falun Gong practitioners has been studied in an independent report by legal scholar David Matas and myself ( http://organharvestinginvestigation.net ).  The two of us found 52 kinds of evidentiary proof indicating that this crime against humanity is occurring.  The Government of China has  to date made no substantive response to our report.

Just this month, three lawyers were arrested in China for daring to defend Falun Gong practitioners. The persecution of  another prominent attorney, Gao Zhisheng, who defended Falun Gong, continues.  He was twice arrested and suffered seventy days of torture. Despite repeated appeals from a range of Chinese and international groups for accounts of his whereabouts and release, Beijing ignores them.

Genocide?

David Matas to the International Association of Genocide Scholars at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, concluded on June 9th of this year:

”Every Chinese embassy around the world participates in this incitement (against Falun Gong). Despite their denials, they have to know about the mass killings of Falun Gong practitioners. The evidence fills human rights reports. There are constant media stories. The information is a click of a mouse away on the internet. Any claim of ignorance would mean that they have wilfully been turning blind eyes to the obvious, not a defense in law. So, in sum, the crime of genocide has been committed against the Falun Gong community, through torture, through organ harvesting and through the incitement that leads to both. The elements of the crime, the mass killings based on identity and the intent to destroy the group, can be established. ”

Mr. Matas provided detailed reasons for coming to this legal conclusion, which are available in the Update section of our report website.

China’s Gulag

Forced labour is tragically all too common today, but only the party-state of China uses it to punish and suppress fellow citizens. Any Chinese national can be sent to a camp without any form of trial for up to four years upon committal by a police signature. No appeal is possible. Mao in the 1950s closely duplicated the work camp model set up in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, which in China alone continues today.

In China, only Falun Gong camp inmates are used as a live organ bank to be pillaged for sales to foreigners or Chinese nationals. Medical testing is required before organs can be matched with recipients, but only Falun Gong prisoners in the camp populations are tested medically on a regular basis. In the estimated 340 camps across China as of 2005, up to 300,000 “workers” toil in inhuman conditions for up to sixteen hours daily without any pay, producing a wide range of consumer products, mostly for export in blatant violation of World Trade Organization rules.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Such practices are fully consistent with Beijing`s rejection of the recommendations advanced by a number of governments, including Canada’s, in a Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year…….

The recommendations rejected by the government of China included: ending all forms of arbitrary detention, including labour camps; guaranteeing freedom of belief and the right to worship in private; implementing the recommendations of the UN Committee Against Torture, which included references to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and organ pillaging from them; and ensuring that lawyers can defend their clients without fear or harassment.

Trade with China has been in reality a costly proposition for many around the world. A host of its violations of international trading practices contributed to Canada’s bilateral trade deficit rising in China’s favour from $3.9 billion in 1997 to $26.8 billion in 2006, while ending many manufacturing livelihoods across Canada.

Conclusion

As the world suffers the economic crisis and seeks China’s cooperation in dealing with its challenges, it is tempting to overlook Beijing’s appalling human rights record. We must remind our leaders that to equivocate on China’s record is a departure from Canada’s own values of human dignity and the rule of law. We must caution them that trade with China at any price is costly both for the people of China and the world. We must remember the sacrifices of victims of the Tiananmen massacre and other abuses. We must demand that, instead of mocking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, China should honour its provisions.

- mwcnews.net

As a teenager in the late 1970’s David Kilgour and his brother Hamish, inspired by the independent do-it-yourself spirit of punk rock and the simple yet dissonant songwriting of Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, formed The Clean in their hometown of Dunedin. The Clean went on to become one of New Zealand’s most popular and most respected bands.
All along the way, over a career that spans the course of two decades, David Kilgour has come to be known as one of the most respected and admired songwriters of his generation. His signature guitar style and languid, carefree melodies are readily identifiable.
In January of 2001, David was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit, to recognize and honor his contributions to the arts and cultural heritage.
From the LP Falling Debris. Arch Hill Records, NZ, 09.

http://www.archhill.co.nz/
http://www.davidkilgour.com/

River Plateau Song

Howdy all!

This is the second in a series of five podcasts I am doing for NZ Music month.

This time around I have decided to do a bit of a mixed disc (the first half has sort of a country feel while the second half has that indie-pop thing going on).

Lovely artists lovely tunes lovely way to celebrate NZ Music Month.

Have a look at the artists’ MySpace pages as you listen in.

• Rosy Tin Tea Caddy
• Mel Parsons
• Raggamuffin Children
• The Bats
• Robo Distaste
• The Puddle
• David Kilgour
• Luke Buda

And here we go…

Mixed Disc Cast

Stream

Download here

Subscribe to KBP on iTunes for the free download (Due to popularity [a good thing] once folks download it at iTunes the bandwidth goes out for three weeks [bad thing]. If you encounter problems on iTunes for this reason simply download above.)

Track listing

Rosy Tin Tea Caddy – Chestnut
Mel Parsons – Darlin’ Darlin’
The Bats - Castle Lights
Raggamuffin Children - A Fine Storm
Robo Distaste - Darth Vader Disco
The Puddle – Naked
David Kilgour (featuring the poetry of Sam Hunt) - Chord
Luke Buda - Blue Summer

This isn’t a reference to the Monty Python skit.

Kevin Rudd recently met with Li Changchun, the Chinese Minister for Propaganda (the name of the portfolio tells you something isn’t right). Big deal; except that it was supposed to be a secret from the Australian public. Why is that, we wonder? Could it be anything to do with China’s egregious record of human rights violations?

Sure, Chinese people were killed by their own countrymen in Tiananmin Square in 1989 and as a result of Mao’s Great Leap Forward – from agriculture to industry – in the 1950s, 20 million people were reported as having died from malnutrition. And of course, there is the fact that Chinese people who are practitioners of Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) are being arrested and their organs harvested. When someone, Chinese or foreign, wants an organ transplant, the Chinese medical institution claims it can usually have a compatible organ in one week!

Representatives of the international Falun Gong society asked David Matas and David Kilgour to investigate. This link gives the whole report; also downloadable as a pdf.

http://www.organharvestinvestigation.net

I’m sure 99% of Chinese people don’t know about this – after all, there are over a billion people there. Nonetheless, why doesn’t the international community do something about this abomination? The media is almost silent on it. Why? Could it be something to do with who owns the media and their connections – financially beneficial – with China? China is the backbone of the global economy. What if we did stop trading with them? What would then befall the world economy? If we did, everyone would suffer.

But what are groups like the United Nations, and national governments who are aware of this, doing about it? From what I last heard, the Australian government is dealing with three Chinese people who are giving testimony about their experiences with organ harvesting, and the Chinese government is trying to stop this.

But why aren’t they (1) telling us, the people, what is going on? and (2) making strong representations to stop it?

A snippet from yesterday’s (March 24th) The Australian may give an idea:

The visit by Mr Li, China’s fifth most powerful man, also comes at a time when Beijing wants to win approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board on the $US19.5 billion ($28billion) deal between China’s state-owned Chinalco and Australian- and London-listed mining group Rio Tinto. That deal is one of a flood of applications to the FIRB – including a $2.6 billion takeover of OZ Minerals by China’s Minmetals – which will define the business relationship between the countries for a generation.

It seems a case of money versus humanity.

Le 2 mai 2008, les pratiquants de Falun Gong organisent un rassemblement sur la Colline parlementaire à Ottawa pour protester contre les arrestations massives des adeptes en Chine à l’occasion de la préparation des Jeux de Pékin.

Le secrétaire général d’Amnesty International Canada, Alex Neve, est présent pour donner son appui, de même que le député libéral Borys Wrzesnewskyj et l’ex-diplomate canadien Brian McAdam.

Alex Neve d'Amnesty Canada prononce un discours, tandis que Brian McAdam, Borys Wrzesnewskyj et Xun Li écoutent.

Le président de l’Association de Falun Dafa du Canada, Xun Li, est aussi présent. Ce dernier ne semble pas craindre les médias, comme le laisse entendre Radio-Canada.

