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INEPTITUDE DEALING WITH COMMUNIST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

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jefffranklin

INEPTITUDE DEALING WITH COMMUNIST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

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May 20 10 10:58 AM

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Dennis Miller : Assistant Secretary Of State Michael ...

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Bill O'Reilly interviews Dennis Miller about Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, former Obama spiritual advisor Rev. Jeremiah ...
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Updated May 18, 2010

State Department Defends Official Who Expressed Regret to Chinese Over Arizona Law

FOXNews.com

The State Department on Tuesday defended a top-ranking diplomat who expressed regret to China last week about Arizona's immigration law during a discussion on human rights in Washington.

Spokesman P.J. Crowley, in an interview with Fox News, disputed the notion that Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner was apologizing to China, saying he was actually "standing up" for America by describing how debate functions in a "civil society."

But he echoed other top Obama administration officials in describing the law as a gateway to "racial profiling" and doubled down on Posner's comments to the Chinese.

Posner told reporters on Friday that the U.S. delegation brought up the Arizona law "early and often," as an example of a trouble spot Americans need to work on.

"It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society," Posner said.

video

The two-day talks were held in Washington and meant to ease the way for similar discussions in the future. The delegations discussed concerns with U.S. and Chinese rights issues, including Tibet and the Chinese treatment of dissidents. The United States was represented by officials from several Cabinet agencies including the Justice Department, Commerce Department and Internal Revenue Service.

The United States has a raft of concerns about human rights in China, including the government's forced sterilization of women and mass executions.

Arizona Republican Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain sent a letter to Posner on Tuesday demanding he retract his statement and issue an apology. They cited the 2009 Human Rights Report produced by Posner's bureau as a reminder of the arbitrary arrests, detention and harassment of Chinese citizens by the Chinese regime.

"As the assistant secretary of state in charge of the bureau of democracy and human rights, your remarks are particularly offensive," they wrote.

"There is no place for moral equivalency in democracy and human rights policy. The United States is the world's leader in defending the rights of all people. Someone in your position should be proud to proclaim that," they added.

Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a longtime critic of China's human rights record, told Fox News he's "tired" of seeing comments like this, particularly to a delegation from "one of the most repressive societies in the world."

"It's unseemly that a member of our State Department and the administration should be apologizing to China," Burton said.

But Crowley backed Posner for bringing up the Arizona law as something of comparable concern.

"There is, as many have said, real concerns about -- that this Arizona law will inevitably devolve into racial profiling. That would be a fundamental challenge to human rights around the world," Crowley said.

Crowley acknowledged Tuesday that he has not read the Arizona law, putting him in the same boat as top officials like Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Holder admitted last week that he has not read the 18-page law, though he has publicly warned that it could lead to racial profiling.

The Arizona law makes illegal immigration a state crime and empowers law enforcement to require people they suspect of being an illegal immigrant to provide documentation proving their legal residency. The bill specifically outlaws screening suspects based only on race or origin, though critics say police will end up profiling based on race anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/po...ret-chinese-arizona-law/

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Sharon

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Sep 15 10 6:51 AM

Talked about it but could not take the time to read 18 pages??? It reminds of of Atheists who comdemn the bible but have no idea of scripture..
Talking to China and never read the law, and who is talking about our laws when they are still ...well you know what they are still doing, and all their human right violations

The Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have not read it either?? 18 pages, they could read that on the john for heavens sakes.
What on earth would get them to talk about something they have not even read... lazy and ignorant... bad mix...

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Sharon

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Dec 27 10 3:12 AM

EU rejects eastern states' call to outlaw denial of crimes by communist regimesEastern European states wanted Soviet crimes 'treated according to the same standards' as those of Nazi regimes

For all the terrible crimes of the USSR, you can't compare the people who built Auschwitz with the people who liberated it,' said Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff.

The European commission has rejected calls from eastern Europe to introduce a so-called double genocide law that would criminalise the denial of crimes perpetrated by communist regimes, in the same way many EU countries ban the denial of the Holocaust.

Last week six countries wrote to Viviane Reding, the European justice commissioner, calling for the "public condoning, denial and gross trivialisation of totalitarian crimes" to be punished.

