Practitioners of Falun Gong lose their rights to employment and education. Countless families have been torn apart and many children have been orphaned when their parents were either incarcerated or tortured to death.

Brainwashing and torture is routinely used to force people to stop practicing. According to a 2006 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Novak, two thirds of those tortured in Chinese prisons are Falun Gong practitioners.

The majority of the practitioner who get arrested are sent to labour camps, often referred to as a present-day  Gulag, where they are subjected to slave labour and torture.

There are more than 3000 documented deaths among Falun Gong-practitioners as a result of torture, but the real figure may be many times higher than that. Furthermore, deaths among Falun Gong-practitioners are reported as suicides by the regime.

Read more at: www.faluninfo.net

In China, only the state-run “Patriotic” Christian churches are allowed. All common versions of Christianity is banned, and it is difficult to find places to congregate for worship. This has led many Christians to conduct services in someone’s home, so-called House Churches.

There have been widespread police repression against House Churches, where Christians who hold prayer meetings or conduct services in their own homes are raided, harassed and jailed.

In China, Christians risk persecution and imprisonment simply for gathering at someones home for prayer or Bible study.

Organ harvesting

The report “Bloody Harvest” presents clear evidence of a large-scale trade with organs from Falun Gong practitioners in China.

The report states that between the years 2000 and 2005, some 60,000 organ transplants took place in China, and that in 41,500 of these cases, the organ source remain unknown.

Organs are harvested while the victims are still alive, and afterwards their bodies are cremated.

Read the report at: http://organharvestinvestigation.net

Since the occupation began, China’s so-called “policies” have claimed many lives. During the Great Cultural Revolution alone, more than 150 000 people were killed. Since 1947, the Chinese government has arranged for the migration of more than 20 million Han Chinese to Inner Mongolia. The rich natural resources are transferred to China and the once unspoiled nature is now being ruthlessly exploited.

64 percent of what used to be grasslands is now a barren desert.  Furthermore, in later years, the Chinese government has prevented the Mongolians from upholding their traditional nomadic lifestyle. Mongolians have been forced to relocate to densely populated cities. In this way, Mongolians are being deprived of their livelihood and they are losing their land. These policies are threatening the Mongolians very existence in Inner Mongolia. The Mongolian culture and language are in danger of disappearing in the region. The cultural heritage that has been preserved for generations is in danger of disappearing in Inner Mongolia. The policies of the communist regime are violating the Mongolian people’s basic human rights. They are denied their right to express their opinions and hold public meetings.

Read more at www.smhric.org

Buddhism became the primary target for communist “reform” under chairman Mao’s cultural revolution and hundreds of thousands of buddhists were arrested and sent to prisons or labour camps. The exact number of political prisoners in Tibet before 1979 is unknown, but according to some estimates at least 70 % of the prisoners have died in captivity.

Even today political activism, no matter how peaceful, is considered a very serious offence and leads to prison sentences of between a year and life imprisonment. Similarly, any expression of support for the Dalai Lama, even carrying his picture or showing the banned Tibetan national flag, are reasons for arrest and imprisonment.

Torture is routine during interrogation and detention of political prisoners in Tibetan jails. Methods of torture are varied and extremely cruel. They include electric shocks, beatings with nail-studded clubs, metal rods or rifle butts, burning with red-hot irons or boiling water, hanging people by the thumbs or feet, sexual abuse, prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures, deprivation of food, water and sleep and prolonged solitary confinement.

From 1944 to 1949, the region enjoyed independence under the name East Turkestan, But it became a part of the People’s Republic of China when it was formed in 1949.

Xinjiang is China’s largest province, covering 17% of its total territory. It has important natural resources like oil, and the region is also a gateway to Central Asia. This makes Xinjiang a key area in Chinese domestic politics.

Persecution in Xinjiang is mainly, but not exclusively, focused on Uyghurs, the largest ethnic group in the region.

Examples of religious persecution is the banning of Ramadan celebrations, the shutting down of mosques and religious schools. Illegal religious practice is punishable by imprisonment or even execution.

Peacefully opposing the government’s policies has resulted in imprisonment, and in some cases torture and execution. According to sources, tens of thousands of people have been punished for expressing their opinions and for joining peaceful organizations that oppose government policies.

Xinjiang is the only Chinese province where people are executed for so-called political crimes. Refugees can also testify to being brutally tortured in captivity and how demonstrators are severely beaten.

