"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
October 10th is observed in Taiwan
as the National Day of the Republic of China. 2024 commemorates 113 years since the start of the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911 which
is known as the (10-10 or double ten) and the theme this year is "ABeautifulTaiwanToday. A Better Taiwan
Tomorrow."
This uprising led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China
following a 268 year reign and the establishment of the Republic of
China on January 1, 1912. Before this China had known imperial rule for 2,133 years beginning in 221 BC. The founding father of the Republic of China was Sun Yat-sen.
This Free China was driven out by the communists from the mainland in 1949, but has been maintained on the island of Taiwan, a beacon of freedom
for all Chinese. The Republic of China remains today a living national
symbol of what a free China would look like on the mainland. Below is
the footage of the 100th anniversary celebrations in 2011 in Tapei.
Therefore all friends of freedom in China can raise a toast to the Republic of China on its national day in praise of all their accomplishments over the past century and pray for the day that all of China is free.
14 years later, and the world has suffered over 5.6 million deaths due to COVID-19, and the Chinese Communist dictatorship of Xi Jinping bears responsibility. The Chinese government did not reveal for weeks what it knew about COVID-19, allowing it to spread into a worldwide pandemic. The Frontline Documentary "China's COVID Secrets" is required viewing to understand what happened.
#NoBeijing2022 has listed some of the other outrages committed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. "The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is set to happen amid one of the world’s worst crackdowns against freedom, democracy, and human rights."
At least TWO million Uyghur,
Kazakh, and Uzbek Muslims are detained in “re-education camps”
undergoing systematic torture, rape, and political re-education.
80% of Tibetan children – as young as 4 – are forced away from their parents and housed in China’s colonial boardingschools, cut off from their families they face intense political indoctrination.
In Hong Kong, the Chinese government has implemented a draconian National Security Bill that effectively criminalises protest and curtails any remaining human rights.
Protests by Southern Mongolians, whose rights, language and culture being eradicated, are put down with force
Detention & disappearance of countless Chinese lawyers, feminists & activists
Intimidation and geopolitical bullying of Taiwan and aggression and expansion across borders – in the South China Sea and India-Tibet border – present a clear threat to regional and global security.
A second Frontline Documentary from April 2020, "China Undercover" examined the systematic crackdown on Chinese Muslims.
Despite this the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) chose China once again to host the Olympics in 2022 in
the midst of the historic crimes of the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship.
As was the case in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics
friends of a free China need to increase scrutiny on the Chinese regime and boycott these Olympics. The consequences of the IOC legitimizing such a regime cannot be overstated. If you are in the Washington DC area on Thursday, February 3rd at 12 noon please join the #NoBeijing2022 Rally at Union Square 3rd Street SW.
On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the XIth Olympiad. Musical fanfares
directed by the famous composer Richard Strauss announced the dictator's
arrival to the largely German crowd. Hundreds of athletes in opening
day regalia marched into the stadium, team by team in alphabetical
order. Inaugurating a new Olympic ritual, a lone runner arrived bearing a
torch carried by relay from the site of the ancient Games in Olympia, Greece.
[...] Concerted propaganda
efforts continued well after the Olympics with the international
release in 1938 of "Olympia," the controversial documentary directed by
German film maker and Nazi sympathizer Leni Riefenstahl.
She was commissioned by the Nazi regime to produce this film about the
1936 Summer Games. Germany emerged victorious from the XIth Olympiad.
German athletes
captured the most medals, and German hospitality and organization won
the praises of visitors. Most newspaper accounts echoed the New York Times report
that the Games put Germans "back in the fold of nations," and even made
them "more human again." Some even found reason to hope that this
peaceable interlude would endure.
The 1936 Olympics whitewashed the brutality of the Nazi regime in
Germany and led to acceptance of Hitler's criminal regime. The 2008
Olympics whitewashed the brutality of the Communist regime in China
further legitimizing that criminal regime.
In 2022, returning the Olympics to China and making this decision in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the destruction of Hong Kong's democracy, threats against Taiwan, and the Uyghur genocide creates a historic moral hazard.
