> 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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> November 09, 2006
>
> 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 21-29 May 2006 on a fact-finding mission, in particular to
> investigate claims of organ harvesting.
>
> On 21 May in Beijing I held a meeting with Mr. Cao Dong, a Falun Gong
> practitioner, who had been 'administratively detained' for his religious
> beliefs. He said he had seen his friend's cadaver with holes where parts
> had apparently been removed. He had discharged his sentence and was
> guilty of no crime. Following this meeting, he was arrested.
>
> I have recently learned that he is still being detained by the Chinese
> public authorities, has been transferred to Gansu province and is being
> held in the Public Security Bureau detention center charged with
> 'producing Falun Gong material' on September 29, 2006.
>
> During my time in Beijing, I sought a meeting with the distinguished
> human rights attorney Mr. Gao Zhisheng, but was advised against this by
> several embassies on the grounds of his safety. Over the past years Gao
> Zhisheng has developed an international reputation for his courageous
> stand on religious freedom: he has represented Falun Gong practitioners,
> members of underground churches, and victims of forced evictions.
>
> On 4 June, I spoke to him at some length on the telephone. On August 15,
> he was arrested, has been charged with 'subversion' by the regime and is
> being held in Beijing.
>
> I would like to request your personal intervention with the Chinese
> authorities to call for the release of both of these men.
>
> Yours Sincerely,
>
> Edward McMillan-Scott ***************************
>
> Now I hope, Mr. Chairman, that Mr. Annan and I, in our discussion, had
> raised the question of human rights in China, and described China as a
> "difficult country." That is the terminology in the European Union, that
> we define countries like Cuba, or China, or Burma. But it was a
> different terminology in the United Nations. For understandable reasons,
> China is a key player within the United Nations; it is known as a
> "complex environment." And that phrase disguises the most massive and
> longstanding infringement of personal human rights in modern times-since
> 1949, the oppressive, brutal, arbitrary, and paranoid regime, which
> currently runs the largest country on Earth.
>
> I believe, and I said this to Kofi Annan this morning, that the European
> Union and the United Nations should make common cause. But in
> particular, the EU, which has no particular relations with China, should
> be more ambitious, should be more hard-hitting in its approach to
> relations with China. We have, after all, the great good fortune in
> Europe, to have witnessed in the last few years an enormous conversion,
> and I played a small part in it myself.
>
> This was the ending of the regime of the Soviet Union, and its
> replacement by freedom, peace, and security, and in large measure
> economic freedom, right across the Continent of Europe. So that
> countries like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (which was
> Czechoslovakia), Slovakia itself, and soon Romania and Bulgaria, now
> form the European Union. Twenty five going on twenty seven nations
> living in peace with each other, and upholding democracy and human
> rights within this economic, political, and social space.
>
> And when I look at China today, with its ludicrous relationship with
> neighboring territories-and I define neighboring territories as Hong
> Kong, as Taiwan, and as Tibet, and of course the Chinese peoples in
> Singapore-I ask myself why China cannot learn from the history of the
> European Union, which in the past 60-odd years, during my lifetime, has
> gone from a Continent of starvation, war, internal political repression,
> and political arbitrariness, to the European Union we see today. Why can
> this model not be applied to the Chinese people, and I mean all of the
> Chinese people. This is my optimistic hope for the future.
>
> But let's be realistic; let's be realistic. The regime in China today is
> corrupted. When I was in Beijing, I was entertained to dinner by a very
> rich Chinese woman. We were in a restaurant very near Tiananmen Square.
> It was quite a noisy party in the next door room. And I said to this
> young lady, who I met on the plane on the way from Paris to Beijing-I
> won't tell you her name, because she was very kind to me, but I think
> she's part of the regime-she said, "That's a politician who's come up
> from the country to receive his bribes for granting planning
> permissions." That is the regime in China today, because corruption is
> at every level of the administration.
>
> What was, whatever you like to feel about Communism, a generally
> idealistic beginning back in 1919 or 1921 when the Chinese Communist
> Party was founded, has now developed into the most tyrannous and vicious
> money-making enterprise the world has ever seen. So corruption there is,
> corruption at all levels, and the people of China know it.