Foreign ministers from Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic said communist crimes "should be treated according to the same standards" as those of Nazi regimes, notably in those countries with Holocaust denial laws.

But the EU executive will say in a report due tomorrow that opinion is too divided on the matter and that there is no legal basis allowing Brussels to act.

"There is no consensus on it. The different member states have wildly differing approaches," EU justice spokesman Matthew Newman told the Guardian. He said the commission takes the issue "very seriously", but: "At this stage, the conditions to make a legislative proposal have not been met. The commission will continue to keep this matter under review."

The east European countries point to the EU's ability to make laws relating to "particularly serious" cross-border crimes and a separate EU decision permitting the crafting of rules targeting racism and xenophobia.

But the commission says neither legal instrument mentions totalitarianism and rejects the idea of double genocide. "The bottom line is, obviously, what they did was horrendous, but communist regimes did not target ethnic minorities," said Newman.

According to Lithuania, whose foreign minister leads the campaign to create a new law, the EU's understanding of genocide should be extended to include crimes against groups defined by "social status or political convictions".

Andrius Grikienis, a spokesman for Lithuania's mission to the EU, said: "During the first years of Soviet occupation, Lithuania lost more than 780,000 of its residents. 444,000 fled Lithuania or were repatriated, 275,697 were deported to the gulag or exile, 21,556 resistance fighters and their supporters were killed and 25,000 died on the front."

By comparison, he said: "More than 200,000 citizens of Jewish origin were killed by Nazis and their collaborators."

The commission is also uneasy about wading into a highly controversial area. A number of western EU countries oppose the proposal, suggesting that it is a thinly-veiled attempt at rehabilitation of domestic collaborators while antisemitism remains a live issue on the streets and in the media in the east.

On 25 November, the ambassadors to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, of seven EU states including the UK sent a letter to the country's president complaining about a newspaper article by an interior ministry historian, Petras Stankeras, that described the Holocaust as a "legend".

In the letter, they complained about how a court in May had ruled that the swastika is a "traditional Lithuanian symbol" while "spurious attempts are made to equate the uniquely evil genocide of the Jews with Soviet crimes against Lithuania, which, though great in magnitude, cannot be regarded as equivalent in either their intention or result".

Efraim Zuroff, the Nazi-hunter and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Israel office, describes the effort by the six eastern states as a "false symmetry".

"We have no problem with a day of commemoration for communist crimes, and indeed, something should be done, but the Holocaust was a unique tragedy in history," he said.

"For all the terrible crimes of the USSR, you can't compare the people who built Auschwitz with the people who liberated it. Nazi Germany would probably not have been defeated if it weren't for Russia."

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Sharon

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Mar 3 11 4:13 AM

China's disabled exploited as slaves
In an economy where manual labor is in demand, ruthless recruiters often prey on the mentally disabled. One man, held at a brick kiln, is one of countless slaves who endured torture and deplorable living conditions.

Reporting from Xian, China —

At 30, Liu Xiaoping is more boy than man, with soft doe eyes that affix visitors with the unabashed stare of the very young and glisten with reluctant tears when his bandages are changed.

It takes effort not to show the pain of the wounds that read up and down his body as a testament to the 10 months he was held captive at brick factories in the Chinese countryside.

His hands are as red as freshly boiled lobster from handling hot bricks from a kiln without proper protective gloves. On the backs of his legs, third-degree burns trace the rectangular shape of bricks, a factory foreman's punishment for not working fast enough. Around his wrists, ligature marks tell of the chains used to keep him from running away at night.

Liu was found wandering in the small town of Gaoling, north of Xian, on Dec. 22, 10 months after his family reported him missing. He was wearing the same clothing as when he'd disappeared in February, but the trousers were glued to the festering wounds on his legs and the gangrene of his frostbitten feet stank through the gaping holes in his shoes.

Despite his injuries and an intellectual impairment, he was able to tell how he'd been tricked by a woman who bought him a bowl of soup and promised him the equivalent of $10 per day, good wages for manual work in rural China.

Instead, he became a slave.

