Vice President of the European Parliament: A Closer Look into China
A speech by Edward McMillan-Scott
The Epoch Times
Dec 06, 2006

Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice President of the European Parliament, gave a
Keynote Speech titled "A Closer Look into China" at New York Summit
Forum at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on November 10. (Peter Wei/The Epoch
Times)

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In a New York Summit Forum held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Nov. 10,
"China's Global Strategy and Inner Crisis," western leaders and veteran
China watchers discussed the mass movement of tens of millions of
Chinese to quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which has emerged as
the largest internal crisis facing the Chinese regime.

The forum was organized by The Future China Forum , The SecretChina News
), and co-organized by The Epoch Times, the Wei Jingsheng Foundation,
Sound-of-Hope Radio Network, New Tang Dynasty TV, and The Beijing Spring
Magazine. Invited speakers included European Parliament Vice-President
Edward McMillan-Scott, China human rights advocate Wei Jingsheng, New
York State Assemblyman Michael Benjamin, and The Epoch Times'
Editor-in-Chief Guo Jun.

Also joining via an Internet-linkup was Professor Jia Jia, the former
Secretary General of the Science and Technology Experts Association of
Shanxi, China. Jia is currently in Taiwan. After defecting on October 23
in Taiwan from the Chinese regime, Jia traveled to Thailand. When his
temporary refugee status was about to expire, he returned to Taiwan,
where he hopes to find a nation that will offer him political asylum.

Attendees of Forum, Part I: Professor Sen Nieh, President, The Epoch
Times, Washington D.C. (1st on left), Mr. Tony Dai, Vice President of
the Secret China News (2nd on left), Vice President of European
Parliament Edward McMillan-Scott (standing at middle), Mr. John Nania,
Editor-in-Chief of the English Epoch Times (2nd on right), Dr. Dayong
Li, Co-founder and Board Director of the Future China Forum (1st on
right). (The Epoch Times)

Introduction of Mr. Edward McMillan-Scott:
by Prof. Sen Nieh, President of the Epoch Times, Washington, D.C.

It is my great honor to introduce to you today one of the most respected
world leaders, Honorable Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice President of the
European Parliament.

Mr. McMillan-Scott has been a British politician for the Yorkshire and
Humber region for the Conservative Party and a Member of the European
Parliament since 1984. He served as the Leader of Conservative Party in
the European Parliament from 1997 to 2001, a Member of its Board, and
the Shadow Cabinet Europe Committee. He was elected a Vice President of
the European Parliament in July 2004.

He is the founder of the "European Initiative for Democracy and Human
Rights," which has spent ?80M to ?140M each year since the fall of the
Berlin Wall for developing democracy and civil society in the ex-Soviet
Communist regime, Islamic countries, and the rest of the world. Several
thousand projects have been financed in the past two decades, from
grass-root activities to pan-European programs; he is currently
reviewing the budget for the 2007 to 2013 period.

He is also a founding member of the International Movement of
Parliamentarians for Democracy. He has been named many times by the
media for his outstanding leadership in promoting freedom and democracy,
and was regarded as "Mr. Democracy" in the European Parliament.

Six months ago on May 21 in a hotel room in Beijing, McMillan-Scott met
with Mr. Niu Jinping and Mr. Cao Dong, who had served time in prison for
their belief in Falun Gong. They were guilty of no crime. Following this
meeting, Mr. Cao Dong was arrested and he has not been seen since.
McMillan-Scott later discussed this with the leading Beijing human
rights attorney Gao Zhisheng, who has now also been arrested.

McMillan-Scott has been meeting with key individuals at the United
Nations in the last two days. In this Forum, he will share his
experiences and observations in China, and his understanding and
assessment of China's global role as the 2008 Olympics approaches. His
topic of the Keynote Speech today is "A Closer Look into China." Let's
put our hands together to welcome this great friend of yours and mine,
Honorable Edward McMillan-Scott.

Attendees of the forum, Part II: Ms. Annette Guo, Editor-in-Chief, The
Epoch Times (1st on left), Mr. Jingsheng Wei, renowned China human
rights advocate (2nd on left), Mr. John Nania, Editor-in-Chief of The
English Epoch Times (standing at middle), Hon. Edward McMillan-Scott,
Vice President of the European Union (2nd on right), and Hon. Michael
Benjamin, New York State Assemblyman (1st on right). (Peter Wei/The
Epoch Times)

Transcript of Mr. McMillan-Scott's Speech on 11/10/06 NY Forum:

Thank you Sen, very much indeed, and thank you to the other introductory
speakers. I was with Tony a few weeks ago in Australia, and I was
delighted to meet John Nania yesterday in New York.

