First of all let me start by saying that I'm making this post to fulfill a requirement for a class project. In addition to a research paper, we have to perform an action that could help create change for the topic that we chose.
My topic is on China's persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong ( link to Wikipedia ). My course of action is to create awareness, because this issue doesn't seem to be discussed very frequently compared to other human rights issues such as Tibet, Darfur, and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. I was not aware of China's persecution of Falun Gong until 2006 when I was in Madison, WI for my first year of college. I was walking around the farmer's market and a Chinese lady came up to me and handed me a pamphlet about the issue and asked me to sign a petition to help the people affected by the conflict.
China doesn't seem to get punished by the international community even though they've done so many ugly things that violates people's human rights. In my topic for example, members of the spiritual group are imprisoned and tortured just because they belong to the group. From my research, the problem that the Chinese government has with this group is the large number of members that it has. The communists fear being overthrown. Estimates range from 80-100 million. I don't necessarily agree with what this group believes in, but they should not be tortured . What else doesn't make sense is that China is part of the UN and they are violating basic guidelines for human rights. The UN and world powers obviously haven't taken appropriate action to rectify China's wrong doings, as we can see with the current events. These people being persecuted have not committed any heinous crimes for the most part. The best excuse that the Chinese government could come up for cracking down on them is because they deem the group an "evil cult".
The point of this post though is not just to bring awareness to this issue but to hopefully catch a few people's attention and those few people might take some action, such as writing to their congressmen regarding the issue and asking them to do something about it.
Also, this site seems to have many people who pretty much boycott Chinese made goods. Besides having lousy quality, there is another reason to boycott them. As part of their punishment plan, some members of Falun Gong are forced into labor camps. There was an account from one of these prisoners who said he was forced to work in sweatshops. One of the items that he made were Homer Simpson slippers. The ones that he are talking about resemble the ones that I've seen at Walmart before.
Thank you for reading this post. I know it's long. I hope you would leave some feedback on this issue and since I am writing this so late I'm not thinking quite clearly so I might make a another post to add a few things.
My topic is on China's persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong ( link to Wikipedia ). My course of action is to create awareness, because this issue doesn't seem to be discussed very frequently compared to other human rights issues such as Tibet, Darfur, and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. I was not aware of China's persecution of Falun Gong until 2006 when I was in Madison, WI for my first year of college. I was walking around the farmer's market and a Chinese lady came up to me and handed me a pamphlet about the issue and asked me to sign a petition to help the people affected by the conflict.
China doesn't seem to get punished by the international community even though they've done so many ugly things that violates people's human rights. In my topic for example, members of the spiritual group are imprisoned and tortured just because they belong to the group. From my research, the problem that the Chinese government has with this group is the large number of members that it has. The communists fear being overthrown. Estimates range from 80-100 million. I don't necessarily agree with what this group believes in, but they should not be tortured . What else doesn't make sense is that China is part of the UN and they are violating basic guidelines for human rights. The UN and world powers obviously haven't taken appropriate action to rectify China's wrong doings, as we can see with the current events. These people being persecuted have not committed any heinous crimes for the most part. The best excuse that the Chinese government could come up for cracking down on them is because they deem the group an "evil cult".
The point of this post though is not just to bring awareness to this issue but to hopefully catch a few people's attention and those few people might take some action, such as writing to their congressmen regarding the issue and asking them to do something about it.
Also, this site seems to have many people who pretty much boycott Chinese made goods. Besides having lousy quality, there is another reason to boycott them. As part of their punishment plan, some members of Falun Gong are forced into labor camps. There was an account from one of these prisoners who said he was forced to work in sweatshops. One of the items that he made were Homer Simpson slippers. The ones that he are talking about resemble the ones that I've seen at Walmart before.
Thank you for reading this post. I know it's long. I hope you would leave some feedback on this issue and since I am writing this so late I'm not thinking quite clearly so I might make a another post to add a few things.