This is why I will not watch the Olympics, and encourage others to join me in this boycott, instead I will stand with Hong Kong, and Taiwan, share documentaries and films that reveal the facts of the genocidal regime in Beijing, and calls to nonviolent protests against the Chinese Communist dictatorship, and their enablers.
Below is a documentary about the 2019-2020 protests in Hong Kong titled "Do Not Split." Please share it with others.
On November 2, 2021 the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's memoir "1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows" came out. Over the years this blog has followed his career as a dissident artist, and his solidarity with Cuban prisoners of conscience. Most recently he wrote the entry for Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara in Time Magazine.
Penguin Books South Africa provided a video, along with the below transcript, of Ai Weiwei on why he wrote the book.
‘The idea for this book came to me during the eighty-one days I was held in secret detention by the Chinese government in 2011. During those long weeks, I thought often of my father, a poet who had been exiled during Mao Zedong’s Anti-Rightist Campaign. I realized how incomplete my understanding of him was and how much I regretted the unbridgeable gap between us. I did not want my son to suffer the same regret. I resolved that if I was released I would write down what I knew of my father and tell my son honestly who I am, what life is like, why freedom is so precious, and why autocracy fears art.’ - Ai Weiwei
Back in July 2021 Benedict Rogers of Hong Kong Watch interviewed the Chinese artist, who asked him about the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. They also discussed the situation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, his film about the 2019 protest movement, Cockroach (2020) and his memoir, '1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows'.
Although China and Cuba are geographically very far from each other, both nations are suffering the scourge of Communism, and this joins both peoples in the struggle for freedom. Ai Wei Wei's memoir is required reading.
100 years of an evil ideology metastasizing in the Middle Kingdom. #CCP100#100YearsofRepression
Students wave flags of the CCP before celebrations in Beijing to mark 100th
anniversary of its founding. Wang Zhao/AFP
China's Communist Party was actually founded on July 23, 1921 "by a mixture of Chinese and foreign revolutionaries in Shanghai" according to NPR, but twenty years later hiding out in caves from the Japanese they decided to rewrite history and declare that the founding of the Party was on July 1, 1921.
This is why today the communist dictatorship in China is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the political party that has created a totalitarian one party dictatorship that has caused the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese, and whose founder, Mao Zedong, is considered the greatest killer in human history, outdoing both Josef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler in body counts.
According to historian Frank Dikötter, author of the book Mao’s Great Famine, the Chinese dictator was "responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962." Mao was responsible for the deaths of as many as 70 million Chinese on his watch alone. Mao died in 1976, but the Chinese Communist Party continues its killing spree to the present day.
Estimates place the number of killed by Chinese Communists at over 70 million
On September 26, 1980 The New York Times ran a UPI story reporting
that "Chinese Reds Limited To a Child Per Family" and euphemistically
wrote "China intensified its population-control drive today by ordering
the 38 million Communist Party members to have only one child per
family" and how the policy would use "painstaking patience and
persuasion."
Time Magazine reported in 2015 that "patience and persuasion" included "forced abortions and sterilization, and a gender imbalance resulting from female infanticide." Tom Hilditch in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) in September of 1995 described it as a "A Holocaust of Little Girls." In 2015 reports emerged that the one-child policy was replaced with a two-child policy.
The Dying Roomsand Return to the Dying Rooms broadcast in 1995 and 1996 respectively
offered a variety of sources (human rights organizations, doctors who
had fled China armed with photographs) which corroborated the claims made in the documentary:
Producers/directors Brian Woods and Kate
Blewett uncover the systematic neglect of abandoned babies in Chinese
state-run orphanages. They find "dark rooms" where the weakest and least
liked children are left to die. These are known as "The Dying Rooms."
China’s one-child policy has created a race where most families desire
boys and therefore parents are forced to abandon their babies. Their
unfortunate and tragic lives are left at the mercy of these orphanages
where their sad fate is ultimately decided by the staff and ignored by
the government.
