By Matt for the TIB Network:
Every now and then I see a press release that just floors me...this is one of those:News Advisory:What is this all about? Religious persecution via telephone? Why does China give a kitty about what religion Americans are practicing? I don't get it...if anybody knows the Reader's Digest version, feel free to let me have it in the comments section.
Starting from Feb 6, 2005, dozens of homes and individuals in the Washington DC area have been bombarded by phone calls with recorded messages that unmistakably come from China's Communist regime. The messages contain propaganda, demonizing Falun Gong, and claiming the Chinese Government is defending "human rights" by "saving" people from the benign Chinese spiritual practice. People who experienced this attack will play the recordings and share their shock, uneasiness, and indignation of this state-run terrorism in the land of America. Victims available for interview.
TIME: Feb 9, noon to 1 PM
LOCATION: Zenger Room, National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, DC 20045
The assault. This phone assault happened to hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, at about the same time. By midnight Feb 7, at least 23 individuals and families in the metropolitan Washington DC area received phone calls with a prerecorded message, slandering Falun Gong. Some received as many as 18 messages. Most recipients were Falun Gong practitioners.
New method of terror? This may mark the first time in U.S. history that agents of a Communist regime have executed a mass calling to U.S. homes and cell phones with recorded propaganda. Contents of the message are identical to propaganda from China's five-year-old campaign against Falun Gong. The message centered on reports by the Beijing regime, attempting to link Falun Gong with an alleged self-immolation incident in 2001, which has since been exposed as an hoax.
Diversion tactic. This campaign also comes at a time when China is trying to divert attention away from internal crises caused by the death of former leader, Zhao Ziyang, and the recent decisions of thousands of Communist Party members to withdraw from the party after reading the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. (See for Chinese and for English.)
Propaganda. The propaganda this time appropriates a recent article by the Associated Press-Beijing in an attempt to gain credibility. This urged the media industry to rethink the role of media in Chinese communist's Falun Gong purge. Human rights attorneys have likened China's vilifications to the deadly tactics of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in the 1930s against the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
For more information, visit here and here.
The proposed topic for the MVCA chat is China and missile defense, so this is somewhat interesting to me...the China part, not the missile defense...