À cette période de l’année, Radio-Canada avait déjà commencé à produire son reportage sur le Falun Gong et les intentions de Solveig Miller et Léon Laflamme, journaliste et réalisateur à l’émission Enquête, étaient claires : il faut dépeindre le Falun Gong comme un groupe étrange, isolé, marginal, qui ne dispose pas d’appui dans la société.

Ce n’est pas que Radio-Canada n’était pas sur place à cet événement. Un caméraman et un preneur de son y étaient. Mais ils n’étaient pas intéressés par les beaux discours pour les droits de l’homme.

Alors voici une photo de l’équipe de Radio-Canada envoyée sur les lieux. Notez leur intérêt particulier lorsque des policiers de la GRC sont venus discuter avec les organisateurs de l’événement.

Un caméraman et un preneur de son de Radio-Canada sont très intéressés par la présence des policiers.

L’émission Enquête n’avait que faire des tonnes d’arrestations de pratiquants de Falun Gong en Chine. Elle n’avait que faire des discours de personnalités reconnues. Mais oh! des policiers, c’est chaud! Ces scènes n’ont toutefois pas été diffusées par Radio-Canada, car il n’y avait rien de sensationnel là.

Solveig Miller suggère que le Falun Gong a accompli un exploit en dénichant l’appui de l’ex-parlementaire David Kilgour, comme si leur cause était farfelue et qu’il était étrange qu’un politicien veuille s’y associer.

Une autre fabrication péjorative d’Enquête.

David Matas, avocat international spécialiste des droits de l'homme.

Voici des individus ayant apporté leur soutien au Falun Gong ces dernières années.

Le rabin Reuven Bulka, David Kilgour et le député libéral Keith Martin.

Irwin Cotler, député libéral.

Les deux seuls intervenants dans le reportage qui sympathisent avec le Falun Gong et dont les propos sont diffusés, David Ownby (professeur à l’Université de Montréal) et David Kilgour, affirment que leurs paroles ont été utilisées sélectivement et de manière à ne pas représenter leur vraie position.

Kilgour a déclaré à La Grande Époque :

«Je dirais que [...] l’émission a été fortement injuste envers les gens qui sont préoccupés par la question des vols d’organes sur le Falun Gong. David Matas et moi-même avons voyagé dans environ 45 pays pour parler de cette affaire et je crois que je peux dire que je n’ai jamais vu une représentation aussi injuste de notre position.»

«Lorsque j’étais journaliste, nous étions supposés essayer d’accorder un traitement égal aux deux parties et, concernant cette émission, il et clair qu’il n’y a eu aucune tentative d’accorder un traitement égal aux deux parties.»

If you are wondering about the meaning of the title, it is about the influence that a murderous, oppressive, brutal and totalitarian regime wields over a media organisation in a neighbouring democratic country where the media is supposed to be “free”.

Mount Road Mussolini . . .

http://mediawatch.afp.com

Mount Road (also known as Anna Saalai) is an eight-lane arterial road that runs diagonally across Chennai city. The headquarters of the The Hindu newspaper group is located on this road. Once upon a time, when The Hindu newspaper was known to be a reliable source of independent and unbiased news, it earned the nickname Mount Road Mahavishnu. Later it came to be known as Mount Road Marx because it distanced itself from the ethics of journalism and shamelessly became a mouthpiece of some Marxist politicians despite the presence of some good journalists in its ranks. The newspaper’s readership has steadily declined over the years and like other broadsheets in India, this newspaper too resorts to some amount of sensationalism and trivialism to attract readers. But unlike other newspapers, The Hindu has taken upon itself the role of acting as the mouthpiece for all the notorious, murderous, oppressive, filthy, bloodthirsty, fascist regimes across the globe. The Hindu portrays, or tries to portray all the notorious, criminal, fascist tyrants of the world in a positive light by deliberately ignoring the gross human rights violations in their respective countries and instead publishing only irrelevant reports dished out by the fascists and their stooges. The criminal, oppressive, totalitarian regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the murderous military junta in Myanmar, the rogue totalitarian regime in Sri Lanka, the notorious Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, the military run government in Bangladesh and the genocidal Sudanese government are all in the good books of The Hindu, hence the name Mount Road Mussolini.

The editor-in-chief of The Hindu, N. Ram also unofficially acts as the PR guy of the PRC in India. The India-China border dispute gets pushed out of the news and instead the paper chooses to give prominence to optimistic statements about trade from the officials of the murderous Chinese regime. The PRC’s outrageous claim over the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and the Chinese claim over the occupied Aksai Chin region as well as the massive Chinese military deployment in occupied Tibet almost never gets mentioned in the newspaper. On many important issues like Tibet, the newspaper reports the utterances of the Chinese officials as “news”. The newspaper is also known to threaten peaceful protestors who express concern over the human rights violations in occupied Tibet by the People’s Republic of (Han) China. Read about it here.

The editor-in-chief of this toilet paper, who is a close friend of the officials of the (Han) Chinese occupation regime in Tibet once wrote an article about the situation in Tibet after being treated to a guided tour of occupied Tibet by the (Han) Chinese officials. It would have been ridiculous, had it not been for the fact that it was full of half-truths and plain lies. The PRC’s totalitarian regime liked this article so much, that the murderous regime translated it into the Tibetan and Uighur languages to be used as propaganda material in the occupied regions of Tibet and Uighur and dished it out to the oppressed people of those regions. Read about it here. Little wonder then, that The Hindu has come to be known as The Chindu, China’s national newspaper in India.

Even more shocking is the fact that this toilet paper never reports the brutal oppression of thousands of people who are involved in the spiritual movement Falun Gong. There is not a single report about the brutalities that are perpetrated on those who belong to the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Mount Road Mussolini is surely not going to like the shocking pictures and videos on this post as they expose his bosses in the murderous, criminal, brutal, oppressive, totalitarian, fascist regime of the People’s Republic of China, the Bloody Dragon.

Falun Gong or Falun Dafa is a spiritual practice founded in China by Li Hongzhi in 1992. It has five sets of meditation exercises and seeks to develop practitioners’ hearts and character according to the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, articulated in the main books Falun Gong and Zhuan Falun. The teachings deal with issues such as “cultivation of virtue and character”, “moral standards for different levels”, and “salvation of all sentient beings.” The books, lectures, and exercise materials have been translated into over 40 languages and are available on the Internet free of charge. After the Communist Party of China (CCP) outlawed this spiritual practice, Falun Gong practitioners have been officially subject to the most horrifying brutalities in history.

The CCP regime in the PRC murders prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners and sells their organs. If you want an organ, go to China and you can get it immediately:

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

Reports about death camps in the PRC where Falun Gong practitioners are butchered to have their organs removed are not new. But it has been independently and officially confirmed by two Human Rights activists that the allegations are indeed true and that organ harvesting is fairly common in China:

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

The murderous, fascist CCP regime’s crimes against humanity were exposed by David Kilgour and David Matas who decided to investigate the allegations. According to them, “The allegations, if true, would represent a grotesque form of evil which, despite all the deprivations humanity has seen, would be new to this planet. The very horror makes us reel back in disbelief. But that disbelief does not mean that the allegations are untrue.”:

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

These are not mere allegations. They are true. Organ harvesting takes place on what can be described as an industrial scale in China. A Chinese military doctor has come forward to admit that the unthinkably evil practice of harvesting organs is prevalent in China:

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

The most shocking part is that organs are forcibly removed from people who are alive! There are several concentration camps in China, where organs are forcibly removed from Falun Gong practitioners who are still alive and then sold for money. These death camps and human butcher shops conceal the most evil practices that are perpetrated on followers of a spiritual movment by the notorious, murderous CCP regime of the PRC. Watch a report about the Sujiatun human butcher shop:

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

Here is an animation that shows the horrible atrocities that are perpetrated on Falun Gong spiritual practitioners. This Chinese song is a tribute to those who are butchered ruthlessly by removing their organs when they are still alive:

(If the video does not load, you can watch it here.)