But the most damning evidence came from official records themselves that
document how many of the children in their care died, and how long
it took them to and they called it a "Summary Resolution."
In addition to systematic processes that have impacted millions, the communists would still carry out massacres when Chinese nationals engaged in sustained public dissent.
Thirty two years ago the Pro-Democracy Movement that had taken to the streets
in April of 1989 was violently crushed by the Chinese communist
dictatorship beginning on the evening of June 3, 1989. By dawn on June
4, 1989 scores of demonstrators had been shot and killed or run over and crushed by tanks of the so-called People's Liberation Army. A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that
"at least 10,000 people were killed. The Chinese Communist regime still defends committing this massacre.
Between June 3 and June 5, 1989 tank drivers ran over protesters
Think
of it, the biggest mass murderer of the Chinese people is the Chinese
Communist Party. 100 years of conspiracies, mass killings and repression while
building the perfect totalitarian cage. There is nothing to celebrate but much to mourn, and also to continue to fight for a free China.
Despite this history, Westerners decided to go into business with the Chinese Communist Party, and betrayed a free China, with many withdrawing their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan, a free and democratic republic where human rights are respected, and a free economy lifts all boats.
Flag of Taiwan
The island of Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule from 1895 until 1945, and during the Chinese Civil War, the forces of a free China (the Republic of China) relocated there in 1949. Over the next 72 years the Republic of China (ROC) established itself on the island and transitioned into a democratic multi-party democracy that is an example of what a free China could be on the mainland.
It is shocking that those in power did not think twice about enriching, and providing technical know how to a totalitarian dictatorship that has killed over 70 million of their own citizens, and do not respect human rights, or the rule of law. Now, with the aid of Western investments and technology they have intercontinental ballistic missiles and where do you think they are pointing?
It is even more shocking that after the Chinese communists demonstrated their continued outlaw status with the COVID-19 pandemic that Westerners consider this regime "a good place to invest." It is disappointing to see business magnates, like Elon Musk, " celebrate the "economic prosperity" in Communist China, without looking at the costs. Meanwhile a jewel of international capitalism, Hong Kong, is being dismantled by the dictatorship he praises.
Westerners claimed that engaging with communist China would lead to them becoming more like us, but instead the rest of the world has become more like them, and human rights have been in decline for nearly two decades globally as a result.
Time for people to wake up, before it is too late, that is if it is not already too late. Sorry Elon Musk, while communism reins in Mainland China, the only China that I will be visiting is a free China, and that today is Taiwan.
Quite the turnout for the rally for Uighurs/Tibet/Hong Kong outside the Chinese Embassy in London for the 100th anniversary of the CCP and the 24th anniversary of the HK Handover. It’s a sharp contrast from the somber day that Hong Kong had. pic.twitter.com/KiTsggePTN
Today is the final day of the Week of Prayer for the Church in China and the peoples of China that is being held from Sunday May 23rd until today, Sunday May 30th.
The GlobalPrayerforChina.org was created by an informal coalition of lay Christians from six continents who have joined together to facilitate a response to Cardinal Bo’s Global Call for Prayer for the Church and Peoples of China.
14
years ago, in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI published his letter to the
Church in the People’s Republic of China, and designated May 24th, the
Feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, a Worldwide Day of Prayer for the
Church in China. Cardinal Charles Bo extended it in 2021 to a week of
prayer.
This past week has been an opportunity to focus prayers on China, but also to observe events unfolding that are cause for great concern. The Center for a Free Cuba on Monday announced that it had joined in the Global Prayer for China.
Through these days of prayer, signs have also appeared on the consequences of bending the knee to the Chinese dictatorship. On May 24, 2021 two events occurred that demonstrate the increasing international power of the People's Republic of China and the negative consequences for not only the Chinese people, but the world at large.
On May 24, 2021 the actor and wrestler John Cena made an abject apology in Mandarin for having correctly identified Taiwan as a country. Communist China does not recognize Taiwan, a free and sovereign country with 23.57 million inhabitants living in a representative democracy.
