The Portrait of an Olympic Host -- Totalitarianism in Romania's Past and
China's Present/David Kilgour
Totalitarianism in Romania's Past and China's Present/David Kilgour
Jul 24, 2007
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The Honorable David Kilgour (Matt Hildebrand/The Epoch Times)
Address (revised) by Hon. David Kilgour at the International Symposium
on Forms of Repression in Communist Regimes Brancoveanu Monastery near
Fagaras, Romania July 13, 2007
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Canada reportedly has more citizens of origin in the former Soviet bloc
as a percentage of our population than any other NATO member country.
The various themes of the papers given in summary form at this
conference are thus of particular interest to many Canadians too.
I have enormous admiration for all of you across Romania who risked your
lives to stand up to the various armed forces of Ceausescu's regime
during December, 1989. What cruel and inhuman violence was meted out by
his supporters even in the final days.
I still recall being with hundreds of Romanian-Canadians and others
outside the Romanian embassy in Ottawa the night the regime fell. As
many of us as could get into the building were suddenly invited in; on
on earlier nights, we were clearly unwelcome.
Role of Civil Society in Illuminating the Past
Your civil society organizations should teach continuously about your
45-year experience with totalitarianism. For example, one of many things
I've learned as a visitor is that as late as 1944 the Romanian Communist
party had only about 1000 members, which no doubt explains in part why
the Russian soldiers then in your country required so much violence to
impose their model of totalitarianism. Second, as Stefan Caltia, painter
and professor at the University of Arts in Bucharest observes,
"Communism in Romania was not a doctrine, it was a system by which a
group sought to enslave everyone else in the country".
Professor Caltia also explained to some of us what happened to the
farming village in which he lived. Before collectivization of
agriculture in the 1950s, residents farmed all the land they owned with
pride, vigour and care.
When they were forced into collectives in the 1950s, only about half the
land was cultivated; he as a teacher was even obliged to go door-to-door
at about 9 a.m. each day to try to wake villagers up to go to work. When
the land was re-privatized in the 1990s, many ties with the land had
unfortunately been broken and others had left the community, so even
less land is used productively today. The experience in his village was
evidently repeated generally throughout rural Romania.
And this is just one example of how the regime sought to deprive
individuals of their identities and to distort the natural course of so
many lives. Your symposium offered many more examples of this kind, so
the experiences of the Romanian anti-Communist resistance can be
compared with those in other countries.
Some of us visited the Fagaras Fortress―a historical monument of the
14th century- that functioned as a prison mainly for officials arrested
after 1948, for those who formed the local resistance in the nearby
mountains, and for other dissidents who opposed the imposition of
Communist control over the region.
I was impressed by the pride that your foundation, the 'Negru Voda'
Foundation, your Academy and your Institute of Communist Crimes
Investigation have in all anti-Communist resistance in this special part
of the country―Fagaras Land―and by the fact that you want to keep the
memories alive by setting up a Museum of the Communist Repression.
China Today
Restored and other democracies can learn much from today's China as a
case study of what might still be occurring as well in eastern Europe
and elsewhere in the absence of the events of 1989. The important book,
Mao―The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang (author of Wild Swans ) and Jon
Halliday, for example, quotes Mao saying about his vital role in
installing the Kymer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1975:
"Pol Pot, its leader, under whom up to one quarter of the Cambodian
people perished in the space of a few years, was a soul-mate of Mao's.
Immediately after Pol Pot took power, Mao congratulated him face to face
on his slave-labor-camp state: 'You have scored a splendid victory. Just
a single blow and no more classes.' What Mao meant was that everyone had
become a slave."
Mao and Tibet
The book makes clear that the leader whose portrait and corpse still
dominate Tiananmen Square in Beijing was one of the cruellest despots in
all of recorded history. The authors conclude sadly that Mao was
"responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any
other twentieth-century leader."
Given your own experience with an invading army, it seems worthwhile to
illustrate Mao's own methods with neighbours from Chapter 42 of the
book, which deals with how he treated Tibet. Briefly, his food seizures
from Tibetans in the late 1950s were so severe that they understandably
rebelled. This pleased him because, as he wrote, "…this makes it
possible to solve our own problems through war." He then allowed the
then very young Dalai Lama (who became an honorary citizen of Canada
last year) to escape to India in order to avoid inflaming world opinion
and began his war of terror against Tibetans.
The Panchen Lama, the second-ranking spiritual leader of Tibetans, who
initially welcomed Mao's soldiers into Tibet, wrote in 1962 that his
people were herded into canteens, where they were fed "weeds, even
inedible tree bark, leaves, grass, roots and seeds." Years later, he
revealed that 15-20 percent of all Tibetans-perhaps half the adult
males-were imprisoned, where they were "essentially worked to death."
