talking to chinese about human rights:(

[AlexisInfectious®]

it is very frusting. they are so skeptical on anything you tell them about chinese human rights abuse. i am in a chinese club on campus and today i responded to a criticism about "fulon gong" (qigong) practitioners. if you do some research, you can find how they were a group like tai chi that grew to quick for the governments liking. so they created videos showing (falsely) these people killing children and burning themselves... arrested thousands of them and tortured or killed them... protesting outside china still continues to get the UN to do something about it, but so far no luck.

http://www.falunart.org/

anywho, someone kindly wrote that the school (uw-milwaukee) is having a falun gong art exhibit soon...to show the human rights violations and raise public awareness on the issue. in response someone wrote (to the entire mail list)

"give me a break, please!
One more thing, leave the children out of this please. Does a five year child
know anything about your Falun Dafa at all? When you guys made the children to
your practice and put them into pictures, you practically bring their innocence
into this mass. They are ignorant, you guys too?"

this was an example of how they believe the chinese government and not the exhiles. anywho another person wrote me saying i should stop writing replys ot the mail list because people fear these qigong practitioners.

AHHHH. it just frustrates me how the chinese government creates false media and sensors information. some of these people are like zombies believing anything their messed up government says. ontop of this they believe that non of hte human rights violations happens.

is it out of fear of the government?
is it from being a sheep for so long?
is it being cruel and uncompassionate?

thanks for letting me vent. i just find it hard to forgive china for what they have done to the buddhists and sifus in tibet and china, yet i still show them compassion and forgiveness.

 

[jessvida]

That is the art of Propaganda. At first the people despises the governments lies, after a few generations the lies become the truth for the people and finally the people become to depend on the propaganda.

 

[marrcus]

i always say to myself...

if so many have done good in the past, that we can do good in the future. look what the chinese have gone through over the dynasties and you can see how far they have come, but there is still so much to go. to me, they are still in a dynastic stage but will evolve into something semi-american like or consume itself into a revolution.

 

[TRACKANDNICKJONAS]

We have a "Crimes against Falun Gong" society in our University. Whenever they put up posters informing people about the whole situation, someone rips it down or sprawls "Don't believe it" over it. It really is quite strange. One of my friends stayed in Chinia for 6 months and noticed that many people join the communist party just to get ahead in life regardless of political beliefs. It appears that this sort of political devotion is spilling over to into our educational institutions.

 

[SublimeChick]

And right now there is a Chinese kid writing the same thing about our own US government. And I'm not so sure I'd want any country to evolve into the US. We're messed up enough, let's not make ourselves a model for other countries, that's not going too well at the moment.

 

[ZahyraL]

i make myself a model as an individual. i can't be a representation for a whole country i do not represent. however i can be a good rolemodel and help make changes through compassion.

the argument.... "america sucks, lets do nothing" is a very weak one. that actually is what some chinese students wrote back to me. the old argument "do not pick the stone out of my eye until you get the one out of yours" SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED TO GOVERNMENTS.

when will people learn this?
one injustice does not ok another. i do not sanction what america does wrong, but i do not sanction what china does wrong either. make a difference, or your passing on a cruel world to the future. if we do not save people now, their lives will be lost and i hope karma does not pay us for our ignorance.

EXAMPLE:
my girlfriend is a asian hmong minority. her entire culture that still lives in laos is "on the run" because they are kill on site by the communist government. why? because they allied the US during the vietnam war. they were promised private territories or sanctions if they aided the US in the secret CIA Laos wars (that were a form of terrorism against north vietnamese along the ho chi ming trail).

the result?
90% of the male population from 10-50 was killed off in laos. the us government enlisted 10 year olds!!! once the US government retreated from vietnam, they left the hmong with no where to go. several church groups helped get a small amount of hmong into america, but many live now in closing refugee camps in thailand or on the run in laos jungles. the closing refugee camps means forced assimilation into a new culture or face death by being forced by to communist laos.

today, the laos government wants to flood the jungle and drown any remaining resistant groups (resistant means, you refuse to turn yourself in for excecution). their people are almost wiped out in laos, they have no homeland.

why did i mention this? america created a mess that most people do not know about and today ignore. is that the solution? ignore the problems in our world so we do not have to deal with them? allow millions to die each year out of pure ignorance to help them?

didn't anyone else learn this from their training, to have compassion for others and not to harm them if you can help?

 

[rockstar]

Maybe we should fix ourselves before we worry about fixing everyone else is my point. We can't stand up and cry "foul" to China when we have a huge racial and classist divide, we regularly toss the Constitution out the window, and we can't even choose who we want to love. Not to mention the destruction of the environment, absolutely irresponsible foreign policy, and insistance on having a cowboy government. If we can't fix out own problems, I don't think we should be steping into the messes of other countries right now.

 

[ArleneR]

"is it out of fear of the government?
is it from being a sheep for so long?
is it being cruel and uncompassionate?"

Or is it some people out of a population of over a billion Chinese?