Proof that physical strength does not equal moral courage: @JohnCena grovels in public apology to CCP after **correctly** referring to Taiwan as a country. https://t.co/MM6IfCaWNA
A more egregious action was revealed the same day when Taiwan's Foreign Minister and Health and Welfare Minister expressed their "deep displeasure at Taiwan’s exclusion from the virtual 74th World Health Assembly."
In a time of a global pandemic to play politics to exclude the participation of a country that early on successfully contained the outbreak, and today needs help with vaccinating their entire population is an outrage against global public health.
On May 26, 2021 the City of Vienna's Mayor, Dr.Michael Ludwig,gave the Ambassador of Communist China "the Great Gold Medal for Services to the State of Vienna" in a public ceremony.
It is a great shame for Vienna to honor Chinese Ambassador Li Xiaosi, because Li does not represent himself, but a government that opposes values that the people of Vienna cherish. The Chinese government responded to the COVID-19 epidemic by covering up its outbreak, cracking down on whistleblowers, falsifying casualty data, and misleading the world. Furthermore, the Chinese government has erected all kinds of barriers to prevent independent experts from investigating the origins of the coronavirus, placing all of humanity, including the people of Vienna, at risk for a future crisis. The Great Gold Medal for Services to the State of Vienna awarded to a representative of such a dictatorial government not only disregards the dignity of the direct victims of this repressive regime, but also insults the integrity of the people of Vienna. I hope this deplorable episode serves as a wake-up call to Vienna, Europe and the free world.
Finally on May 29, 2021 was dismayed to learn that after 31 years of nonviolent protests in Hong Kong to observe the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre that Hong Kong’s Security Bureau "warned Hongkongers not to take part in this year’s Tiananmen Massacre
vigil on June 4, or commemorative long-distance run this Sunday." If one promotes these acts of remembrance they are subject to a year in prison, and if they attend - they face a five year prison sentence.
For three decades, this event took place peacefully and lawfully, a moderate yet solemn expression of resistance and dissent. https://t.co/M2OpOIy2Bq
Today, on this final day of this Week of Prayer for the Church in China and the peoples of China I pray for the end of communism in China, and the freedom of the Chinese peoples from genocide and totalitarian rule.
"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and
petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace
of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)
"Of course, after this crisis, there will be thousands of theorists who
will try to describe precisely how and why it happened and how to
prevent it next time. But this will not be a sign that they have
understood the message that this crisis has provided." - Vaclav Havel, Forum 2000, 2010
Over the past 24 years, Forum 2000 has organized an annual gathering to
focus on pressing international issues. This year's Forum 2000
Conference theme “A New World Emerging? Restoring Responsibility
and Solidarity” will be a virtual conference held from October 12 - 14, 2020.
It coincides with the United Nations General Assembly voting several dictatorships with terrible human rights records onto the UN Human Rights Council, and takes place in the midst of a pandemic that was made worse by one of these candidates, the People's Republic of China that has been aided and abetted by the dictatorship in Havana.
Therefore it is no small coincidence that Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), will be opening the Forum 2000 Conference. The Conference kicks off on Monday, October 12, at 2 PM (CET). This is a courageous stand rooted in truth challenging a powerful dictatorship at a time of crisis. Communist China has threatened retaliation against the Czech Republic for their solidarity with Taiwan.
This act of defiance is very much in the spirit of the founders of Forum 2000. Forum 2000 is a joint initiative of the late Czech President Václav Havel, Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa, and the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel. In 1990 in his book, Disturbing the Peace, President Havel presented a definition of hope that is relevant to the moment the world is traversing today.
“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
This is why Forum 2000 will be taking place later today and pushing for the restoration of solidarity and responsibility in the world that is emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ten years ago at Forum 2000 Vaclav Havel spoke of the financial crisis that had shaken the international community, but his words were not heeded and unfortunately are even more relevant for today.
The former Czech president observed that "the crisis is a call to
humility. We should not take things for granted." This was true when he
said it in 2010, and even more so today in 2020.