Here are the pictures of some victims of the Chinese human butcher shops:

Wang Bin, a 44-year old Falun Gong practitioner from Heilongjiang Province was mercilessly beaten to death by policemen at Daqing Men’s Labour Camp on September 24, 2000. Afterwards, his heart and brain were removed, and the remains were placed in the morgue of Daqing People’s Hospital. What was done with his organs is not known, but only hearts that are still beating when removed from the body are useful for heart transplants:

(Image: www.clearwisdom.net)

Falun Gong practitioner Liu Yufeng was beaten to death. Surgeons removed his organs, and then carelessly sewed him back together:

(Image: www.clearwisdom.net)

Watch this report from NTDTV. The Canadians David Kilgour and David Matas are doing a good job in exposing these horrifying crimes by the Chinese Communist Party. Read more here.

Hello everybody!

I am now back. Back after moving from Georgia to Oklahoma. Back after getting the flu 10 days after being here. Back after my daughter getting strep throat after having the flu. Back after heaps of other things that have been going on.

Most importantly I am back with a new podcast! Actually … THREE new podcasts!

The first one is devoted to the music of The Clean.

The Clean are one of the most prolific New Zeland bands ever…ever, ever. As in ever.

I caught up with Ian Henderson and we talked about about the history of the band and what they have been up too lately.

They recently released a live album called Mashed and they have a new studio album nearing the completion stage. (Woohoo! I am too stoked about that).

Ian spoke with David Kilgour and Robert Scott seperately about their work with the Clean and their various side projects and solo work.  AND both David and Robert recorded a song each especially for Kiwi by Proxy. 

While you are listening in to the podcast have a look at a few sites.

Arch Hill Recordings – Go here to purchase the live album Mashed that is featured in the Cleancast.

David Kilgour’s MySpace page – Keep up with projects David is working on.

Robert Scott MySpace page – Keep up with the projects Robert is working on and get in touch with Robert on how to purchase rare material from The Clean, The Bats, and his solo work.

The Bats MySpace page – Keep up with all the comings and goings of the Christchurch/Duedin band The Bats.

So here ya go folks… three new podcasts with some very sweet music, excellent interviews, and live KBP exclusive recordings from David and Robert. (Oh and ignore the bits about … “next week and then the next”…. I went ahead and uploaded everything all at once for your listening pleasure.)

Cleancast

Stream

or Subscribe to KBP on iTunes and dock your iPod

Tracklisting

Stars – Album: The Getaway
The Blue – Album: Anthology
Anything Can Happen – Album: Anthology
Fish – Album: Mashed
Tee Pee and Tom Toms – Album: Mashed
Tallyho - Album: Anthology

DKcast

Stream

or Subscribe to KBP on iTunes and dock your iPod

Tracklisting

Today is Gonna be Mine – Album: Feather in the Engine
All the Rest - Album: Feather in the Engine
Blue Sky - Album: Frozen Orange
Gold in Sound - Album: Frozen Orange
BBC World - Album: The Far Now
*** With an interview with David and an exclusive KBP performance of ”Under Cloud” from The Far Now

BobnBatscast

          

Stream

or Subscribe to KBP on iTunes for the free download

Tracklisting 
 
Around You Like Snow- Album: Couchmaster (The Bat’s)
Lost Weekend – Album: Couchmaster (The Bat’s)
North by North – Daddy’s Highway (The Bat’s)
Up to the Sky – At the National Grid (The Bat’s)
Back Beach – Tudor Gates (solo)
A Trip Down South – Songs of Otago’s Past (solo)
***With an interview with Robert and an exclusive KBP performance of “Silent Treatment”

The best gift you could give yourself today is these two albums by The Clean and The Great Unwashed. If you are new to them, just go and download them right now. I’m serious, your life has a gaping hole in it you were previously blind to but this dangerous gape can quickly and succinctly be filled with the music of these two bands.

As previously mentioned a while back in the post on the cold but always fuzzy Chills, the Flying Nun label out of New Zealand unintentionally became an institution of incredible bands who’s influence becomes greater and more apparent all the time. Both the Clean and The Great Unwashed were two flagship bands on the label. The brains behind both of the outfits are the brothers Hamish and David Kilgour. They had a rotating cast of characters behind them all of varying levels of input to the bands but essentially these two were the ones pumping out the hits year after year. The Clean ended up breaking up in 1982 with the Great Unwashed soon following with their first LP called Clean Out Of Our Minds. Pretty clever, eh?

What i’m offering up today are compilations by both bands since collecting all of this stuff release by release would give you about 12 different records. The Clean album in particular is a simple overview of their catalog, but the Great Unwashed album is about their entire output. Again, I can’t recommend this stuff highly enough, there’s magic in those recordings, I’m sure of it!

Download: The Clean – Compilation

Download: The Great Unwashed – Collection

Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour and David Matas, a human rights lawyer, on August 22, 2008, released a new letter, describing new evidence about continued murder of Falun Gong practitioners in China for their organs.

By Ben Bendig, Epoch Times Staff Aug 24, 2008 -

New evidence of the Chinese regime’s practice of harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners has come to light through the admission of a Chinese doctor.

An audio recording of the doctor admitting to having taken part in harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners, together with a state-endorsed documentary in which the same doctor acknowledges taking part in the conversation, is “an undeniable, inculpatory admission of the harvesting of Falun Gong practitioner prisoners for profit,” say David Matas, a human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of state (Asia Pacific), in a letter released yesterday.

Matas and Kilgour had their investigators call Chinese hospitals inquiring about organ transplants, specifically if they could get organs from Falun Gong practitioners, the rationale being that Falun Gong practitioners are healthy, owing to their practice.

In one case, Dr. Lu Guoping at Minzu Hospital of Guangxi Autonomous Region said that his hospital used to have organs from Falun Gong practitioners, but didn’t any longer. Here is a portion of the transcript:

“Caller: …what you used before, were they from detention centers or prisons?

“Lu Guoping: From prisons.

“C: Oh, prisons. And it was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners, the healthy Falun Gong right?

“LG: Right, right, right. We would choose the good ones, because we will assure the quality of our operations.

“C: That means you choose the organs yourselves?

“LG: Right, right, right.”

He later referred the caller to a hospital in Guangzhou, saying that this hospital would have Falun Gong organs.

Where the new evidence comes to bear is that in a documentary released by Phoenix TV, Lu Guoping admits to having received the call, and also to referring the caller to a Guangzhou hospital.

However, he denies what he said, stating in the interview, “I told her [the caller] I was not involved in the surgical operations and had no idea where the organs come from. I told her I could not answer her questions. She then asked me whether these organs come from prisons. I replied no to her in clear-cut terms.”

When shown a transcript of the interview on the video, Dr. Lu claims that it is a distorted version of the conversation. However, the documentary makes no mention of an audio recording, and no explanation for how the recording could have his voice saying some things that he admits, and other things he denies saying. Matas and Kilgour, in their report of the new evidence, make the point that the documentary suggests an altered transcript, but because there is no mention in the documentary of the recording, the recording itself is not being disputed.

Matas and Kilgour sum up the evidence: “So here we have on our recording an admission from a doctor that he and his colleagues used to go to a prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. He does not just say that someone else did this. He says that he and his colleagues used to do this themselves. Moreover, we have a further admission that the voice we have on our recording is the voice of the very person our recording says he is.”

One particularly damning aspect of the documentary is that it is available through Chinese consulates and embassies.

“[C]onsequently,” Kilgour and Matas state in their letter, concerning the documentary, “it has the sanction of the Government of China. The admission is, accordingly, one which is sanctioned and approved by the Government of China and can not credibly be denied by the Government.”

Kilgour and Matas have been investigating claims of Falun Gong organ harvesting since 2006. Some of evidence includes 40,000 transplants that have taken place in China with donors unaccounted for, since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. Additionally, waiting times for organs in China are on the order of weeks, while in Western countries, the wait can be months or years.