"They took advantage of my brother because he has a mental disability," said his 26-year-old brother, Liu Xiaowei. "They forced him to work, beat him, tortured him, and then when he was too weak to take it anymore, they threw him out on the street."

In an adrenaline-paced economy with a chronic shortage of manual laborers, ruthless recruiters often prey on China's mentally disabled. The worst offenders work with the brick kilns that are feeding a seemingly insatiable appetite for the new apartment complexes and malls cropping up around the countryside.

"The brick factories can never get as many workers as they need. The work is heavy and a lot of people don't want to do it," said Ren Haibin, the former manager of one of several brick factories where Liu said he had worked. "Possibly the mentally disabled can be intimidated and forced to work.... They are timid and easier to manage."

In the Beijing offices of Enable Disability Studies Institute, a nongovernmental organization, director Zhang Wei reels off a list of more than a dozen cases over the last decade in which people were enslaved in appalling conditions, each more nightmarish than the last.

Young women have been sold by psychiatric hospitals as sexual partners and wives; mentally disabled young men have been imprisoned as forced laborers in coal mines and brick factories. In 2008, a brick factory owner beat a young man to death for an escape attempt. In December, Chinese authorities rescued 11 workers who had been sold by a supposed charitable organization for the disabled to a brick factory more than 1,000 miles away.

Reports on conditions in the factory said the workers hadn't been allowed to bathe in more than a year and were fed the same food as the boss' dog.

"Every year there are cases like this," Zhang said. "The worst are when they are violating the rights of the disabled in the name of charity."

Police often won't exert much effort when a mentally disabled person disappears, he said, and even if they're rescued, their testimony is not taken seriously because of their impairment.

"This is not like when a child goes missing. Police will just assume they've run away," Zhang said. Some families, he says, won't even bother to report. "They might feel that they've been relieved of the burden."

That was not the case with Liu Xiaoping. He comes from a loving family who occupy the ground floor of a shabby apartment in southern Xian, where his father sells remedies to people too poor to afford a doctor. Since Liu escaped from the brick factory, he has shuttled between home and the hospital, while his family tries to raise money for skin grafts.

Liu doesn't speak much. When he does, the words come slowly but clearly, as though they've required some concentration. He left school in the third grade, when it became clear that he'd never be able to read or write beyond an elementary level.

But he was strong and healthy. Neighbors would always call on him to help harvest wheat and potatoes and he would hang out at the market looking for odd jobs unloading trucks or carrying parcels.

"He wanted to stand on his own feet," said younger brother Xiaowei. "He was kindhearted and thinks that everybody else is too."

On Feb. 28, 2010, the night of the Lantern Festival that ends the lunar New Year holiday, he and his family were visiting relatives in Shanyang, a town south of Xian. That night, Liu failed to come home, something that had never happened before. His family reported him missing the next day and printed posters that they distributed around the neighborhood.

Little did they know that he had been transported almost 100 miles away to Gaoling, a rural county where there are dozens of brick factories tucked deep in the countryside. They might never have found him if not for another family who'd also lost a son to the brick factories.

***

He Wen went missing June 2. The 35-year-old had been psychologically troubled since his late teens, when he'd suffered a breakdown after failing an exam. He was unable to hold a regular job but could unload trucks and was proud that he'd managed to buy his own television set.

The afternoon he disappeared, a nephew overheard him taking a telephone call from a woman who'd offered him a job that would provide more than $10 a day, meals and a free pack of cigarettes. He rode away on a bicycle.

His father, He Zhimin, is a 62-year-old farmer with unruly whiskers and hands that tremble as he fingers photographs of his missing son.

"I was suspicious as soon as I heard about this supposed job offer. I started asking around and people told me stories about the brick factories," He said.

He went to the local police, but they told him to file the report in nearby Gaoling. The police there sent him back.

"They kept kicking me from one place to another," he said.

So he launched his own investigation. Every afternoon, he'd go out in a three-wheel motorized cart, handing out fliers and business cards with images of his son's square-jawed face. Somebody printed out a map from Google and he marked the locations of all the brick factories he heard about: 58 in Gaoling alone.