"The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men." - Henry David Thoreau
This blog has stood in solidarity with and continues to be in solidarity with the aspirations of the peoples of Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, China, Southern Mongolia and Taiwan to live in freedom.
The forces of oppression have joined together to maintain their people subjugated and to spread their communist system of totalitarian oppression to the four corners of the world.
It was the Castro regime that led the charge in July 2020 at the UN Human Rights Council in favor of the security law that ends Hong Kong's space of freedom in the Peoples Republic of China.
Sadly, Chinese and Cuban people now share a common date to mourn victims of repression in their respective countries: July 13th.
On July 13, 1994 six miles off the coast from Havana, 37 men, women and children were massacred
by Cuban government agents who sank the tugboat they were on and used
high pressure hoses to drown them. On July 13, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo died of "multiple organ failure" while still under the custody of the Chinese communists.
The consequences of continued one party communist rule in China are being felt around the world today due to the COVID-19 pandemic that they initially covered up, and allowed to spread.
This is why now more than ever it is important to #ResistCCP and stand with democrats and human rights defenders in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, China, Southern Mongolia and Taiwan.
The Castro regime stabbed Hong Kong in the back on July 1st, but it should surprise no one.
Cuba diplomat introduces 53-country pro-CCP
resolution at UN Human Rights Council
On July 1, 2020 the Cuban dictatorship introduced a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council praising China for the passing of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Fifty three governments backed this resolution endorsing the death of a free Hong Kong.
The Chinese Communist Party in a secretive legislative process circumvented Hong Kong's sovereignty and imposed this new law a day earlier on June 30, 2020, the 23rd anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong. This action is a breach of the agreement made with the British. Professor Johannes Chan, a legal scholar at the University of Hong Kong in a BBC news report explained that "effectively, they are imposing the People's Republic of China's
criminal system onto the Hong Kong common law system, leaving them with
complete discretion to decide who should fall into which system." Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, in an interview with the BBC put it more succinctly, "It spells the death knell for Hong Kong."
However, this is consistent with Cuba's actions on the UN Human Rights Council over the years when they have been members. Below is a partial accounting of their defense of Communist China and its atrocities:
The Castro regime was
one of the few voices applauding the June 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre in China congratulating them for "defeating the counterrevolutionary acts."
The Castro regime has had a relationship with China that stretches back to 1959 and saw a close relationship in the first years of Cuba's Communist revolution, but cooled with the Sino-Chinese split in 1966. Ernesto "Che" Guevara left Cuba siding with Mao Zedong and Communist China, while Fidel and Raul Castro backed the Soviet Union. Relations between the Castro regime and Communist China warmed again with the cooling of relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev years. Cuba's defense of the Tinananmen Square massacre in 1989 was a key step to this new era of China-Cuba relations. Below is a presentation from earlier this year that explores this relationship in more detail.
However, the Cuban dictatorship's attack on human rights standards crosses ideological and geographical boundaries that extend far beyond China.
In the 1970s in addition to
supporting guerrillas and terrorists the Castro regime also began an unusual relationship with the military dictatorship in Argentina helping to block efforts
to condemn it at the United Nations Human Rights Commission for thousands of
leftists disappeared by the regime.
On April 15, 2004 when the United Nations Human Rights Commission
decided by a single vote to censure Cuba for its human rights record a
Cuban human rights defender Frank Calzon was physically attacked by
members of the Cuban diplomatic delegation. According to Freedom House:
"Witnesses said a Cuban delegate punched Mr. Calzon, knocking him
unconscious. UN guards reportedly protected him from further assault by
additional members of the Cuban delegation."
On March 28, 2008 the Castro
regime’s delegation together with the Organization of Islamic Congress (OIC) successfully passed resolutions undermining international freedom of expression standards at
the United Nations Human Rights Council.
“I
regret that in spite of its clear invitation, the Government of Cuba has not
allowed me to objectively assess the situation of torture and ill-treatment in
the country by collecting first-hand evidence from all available sources.”