Matas and Kilgour’s letter, along with links to the Phoenix TV video (with English subtitles), Chinese and English-language copies of the transcript of the conversation with Dr. Lu, and the audio recording of Dr. Lu, are available at: http://organharvestinvestigation.net/Dr.Lu-Voice-Recording/

- Original: Admission of Organ Harvesting is ‘Undeniable,’ Say Investigators , The Epochtimes

I find it very interesting that Mr. Kilgour acknowledges that he had been to China several times on political business trips and remained ignorant of the harsh realities surrounding China.  This is important to recognize. Some remain ignorant on purpose and ignore the facts, but there are others who are just unaware and need to know more but don’t find out the relevant info because of widespread  corruption and greed from various walks of life.  When will people of influence realize that they have the power to make a big difference, for good, or bad?  Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Kilgour’s speech, TRUST THE PEOPLE OF CHINA, BUT NOT ITS PARTY-STATE

Carsten Holz, an academic economist who specializes in China, published an article on self-censorship several months ago. He noted, for example, that China experts often take at face value the country’s business laws without mentioning the dominant role of the Party. He adds: “At the national level, the leadership of the 50 largest state-owned enterprises-enterprises that invest around the world-is directly appointed by the Politburo.” Many studies have looked at reasons for the growing income inequality in China. Holz notes that among the 3,220 persons with a personal worth of $13 million equivalent or more in the country 2912 are children of high-level cadres.

The Party seeks to conflate itself with China as a country, to convince naive persons from within and without the country that it is China, and that without the Party there would be no China.

I had the chance to meet Mr. Kilgour when he came through my city for Human Rights Torch Relay and forum about Organ Harvesting.  If there were no people like him, life would really be bleak.

Here is his site.  I’m sure the CCP will say he is a terrorist or is spreading rumours, but he is innocent and is doing what he thinks is right, simply, because he is a responsible person, unique, very great.

Stream

By Rahul Vaidyanath, Epoch Times Ottawa Staff, Jan 15, 2008-

OTTAWA—The Chinese New Year Spectacular presented its final performance in Ottawa on Monday night. Presented by New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV), the show features Chinese classical dance and music emphasizing the positive values of freedom, peace, and beauty.

David Kilgour, former Secretary of State for Asia Pacific, attended the Monday show after arriving from Europe. (photo at right)

“I want to congratulate everybody associated with this show. I wish everybody in Canada could see it. I wish everybody could see it everywhere, especially of course in China.”

“Last year, when I saw it in Toronto, I did not think it could get any better. This year, probably everything is a little better,” said Kilgour. “The dancing is absolutely fabulous, the last piece was spectacular.”

Kilgour elaborated on some of the issues currently facing China and pointed to how the show transports the audience to a China before communist rule.

“I’ve been reading a lot of books on China in the last year or so, and I think this is the authentic China, the authentic culture.”

“What is being used now [in China], as somebody says, is imported from Europe. Last time I looked, Karl Marx was not Chinese,” said Kilgour, alluding to the link between the father of communism and the regime that now rules China. “The imported violent philosophy that is still, unfortunately, being used by the [regime in] China is quite foreign to the culture, people, and history of China. This shows what a marvelous culture and tradition the authentic Chinese culture is.”

Kilgour also described how the show makes people feel.

“Uplifted, inspired, dazzled,” he said. “It’s magical what we’re seeing here tonight. I’ve got nothing but respect for the people who’ve done it. They have put in so much time, I gather, to make the show what it is.”

“It’s topically spiritual. It’s not giving any other message, that’s what’s wonderful,” said Frank Scheme, a freelance photographer who also works part-time with Amnesty International, and who attended the show with Kilgour.

Due to his previous role as Secretary of State for Asia Pacific, Kilgour has traveled extensively throughout Asia and is in a strong position to comment on the unique nature of the show.

“It’s absolutely unique, one of the best I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world, and I’ve been in more than 100 countries,” Kilgour added. “The combination of everything, costumes, music, the live orchestra … The moderators are good, they’re funny.

“The dancing is really out of this world, almost everything is out of this world. I would recommend this show to anybody, I have recommended it to many people and I’m glad to see some of them here tonight.”

The Chinese New Year Spectacular now leaves Ottawa to play four shows in Montreal before going on to Toronto next weekend.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Divine Performing Arts shows that will perform in over 60 cities worldwide in 2008. To find a show near you, please visit www.bestchineseshows.com.

- Original report from the Epochtimes

Notes for Remarks by Hon. David kilgour, J.D, International Symposium on the Crimes of Communism, Kiev, Ukraine, November 14, 2007-

David Matas and I are pleased to be back in Ukraine for the first time since your December 2004 runoff election, when both of us were among the more than one thousand Canadian election observers of your noted-around-the-world presidential election.

The voting stations observed by the international team I was part of were near Luhansk, a 15-hour train ride from Kiev and close to your border with Russia. There were many memorable moments during those days that December, including the genuine appreciation of many residents that observers from abroad were present, but one voter in his eighties will never be forgotten. He came up to some of us at a polling station and said, “When I was a small child, I watched both my parents die of starvation in front of me.”

Famine of 1932-1933

Your fellow citizen was, of course, referring to the terrible Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933, which took millions of innocent lives, not because there was any food shortage, but because the Communist dictator Joseph Stalin wanted to exterminate many of your farmers and their families to overcome widespread resistance in this country to his collectivization of agriculture. Food was exported from Ukraine by Stalin’s henchmen even as millions of your fellow citizens starved to death.

Far away in Edmonton, Canada, we residents, led by our neighbours of origin in Ukraine, unveiled near our city hall a number of years ago a monument to the victims of the Ukrainian Genocide or Holocaust. There have been many estimates as to the number of millions of victims, ranging up to ten million, but, whatever the most accurate number, this crime against humanity was simply unspeakable and must never be forgotten.

One reason there is still some doubt at least outside Ukraine about the numbers of deaths in those fateful years lies in the gross irresponsibility of most Western journalists, who visited Ukraine during the famine and chose not to report on the human catastrophe they observed. Walter Duranty of the New York Times, dean of the foreign press in Moscow at the time, appears to have been among the worst in putting misplaced loyalty to Stalin ahead of his duty to his readers and profession, but he was hardly alone. One journalist who did report accurately on what was going on, the late Malcolm Muggeridge of Great Britain, lost his job for doing so.

The Holocaust

A decade later, in December, 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill learned from Jan Karsky of the Polish resistance that thousands of Jews were being rounded up and sent in cattle cars to the death camp at Belzec in eastern Poland. Churchill used Karsky’s report to persuade the Allies, including the Russians, to condemn “a bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” in Germany.

Time unfortunately does not permit me to go into the Holocaust here more fully. Let me only say that the world will never know how many lives might have been saved if the hideous details of both genocides had gotten out sooner. Many observers-including this one- will say that enough was known soon enough about both catastrophes, but, as in the later cases of Rwanda and Darfur, the problem was the absence of robust political will. Tragically, human dignity was not universalized then or now.

Falun Gong in China

This brings me to the independent report which David Matas and I did on what is still happening to the Falun Gong community across China and the importance of raising public awareness about it worldwide in the months prior to the Beijing Olympics in August, 2008. We concluded to our horror that since the latter part of 2000 the government of China and its agencies have murdered thousands of Falun Gong practitioners across China without any form of prior trial, and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money, often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries.

Virtually no independent person we know who has read our report, which is available in 18 languages at www.organharvestinvestigation.net, is not convinced of the validity of our dismaying conclusion.

None of these deaths would be occurring if the Chinese peoples as a whole enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the equal worth and dignity of each one of them. Most human beings across China appear to have no more importance to those still monopolizing power there than does the natural environment, work safety, the lives of African residents in Darfur or Buddhist monks and democracy protesters in Burma. It is the combination of totalitarian governance and ‘anything goes’ capitalism that allows this new form of evil on the planet to continue across China today.

