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Or a commemorative T-shirt depicting the images below.
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Wishing you a Wonderful New Year and Review of 2017 |
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Monday, 01 January 2018 |
Dear Friend,
Entering 2018, we wish you a wonderful New Year.
We will continue working with you in helping to bring
attention to the many people whom we see as giving the world a
spark for hopefulness and love.
2017 can be remembered as the year when China's
president Xi Jinping consolidates his China dream beyond the
imagination of the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Thought police are in all China's internet
surveillance with the requirement of real name registration.
WeChat, the all-in-one messaging calling app is being used by
China as a national id that will make any user responsible for its
own group chat as the government of China continuously censor
speech and expression in pushing for their catch all phrase of
"maintaining security". Western corporations became collaborators
in censorship when Apple removed VPN apps that allow Chinese in
China to bypass China's Great Firewall.
The death of Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo in July
brought to the world attention that any long term imprisonment by
China may in fact be a death sentence. Liu was sentenced to 11
years in prison on Christmas day 2009; detained in 2008, he had
less than two years left in his sentence. Yang Tongyan, 杨同彦
a writer and member of PEN, died in
November after being released for medical parole in August for a
brain tumor. Yang was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2006 and
was only a few months towards the end of his sentence. In
2014, attorney Cao Shunli 曹順利 died
after she was detained in 2013 as she was leaving for Geneva for a
review on China's human rights record. This pattern of causing the
resultant death of detainees or prisoners in China is alarming.
Currently, Visual Artists Guild is concerned that Huang Qi,
黃琦,a human rights activist
who started an early web site "64 Tianwang" since 1998 and
imprisoned twice before, is now in danger of dying while in
custody. The 8 years sentence in December of blogger Wu Gan 吳
淦 is certain to result in his health deterioration in
the future.
While the world may celebrate China's commitment to
the Paris climate accord, few recognizes that in a totalitarian
government, the authorities can set their goal for peak emission
by 2030 with no regard to how it will impact ordinary citizens.
Minister of Environment Protection Li Ganjie's 李干杰;
order to stop coal use by three million housholds in 28
cities around Beijing resulted in the destruction of coal stoves
of those homes when replacements were mostly not ready during the
depth of Beijng's deadly winter. Within the same policy of
pollution control, China started to expel its low-end population
"低端人口" when a fire broke out in late November in Beijing where 19
people died. The forced eviction and demolition of homes for
migrant workers on Beijing is part of the government plan to limit
population in Beijing in co-ordination with president Xi Jinping's
plan for a "beautiful China" 美好生活as announced during the 19th
Congress in October.
Perhaps the most Orwellian nightmare China's
government is doing is the collection of biometric DNA of the
people in Xinjiang province where 11 million Uighur Muslims live.
With pressure from China, Egypt and other countries have forced
the return of Uighur students back to China where they have
disappeared. One would wonder whether such data could be used for
China's organ trade.
Self-immolation in Tibet continues with seven this
year. We must convince the Tibetans that ending one's life will
not help to end the repression. Each and everyone of their life
is necessary to continue to preserve Tibetan culture and language
for the future.
Bringing attention to China's human rights violations
will help to give those in China fighting for their rights a ray
of hope that the world is watching. China's government may
proclaim beautiful policy to the world but the facts of such
policy actions will belie the government's declarations. The
Chinese Communists Party should review their own disastrous
history to truly understand why they continue to fail their people
despite such flowery policy such as the Great Leap Forward when
over 40 millions died of the biggest man made famine in human
history.
Ann Lau
Chair, Visual Artists Guild
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