On August 23, 2011 the Cuban
government along with China, Russia and Ecuador voted against investigating
gross and systematic human rights violations in Syria.
On June 1, 2012 at a Special
Session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria with a special
focus on
the massacre in El-Houleh the Cuban regime and its allies took a stand against holding the Assad regime accountable for its gross and systematic human
rights abuses.
On July 15, 2013: “Panama
captured North Korean-flagged ship from Cuba with undeclared military cargo.” On March 6, 2014 the United Nations released a report indicating that the Castro regime was in violation of international
sanctions placed on North Korea and had not cooperated with the investigation.
On March 17, 2014 the UN Human
Rights
Council “was divided” in its discussion of the
atrocities in North Korea between
those who want the case to be elevated
to the International Criminal Court and those who reject outright the
existence of a commission of inquiry and conclusions. The Castro regime vigorously defended the
North Korean regime and denounced the inquiry.
On March 28, 2014 at the
United Nations Human Rights Council a resolution for “The promotion and
protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests, tried to
safeguard this right” passed but with the narrow defeat of amendments that
would have watered it down led by South Africa with the backing of Algeria,
Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and
Venezuela. Out of that list of countries the one with the closest relationship
with South Africa is Cuba.
Prior to the Castro regime there had been a democratic order that instead of undermining international human rights standards, championed them and played an important role in the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Castro regime seeks to return to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2021-2023 term and their application is a mockery of the process and full of falsehoods. Cuba, under the Castros' has spun the yarn that they are the David to the United States' Goliath, but the reality is that they are the villain both on the international stage and domestically terrorizing and exploiting their own populace. If there is a country that best fits the definition of a David then it is Taiwan that for the past 70 years has faced off against the Goliath of Communist China. Betrayed by the Democratic West, they have managed to not only survive and endure, but thrive building a free society with rising living standards, and competent governance that is the envy of the world. If the international order were one based in freedom and human rights then Taiwan would be on the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Castro regime would be banned from this international human rights organization.
Thirty one years ago the Chinese Pro-Democracy Movement that had taken to the streets
in April of 1989 was violently crushed by the Chinese communist
dictatorship beginning on the evening of June 3, 1989. By dawn on June
4, 1989 scores of demonstrators had been shot and killed or run over and crushed by tanks of the so-called "People's Liberation Army." A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that
"at least 10,000 people were killed. The Chinese Communist regime still defends committing this massacre.
Mass hunger strike, Tiananmen Square 1989. Photo is by a friend who wants to share it anonymously. I first tweeted it last year. Now, on eve of 31st anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre, it's even more important to remember those days of peaceful protest, and those ideals. pic.twitter.com/J6nEFg12OB
The Chinese Communist regime still refuses to apologize for the June 3rd-4th, 1989 massacre when thousands were killed on the orders of the dictatorship.
As the virus continues 2 plague the wld, we once again observe the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. All should be reminded by the 2 tragedies 31 years apart of the lesson:the difference made by freedom is often that btw life & death. #TiananmenVigil@StateDept@StateDRLpic.twitter.com/JO00w1KDUu
For thirty years tens of thousands of citizens in Hong Kong would gather in June to remember and bear witness for the victims of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
"The class struggle
is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to
that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to
that task." - Vladimir Lenin (1920)
CCTV broadcast Xi Jinping's visit to Wuhan at a Beijing shopping center March 10.
The past couple of months should have been a wake up call on the international community's credulity regarding health data provided by communist regimes, such as China, and Cuba. It is now known that the first case was diagnosed on November 17, 2019 in Hubei, China.
China's focus from the start has been on its international image, and this includes censoring information that would have been useful to stopping the spread of the pandemic, but also helping coronavirus victims. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported on specific cases.
Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan who was reprimanded for warning
colleagues of a new coronavirus earlier this year, used the messaging
app WeChat to share his concerns on December 30, 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Be careful, our group chat can be suspended,” a contact responded, according to screenshots
purporting to show the private exchange. CPJ could not independently
verify the screenshots, which were widely cited in online discussions
and media reportsafter Li sickened and later died from the COVID-19 disease.
