Truth in China

Matthew Little
Epoch Times Staff
Jul 8, 2009

Chinese riot police get ready to hit ethnic Uygur women as they protest in Urumqi in China's far west Xinjiang province on July 7, 2009. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

When violence erupted in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, home to the Uyghur Muslim minority, China’s state media rushed to “cover” the news, and Western media followed their lead.

"The clashes between ethnic Muslim Uighurs and China's Han majority in Xinjiang that left more than 150 dead signaled a new phase in a region used to seeing bombings and assassinations by militant separatists but few mass protests," wrote Associated Press.

“The death toll from violent ethnic riots in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region has risen to 156, and police on Monday dispersed ‘rioters’ in a second city, the official Xinhua news agency said early on Tuesday,” reported Reuters.

But media experts and Uyghur activists say that China’s state-controlled media are working to frame the story in favor of the regime, a strategy one Hong Kong-based Chinese media expert calls “Control 2.0.”

“By getting the information out, officials can get the ‘peripheral media’ (influential portal news sites, and commercial newspapers) to work for them,” writes David Bandurski editor of the China Media Project Web site in his analysis of the earlier riots in Shishou.

“These media feed off of the original Xinhua reports, amplifying their effect. Those same reports, with only slight permutations in many cases, become AFP, Reuters, and AP reports.”

Using this method, Bandurski says the Chinese regime can kill negative information and keep “rabble-rousing professional media away.”

While Chinese state media set the tone for reporting, the regime worked to cut uncontrolled information from escaping the region.

Tala Dowlatshahi, with Reporters Without Borders in New York, said more than 50 Uyghur-language Internet forums were closed yesterday and communications were cut down.

“The people of that region are completely cut off from the rest of the world,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of answers for you but I can tell you that we are not getting the real story.”

Uyghurs in Canada say that friends and family have disappeared off instant messenger services, don’t answer their cell phones, and don’t reply to e-mails.

While early reports of the riots in Xinjiang relied heavily on Chinese media sources few, if any, of those reports, mentioned that these same state media are regarded as propaganda tools of the regime.

“[News media] should be greatly concerned about the accuracy of any reports by Chinese state media because Chinese state media reports one side,” she said, noting that all coverage serves the regimes political interests,” Dowlatshahi said.

Xinhua has also worked hard to frame the story as a clash of Han and Uyghur ethnicities fueled by terrorists within the Uyghur minority. But Uyghur experts are saying the tension there is caused mainly by longstanding grievances related to the Chinese regime’s occupation of the region.

The Uyghur people have suffered a fate similar to Tibetans after their region was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. Thousands were killed, their religious institutions were destroyed, their language banned, and recent policies have seen Uyghur families coerced to send their children to inland schools and their young women to work in inland cities. Few of the women ever return and Uyghur activists say they are forced into prostitution.

Amnesty International says that since the 1980s, “the Chinese government has mounted an aggressive campaign that has led to the arrest and arbitrary detention of thousands of Uyghurs on charges of ‘terrorism, separatism and religious extremism’ for peacefully exercising their human rights.”

Although international media reports were skeptical when the Chinese regime portrayed riots in Tibet before the Olympics as a plot cooked up by the Dalai Lama, they have been far more willing to accept and reprint the regime’s line on the situation in Xinjiang, say Uyghur activists in Canada and the United States.

“Most of the media just show Chinese side, take the Chinese media’s pictures and photos,” said Rukiye Turdesh, president of the Uyghur Canadian Society.

Chinese state media reports focused on Han Chinese, she said, and presented Uyghurs as violently attacking Han Chinese people. Western media then followed suit, said Turdesh.

“They don’t show any pictures of how Uyghurs are killed. They don’t say anything about the Uyghurs, what happened to the Uyghurs, they just say the Chinese were beaten, the Chinese were killed. What is this, it is not fair, right? They just copy the Chinese media,” Turdesh said.

“Uyghurs are helpless, they don’t have soldiers, they don’t have guns, they have nothing, the Chinese have everything and the Chinese blocked the information, we don’t know what is happening over there right now. Even if China killed all of them, massacred all of the Uyghurs, nobody could know.”

Turdesh said that watching footage of Uyghurs being attacked and killed that got out of the region before the regime cut it off from the outside world was unbearable for her.

Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Uyghur American Association, the umbrella group that the Chinese regime accuses of orchestrating the riots, said later coverage of the riots has improved, with more media talking to Uyghur sources, but he is still concerned too many news sources give credence to Chinese state media.

“It is wrong for the international community to take words coming out of the Chinese media as facts, they should be cautious about that because it is always prejudiced and one-sided.”

Xinhua and CCTV, China’s most influential and pervasive media, which smaller Chinese outlets take as guides for their own reporting, have been framing the riots in Xinjiang eerily similarly to those in Tibet in March 2008.