Advocates for independence are persecuted even outside of China, and have been immediately executed when the Chinese government has managed to bring them back to China. Since 2001, the Chinese government has intensified the persecution under the guise of “war on terror”.

The violent response to demonstrations in the city of Urumqi on July 5, 2009, is one of the most serious crimes against the Uyghurs. Massacres and clashes between Uyghurs and Chinese police have occurred before in Xinjiang, but not with such high casualties.

Read more at: www.uyghuramerican.org or www.uhrp.org

A free and independent media, as we know it, hardly exists in China today. Internet searches for terms like Falun Gong, Dalai Lama, democracy and human rights will yield no hits whatsoever.

In 2004, the journalist and poet Shi Tao was sentenced to ten years in prison for leaking state secrets. His crime was that he passed on directives that his newspaper had received from higher officials to a foreign website. The directives told newspapers not to report on the anniversary of the massacre on Tiananmen Square in 1989. Yahoo helped the regime to track down the IP address of Shi Tao’s computer, so he could be identified. Dozens of journalists are currently serving time in Chinese prisons. Numerous democracy activists have also been imprisoned and all democratic movements must operate from outside of China.

Examples of imprisoned human rights activists are Hu Jia and the lawyer Gao Zhizheng.

Gao was arrested on numerous occasions, after defending some of China’s most vulnerable groups such as Falun Gong practitioners and miners, and he called upon the Chinese government to follow Chinese law in several open letters.

Gao has also described in a statement how he was subjected to cruel torture for 50 days. After his testimony, Gao was once again abducted by the Chinese police and his current whereabouts are unknown.

Read more at: www.freegao.com

In 2008, Hu Jia was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. He was arrested after a nationwide crackdown on dissidents before the 2008 Olympics. Among his criticism of the Chinese government is a letter entitled “The Real China and the Olympics”where he provides detailed accounts of human rights violations carried out by the Chinese government. Despite suffering from liver cancer, Hu is still in prison and has been denied medical parole. Hu’s wife, Zeng Jinyuan, has been under constant surveillance but continues to support human rights and work for the release of her husband.

Read more at: http://hujiajinyan.wordpress.com/about/

Watch a clip from the massacre at Tiananmen Square 1989: http://chinasupport.net/CSN/history.aspx

Source:http://www.epochtimes.se/articles/2010/04/14/19060.html

Products manufactured in these camps are exported to many places, including Europe. There are currently 256 labour camps operating as registered businesses in China.

The report states that between the years 2000 and 2005, some 60,000 organ transplants took place in China, and that in 41,500 of these cases, the organ source remain unknown.

Organs are harvested while the victims are still alive, and afterwards their bodies are cremated.

Read the report at: http://organharvestinvestigation.net

The one-child policy is a form of state-enforced family planning which since 1979 has been applied in China to slow its population growth. Many women suffer serious health problems the rest of their lives and the emotional trauma   of  forced abortions leads reportedly to the high suicide rate among women.

The one-child policy is a form of governmental family planning, which has been used since 1979 as a measure to slow down the population growth in China. Many women suffer lifelong health problems as a result of forced abortions, and the emotional trauma is thought to be a factor behind the high suicide rates among Chinese women.

One-child policy was introduced in 1979 to tackle the growing problem of overpopulation. During Mao Zedong’s rule in the 1950′s, reproduction was encouraged among the workers and the military as a way to boost morale.

China’s one-child policy means that a couple must apply for permission to have a baby in advance. Single women are can not have children, married women who already have a child must use an IUD, and women with two or more children or a son are sometimes forced to undergo sterilization.

While one-child families enjoy priority access to homes and other advantages, families with several children  are moved to the back of the line. They are banned from certain attractive jobs and have to pay fines and special fees. Preventive measures include prohibitive fines, forced abortions and sterilizations, arbitrary arrests, torture and sometimes kidnapping of children.

The number of children who have been abandoned is also high. Divorced couples sometimes abandon their children when the regulations make it impossible for them to have a child in their new marriage. Abandoned children become homeless and end up outside the system, without education or care. Children whose parents have not been given permission to have a child often suffer the same fate.

A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2005 showed that men over the age of 20 surpass the number of women in the same group by 32 million. Traditionally, families hope to have a son, since he will be able to provide for his parent when they are old. This cultural preference, combined with the one-child policy, has led to this gender imbalance.