On March 7, 2020 a five-story Xinjia Hotel in China's Fujian province that had been converted into a "quarantine hotel" collapsed and killed 29 patients. China built what it called "two new coronavirus hospitals" in 12 days and used it as part of a propaganda campaign to promote its regime. Business Insider noted that
"Official data [which should also be questioned], however, shows that
the utility of the hospitals has yet to match the pace or spectacle of
their construction, with the facilities running at less than half their
projected 2,600 capacity."
Search for survivors in rubble of collapsed hotel in Quanzhou, in China's Fujian province, March 7th AFP
Now Communist China is trying to spin conspiracy theories to draw attention away from its own culpability in making a bad situation worse, continuing to disappear prominent Chinese voices that have criticized the regime's response, and with their Cuban and Venezuelan allies they are spinning a yarn of Cuban medicine saving thousands of Chinese lives with a pioneering treatment, but that in fact arose out of research surrounding SARS and MERS years ago patented by private firms. However that doesn't stop Venezuelan tyrant Nicolas Maduro and the propaganda organ teleSur from repeating the talking points.
It is in this upside down environment that Marion Smith of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has published an article in National Review titled "Why Do Global Medical Institutions Trust China?" in which he describes the role played by international organizations in the initial cover up of what now has become a pandemic.
"As the coronavirus spread from China across the world in January and February, the World Health Organization repeatedly praised Beijing’s efforts to contain it. The agency did so despite China’s censorship of medical professionals and evidence of undercounting deaths. As the second-largest donor to the United Nations, which oversees the WHO, China, it appears, has induced the agency to provide a veneer of legitimacy while it engages in cover-up, thereby worsening the global crisis."
Context must be provided to the unfolding global tragedy that began in China. The Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero observed in Oratio Pro Animo Milone XVI that "Maxima illecebra est peccandi impunitatis spes." (The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong.) Communist China has been able to act with impunity invading and occupying Tibet in 1950, killing tens of millions of Chinese in the Great Leap Forward (1958 - 62), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), crushing the Tiananmen Square protests (1989), and forced organ harvesting (2000 - present).
Chinese Tycoon Who Criticized Xi’s Response to Coronavirus Has Vanished https://t.co/A72RibZVw8
Looking the other way at the crimes visited on tens of millions of Chinese nationals is now threatening many more lives around the world following the coronavirus coverup and the active complicity of the World Health Organization. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was right "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
This is the same World Health Organization (WHO), who has a subsidiary, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), profiting of the trafficking of Cuban doctors in a questionable arrangement with Cuba's dictatorship.
The Castro regime, that also has a history of committing crimes and covering up epidemics with impunity is once again being given the benefit of the doubt with regards to its claims that it has been coronavirus free.
This despite the February 2020 announcement by the Castro regime that there is a shortage of soap and detergent in Cuba that will not be alleviated until April 2020 or later, due to decisions made by the central planning authorities. This means that Cubans will not have access to soap to wash their hands.
Secondly that tens of thousands of travelers from Europe, China, and other areas heavily impacted by the coronavirus have been entering Cuba throughout this outbreak. At least 147,900 Italian tourists and 49,781 Chinese tourists traveled to Cuba in 2018 and Cuba's military run tourism industry sought to double the number of Chinese tourists.
The claim that Cuba did not have coronavirus in larger numbers under these circumstances was highly unlikely, but then North Korea continues to claim that they have no cases of coronavirus, despite having a border with Communist China, and South Korea having 7,979 cases.
Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo forced public workers to march in a pro-govt rally today
In Nicaragua, where dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife, and first lady, Rosario Murillo carried out a mass march titled, "Amor en tiempos del Covid-19" (Love in the time of Covid-19), and mandated that public workers attend on Saturday, March 14, 2020. This was done against recommendations of the World Health Organization.
Poster calling for walks in midst of coronavirus threat in Nicaragua.