While the Dalai Lama was blamed for orchestrating the riots in Tibet, Rebiya Kadeer, a leading Uyghur activist and President of World Uyghur Congress is being blamed for the current riots.

Like Tibetans, Uyghurs are consistently portrayed as “barbaric, lazy, and stupid,” said Alim.

The Chinese regime has gone a step further in trying to manage the media by inviting overseas reporters to Xinjiang for guided tours of hospitals and riot areas.

“The important phrase is ‘guided tours.’ They did the same thing in Tibet itself,” said D.J. McGuire, co-founder of the China e-Lobby and author of Dragon in the Dark: How and Why Communist China Helps Our Enemies in the War on Terror.

“The problem is that people have already been preconditioned to not believe what the cadres say on Tibet, so there was something of that in the Tibet coverage,” said McGuire, referring to the fact that media coverage on the Tibet riots was very sympathetic to the Tibetans, and those guided tours were largely seen as a farce.

“People understood that, but they don’t understand that as much with what is going on in Urumqi [Xinjiang’s capital].”

The fact that Uyghurs are Muslim further conflates the issue, he said.

“After 9/11 it became much easier to paint any Muslim resistance as terrorist and anti-Western than it is to do the same with any resistant in Tibet, so that is what colors the coverage,” he said.

The regime was caught trying to frame Uyghurs for terrorist attacks when evidence emerged months after that a reported machete attack in Xinjiang just before the Olympics was actually played up by state media. Chinese paramilitary officers were also discovered to have staged an anti-terror raid in Urumqi in 2008.

Last Updated
Jul 7, 2009

June 24, 2009

Zhaoyu Jin is a Chinese girl in her twenties. She met her Finn husband Tommi in China in 2004. July 2008, Zhaoyu came to Finland to visit Tommi’s family. However, just as she arrived in Finland, her mother was arrested in China right before the Beijing Olympic Games because her mother practices Falun Gong. The Chinese policemen broke into their house to search for Falun Gong literatures. After that, Zhaoyu’s younger sister was the only person left home. In early 2009, Zhaoyu’s mother Chen Zhenping was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Zhaoyu Jin holding poster with her mother's picture

Tommi is a good and honest Finn. He lived in a village in northern Finland. When he heard Zhaoyu’s mother had been sentenced to 8 years in prison, he became emotionally instable. Growing up care-free, he never experienced such pressure and pain. He almost had a nervous breakdown.

Zhaoyu and her husband Tommi being interviewed by reporter

The biggest newspaper in Northern Finland Lapin Kansa sent a photographer and a reporter to interview Zhaoyu.

Zhaoyu grew up with her mother who had been ill for many years. Zhaoyu witnessed how her mother’s health and spirit tremendously improved after she started practicing Falun Gong. She vowed to reveal the terrible injustice and rescue her mother from prison. In summer or winter, she went to the streets to collect petition signatures for mother. From ordinary people to members of parliament, she met with many. Her thin figure aroused people’s sympathy. They applauded for her strong will.

Chinese policemen broke into the house and searched for Falun Gong literatures.

Chinese policemen broke into the house and searched for Falun Gong literatures.

Chinese policemen broke into the house and searched for Falun Gong literatures.

One day, a woman signed her petition but would not leave. She stayed and helped her to clarify the truth and collect more signatures. She even called her family members to join her until they finished that day. One day, the temperature was over ten degrees below zero, a man signed her petition and continue to help her to explain to the people passing by.

Zhaoyu’s spirit touched Tommi. He became stronger everyday. He helped Zhaoyu to contact the media so that more Finns can learn the true story about Falun Gong and the persecution in China.

The biggest newspaper in Northern Finland Lapin Kansa sent a reporter and a photographer to interview Zhaoyu. They were shocked by the brutal persecution stories. They were also touched by Zhaoyu’s rescue campaign. Therefore, the newspaper published a long report about Falun Gong, and the Chinese communist party’s organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. Later, another newspaper POHJOLAN SANOMAT carried these stories with full page. And a magazine called ME NAISET also interviewed Zhaoyu.

Finland newspaper carried Zhaoyu's story with a full front page.

Right now, Zhaoyu still do not know her mother’s whereabouts, because she had been transferred to another prison. She called many times to the Xinxiang Women’s Prison in Henan Province where her mother was detained, but no response. The money she sent to the prison was returned. Her younger sister was chased by the infamous 610 office and managed to escape after being caught at the airport. Now her sister has become homeless and therefore nobody can go to the prison to visit her mother any more.

Old pictures of Zhaoyu and her mother and sister.