The misery inflicted on Tibetans differed only in degree from what Mao
did to many of his fellow citizens across China. For example, more than
35 million Chinese died needlessly of starvation during his bizarre
"Great Leap Forward" in the late 1950s.
World Peace
On the important subject of world peace, I might also note from the book
that in 1960 at a meeting of Communist leaders from 51 countries in
Bucharest Russia's Khrushchev refuted Mao's contention that war was
necessary to bring about socialism: "Only madmen and maniacs can now
call for another world war. " The Russian leader also told Mao's
delegate at the meeting, Peng Zhen, "Since you love Stalin so much, why
don't you take his corpse to Peking?" He also told his colleagues, "When
I look at Mao, I see Stalin, a perfect copy."
The history since 1949 of Mao's party in China is written with
continuous bloodshed, corruption and deception. Virtually everything its
leaders do―then, now or whenever―is designed to extend their exclusive
hold on the levers of government wihout holding an election. This is why
they seek to perpetuate positive myths about Mao and to minimize the
terrible things he did to his own people and foreigners alike: if the
Chinese people knew the truth, his party would lose any remaining
legitimacy to govern the country .
Chinese People Today
No doubt like all of you, I have the highest admiration for the people
of China and their millennia of hard work, accumulated wisdom, success
with agriculture, myriad inventions, international exploration, art,
literature, philosophies and earlier Confucian harmony in governance. In
spite of its rich history, China's totalitarian government, combined in
recent years with "anything goes" capitalism, have created terrible
conditions for most of both the people and the natural environment
throughout the country. China is its people, not its unelected government.
In 1975, after more than a quarter century of absolute power, Mao
admitted privately that China was the poorest nation on earth. Since
1978, Deng Xiao-ping, whom Mao twice purged from the party leadership,
managed to reverse the disastrous economic policies. One consequence of
Deng's 'anything goes' model of capitalism, however, was that the people
of China are today exploited probably more than any other population on
earth. They are also kept down by millions of officials, police and
soldiers. As the Nobel prize laureate, Amartya Sen, puts it, economic
growth that pays no attention to the welfare of its own people is nothing.
Consider this quote from The Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist
Party: "The CCP does not hold universal standards for human nature … It
does not believe in God (and) does not respect physical nature. 'Battle
with heaven, fight with the earth, struggle with humans-therein lies
endless joy'-the party motto during the Cultural Revolution." So many
good citizens of all ages were killed by Mao's Red Guards during the
'Cultural Revolution'; an entire generation was also denied formal
education. The reason for the entire initiative by Mao, as now
documented in the Jung Chang-Halliday book, was to create an atmosphere
of terror across the country so that he could carry out a Stalin-like
purge of his perceived enemies.
The pre-1949 culture in China respected loyalty and a host of other
values. Confucianism (which Mao detested), Buddhism and Taoism
encouraged stability. Taoism encouraged truthfulness; Buddhism,
compassion; Confucianism, loyalty, acceptance and benevolence. Given
that the Falun Gong's practices are based on similar principles, it is
not surprising that its practitioners across China have been persecuted
mercilessly now continuously since the summer of 1999. This has included
virtually every known method of torture, from whips, electric shocks,
burning with open flames or lit cigarettes, being hung on walls, sexual
assaults, rapes and murders. The UN rapporteur on torture, Manfred
Nowak, reported last year that two-thirds of the torture victims in
China are Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.
Bloody Harvest Report
The Falun Gong was declared an 'enemy' of the party only after the
government had actively promoted its healthy lifestyle and meditation
for several years, Falun Gong practitioners continue to be in effect
murdered by medical personnel across China for their vital organs. The
independent revised report on this new crime against humanity by David
Matas and me can be accessed in about 18 languages at
organharvestinvestigation.net.
Our revised report of January with its appendices is 178 pages long in
one edition, so I'll summarize here its major findings only briefly:
Since launching our independent investigation in May, 2006 at the
request of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in
China, Matas and I have concluded to our horror that the government of
China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country have "put to
death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.
Their vital organs, including kidneys, livers, corneas and hearts, were
seized involuntarily for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners,
who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in
their home countries."
Falun Gong practitioners practise a combination of five physical
exercises and spiritual principles based on "truth, compassion and
forbearance." The latter contain similar principles as Buddhism, Taoism
and Confucianism. It grew in numbers from virtually nothing in 1992 to
more than 70 million practitioners across China at the end of the
nineties by one government of China estimate.
