.png)
Canadians David Kilgour (R) and David Matas. (The Epoch Times)
Canadians should remain fully engaged with China despite the difficulties created by its governance model. Democracy with very Chinese features is probably closer than many think. How many “experts” anticipated the Arab Spring?
We shouldn’t forget in this engagement that the values we represent are both Canadian and universal ones, including human dignity, rule of law, multi-party democracy, corporate social responsibility, and the need for access by people everywhere to good jobs.
You have just heard David Matas outline the persecution underway since mid-1999 against China’s peaceful Falun Gong community. Organ pillaging is a new crime against humanity and is completely contrary to the traditional values of the Chinese.
I’ll now attempt to show how Mao Zedong’s’s value system, maintained today by the Communist party, made this continuing barbarism possible.
Many historians include him with Stalin and Hitler as the three worst mass murderers of the 20th century. Jung Chang and Jon Holliday note in their biography, “Mao, The Unknown Story,” “In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule in peacetime.”
Mao Practices Continue
The worst of Mao’s assaults upon fellow citizens is detailed in Yang Jisheng’s 2008 book, “Tombstone.” It documents the death by starvation of 25-40 million Chinese from 1959-1961.
Practices of the “Great Helmsman” continue. In 2003, for example, the Party sought to hide the impact of the deadly SARS virus, which began in southern China and spread to its major cities. Only when a surgeon, Jiang Yanyong, sent to foreign media the actual numbers of Beijing residents struck by SARS did it launch quarantine measures.
Similar indifference to the public good recurred in 2008 over the Sanlu dairy tainted milk scandal, which caused sickness or death to some 300,000 Chinese babies. Zhao Huibin, a dairy farmer, revealed that quality testers at Sanlu took bribes from farmers and milk dealers in exchange for “looking the other way” on milk adulterated with melamine.
Arthur Kroeber of the Beijing-based consultancy Dragonomics, later stated that the Sanlu disaster was rooted in the Party’s continued involvement in pricing control, company management, and flow of information. “(It) views control of all three as necessary to its rule. … Further scandals are thus inevitable.”
Tibet and Dalai Lama
Another instance of Mao governance tactics persisting is Tibet and the Dalai Lama. In 1959, Mao wrote about the uprising, caused in part by the famine created by his Great Leap Forward.
Quoting again from “Mao, The Unknown Story”: “When word spread … that Mao planned to kidnap the … young Dalai Lama, thousands of Tibetans passed in front of his palace, shouting, ‘Chinese get out.’ Mao cabled that the Dalai Lama should be allowed to escape because he feared that his death would inflame world opinion. … Once the Dalai Lama had escaped, Mao told his men: ‘Do all you can to hold the enemies in Lhasa … so … we can surround them and wipe them out.’’’
An estimated half of all adult Tibetan males were thrown into prison, where they were basically worked to death.
Today, the Party continues to accuse the Dalai Lama of fomenting violence in Tibet. In fact, as the spiritual leader of Tibetans, an honourary Canadian citizen, and respected world leader, His Holiness is Beijing’s best chance for a peaceful resolution of the Tibet issue. Advocating Tibetan autonomy under Chinese rule, he disavows violence, does not favour secession, and last year gave up his political leadership of Tibetans in exile.
Suppression of Dissent
The party-state still uses overwhelming force to suppress voices advocating dignity for all and the rule of law. One is Gao Zhisheng, a twice Nobel Peace Prize-nominated lawyer. A decade ago, he was named one of China’s top 10 lawyers. Party wrath was released, however, when Gao defended Falun Gong practitioners.
It began with the removal of his permit to practise law, an attempt on his life, a police attack on his family, and a cessation of any income. It intensified when Gao responded in the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi by launching nationwide hunger strikes calling for equal dignity for all nationals. One of his communiques described more than 50 days of torture in prison.
Trials in China are mere theatres. The deciding “judges” usually don’t even hear evidence given in “courts.” Canadian Clive Ansley, who practised law in Shanghai for 13 years, explains:
“There is a … saying amongst Chinese lawyers and judges who truly believe in the Rule of Law …(which) illustrates the futility of attempting to ‘assist China in improving its legal system’ by training judges. It is: ‘Those who hear the case do not make the judgment; those who make the judgment have not heard the case’ … Nothing which has transpired in the ‘courtroom’ has any impact on the ‘judgment.’”
Next … Religious Persecution