Zhaoyu Jin and her younger sister Zhaoheng Jin

http://www.globalrescue.net/

Author: A Dafa practitioner from China now living in Toronto

Experience sharing from the 2009 Canada Fa Conference

(PureInsight.org)
Greetings, Respected Master,
Greetings, Fellow practitioners,

In “Teaching the Fa in Canada, 2006,” Teacher said: “Dafa has been established in human society, and your form of cultivation has you conform to ordinary society to the maximum extent. Many people think it's about being lenient with and making things convenient for our cultivation, but diligent students don't see it that way. It is, rather, the path that Dafa disciples must take as they cultivate. So everything that you do, be it your balancing well your family relationships while you live among ordinary people, balancing well your relationships in society, how you perform at your workplace, how you conduct yourself in society, etc., none of these are things you can just go through the motions on. All of these are part of your cultivation format, and are serious matters.”

I came to Canada in 2004. As I was persecuted in China, my family members wanted me to have a stable life when I finally got to Canada. Going to school seemed to be the first step in getting established in Canada. However, my memory had been damaged from the persecution I suffered at a forced labor camp. I had difficulties remembering the English words I had learned, not to mention learning new words. I had to take the English exams twice for the University of Toronto and failed them both, but somehow I was accepted into the master’s program in Urban Design. The course load was very heavy at U of T and I didn’t know how I could face the two years of study with my poor English. But I thought, since Dafa gave me an opportunity to study, I was determined to validate Dafa and save the sentient beings in this particular environment.

I used all the opportunities I had at school to clarify the truth to my classmates. In one of my history courses, we had to do a presentation on selected topics. One of them was Marxism. In western universities, communism is still poisoning the students. So, I decided to use this issue to clarify the truth. It was a difficult topic for me, but I thought it would be a good opportunity. I borrowed the books from the bibliography and found that they were of the same tone as the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to the professor’s requirements, we should first of all give a summary of the literature. But I decided to give a presentation with content contrary to what the books said. This might irritate my professor, and with my poor English, I may not have been able to argue my point eloquently, but I did not care about my marks. I just didn’t want communism to continue to poison sentient beings. So, I collected many posters from the Cultural Revolution period and a picture of how the CCP persecuted a white nun, along with my X-rays showing the injuries that I sustained as a result of the persecution. These pictures helped me to illustrate my points. All of my classmates were engaged by my lecture. As soon as the class was over, my classmates said to me, “You are so brave. You spoke very well. I have learned a lot.”

When my roommates and I got back to our studio, we had more discussions about my presentation. They asked me about Falun Gong and why the persecution was happening. They were really shocked when I told them the truth. My classmates from Iran were especially shocked. They said, “We thought only the Iranian government was so brutal. Many anti-government people have gone missing. The Chinese government is even worse than the Iranian government because it even persecutes those who are not against it. They wanted me to show them the Falun Gong exercises. However, some of my classmates from India were not convinced of the benefits of Falun Gong. They thought Yoga was better. I decided that I would talk with them further at another time.

I have used all the opportunities that I had in my courses to expose the Chinese Communist regime. Students and professors have learned about the forcible demolition of people’s homes in China, the environmental pollution in China, and the Chinese government control of the Internet. They were amazed at the absurdity of the regime.

As time went by, conflicts arose among my classmates during group projects. This was especially so between different ethnic groups and even among the same ethnic group, such as the Iranians. It made it very difficult for people to complete their assignments. I was affected and many of my classmates complained to me.

I think that everyone I meet has a predestined relationship with me. My environment mirrors my heart. Their problems are reflections of the shortcomings that I have in my dimension. I enlightened to the fact that, first of all, I cannot be affected by them. No matter who is right or wrong on the surface, I would not get involved. In addition, as I am a Dafa practitioner, I should use the Fa principles to help them solve their problems so that they can feel the compassion of a Dafa practitioner. So every time they complained to me, I would talk to them using Fa principles in a way that they could understand in order to help them put things in perspective. I tried to tell them to look at things from others’ perspective. Usually, after I talked to them, they felt better.

As well as completing school work, my husband and I also have to do a lot of Dafa work. Time is tight. However, many classmates asked for my help with their assignments, such as what do to for their thesis or an idea for a design. It was time consuming for me to come up with even my own ideas and it was almost impossible for me to help others. Sometimes I was really annoyed and thought, “I am just your classmate” or, “I am not your teacher. Why don’t you go ask your teacher? Don’t you know that I am also tired? Why are you so selfish?” But then I realized that I should not be deceived by this illusion of ordinary people. They would rather talk to me than their teacher because their knowing side wanted to hear the truth. This was also an opportunity for me to guide them with Fa principles and righteous thinking. Think about how hard it was for Teacher to save us and we know how much Teacher suffered. As a practitioner, with a mission to save sentient beings, why should I be concerned about being tired? So I tried very hard to help them. They were all very appreciative.