Perhaps I should explain my own position in relation to China and its
future and religious freedom. I'm a Conservative member of the European
Parliament, I was elected in 1984, and I set up in 1992 the European
Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights, which is a program aimed
originally at transforming the ex-Soviet bloc. And in 1996, I was
appointed by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee as the
Rapporteur, that's to say, the coordinator of an opinion, on EU-China
relations.

At that time, the EU and China sought to establish a full relationship,
which was primarily concerned with trade, but also looked at human
rights, and established a human rights dialogue. I visited China on a
number of occasions, and wrote a very critical report of the state of
human rights in China, and the complete absence of political freedom. I
was concerned, at that time, about rights, in particular religious
beliefs. And so, that's the personal background.

Only one other remark: My previous contact with China was absolutely
zero. My uncle was killed by the Chinese in Korea, and he has no known
grave, and for six months his family knew nothing of his fate. But that
is entirely typical of the absence of concern about individuals that
characterizes the Communist regime in China, which has been in existence
since I was born in August 1949.

A few months ago earlier this year, the nature of relationships between
civilized countries and China suffered something of a shock. We had all
been aware, those of us who deal in human rights and democracy and
religious freedom, of the crackdown by the Chinese regime of the Falun
Gong practice in China dated from the 10th of July, 1999, and the very
brutal repression, which the practitioners had suffered. But a new
dimension began in March of this year, when reports of organ harvesting
began to emerge here in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
And since I am currently preparing a review of the programs on democracy
and human rights I set up in 1992, I was very pleased to take the
opportunity of a visit to Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: a fact-finding
visit in May that Sen has referred to, since it offered me an
opportunity first-hand to look into these allegations.

I arrived in Beijing in May, and immediately went with a Falun Gong
practitioner who had helped arrange a meeting to a hotel nearby. And in
that hotel, in a bedroom, I met two former prisoners of the regime.

Niu Jingping is in his 50s, and he was there with his 2-and-a-half year
old daughter from his second marriage. He told me that his wife―his
second wife―was in prison in Beijing; that she was also a Falun Gong
practitioner; and was being tortured for her beliefs in order to
encourage her to renounce her practice. He said that she was black and
blue over the whole of her body as a result of repeated beatings, that
she had become deaf as a result of this torture, and that visiting days
were often advised to him after the visiting day had taken place. He
told me that her treatment was very typical of Falun Gong practitioners
who are detained in China and suffering political reeducation. I asked
him whether he had heard of reports of organ harvesting, and he said he
had not.

I then spoke to Cao Dong, a young man in his 30s, a former tour guide in
Beijing. And he too had been married, his wife had been in prison as
well. And he had been in prison in northern China, and his marriage had
then broken up. He too had suffered very harsh treatment in prison, and
had been forced to make tourist goods for export. But what was
significant about this young man, was when I asked him about organ
harvesting.

I don't think I need to tell you in this audience what organ harvesting
is, but just for the clarification, it is a widespread practice in China
to execute prisoners and then to sell their organs for
transplant―livers, kidneys, lungs, and other organs. What is new is the
systematic use of Falun Gong practitioners as a resource, the body parts
for organs.

I asked Cao Dong whether he was aware of such reports, and he told me
that he, while he was in prison, had a good friend, his buddy, who
disappeared in one evening in the prison in northern China; he'd been
there for four years. And the next time he saw his friend, it was his
body―his cadaver―with holes where apparently body parts had been
removed. Now that is a direct report, you can say evidence if you like,
of the removal of body parts from a prisoner, who is also a Falun Gong
practitioner.

I later discovered that it is only Falun Gong practitioners, who while
imprisoned in China, always have blood tests, urine tests, and blood
pressure tests. And these tests are not done for their own health; they
are done for another purpose. And that purpose we believe to be the use
of their body parts for profits.