In the summer of 1999 for reasons which seem mostly rooted in
totalitarian paranoia, the party unleashed a campaign of media
vilification and persecution which continues to the present. The
invented rationale was that Falun Gong was an "enemy of the state" and
an "evil cult", although in reality its practitioners in fact were
non-political until attacked and have none of the characteristics of a cult.
Falun Gong practitioners have since been arrested in huge numbers; they
are imprisoned in 're-education camps' almost always without charge or
trial and many have been tortured and forced to work long hours in
manufacturing facilities until they renounce their beliefs. Thousands of
named practitioners have died as result of torture. Only Falun Gong
prisoners among the general prison population are regularly blood tested
and physically for a terrible reason which is now evident―to assess
their suitability as organ donors.
Virtually all organs transplanted in China come from executed prisoners,
but this group comprises both convicted individuals and Falun Gong
practitioners. The latter are rarely convicted of anything. Unlike
convicts, they are in effect murdered by doctors and nurses with toxic
inoculations and scalpels to provide organs for tissue compatible organ
recipients, who pay large amounts of money for the organs (ranging from
$30,000 US to $180,000 for a kidney-liver combination).
No Smoking Guns
The seizing of organs in China from Falun Gong practitioners is done in
operating rooms. The victims are killed in the process and their bodies
are cremated. The medical perpetrators of these acts are guilty of
crimes against humanity and highly unlikely to confess. Fair-minded
persons considering our evidence as a whole can, as we do, have 'gut
level certainty', as one law professor referred to criminal convictions
based largely on compelling circumstantial evidence, that these crimes
have taken place and continue to occur. Smoking guns exist mostly on
television.
Our terrible conclusion comes not from any one of the thirty-three
pieces of evidence we have now considered, but from the combination of
all of them. All of the thirty-three however, are verifiable and in most
cases are incontestable. Five representative samples are these:
* 1- Falun Gong practitioners constitute a huge prison population
which the government vilifies, dehumanizes, depersonalizes and
marginalizes even more than prisoners condemned to death upon conviction
for capital offences (which number more than 60 offences, including tax
fraud).
* 2-We had callers telephoning hospitals and other institutions
across China, posing as family members of persons needing organ
transplants; in a wide variety of locations the respondents said that
Falun Gong prisoners were the source of the organs.
* 3-The ex-wife of a surgeon told us that he had personally removed
the corneas from approximately two thousand Falun Gong practitioners in
Shenyang city in northeast China during the two-year period before
October, 2003 and we found her statement to be credible.
* 4-Waiting times for organ transplants in China are astonishingly
short-a matter of days or weeks, strongly suggesting a bank of living
"donors" available for organ tourists. Everywhere else in the world
waiting times are measured in months and years. Hospital websites in
China self-incriminate by boasting of very short waits for all organs on
payment of large fees.
* 5-Transplant recipients told us that military personnel do
operations in both military and civilian hospitals. The website of the
Organ Transplant Centre of the Armed Police General Hospital Centre in
Beijing boldly says: "Our Organ Transplant Center is our main department
for making money." One organ recipient in Asia told us that he was
brought fully seven kidneys by a military surgeon before the eighth was
found to be compatible with his body tissue and anti-bodies. Eight human
beings died before he got his usable kidney.
In summary, the evidence that these crimes have been occurring across
China is simply overwhelming. The government of China has to date
produced no effective response to our report.
Conclusions Confirmed
By announcing on April 6th this year that as of May 1st there will be no
more trade in human organs, the government of China unintentionally
confirmed the grisly truth of the conclusion by many, including our
report. Matas and I, of course, hope that this latest edict will stop
the killing of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience both before and after
the Beijing Olympic Games. Given the vast sums of money involved, the
indications that the military operate outside the health system and the
obvious linkage of this announcement to concern about the now indelibly
termed "Genocide Olympics", we remain sceptical that much will change in
a crime against humanity that has gone on across China now for about six
years.
The government of China has a history in this area of announcing
policies and laws which sound fine in principle to the international
community but are then not enforced. This announcement will mean nothing
if the practice of organ harvesting from non-consenting 'donors' for
huge sums of money continues.
The Chinese Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu, speaking in Guangzhou in
mid-November 2006, denounced the selling of organs of executed
prisoners, saying, "Under-the-table business must be banned." Yet the
practice had already been banned in law on July I, 2006 and by policy
long before that, so his speech was an official acknowledgment that the
previous bans were ineffective. We worry that this announcement of a
change in the law is nothing more than a political cosmetic, a piece of
propaganda with its eye fixed firmly on cleansing the party's terrible
human rights reputation before the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the minds of
prospective foreign visitors.