"AHHHH. it just frustrates me how the chinese government creates false media and sensors information. some of these people are like zombies believing anything their messed up government says. ontop of this they believe that non of hte human rights violations happens."

Thank you for making vast generalizations about my people. Because the American government doesn't do the same thing, nor does any other government, right.


"thanks for letting me vent. i just find it hard to forgive china for what they have done to the buddhists and sifus in tibet and china, yet i still show them compassion and forgiveness."

Compassion and forgiveness to whom? The Chinese or the government? I don't see why anyone would have compassion for a governing body. And if it's a people, well... I don't think you should go obviously so far out of your way to have compassion and forgiveness for us. We do fine all by ourselves.

 

[DeRcocksause]

Every country including the US, has some serious human rights issues. We do too much business with the Chinese to seriously consider any "real" sanctions because of their HR violations.

 

[h2obling]

I'm not making any excuses for China's human rights record, however I will say this... until you see it, it is very difficult to imagine what a population of over 1.3 billion is... and that is more than likely a huge underestimation. To pull off governing such a diverse people is a task I wouldn't wish on any organization.

And, I'm going to have to agree that generalizations do suck..

 

[GerryAtrix]

"as long as the skies exhist, as long as there are sentient beings, may i remain to relieve them of their pain"

i see myself as human, not just american. it is up to us as humans to make a difference in the world. i do not love any government, but i do love the people they represent. I already do disagree with the injustices of america and often discuss those issues as well in my college history courses and to my friends.

china is booming economically at the expense of many. Many have the idea to "modernize" and overlook any social problems. In a small sense this could be ok. How? If some were modernizing, some were in poverty it would be ok. Is this the case in china? No. Why? Because the government is CAUSING HARM to the ones in poverty or the ones that do not agree with communism. Therefore, I do not support those that cause harm to others (forced labor, imprisonment, abuse, excecution).

If they want to modernize that is fine. If people want to allow a government to hurt their own, then this is wrong weither it was in america or china. Just because people want to live, does not mean they should die so others can have material possestions.

Are there no buddhists left in this forum?

i rescieved tons of replies from the chinese students saying i was being a propagandist.

as an american, i want to set an example by not being a hyprocrit. by not supporting those whom are going to do injustices, weither abroad or at home. Do you not apply your own morality in all walks of your life? do you not apply your own morality to others outside your country?

 

[AlexisInfectious®]

Talk is cheap. Anyone can talk in a history class.

Give money to charity? Join political action groups? Read the labels on the good you buy to ensure you're not contributing to "communism"? What do you do to help the cause besides rant on a MA forum?

 

[iyera]

Actually, the income of almost every family is higher now in China than it was five years ago. Not many people are being left behind, to be honest, and yes there is higher unemployment but that's because the government is trying to successfully privatise some industries so China doesn't bleed to death.

The things that you describe are often simply not happening in China, how about you visit Chengdu or Xianyang or Fandao for a couple months and then give your opinion. I'm so sick of outsiders judging my government (Singapore) and China's, and often (though usually more veiled) my culture without knowing anything first hand about it. It would be like me decrying everything American I see without having ever spent any time in America or with Americans, it wouldn't be right.

And you still didn't answer my question I posted above.

 

[McWizard]

so how do you explain china killing 1/8ths of tibet's population off as not happening in china?

 

[furkinghel]

Answer our questions

 

[MrsJeffHardye[Iwish]]

noi your post made sense hehe.

i agree and disagree with alot about china. in a large nutshell i say "i love the people, dislike their government". but, is not their government made of people of china? are not the prison guards that abuse innocent people, people of china?

these cruel people i put in the same catagory as how i view neo-fascist americans that want to do the same in the middle east (economic growth at the expense of peoples lives).

i know developing countries should develop, but at what costs? again, i'd rather be poor in peace on rice and peas, then working in a forced labor sweatshop "living the life" in china.

problems in china do occur, if you live in china you cannot research them because all keywords are blocked by the chinese government, expecially with google. if you ever go to china, try searching "human rights violations", and you'll see no results or that it is blocked.

try researching tennement(spelt wrong) square massacre and you will get the same. TO IGNORE THE PROBLEMS TO GAIN ECONOMIC SUCCESS IS just as horrible as letting the nazis burn jews in your backyard because it is convienent for you.

***
Info on falun gong:
http://www.faluninfo.net/

Here is a horrifying example of a fulan gong practitioner after being tortured:
http://faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=8783

Tibet:
http://www.tibet.org/Why/occupation.html

 

[always4him]

I think that we americans only have so many resources to 'spend' on helping other nations. Like the Dafur problems, there is no benefit to the american government to fix the problem they created in Laos. We were violating a number of laws then (agent orange) and we won't fix them now. Who knows what problems are being created around the world or in Iraq even as we speak that we won't know about for 35-40 years.

 

[josephf]

jroe52,

Have you ever been to China?

Have you lived there?

Have you worked there?

Just curious.

 

[hold_me_close101]

Moved to Off Topic.

 

[SdS]

nope. but i know the tibetan monks that were killed in prisons for doing peace protests didn't die for economic gain of middle class chinese