I regret to say that after that meeting, everybody present, apart from
myself and my assistant, were arrested. Steve, the American who had
helped arrange the meeting, was deported. Niu Jingping, the elder man,
was held for a week and questioned, and then released with his daughter.
Cao Dong, the younger man, remains in prison to this day. He has
apparently been charged with a criminal offense―in China―of
disseminating Falun Gong material.

During the course of this four-day visit to Beijing, I had been advised
that I should meet a very distinguished individual in China today, Mr.
Gao Zhisheng. Gao Zhisheng is a Christian, who is a self-taught lawyer,
and he has represented many cases of people who he believes are victims
of human rights abuses in China. These include people with property
problems, and people who've had religious pressure, including Falun Gong
practitioners. As a matter of fact, he knew of Niu Jingping, because
they had been in telephone contact. However, I was advised by the EU
ambassadors that to meet Gao Zhisheng would be harmful to Gao Zhisheng.
And so, I decided I'd better not, since by that time I already knew that
everybody had been arrested whom I'd already met.

I left China and went to Hong Kong. When I was in Hong Kong, I addressed
a Forum like this. And a friend of my family, who happened to be passing
by, saw my name on the billboard, and came in and said, "I admire what
you're doing!" He's a journalist with Hong Kong Radio, an Englishman. He
said, "A few months ago, a friend of mine needed a new liver. And he
called the hospital in Shenzhen, and the hospital in China said, 'Come
right over. We can find you a liver. It'll probably take about a week.'"
In the U.K., the average time to get a new liver would be anything from
eight months onwards. In China today, it's a matter of eight days.

Many of you may know the two Canadians, David Kilgour and David Matas:
David Kilgour, a former Minister, Secretary of State for Asian Affairs,
a lawyer, and a human rights specialist; and David Matas, a
distinguished human rights attorney. They began to collect the available
evidence of organ harvesting earlier this year. In early summer, they
produced a report, which brought together all the available evidence of
organ harvesting. They established 18 methods of proof. And I traveled
to Australia and New Zealand recently with David Kilgour. We met a
number of politicians. In Australia, we were fortunate enough in
securing the commitments from both the opposition and the government of
an international inquiry into organ harvesting. This I look forward to
seeing on the table.

After I left Beijing, I organized a telephone call with Gao Zhisheng.
And this took place the week after I returned to the U.K. We spoke for
more than an hour and a half. Gao Zhisheng said how he had been treated
by the regime: His law office had been closed, he was under house arrest
since February, and he said, "Down below in my apartment block, there
are a number of policemen drinking beer. When I go out, they kick me.
They abuse me. They treat me like a dog, but I'm used to this. I can put
up with it." He said, "I want you to tell the world, that when people
come to Beijing, they should do like you have done. They should meet
former prisoners and people who have been oppressed by the regime. It is
only if people outside China stand up for those within that we will
begin to defeat this tyranny."

Mr. Chairman, it's an honor to share a platform with Wei Jingsheng, one
of the greatest exponents of human rights and freedom in China, who I
have met before on a number of occasions. I pay tribute to his massive
political courage and personal courage. I knew he'd understand how
distressed I was, when, on August 15 (as it happened, my birthday), Gao
Zhisheng was arrested. He was taken away to an unknown place; we now
believe he's in Beijing somewhere. He was later charged on September 29
with subversion. That is the current state of play.

Now, I have made a number of representations, primarily within the EU,
about the fate of Cao Dong and Gao Zhisheng. I have tried to raise the
nature of their detentions as typical of the hundreds of thousands of
people in China today who are imprisoned for their beliefs, whether
political or religious, who are being tortured, and whose human rights
are completely ignored.

I'm here in New York as part of a delegation of the European Parliament
to meet with figures of the United Nations. It's part of the routine
series of visits every year, in the context of the General Assembly of
the United Nations. I believe strongly in forceful representation. I
don't believe that diplomacy can work with a country like China, or
indeed a country like Egypt―there are many around the world. I was in
Cuba last week, where similar tyranny applies.

But sometimes you need to take advantage of the meetings you have. And
this morning, I met Kofi Annan, the outgoing Secretary-General of the
United Nations. I handed him the following letter. Now, I'm going to
read it to you; it's not very long:

*************************** Dear Mr. Annan,

I traveled, as rapporteur for the review of the EU's Democracy and Human
Rights Instrument, which I founded in 1992, to China, Hong Kong and
Taiwan on 21