'Draw Lessons from Facts'
This brings me to The China Fantasy by an American, James Mann, which
criticizes the common presumption that the CCP is bound to move towards
democracy, political liberalization and respecting human rights. Mann
thinks the elites in cities like Shanghai and Beijing might turn out to
want to perpetuate authoritarian governance in China, contrary to the
three-decades-old assumptions of American politicians in both parties,
business executives, sinologists and diplomats. His book argues that it
is time to stop overlooking the party's human rights abuses, the
crushing of political dissent at home and support for pariah regimes abroad.
Mann asserts that if China becomes a democracy the chances of a military
confrontation of any kind anywhere would disappear immediately. As well,
the 1.3 billion residents of China deserve the right to choose their own
government rather than continue with an unelected party "with a long,
unsavoury, violence-prone history, a love of its own privileges and a
weakness for corruption." There is also the role of the CCP abroad,
which, Mann notes, undermines democratic values continuously.
It gave Robert Mugabe an honourary degree in China and economic help to
his government, although his regime is one of the most brutal and
corrupt anywhere on earth. It is the principal backer of the military
junta in Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi continues under house arrest 16
years after she and her supporters won an open election. When Uzbekistan
president Islam Karimov ordered a murderous crackdown on demonstrators
in 2005, China's government shored him up. In Sudan, where reasonable
people long ago concluded that the Bashir regime has been conducting
crimes against humanity if not genocide in Darfur for years, the CCP is
one of his major backers, especially at the UN Security Council.
Recently China sent several hundred "engineers" to Sudan, but no-one has
any doubt that this sudden interest in stopping the ongoing killing and
raping is related only to the "Genocide Olympics" about which Darfur
supporters like Mia Farrow continue to raise public awareness.
Olympic Games
Mann thinks the media hype surrounding the 2008 Olympic Games will dwarf
all earlier ones. He asks pointedly if the "world's car manufacturers
and beer companies (will) want to sponsor television coverage of the
Olympics that dwells on the unpleasant side of China-the sweatshops, the
poverty, the political prisoners, the corruption and the environmental
disasters? Not likely." He queries if the Beijing games will follow the
terrible precedent of the Berlin Olympics of 1936.
The presence of a huge international media corps in Beijing could help
to spur political demonstrations by democracy activists, religious
groups, including Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uighurs, aggrieved workers and
farmers, but only if they can penetrate the security designed to keep
them away from the television cameras. Mann: "Would-be protesters will
be kept out of Beijing (or if they live in the city, they may be thrown
out of Beijing). Crowds will not be allowed to gather; if they do, they
will dispersed before they can make it to any public space. The police
will be especially rough on groups seeking access to Tiananmen Square,
which has been off limits to protests since 1989."
The real test will come after the foreigners have left Beijing, says
Mann. How many of any changes in China's political system hinted at on
the eve of the Games will be implemented? Will the democratic world
successfully integrate China to our norms? Or will the business
community in Canada and elsewhere have to continue to explain why they
are kowtowing to a regime that rather recently ordered tanks to fire on
unarmed citizens and which since 2000 has been killing Falun Gong
prisoners of conscience without trial and selling their organs for cash
to organ tourists? Is this corporate social responsibility to some CEOs?
Mann correctly stresses that the real problem with the international
business community is "Who's integrating whom?" How many families in
Romania, other parts of Europe or Canada have lost their livelihoods as
a result of this 'integration'? Take, for example, 800 Goodyear Tire
employees near Montreal who saw their tire plant close a few months ago
because someone thinks they can manufacture tires more cheaply in China?
I noticed recently that a lot of tires made in China, among other
consumer products, are now being recalled in some Western markets for
safety reasons.
Conclusion
We democrats around the world must be neither complacent nor over
confident. There are still about 45 dictatorships in the world, which do
much harm to both human beings and the natural environment.
Look at what the government of China, for example, is doing to its own
people, including independent journalists, human rights activists,
democrats, religious communities, Uyghurs, Tibetans and many others. In
respect of the large Falun Gong community, as mentioned, it is simply
inconceivable that the government hosting the Olympic Games in one part
of its capital city next year could be simultaneously killing some of
its own people for profit in another district of the same city. This
terrible commercial practice must stop now.
Whether in Romania, China or Canada, human dignity is ultimately
indivisible across our shrunken world today.
Thank you.
The Honorable David Kilgour, former Canadian secretary of State for the
Asia-Pacific region, has a long history of investigating human rights
abuses. Most of his efforts recently have been focused on the
persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party,
and more specifically on the CCP's program of harvesting organs from
Falun Gong practitioners for sales to overseas transplant patients.
Copyright 2000 - 2007 Epoch Times International