The propaganda phase of the regime’s war began in mid-1999 against a then estimated 70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners across China. The party-state media demonized, vilified and dehumanized them in a manner somewhat similar to that used by the government of Rwanda against its Tutsi community prior to the genocide there in April-July, 1994. Both nationals and some outside China were thus persuaded to think of the community as disruptive to social harmony and even somehow less than human.

Health in China

When observers understand the present state of public health across China as a consequence of three decades of ‘pollute anything’ capitalism for water, soil and air and the condition of the once-vaunted health care delivery system, they are better able to understand the context of our report. Consider only two of the observations made by journalists Joseph Hahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times this past summer: only one per cent of China’s city dwellers are breathing air considered safe by the European Union; last spring a World Bank study concluded that air pollution is causing premature deaths in the 750,000 persons range a year. The two also noted that many experts have concluded that China “…cannot go green without political change.”

On the health care delivery system, my primary source is The Coming China Wars by Peter Navarro, who has a PH.D in economics from Harvard, has published six other books and is a professor at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California. Navarro concludes that the health care system has collapsed: “…sick people are forced to pay for their health care upfront. Those lacking the means to pay are cast out of hospitals and left to die an often slow and painful death. A big part of the problem is the cost of medical insurance-$50 to $200 per year-in a country where the annual per-capita income for the vast majority of the population remains well below $1,000.”

With this melt-down of the health care systems, coupled with continued totalitarian governance, I think you can better understand the context for organ pillaging during the past six years. Between 1980 and 2004, the central government also cut funding for health care by more than a half. Doctors, hospitals and pharmacies were converted to “profit centres” and expected to finance their activities through patient fees.
New Organ Transplantation Policy

The Chinese Medical Association recently agreed with the World Medical Association that it will no longer take organs from executed prisoners, presumably including Falun Gong ones, even conceding that international pressure before next year’s Olympics in Beijing was the motivation. The CMA’s vice-chair, Chen Zhonghua, admitted: “China is worried that if it doesn’t take a stand on this some countries may use this issue as a pretext to boycott the Games.” Whatever the motivation, it is a step in a more human direction, although many of us would like to know if the pledge has any legal consequence. Will it bind military surgeons, who are doing many of the transplantation operations (we’re told that it doesn’t)? Will the new policy be abandoned for the huge profits to be made from organ pillaging once foreigners leave Beijing next August?

David Matas and I have spoken in various countries to some of the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners sent to forced labour camps since 1999, who managed to gain release from both the camps and China itself. They speak of working without pay in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily, making export products, ranging from chop sticks to garments to Christmas decorations for multinational companies from the West. This is corporate social responsibility?

“Naming and Shaming”

What can we all do to stop organ pillaging? Emails to MPs, friends and blogs will certainly keep the pressure on the party-state in Beijing. ‘Naming and shaming’ the regime with placards in front of its embassies and consulates ought to be effective in the months before next summer’s Olympic Games. As the world observed in the case of ‘Magnificent Mia’ Farrow’s comment about “the Genocide Olympics”, the Hu-Wen government in Beijing really listens when the success of its Games can be brought into issue. Let’s use ‘Bloody Harvest’ placards too. Let’s also support the Global Human Rights Torch relay when it continues to more than 100 cities on five continents. You can get more information about the relay at www.humanrightstorch.org.

Conclusion

The people of Ukraine and the nine other countries represented at this symposium do not need a Canadian to tell them what they lived through under the Communist genre of totalitarianism. Let me therefore close with a list of only some of the more glaring crimes and other failures of Communism in Europe:

* The abuse and much worse of tens of millions of innocent families during almost half a century.

* Continuous economic failure.

* The persecution of faith communities, little realizing that they would play a major role in its eventual downfall.

* Causing proud and hard-working farm producers to give up working their soil by forcing them into collectives, which seized both their land and animals.

* Criminalizing talk about representative democracy in order to protect incompetent, violent and otherwise criminal dictatorships.

* Communism twisted the noble concept of human equality into a shield for the special privileges of party officials, the nomenklatura.

* Communism removed all rights of workers’ unions, including the right to exist in any meaningful form and to bargain collectively, demonstrating that nowhere where it governs does it care about the rights of working people.

* It destroyed any concept of the rule of law and independent judges.

* It turned art and culture into a sterile propaganda, thereby forcing many artists and writers into exile.

The general conclusion for all of us wherever we live today seems clear: if human dignity is finally to become indivisible everywhere around the world, the remaining Communist and other authoritarian regimes must be replaced by governments of, by and for their peoples.

Thank you.

- Original speech from David kilgour’s website

Euros Childs + David Kilgour at the High Dive | Seattle

Euros Childs is kind of a mysterious guy, at least to me. There aren’t any photos of him on the sleeves of his records and his previous band Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci weren’t photographed very often either. Half of his songs, he sings in his native Welsh, so even the music has a mysterious quality to it. So when I found myself standing next to Euros at the High Dive I did a double take, he looked like somebody’s kid brother who sneaked in the back door at this 21+ show. Not very mysterious, but a very nice guy and someone capable of playing a killer show to mostly empty High Dive on Halloween night.

Euros is quite prolific of late, putting out two albums this year. The Welsh sung Bore Da came out back in March and the recently released English sung Miracle Inn just released last month. Euros was behind his giant keyboard accompanied by bass and drummer Peter Richardson who is himself another former Gorky (and Topper) . The songs came quick, one after another, and when his acoustic guitar wasn’t coming through the sound board, he quickly put it down and quickly moved on franticly to the next song. Most of his songs are keyboard based, and Euros can rock it on the Roland, at times reminding me of the energy of Jerry Lee Louis. Not that I ever saw Jerry Lee live mind you, but he certainly conjured up a manic energy that I imagine Jerry Lee had, especially on the rocker Henry a Matilda Supermarketsuper.

Another one of my favourites from the night comes from the new album, Miracle Inn.
mp3: Euros Childs – Over You

Not sure what it is about the Welsh and their habit of playing long songs live. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of hearing Gruff Rhys do his 15 minute Skylon! and tonight I had the pleasure of hearing Euros do the 15 minute title track to Miracle Inn. It’s not so much a single song but multiple ones under the guise of Miracle Inn, and the small appreciative crowd was totally into it.

Euros is touring with New Zealander and former Clean man David Kilgour. They are alternating nights as head liners and tonight Kilgour drew the short straw. Since the Clean he’s put out six solo albums, so he had a wealth of material to choose from, but he stuck mostly to his last three. I’m a huge fan of his album Sugar Mouth, and he’s understandably moved on since that 1994 pop masterpiece. Since it was Halloween night, he sported a black whig for the entire set and brought up Homer Simpson for one song. Kilgour seemed like he was in goofy mood, but the loud conversations of uninterested drinkers in the back of the bar seemed to take away any energy the band could muster. Despite that, he still sounded great with his distinctively laid back voice giving his pop songs a really shimmering quality. It was a real pleasure to see him in this rare (at least in America) live setting.

Though, he didn’t play it, No, No, No from Sugar Mouth is one of my favorite David Kilgour songs.
mp3: David Kilgour – No, No, No

by Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, David Matas and David Kilgour, and Human Rights Law Foundation, October 25, 2007-

An Open Letter Addressed to the World Medical Association

The recent agreement between the World Medical Association and the Chinese Medical Association (CMA) to end organ sourcing from prisoners in China except for prisoners donating organs to their immediate family members is welcome. We are pleased to see that the agreement covers all prisoners and not just prisoners sentenced to death. This broader terminology means that, in principle, the agreement encompasses also Falun Gong practitioners who are held in detention but sentenced to nothing. Yet it does not remove all our concerns.

