In the run-up to the World Expo opening in Shanghai this week, the Chinese authorities have engaged in a sweeping crackdown against local residents known to practice Falun Gong.
The Falun Dafa Information Center marked the release of its 2010 Annual Report on Monday with a press conference and panel discussion at the U.S. Capitol Building.
On Monday, April 26, the Falun Dafa Information Center will release its 2010 Annual Report followed by a panel of scholars, human rights experts and victims discussing the findings and what Falun Gong’s experience of persecution and activism can provide towards better understanding China’s present and future.
If you have colleagues, friends or classmates from Mainland China, there’s a chance they have told you no students died in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or perhaps that repression in Tibet is a lie cooked up by the Western journalists, and that the Dalai Lama is an insidious terrorist. And you may have reeled in awe at how otherwise intelligent people living in a land where information flows freely could be so tragically misled.
An elderly man is surrounded by an angry crowd, who chant “traitor” in unison and denounce him as a political enemy. He is accused of betraying the motherland, and for his alleged crime, he is punched, strangled, and spat on in a scene of public humiliation, as communist red flags wave in the background. It’s a scene reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution that wreaked chaos in China in the 60s and 70s. Yet this scene did not take place in China, nor in decades past. This occurred just weeks ago, in one of the most diverse and progressive places in the world – New York City.
AP: CHINA CRITICS SAY CRACKDOWN REACHES U.S. FINANCIAL TIMES: INTERNET GIANTS GRILLED ON CHINA POLICIES FORBES: CRACKS IN THE WALL BUSINESSWEEK: OUTRUNNING CHINA’S WEB COPS WSJ: CHINESE INTERNET CENSORS FACE ‘HACKTIVISTS’ IN U.S.