>
> As you probably know in recent months, a report on internal dissents in
> the rural areas revealed that nearly 100,000 incidents in one year have
> taken place, largely by people who have been dispossessed of their
> capacity to farm, or otherwise use land, by the authorities. This must
> be the tip of the iceberg, because from all the discussions I had when I
> was in China, two things emerged: One, that China today is more
> repressive, more brutal, more lacking in political, religious, and other
> freedoms than it was ten years ago when I was last there.
>
> I say, in particular, when you look at the status of Falun Gong, when I
> was there ten years ago, every open space in China, you saw qigong
> practitioners of various types, but many of them from Falun Gong,
> practicing freely. Today, no practitioners anywhere in China-too
> frightened, understandably so. China is a corrupt country, but the
> people know it. And the people are getting resistive.
>
> One of the messages I want to impart today is one of the lessons in
> Europe that we learned in the late 1980s. People knew back then that the
> communists were corrupt. They knew that the regimes were repressive,
> were arbitrary, and were brutal. In Bulgaria alone, there were 45
> internal concentration camps discovered after freedom came to Bulgaria
> in 1990.
>
> But what was it that got the Velvet Revolution going all across Eastern
> and Central Europe? Was it political activists? No. There was no
> political freedom. It was the religions. And in particular, the
> Protestant religion. I was a Catholic so I'm ashamed to tell you this,
> but it's true that it was the Protestant pastors who went from their
> pulpits through the church and out into the streets, in Eastern Germany,
> in Czechoslovakia, all the way through to Eastern Romania, and they
> said, "This must stop." In a very few months, this extraordinary
> revolution swept Europe, in which only two people died-Nicolae and Elena
> Ceaus,escu.
>
> So the message that I bring to you today is that those people in China
> who are suffering repression, particularly for their religious
> beliefs-there are more than 50 million Christians in China today,
> countless Muslims, maybe 100 million Falun Gong practitioners, all of
> whom are to a greater or lesser degree repressed by the regime.
>
> I say to the Chinese authorities: Take on religions on your peril.
> Because there is one thing you can never change, by force, by torture,
> by repression, by brutal tactics, and that is religious belief. I
> believe that the strategy of repression of the Falun Gong begun in 1999
> was a huge strategic mistake for the regime in China.
>
> I say that I believe with some reason that what happened in Central and
> Eastern Europe can happen in China, and it doesn't need to imply massive
> death, massive killings, massive reactions from the public. It can
> happen quite peacefully, and it should happen quite peacefully.
>
> But I also say to those involved in crimes against humanity, and organ
> harvesting of one particular category of society-under the Genocide
> Convention, it is genocide. One of the proud achievements during my
> political life has been the setting up of this fund for democracy and
> human rights, which provides all the funding for the International
> Criminal Court, and I know that's not a very popular institution here in
> the United States. America will not take part in it. But it is now
> judging cases of crimes against humanity from the Balkans and from
> countries in Africa where there has been civil war.
>
> I put the people of China on notice that they should identify, they
> should note, they should record those crimes against humanity, which in
> future, in my view, will be judged by the International Criminal Court.
>
> I say one other thing, since the Olympic Committee was in Beijing only a
> few days ago. I do not believe that the 2008 Olympics should take place
> in China, where repression of the sort that I have witnessed personally
> continues to take place. I'm grateful to you for listening to me; please
> keep the faith. Thank you.
>
> **********************************************************************
> Forum Questions and Answers by Edward McMillen-Scott
>
> Question 1 by Dr. Dayong Li: The former Chinese officer, Prof. Jia Jia's
> defection and split from the CCP recently revealed the CCP's internal
> crisis of ruling (tuidang) and its global strategy towards wars and by
> deception. My question is for Mr. McMillan-Scott, whether the Western
> world are aware of these and whether you have any counter-measures
> towards the CCP?
>
> Answer by McMillan-Scott