A. The CMA is not a governmental entity. Its promise to avoid organ sourcing from prisoners indicates the good will of some Chinese medical doctors. However, it is not binding on the government. The CMA cannot make decisions for the government. The Government sets the rules for associations and not vice versa. The practice of sourcing organs from prisoners, whether prisoners sentenced to death or Falun Gong practitioners, was and is tolerated by the Chinese government. It is only the Chinese government that can stop this practice.

B. Even if it had been the Government of China, which had entered into the agreement instead of the CMA, it is questionable whether the agreement would be effective. The Chinese government has over time issued several laws and regulations prohibiting the selling of organs without the consent of the source. The very repetition of such laws is evidence that these laws are not effective.

The Chinese government has had a history of duplicity in this field. An example is the case of Dr. Wang Guoqi. On June 27, 2001, Dr. Wang Guoqi testified before the Subcommittee on International Operations, Organization, Democracy and Human Rights of the U.S. Congress, that organs for transplants are sourced from prisoners. The Chinese government called him a liar. This position was held until 2005, when for the first time Chinese officials admitted publicly that they indeed harvested organs from prisoners.

C. Liu Zhi, of the CMA’s international department, said that the agreement with the WMA has no legal effect. He expressed the hope that the agreement would influence China’s 500,000 doctors and government decisions. This statement, in our view, minimizes the effect the agreement might have.

At the very least, the CMA can insist that its own members comply with the terms of the agreement as a precondition for continued membership in their association. The fact that the CMA has not done this indicates a less than wholehearted support for the agreement.

D. The agreement does not address the issues of onus and standard of proof. In many cases in China, medical doctors are supplied an organ and told a source, but make no independent determination whether what they are told about the source is accurate or not.

In this regard, the Professional Code of Conduct of the Medical Council of Hong Kong is instructive. One principle is that, “if there is doubt” as to whether the consent is given freely or voluntarily by the organ donor, the profession should have nothing to do with the donation.

A second principle is that the onus is on the transplant professional to ascertain the status of the donor. The professional is not acting ethically as long as he or she makes no inquiries or only cursory ones. The transplant professional, after investigation, has to be satisfied beyond any doubt before participating in a transplant operation that consent was given freely or voluntarily by the donor.

The agreement with the CMA would not mean very much if CMA doctors could claim respect for the agreement simply by turning a blind eye to practices around them. The agreement needs to ensure that Chinese transplant professionals are respecting the substance of the agreement as well as its form.

E. There is no verification system in place to determine whether or not the agreement with the CMA is being kept. Such a verification system needs to be independent from the Government of China and the CMA itself. There has to be transparent documentation of the sources of organs used by CMA doctors in transplant operations. The CMA should make accessible to the World Medical Association and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as human rights lawyer’s organizations, transplantation numbers which involve CMA members, donor names, and the names of the immediate family members who may receive transplants from prisoners.

Regrettably, right now in China there is no publicly available information on numbers of convicts sentenced to death and executed. This information should be publicly available. That would, one would think, be a simple task, now that the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing must approve all death sentences. The CMA should ask the Government of China to make this information available.

F. In China, transplant surgery has become essential for financing the medical profession and hospitals. A dramatic decrease in transplant surgeries would impose a substantial financial burden on the health care system. Without an increase in Government funds to the health care system, it is unlikely that hospitals will cease relying on transplant surgery for funding. While sourcing of organs and payment for organs are conceptually distinct, they are linked in fact. The need for funds pushes doctors and hospitals to increasing transplant numbers and using historically available sources—prisoners.

The CMA agreement does not bind doctors who are not members of the CMA. In particular, it does not bind military doctors who are not members of the CMA or military hospitals. Yet, organ recipients recount that military doctors and hospitals are heavily involved in organ transplant surgery.

H. The agreement with the CMA does not change the Chinese infrastructure for organ transplants. China still does not have a public organ donation program. There is still no law allowing for organ sourcing from the brain dead but cardiac alive. According to Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu, ~95% of all organs for transplants come from prisoners. The implementation of the agreement with the CMA, in the absence of an organ donation system and a brain dead law, would mean that organs for transplantation in China would be almost non-existent, an unlikely result.

I. The mere fact that the recipient is an immediate family member of the prisoner does not automatically mean that the prisoner has freely consented to the donation. Our concern about this exception is heightened by the fact that people in China can be sentenced to death for a wide variety of economic and political crimes. We are aware that this exception is found in the World Medical Association’s Policy on Human Organ Donation and Transplantation. However, it is not to be found in the ethical principles of the Transplantation Society. In our view, the prohibition without exception, which the Transplantation Society has adopted, is preferable to the prohibition with the immediate family member exception, which the World Medical Association has adopted. The case of China highlights why this exception is problematic.

We note the statement of the former chair of the WMA, Dr Yoram Blachar, who led the WMA delegation to China, that differences between the two sides remained. We urge the WMA to continue to press the CMA on this issue until this appalling practice in China of killing prisoners for their organs ends entirely.

Sincerely,

Torsten Trey, MD
Chief Executive Director, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)

David Matas and David Kilgour, JD
Co-authors of the report Bloody Harvest

Theresa Chu, Carlos Iglesias, Terri Marsh, JD
Executive Directors
Human Rights Law Foundation (HRLF)

- Original letter from David Kilgour’s website

Excerpts from an address by Hon. David Kilgour, J.D, Speakers Series, St. Mary’s University College, Calgary, (Canada), September 27, 2007-

WHITHER THE PARTY-STATE IN CHINA ABROAD AND AT HOME?

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
Calgary, September 27, 2007

We Canadians respect and like the people of China for many reasons, including their courage, success with agriculture, culture, hard work and love of education. It is no accident that more than one million Canadians of origin in the Middle Kingdom are reportedly our most highly-educated cultural community. It was an honour to represent those of them living in southeast Edmonton in our national Parliament for about 27 years.

Our differences are with the unelected government of the PRC and its international and domestic policies and not with the human values of the vast majority of Chinese nationals. Paradoxically, it is the friends of the Hu-Wen government who are the China bashers today as they fail to differentiate that government from the real China. The Chinese deserve the right to elect their governments in fair and free elections.

Roles Abroad

Canadian and other media outside China have begun to focus on Beijing’s destructive roles in a number of countries. Thanks to books such as James Mann’s The China Fantasy, key components of the longtime consensus among many Fortune 500 executives, sinologists, politicians and diplomats are being ‘mugged by reality’.

Mann concludes that the party-state in China undermines human values abroad wherever it can get a foot in a door. In the case of Zimbabwe, for example, he reminds readers that it gave Robert Mugabe a honourary degree, economic aid and helicopter gunships despite heading a most brutal regime. For Uzbekistan, when President Karimov ordered a murderous crackdown on protesters, Beijing supported him.

With Russia, during the 1991 coup attempt by military and intelligence officials against Mikhail Gorbachev, China’s government-owned media gave extensive and positive coverage to the plotters, barely mentioning Boris Yeltsin or his democratic allies, and was disappointed when the coup attempt failed.

‘Bloody Burma’

Many Canadians are watching with horror the unfolding situation in Burma. The Nobel Peace laureate and democracy advocate Aun San Suu Kyi has reportedly now been thrown by the generals into prison after spending most of eighteen years under house arrest after she and her National League for Democracy won a fair and free election. Seven unarmed persons were killed last night; more than a hundred were injured; two hundred were arrested. Buddhist temples are being ransacked and monks beaten.

Permit me to focus briefly here only on the various attempts by the government of China to oppose the most recent effort by the peoples of Burma to achieve the rule of law, democracy and national reconciliation. Its efforts to shore up the generals’ junta have included:

Using its permanent veto at the UN Security Council to keep the ongoing Burma tragedy away from the Security Council agenda for more than 15 years. When it finally reached the Council last November, the China representative worked hard to remove it quickly, while providing no help to the long-suffering peoples of Burma;

In January, it vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on the generals to cease persecuting minorities and opposition leaders;

This week, it managed to prevent the Security Council from imposing sanctions of any kind on the junta or even condemning the use of force in Rangoon, allowing the Council only to express “concern”; and

Having its diplomatic envoy in Burma say after meeting the Foreign Minister there recently that Beijing wants “a democratic process that is appropriate for the country.” The current government of China clearly opposes democracy in any country.