Towards the end of the second semester, I was even busier with Dafa work, but I did not want to give up my studies or to appear abnormal to other people. Teacher said: “Don't go to extremes with anything; do things rationally and with a clear head. That is the mighty virtue of a Dafa disciple. Whoever manages to remain steady while following this ordinary-society cultivation format, that person is truly doing what's best in this format of cultivation. If with this format someone exhibits behavior that is out of line with this format and at odds with it, then perhaps that person hasn't done well enough. Since Dafa disciples' cultivation is conducted with a format like this, this format is able to forge Dafa disciples, and it can create incredibly high future Attainment Statuses. Departing from this format or not conforming to it will obstruct your cultivation; those things are actually the product of attachments.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital, 2006”)

In the third semester of my program, we planned to go to Chile’s capital city. Prior to our departure, one class was rescheduled and one of my classmates had to do a presentation, which she was not prepared for. I had also been very busy with Dafa work and had also not studied. While many of our classmates were packing, I decided to stay with my friend. She was desperate. She said, “Cindy, help me. I only read the article once.” I told her, “Say to yourself that Falun Dafa is good.” To my surprise, she opened her mouth and started shouting from St. George Street to College Street and then Harbour Street. A miracle happened as she memorized everything. She did not even have to refer to the originals when she did her presentation.

In the last semester of 2008, I had several courses and also needed to work on my thesis. At this time, the CCP had started to round up Falun Gong practitioners. I was very busy with Dafa work. I didn’t have time to be with my classmates. I wanted them to see the Shen Yun Divine Performing Arts performance, but although they were very interested, they did not go. I thought that my classmates were interested in the arts but the economy was not good and they did not have money for it. Although I didn’t have a lot of money, I thought it was important to invite all of them and so I paid for their tickets. They all dressed up for the occasion and they were very impressed with the show. Some of them were interviewed by the Epoch Times. They expressed their appreciation for traditional Chinese culture and their support for Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance and that they are against the persecution. They were very pleased to see their interviews on the Epoch Times website. They said that they finally understood where my beautiful color schemes came from. Some of them even got their color inspirations from the Shen Yun show for dressing up during their graduation thesis.

The proposal for my thesis was rated number one during the third semester. But when I finally presented my thesis to the committee, it was rejected by some of the advisors due to their notions. My supervisor suggested that I refer to the designs of a famous modern architect. I have always liked traditional designs, as if they have existed in my mind for a long time. In the five years I studied modern design in university, I could not understand how such designs came into being. After I studied Dafa, I understood that traditional architectural culture is the orthodox culture and modern design is the products of aliens. I think in order for me to be able to cultivate Dafa, my mind had been protected so I did not focus on modern urban design. But then I had problems fitting into ordinary society. As my supervisor wanted me to model modern design architecture to create my own design, I talked about it with my husband from the Fa perspective and finally understood that looking from above, the geometrical shapes of modern designs look like huge air stations. If one travelled in the air in a UFO, it would be very clear. So I came up with several designs and each of them captured the essence of modern design, which surprised all of my committee members. However, modern design is not from civilizations of human beings; it does not concern itself with human life and it is even in conflict with nature. So I modified it so that my design would merge into the natural environment and integrated human life into the design as well. When I had my oral defence, my department invited specialists to sit in the committee, including a person in charge of the urban design program of Harvard University. The specialists had a lot to say after my classmates presented. But they were silent after my presentation. After a short while, one professor said, “Let me say something. You have done a lot of work on your design and you solidly established your thesis. You have been very successful in using examples of modern design and you have proved the values of your creativity.” This is the professor who was against my design in the first place.

Two days later, although I was tired, I invited everybody to come to my class for a get-together to teach them Falun Gong. One of the western practitioners also came to help us. All of my classmates came with their spouses and children. They learned the exercises and everyone picked up a copy of the truth-clarification materials and CDs. My husband and I prepared a nice Chinese dinner for them. At the party, people who did not talk to each other started to talk, and a male student from India proposed to a female student from Iran, whom he didn’t like at first. The positive energy of Dafa cultivators rectified the environment and everything was harmonized.

During this process, I enlightened to what Teacher said: “As a Dafa disciple in this society, no matter what kind of setting or corner of society you find yourself in, you are playing a positive role. Regardless of whether you are clarifying the truth and validating the Fa or doing things not so directly connected to Dafa, you are nonetheless saving sentient beings and are playing huge roles, and that is because your righteous thoughts and compassionate field are having a positive effect.” (Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital, 2006)

Looking back at the past two years, when I was clarifying the truth or getting along with ordinary people, I tried to follow the standards of cultivators so that ordinary people could see the beauty of Dafa and be impressed with Dafa. It was a difficult process. But it was worth it.

My English is the worst in my class and yet I got an “A” in most of the subjects. During the two years of my study, I was a top student in my class. I also assisted all of my classmates to get their degrees on schedule. This is a miracle of Dafa. I experienced the power of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.