[guest post by Dana]
Good morning from the President of the United States:
Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2019
Trump tweeted his congratulations just hours after a a young freedom fighter in Hong Kong was shot by authorities with live ammunition:
Hong Kong police have shot a protester with live ammunition for the first time in four months of demonstrations, marking a major escalation in the use of force on a day when China celebrated 70 years of Communist party rule with a triumphalist military parade.
Protests called to mark a “national day of grief” drew tens of thousands of people on to the city’s streets, across six areas, in the most widespread show yet of public anger towards Beijing.
Some gathered in central Hong Kong, while others met up across the harbour in Kowloon or the New Territories beyond. Initially peaceful, the demonstrations turned into running battles. Authorities shut down nearly half the city’s metro stations in an attempt to contain the violence.
Police in full riot gear used water cannons and barrages of teargas, while protesters threw molotov cocktails, built barricades, attacked metro stations and set fires in the street.
The scenes, though extremely violent, did not mark a departure from previous protests until mid-afternoon, when a policeman drew his gun and fired a bullet into an 18 year-old high school student’s chest in Tsuen Wan district.
Images shared by local media showed the protester lying on the ground begging for help as he bled from his injury. “Send me to hospital, my chest is hurting. I need to go to hospital,” he said.
Anchee Min was born in Shanghai, and was nine years old when the Cultural Revolution began: As a child, she was a member of the Little Red Guards and was made to report her favourite teacher, who was an anti-Maoist, to the authorities, and when Min was 17, she was sent to a collective farm… where she endured horrific conditions and worked 18-hour days. Min would later be chosen by party officials from the Shanghai Movie Studios to play Mao’s wife in propaganda films, which eventually provided an opportunity to flee China, and make her way to the U.S. She tells her painful, yet victorious story in her haunting memoir, Red Azalea. During an interview a number of years ago, Min talked about surviving the religion of Mao:
I was taught to write, “I love you, Chairman Mao” before I was taught to write my own name. I never thought I belonged to myself. It was never “I love you, Papa” not “I love you, Mama.” It’s always “I love you, Communist Party of China,” “I love you, Chairman Mao.” What I want to say is that Mao was our religion.
[…]
“When I was seventeen, life changed to a different world. The school’s vice principal had a talk with me after his talks with many others. He told me that he wanted to remind me that I was a student leader, a model to the graduates. The policy was there, as strict as math equations. He told me that I belonged to one category, the category of becoming a peasant. He said it was an unalterable decision. The policy from Beijing was a holy instruction. It was universally accepted. It was incumbent upon me to obey.”
[…]
We were taught if you can sacrifice your loved ones, if you can denounce your parents, if you can denounce your favorite teacher, you are capable of greater love for the humanity. Because the smaller love you feel this person, if this person is proven to be American spy, and your parents is proven to be the enemy of our society, and then it’s always like good battles the evil and we want the good to win. It’s such a grand disguise and things got messed up. And in the meantime, as the executor of such greatness, I didn’t feel good. I was crying when I was denouncing my favorite teacher. It was tearing myself apart.
On coming to America:
You asked me how I changed. I think coming to America plays a big part. If I were in China, I would die in confusion because this problem that’s the mental knot. I couldn’t unknot it, and I couldn’t do anything about it. And I was too close, I didn’t have a perspective, couldn’t see. So coming to America, I think, what the moments that struck me was that, you know, my daughter was in the nursery school. First thing she was taught was love…And also the incredible moment I share with other immigrants and the day that we accepted as American citizens in the big hall in LA with 40,000 people, which is so ridiculous. You know, it was like we’re all prepared, you know, different languages, struggle, try to get the English right. When the music comes on, “Oh, say” — we all couldn’t finish the first sentence, just broke down crying. And we laugh, smiling and crying and looking at each other. We know what it’s like to be American. It was to be allowed to be human, to be ourselves.
This week, there was a report that organ harvesting of persecuted religious and ethnic minorities was taking place in China. Specifically, the Uigher Muslims and Falun Gong members:
The China Tribunal, a group that’s investigating the organ harvesting, said at a tense meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council that the Chinese government was taking hearts, kidneys, lungs, and skin from groups including Uighur Muslims and members of the Falun Gong religious group.
The China Tribunal describes itself as an “independent, international people’s tribunal, and was backed by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, an Australian human rights charity made up of lawyers, academics, and medical professionals.
China has denied carrying out mass harvesting of organs in any circumstance.
Addressing UN representatives, a lawyer for the China Tribunal, Hamid Sabi, said the group had proof of the organ harvesting.
Sabi said the group had found that China was committing “crimes against humanity” by harvesting organs from religious minorities like the Uighurs and members of Falun Gong, which has been banned and widely persecuted by the Chinese government.
UN experts and activists say at least 1 million ethnic Uighurs, and members of other largely Muslim minority groups, have been detained in camps in the vast western [Xinjiang] province.
Beijing describes the camps as vocational training centres to help stamp out religious extremism and teach new work skills.
Although a senior official claims that the majority of detainees have been released from the camps and “returned to society,” the U.S. State Dept. says there has been no such evidence to support this assertion.
Moreover, this claim contradicts what Uigher family members are saying:
Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s Asia regional director, said the claims were “deceptive and unverifiable”.
“We have received no reports about large-scale releases,” he said. “In fact, families and friends of people who are being detained tell us they are still not able to contact them.”
And to this ruling party, President Trump, on behalf of the United States of America, offered congratulations.
–Dana