Unlike their North Korean and Nicaraguan counterparts, the Castro regime recognized reality to a certain extent. Three days ago the Cuban government reached a point where they had to acknowledge that the situation had changed and that Cubans were finally being impacted by coronavirus, after denying its presence for weeks.
Reuters reported the Cuban dictatorship's official press on March 11, 2020 that "four Italian tourists who were staying at a hostel in the southern town of Trinidad after arriving at Havana airport on Monday had presented respiratory symptoms and were taken to a hospital on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the hospital confirmed that three of the tourists had tested positive for the coronavirus, the broadcaster said."
It is important to note that Panama's Ministry of Health, a day earlier, on March 10th had reported that two Panamanians, ages 55 and 29 who visited Cuba had tested positive for the coronavirus when they returned home.
Despite this, the Cuban dictatorship's military run tourism industry continues to pitch Cuba as a travel destination and posted a tweet on March 13, 2020 at 11:01am claiming that Coronavirus does not replicate at high temperatures and that the island is now 29-32 degrees Celsius. Havanatour is owned and run by the Cuban military.
However even non-Cuban tour operators, in the past, have demonstrated a callous indifference for the lives of their clients. In September 2017 when Hurricane Irma, a deadly category five storm with 180 mile per hour winds was bearing down on Cuba and a hurricane watch already issued, tourists were still being flown into the island by British and Canadian travel agencies.The British travel agency "Thomas Cook defended itself saying the company followed the Cuban government's emergency instructions to the letter," BBC News reported.
Cayo Coco suffered the full impact of Hurricane Irma and was destroyed by the storm. They were flying tourists into Cuba to Cayo Coco a day prior to the storm's arrival, as reported by The Independent (United Kingdom).CBC News (Toronto) reported that Canadian tour operator Sunwing had elderly tourists flying into Cuba 24 hours before the Hurricane smashed into Cuba, forcing them to flee for their lives.
Needless to say, the Cuba's dictatorship has a no money back policy.
Meanwhile, the Castro regime sought to shut down a markets in Villa Clara, where merchants would sell products not available in government stores, leading to a large scale demonstration for communist Cuba with protesters shouting, “We want commerce! We want a solution! We want answers! We are not delinquents!” Rumors are circulating that they were going to shut them down to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Returning to the issue of data and statistics, but shifting from health data to educational data. USA Today has published an important article on the literacy rates in Cuba pre-1959 and post-1959 that is a must read, but would also recommend reading Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago's essay on the subject.
Observing these lies that have been bought into by many who should know better, and many others who just absorbed it without critical thought. Theodore Dalrymple gave an analysis of the purpose of communist propaganda that, although terrible, is sadly too optimistic, but there is much truth to it for those already living under communism.
“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Flagg Taylor in his 2015 essay in National Review, "What’s New in the New Political Correctness?" responded to Dalrymple's view, "My one quibble with Mr. Dalrymple is that communist propaganda’s purpose
surely went beyond humiliation—it attempted to disrupt the link between
people’s inner thoughts and reality—to erase the distinction between
true and false." Both Taylor and Dalrymple ignore communist morality, which would give a better understanding of how communist propaganda operates.Vladimir Lenin stated the primary element of communist morality clearly in a speech to Russian communist youth on October 2, 1920.
"The class struggle
is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to
that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to
that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old
exploiting society and to unite all the working people around
the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society."
This is why Fidel Castro
denied being a communist, why Hugo Chavez called Fidel Castro a
dictator during his first presidential campaign, and why Senator Sanders
claims to be critical of Cuba and Nicaragua, when he has been a long time apologist, and was resistant to calling Venezuela a dictatorship.
This denial of objective reality, truth and an ability to systematically lie to achieve is sometimes effective in taking over a country and imposing a totalitarian dictatorship, but is a total disaster when dealing with infectious diseases, and an outbreak such as the coronavirus.
On the other hand, democracies such as South Korea, and Taiwan (despite being diplomatically isolated by communist China) have successfully contained the spread of the disease and are exemplars that are the antithesis of the communist model.
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