We all saw the man in 1989 stop the tank at Tiananmen Square. Now comes another image which in its own right is just as threatening to the communist rulers of China. On Sept. 12 while under house arrest, Beijing attorney Gao Zhisheng, wielding the power of the pen, writes a 16-page letter addressed to the United States Congress, which lays bare the moral depravity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Gao writes with the steady hand of a Thomas Jefferson, and like the author of the Declaration of Independence, makes his case in moral terms. As Jefferson listed the misdeeds of our British rulers “to a candid world,” so Gao likewise lists the abuses, beginning with his own life and family.
“…. In the past two years, the Chinese communist regime has demonstrated every vile act one can and cannot imagine during their efforts to silence me. As if to prove their determination to destroy human feelings and conscience at all costs, the regime ordered at least four secret police to maintain continuous, intimate man-to-man surveillance on my 3-year-old son. My 12-year-old daughter was ‘privileged’ to an even higher level of treatment with six to ten male and female secret police at her heels day and night, month after month, even when she was in the classroom. All my family members have been followed around by secret police and have been illegally detained many times. During this period, my wife and children suffered repeated brutal assaults.”
China not only does not respect human life and freedom, but it seeks legitimacy as Hitler did with the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
“Under the name of securing the success of the Olympic Games, all kinds of evils have been committed in broad daylight, including forced eviction, illegal arrests and persecution of people who petition to the authorities, and suppression of religious people. It is plain as day to all Chinese people that, with success in hosting the Olympic Games, the communist regime is trying….to prove to Chinese people that the world is still acknowledging the Party as a legal government despite all the tyranny and all the horrible crimes against humanity the Party has committed during the past decades at the cost of at least 80 million Chinese lives.” Toeing the Party line, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge gives a deaf ear to the human rights disaster in China and says we should not “politicize” the Olympics. Gao runs a bulldozer through that argument.
“…I am not willing to rebuke Mr. Rogge for the dereliction of his duty to defend the ethical values of the Olympics. But it is necessary to remind Mr. Rogge that the Chinese communist regime treated the application and hosting of the Olympic Games exactly as an important political task. Everything related to the Olympics is regarded as a political issue. Liu Qi, China’s key person in charge of these Olympics, himself said that it is a ’supreme political task' to ensure that every need of the Olympic Games is met. This is a simple and commonly recognized fact in China.”
Gao says that the human rights community cannot support an Olympic Games that is used as a political tool.
“…when I remember the social environment of China, and how the Olympic Games will be used here, my conscience and sense of justice make my heart ache. As you know, today in China those who connect the Olympics with human rights are immediately hunted down by the communist regime and its gang as ’the enemy of the state,‘ ’the sinner of the people,’ and ’the destroyer of social harmony'.”
From the “Bloody Olympics”, Gao transitions to the “Bloody Religious Persecution.” Topping the list of persecuted people are the Falun Gong practitioners. Gao, the Christian, sees what the rest of us know but won’t acknowledge because the truth would mean we would have to change our policies towards China.
“The bloody persecution of Falun Gong starting from 1999 has surpassed all evils ever done…Millions were illegally detained in the countless brainwashing camps established in every corner in China by the notorious 610 Office, an agency founded to lead the persecution of Falun Gong. …The eight-year long suppression of Falun Gong is so far the most long-lasting and the most serious human disaster in China and in the world.”
The main body of the letter enumerates the crimes the CCP perpetrates against the Chinese people, tight control on what is allowed to be printed, Internet police, brain washing centers, slave labor camps, electric shock torture, property stealing, environmental degradation, and a dysfunctional legal system.
Gao warns us of another kind of contamination besides the tainted food and toys—“global moral corruption.” He asks, “Does today’s society have the courage and conscience to stand up against the genocide?”
Upon the release of his letter to the U.S. Congress Gao Zhisheng was arrested and has not been heard from since.
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