As another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jody Williams, pointed out yesterday, Beijing’s longstanding support for the military junta includes modernizing their army and providing weapons valued at $1.4 billion. Its concern about what is happening in the country currently is really about how its role there might affect its Olympic Games.

In addition to the “Genocide Olympics” in respect of Darfur and the “Bloody Harvest Games” because of its treatment of Falun Gong practitioners, the world now has the “Burma Junta Olympics” to ponder in deciding if it really wants to attend those games. What else will arise between now and next August?

Darfur

The government of China’s interference at the Security Council in respect of Burma is similar to its ongoing efforts there in respect of shielding another military regime in Khartoum. The modus operendi is the same: feign concern about the ongoing loss of civilian lives out of real concern about possible negative fall-out for the Olympic Games, while ensuring that as little as possible is done to block the ambitions of two bloody regimes with which the government of China does much business and has much in common.

Over the past decade, the government of China has provided Sudan’s Bashir government with more than $US 10 billion in commercial and capital investment, mostly for oil investments, with crude oil comprising virtually all of Sudan’s exports and much of it going to China. Approximately seven percent of China’s oil imports currently come from Sudan. According to one source within Sudan, up to 70 percent of the Sudanese government’s revenues from oil are spent on arms, a good deal of them from China. Nick Kristof of the New York Times has reported that the government of China has built four small arms factories in Sudan.

A key service provided to Bashir’s government is using China’s permanent veto at the UN Security Council to protect the Sudanese regime from any robust peacemaking initiatives while the slaughter in Darfur continues. Only following Mia Farrow’s op-ed piece in March, 2007, which accused the government of China of assisting in genocide, did China’s UN representative join in the Security Council initiative to send 26,000 police and soldiers to Darfur.

The specifics of UN Security Council resolution 1769 passed this summer demonstrate how well Beijing continues to protect Khartoum: The hybrid UN/African Union force will have no authority to seize weapons from belligerents, thus probably making it impossible to control the Janjaweed and other militias that have been slaughtering African Darfurians; there is no provision for sanctioning the government in Khartoum in the probable event that it refuses to comply; the watered down command-and-control provisions will inevitably create problems between the African Union commander on the ground in Darfur and the UN Department of Peacekeeping in New York… (to be cont’d)

WHITHER THE PARTY-STATE IN CHINA ABROAD AND AT HOME? (cont’d)

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
Calgary, September 27, 2007

Oppression within China

According to Freedom House, fully half of the world’s populations living in “not free” conditions are in China. Free countries are defined by Freedom House as ones where “there is broad scope for open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civil life and independent media…Chinese citizens do not have the ability to democratically elect their leadership or to participate in any political activity outside what is prescribed by the Chinese government. Basic civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, religion and even personal autonomy are highly restricted.”

The same study notes that the government of the PRC imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the world over the past eight years. Only last year, Hu Junta’s government silenced the media with new regulations, which jailed outspoken writers and restricted coverage of breaking news. The media across China are now barred from criticizing senior party leaders or their policies, and ones who do not play along on party news content are harassed, fired or jailed. As someone noted, the only thing readers can believe in most dailies in China is the date.

The government of China spends huge sums of money and deploys tens of thousands of police to block citizen access to websites and in monitoring their emails. The foreign companies and consultants who assist them in building and maintaining this “Golden Shield” are violating many of the principles of free speech and corporate social responsibility.

The Chinese penal code currently prescribes capital punishment for 65 offences, including “undermining national unity”. The official number of executions in 2005 was 1770 persons- 81% of the known world total. It was probably much higher in number. One must, however, give credit to the government for directing in 2006 that all death penalty appeals must be heard in open court. I’ll come shortly to another kind of execution in China for Falun Gong prisoners of conscience-virtually none of which are ever convicted of any offence or go near any court.

Tibetan Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and practitioners of other religions face harassment and much worse. The religious freedom recognized in the constitution is given little heed in practice, with only party-managed spiritual groups being fully tolerated. In Tibet, for example, photos of the Dalai Lama can lead to imprisonment; only boys who sign declarations denouncing him can become monks. In Xinjiang, the predominant Muslim Uighur people have been severely persecuted on the pretext that some are terrorists.

Thousands of North Koreans have fled into China to escape food shortages, religious persecution and the terrible conditions of large forced labour camps. The government of China, however, forcibly repatriates such refugees, well-knowing that they face prison, torture and possible execution because it is a capital offence to flee the Hermit Kingdom. This violates a 1951 UN Convention and its 1967 Protocol that guarantees protection for refugees, both of which were signed by China.

Recently, I saw a photocopy of the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, done by the Canadian John Humphreys in 1946. The adopted version, also accepted by China, outlines each individual’s right to freedom of assembly, speech, thought and other rights. Until all the citizens of China enjoy these basic dignities, all thoughtful persons must continue to protest. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. said it best, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The number of public demonstrations by aggrieved Chinese citizens is growing. The public security ministry admits that that there were 87,000 “public order disturbances” in 2005, up from 74,000 in 2004 and 58,000 in 2003. Their major cause, as Freedom House notes, is the “confiscation of land without adequate compensation, often involving collusion between local government and developers…Environmental destruction as a direct result of rapid development has also been a source of mass protest.” I might add an obvious point here that China’s use of coal and other energy sources is highly inefficient: for every thousand units of energy, China produces only US$ .70 in additional GDP whereas Japan in contrast adds US$ 10.50.

Gao Zhisheng and family

There are many families who should be mentioned when individual cases arise concerning the dismal state of human dignity across China, but in view of Goa’s recent re-arrest in Beijing permit me to identify him and his wife as genuine national heroes. David Matas and I have nominated him for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize as a figure in the Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Vaclev Haval and Aung San Suu Kyi tradition.

Gao’s recently-published outside China, A China More Just, is as interesting as it is courageous. His parents were so poor that they lived in a cave in rural China. After his father died, Gao had to fend for himself from the age of fifteen. After serving in the army, he studied law by correspondence and managed to pass the practice examination. From the start, he donated part of his time to helping clients fighting injustices and was later named as one of China’s best lawyers. When, however, he attempted to defend a Falun Gong practitioner, the government closed down his office and swarms of police began to harass him, his wife and two children constantly.

In August 2006, Gao was arrested and he was eventually convicted of “subversion”, bringing a three-year sentence suspended for five years and a suspension of political rights for one year ( i.e. until after the Games are over next summer). Earlier this month, he released a statement (available at david-kilgour.com under ‘Gao solemnly denies all charges’) in which he explains why he signed a confession. Perhaps even more disturbing than what the police did to him to obtain it is what they did to his wife and two young children. On Sept. 22 nd, Gao released a statement to members of the American Congress (also available on the website.)

Falun Gong

Following an independent investigation, David Matas and I concluded to our horror that since the latter part of 2000 the government of China and its agencies have murdered thousands of Falun Gong practitioners across China without any form of prior trial and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries.

If any of you doubt the weight of the cumulative evidence in our report, you can access the revised version at david-kilgour.com. Most who have read are convinced of the dismaying validity of our conclusion. Some in national governments of varying political colours, who are no doubt privately persuaded, unfortunately choose to say otherwise in public because to concur that such crimes against humanity are continuing in China would presumably require some different bilateral policies with the party-state in Beijing.

None of these deaths would be occurring if the Chinese people as a whole enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the intrinsic worth and dignity of human beings. Most lives in China have no more value to those in power than does their natural environment, work safety, consumer protection, health care for farmers, or the lives of African residents in Darfur or Burmese nationals. In my judgement, it is the toxic and lethal combination of totalitarian governance and virtually ‘anything goes’ capitalism that allows this situation to continue across the Middle Kingdom today…

Conclusion

Challenging the government of China over its partnership roles in Sudan, Burma and elsewhere probably offers the best hope to save civilian lives internationally. The key task is to inform widely about the government of China’s actions.