Four workers at one factory said He Wen had worked there earlier in the summer and they gave his father directions to other factories nearby. An elderly woman had seen the younger He walking toward downtown Gaoling. Construction workers erecting an apartment complex thought he might have worked there.

"People kept saying they'd seen my son, but by the time I'd get there, he'd have disappeared."

In December, somebody telephoned to say a homeless man who looked like his son was sleeping on the street in Gaoling. He rushed over. He could see that the unshaven, dirt-encrusted man looked like his son: the same height, close in age. But he was not.

Disappointed, he returned home. His wife was furious.

"How could you leave that boy out on the street in winter? Maybe it was our son, after all. Even if he's not, he's somebody's son," she badgered her husband.

After a sleepless night, he drove back to Gaoling. The homeless man was still out in the street, but he was too delirious to give his name. He tried to take him to the police and to a hospital, but nobody wanted to take him in. Finally, he called a journalist, who matched the young man's description to that of another young man reported missing.

He was Liu Xiaoping.

***

As Liu recovered in the burn unit, his brother coaxed the story out of him. Liu told of the beatings and burnings, of the food so meager than he lost 20 pounds, of being chained at night and guarded by vicious dogs, about being shuttled among three brick factories.

He identified a photograph of He Zhimin's missing son as one of 11 disabled workers imprisoned with him. He also picked out from police photographs the woman who tricked him and a man known as Lao Fang, a nickname meaning "Old Fang," the foreman who beat him and the other workers.

He described in detail the location of the three brick factories where he'd worked, one of them where the workers had recognized the photo of He Zhimin's son.

That factory lies at the end of a straight dirt road through fallow corn fields 10 miles from Gaoling. There are a few houses out front, and in back a partially underground room lined with chambers containing brick ovens. Although it was closed for the winter, the manager, Wang Youqiang, was on duty.

"Look around if you like. There's no evidence against me. It's all just rumor," he told a visitor.

Wang acknowledged that it's hard to find workers — "Business is great. We sold 27 million bricks last year and would have sold 30 million, if we had the labor" — but denied using the disabled. "If you say otherwise, show me the proof."

But Ren Haibin, who was manager until June, when he says he retired because of ill health, confirmed most of what Liu Xiaoping claimed. He said the factory contracted with a man named Fang who would supply and supervise mentally disabled workers. Fang's mistress recruited them with the promise of $10 a day in wages.

In fact, the going rate for healthy workers was about $14 a day, whereas the factory paid Fang $4.50 per day for each mentally disabled worker, of which $1.50 was spent on food. The rest went to Fang.

"They made promises they didn't keep," Ren said. "The money went into Fang's pocket. The workers never saw it."

Ren said he never saw Fang beating a worker, but added: "He was not a kind person.... Maybe if they didn't work up to a certain level, there would be no food."

Fang could not be reached for comment. Telephone numbers he had used were disconnected.

In the two months since Liu was found wandering, local authorities have visited many brick factories in the area, requesting lists of workers' names and where they've come from. But no one has been arrested and Liu's family has yet to receive compensation for his medical bills.

"I thought this should be so simple, an open-and-shut case, but it has proved so complicated," said his brother Liu Xiaowei. "I'm very disappointed that our society hasn't done more to protect people like my brother."

He Zhimin, meanwhile, is no closer to finding his son. He fears that whoever is holding him may have spirited him far away to avoid detection. It's not an unreasonable fear; when the disabled workers were rescued in December in Xinjiang, one was found to have been transported 2,000 miles across China.

He Zhimin continues to go out every afternoon, driving through the countryside near the brick factories, thrusting fliers into the hands of passersby.

By now, most people recognize him, so they simply shake their heads: No, they haven't seen his son.

http://www.latimes.com/ne...226,0,3617177,full.story

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Sharon

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Mar 3 11 4:14 AM

asd

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INEPTITUDE DEALING WITH COMMUNIST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

INEPTITUDE DEALING WITH COMMUNIST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Dennis Miller : Assistant Secretary Of State Michael ...

State Department Defends Official Who Expressed Regret to Chinese Over Arizona Law

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