Topic: Human Rights
This Week at the China Support Network... We have praise for Obama, jeers for Tom Friedman, and we're announcing a press conference and an art exhibit.by John Kusumi
(centrist liberal)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
September 13, 2009 (CSN)
CSN to host RAZY press conference
In responding to the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the China Support Network and the Chinese dissident community are rightly outraged by the capture, mistreatment, arrest, and upcoming trial for Zhou Yongjun, who in 1989 was the first Tiananmen Square student leader elected to chair the Autonomous Students Federation of Beijing Universities. The Federation was the occupying force in Tiananmen Square.
The Chinese government plans to hold a trial for Zhou, who lives in the United States where he has two U.S. citizen children, and who attempted a return to China in September, 2008. As he attempted to cross from Macao into Hong Kong with someone else's passport, Hong Kong immigration authorities decided that he should go to Mainland China in the custody of authorities. They transferred him to Mainland authorities who held him in Shenzhen before moving him to his home province of Sichuan and arresting him with trumped up charges.
There is absolutely no merit to the trumped up case against Zhou, and CSN has already described this case as Tiananmen Square persecution carried forward into the present day. On Friday, September 18, 2009, CSN will host a Manhattan press conference with Chinese legal experts to detail the case and to announce next steps which are being undertaken by RAZY. RAZY is an acronym for the ad-hoc Rescue Alliance for Zhou Yongjun.
The press conference will run from 12:00 to 2:00pm on Friday the 18th, at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003. Presenters will include attorney Li Jinjin, who is also well known from the Tiananmen Square student leadership; attorney Ning Ye; John Kusumi for the China Support Network; and Yuewei Zhang for the family members of Zhou Yongjun.
Obama praised for tariff on Chinese tires
The China Support Network extends its applause for the recent decision by U.S. President Barack Obama to raise import tariffs on Made-In-China vehicle tires. CSN's director emeritus, John Kusumi, said, "This is a first baby step towards closing the barn door and retrieving the U.S. economy from Communist China. However, it is very welcome news in that this step is in the right direction. Kudos must go to Barack Obama and to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
"We used to think that a currency manipulation tariff would be the first Obama tariff against economic dirty pool by the Chinese regime. It turns out that a tire tariff appeared first. We are happy to take progress where we can get it -- so today, the China Support Network offers a round of applause to President Obama."
The China Support Network also calls upon Beijing to abolish Laogai and Laojiao systems in China. Because those systems promote slave labor, they too are economic dirty pool and serve to unbalance trade, tilting the playing field. As internationally-recognized human rights abuses, Laogai and Laojiao could easily become the basis of future tariffs from an enlightened U.S. presidential administration.
Kusumi commented, "When they want the jobs back in America, Laogai and Laojiao are ready reasons for tariffs. They are low hanging fruit -- easy to criticize and easy to tariff, in the same spirit of social and economic justice as that of the Emancipation Proclamation." In line with that, rhetorical questions came from Kusumi: "Should labor be worth nothing? Or, should labor be worth something? And, how noxiously objectionable is this Chinese practice of employing slave labor?"
Friedman blasted for ignorance about China
The New York Times published an abomination on September 8, 2009 -- a rambling, incoherent, disjointed editorial from columnist Tom Friedman, which has been roundly criticized and lampooned on the internet.
Tom Friedman wrote, "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages."
The entire Chinese pro-democracy movement will take a dim view of such dim witted statements. At CSN, John Kusumi said, "Friday's upcoming press conference, where my group will detail human rights abuse in China, serves to put the lie to Tom Friedman's romanticized notions of one-party autocracy.
"The New York Times has become an open sewer emitting the propaganda of Tom Friedman. His statements should be noxiously objectionable to all peoples of the free world. Someone else described Friedman as your classic power slut.' In the current case, he is brown nosing Chinese Communists, and the shoe seems to fit.
"At Friday's CSN event, I will speak and may have more choice words either for Friedman specifically, or for the New York Times in general. If the Times fires Friedman before Friday, then I will applaud the Times for doing the right thing; but certainly not in the alternative case."
Chinese dissidents host art exhibit
The upcoming press conference of Friday will be hosted within an art exhibit that is already in town from the Tear Down This Wall Foundation. "Tear Down This Wall" reminds of the fall of Soviet Communism in Germany, but at this commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the event, the Foundation is actually run by a series of Chinese dissidents.
The Foundation has been co-sponsored by numerous well known Chinese dissidents, including Fang Lizhi, Liu Gang, Wang Dan, Wang Juntao, Wei Jingsheng, Xiong Yan, and Xu Wenli.
Their point is to say that The Wall is still there for those under Communism in China. We still need to tear down this wall. About the art exhibit, see also an earlier announcement from the Foundation, at: [link edited for length]
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