What would happen, for example, if Canadians of varying ages and backgrounds were to demonstrate in front of the Chinese consulate in Calgary, declaring with banners and placards that the government in Beijing must be held accountable for its complicity in the Darfur genocide and violence in Burma? What if such demonstrations are continuous, and grow, and spread to China’s missions in other countries? What would happen if everywhere Chinese diplomats, politicians and business people travel they are confronted by those who insist on making it an occasion for highlighting China’s destructive roles internationally and at home? To succeed, the campaign must be creative and focused. It must take advantage of every means offered through electronic communications.

The general lack of effective advocacy initiatives has not been lost on Khartoum’s génocidaires. Despite the enormous and consequential successes of the American-led divestment campaign, pressure must be ratcheted up even more. Other Canadian and European companies should follow the lead of Germany’s Siemens and Switzerland’s ABB Ltd., who have both suspended operations in Sudan. Let’s demand the same thing for Burma? Why would the government of Alberta agree recently to sell blocks of oil sands land to a Chinese oil company with close links to the government? The task is daunting but fully achievable, given the moral passion and creative energies of the Darfur and other advocacy communities.

Finally, the last words of the preface from The New Chinese Empire ( 2003) by Ross Terrill of Harvard University, who has spent his life studying and writing about the country: “One day the Communist regime in Beijing will pass away, in part for the reasons Suharto fell, in part for the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed, and we should be prepared…for the dangers and opportunities of that moment. The War on Terrorism has sharpened the issue of democracy in world affairs. Ultimately, terrorism is the antithesis of freedom and accountability. In between lies dictatorship. The 21 st century seems likely to be less kind to dictatorship than was the 20th century.”

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D.
Calgary, September 27, 2007

- Original article from David Kilgour’s website

Notes for Address by Hon. David Kilgour, New South Wales Parliament Auditorium, Sydney, Australia, September 7, 2007, published on David Kilgour’s website-

APEC

ORGAN PILLAGING AND OLYMPIC GAMES

David Kilgour

David Matas and I of Canada concluded to our horror following an independent investigation that since the latter part of 2000 the government of China and its agencies have murdered thousands of Falun Gong practitioners across China without any form of prior trial and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money often to ‘organ tourists’ from wealthy countries, including APEC member countries. There is no indication that organ pillaging is on any agenda at the APEC heads of government and business meetings here this week.

If any of you doubt the weight of the cumulative evidence in our report, you can access the revised version in seventeen languages from the first item on the header page of david-kilgour.com. Virtually no independent person I know who has read it is not convinced of the dismaying validity of our conclusion. Some in national governments of varying political stripes, who are no doubt privately persuaded, unfortunately choose to say otherwise in public because to concur that such crimes against humanity are continuing in China would presumably require some different bilateral policies with the party-state in Beijing, quite possibly in respect of its Olympic Games in the summer of 2008.

None of these deaths would be occurring if the Chinese peoples as a whole enjoyed the rule of law and their government believed in the intrinsic worth and dignity of each one of them. Most human lives in China have no more value to those in power there than does the natural environment, pensions (only a fifth of workers have them), work safety, health care for farmers, or the lives of African residents in Darfur. In my judgement, it is the toxic and lethal combination of totalitarian governance and virtually ‘anything goes’ capitalism that allows this new form of evil to continue across the Middle Kingdom today.

One of the members of the Chinese delegation to the APEC conference now in this city is Commerce Minister Bo Xilai. Bo was governor of Lianong province when egregiously brutal tortures and murders of numerous Falun Gong practitioners took place. The Matas-Kilgour report quotes in appendix 18 a woman whose then surgeon husband removed the corneas from the eyes of approximately 2000 practitioners in a hospital in Bo’s province while he was governor. There are lawsuits proceeding against him in ten countries, including Canada, and I’m told that he is being served this week in Sydney for another begun in Australia.

The propaganda phase of the government of China’s war begun in mid-1999 against a then estimated 70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners demonized, vilified and dehumanized them in the state-controlled media. Many Chinese nationals and others outside China were thereby persuaded to think of the community as disruptive and tragically even somehow less than human.

As Ross Terrill of Harvard University’s Fairbank Centre for East Asian Research puts it in his thoughtful 2003 book, The New Chinese Empire: “The Fearful State in Beijing had transformed Falungong from a harmless, health-promoting lifestyle choice of millions of mostly older Chinese into a menace to the “stability and unity” of the Red Middle Kingdom. That loyal and quite senior members of the CCP, some in the army, police and air force, were among the Falungong membership did not undermine the imperative to stamp out a potential, if unwitting, philosophic challenge to the state.”

The phenomenon recalls the similarly inhuman media campaign unleashed by the government of Rwanda against the minority Tutsi community in that country prior to the genocide there between April and June, 1994

My own experience with Falun Gong practitioners in the almost forty countries David Matas and I have now visited, seeking to raise awareness about what is continues to be done to them in China in order to bring it to a full halt, has been overwhelmingly positive. They really do attempt to live their core principles of “truth, compassion and forbearance”, which are by the way shared by most of the world’s religions. I recall, for example, sitting in an Athens park a month ago with some of them when someone spotted a Euro coin on the ground. No-one would pick it up because the practitioners felt it was unearned and thus should be left where it was.

One wonders why is it that in only one of the seventy or so countries where practitioners live are they persecuted mercilessly by an unelected regime? Their huge and growing popularity among the Chinese people during the 1990s was clearly one reason, but another was no doubt that the values of those in power in Beijing are clearly at the opposite end of the ethical spectrum from their own.

There has been no independently-reported instance of a Falun Gong practitioner using violence to respond to police and other attacks by officials upon them since July, 1999. The UN Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Novak, concluded following his visit to China a year or so ago that fully two thirds of the persons being tortured across that country were Falun Gong practitioners. How can such a government be hosting next year’s Olympic Games?

Matas and I have spoken in various places to a small number of the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who have been sent to labour camps since 1999, who managed to leave both the camps and China itself. They worked in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay and little food, making export products, ranging from garments to chopsticks to Christmas decorations for multinational companies. As this constitutes gross corporate social irresponsibility; the CEOs of multinational companies using forced labour subcontractors within China should be held fully accountable.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote in Wealth of Nations that all business must rest on an ethical base and that all transactions must be fully voluntary. Where then is the basis for multinational companies in APEC member countries investing shareholders’ money in China today? What is the World Trade Organization (WTO) doing about such obvious violations of its rules by the government of China, contrary to solemn undertakings it made upon joining the WTO six years ago? How can multinationals subcontract for forced labour when only a little effort on their part would indicate that the prisoners of conscience manufacturing their consumer products have rarely been convicted of, or even charged with, any offence? Did we not recently celebrate the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery in countries like Britain?

Finally, for those who assert naively that they are not Falun Gong practitioners and thus have nothing to worry about in China, consider what Pastor Martin Niemoller said after his years in Hitler’s concentration camps ( I thank our courageous host here in this legislative building, Rev the Hon.Dr Gordon Moyes, MLC, for reminding me of this famous quote):

“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

“Naming and Shaming”

What can we all do to stop organ pillaging? E-mails to MPs, friends and blogs will help. Probably ‘naming and shaming’ the party-state in Beijing with placards in front of embassies, consulates and events attended by Chinese officials offer the best leverage in the months leading up to the Olympic Games next August. As the world saw in the case of Mia Farrow’s ‘Genocide Olympics’ comment about Darfur, the regime does listen when the success of its Games might be in jeopardy. Let’s use some ‘Bloody Harvest’ placards.

People of conscience should come out to support the Global Human Rights Torch relay when it comes to more than 100 cities in 35 countries on five continents. You can get more information on the web at www.humanrightstorch.org. Thank you.

- Original report from David-Kilgour.Com : ORGAN PILLAGING AND OLYMPIC GAMES