Hundreds of Beijing Residents Held in Detention Centers, Dozens Sentenced to Labor Camps

NEW YORK – With one month to go before the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, Chinese security agencies continue to arrest Falun Gong adherents throughout China in large numbers. In Beijing alone, hundreds have been arrested and dozens sentenced to labor camps without trial.

In recent months, the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDI) has received regular reports from adherents and their families inside China of door-to-door searches and arrests. According to statistics compiled from these reports, there have been at least 8,037 arrests of Falun Gong adherents across 29 provinces, major cities and autonomous regions since December 2007.The largest monthly total of 1,819 known arrests occurred in June, followed by 1,799 known arrests in May.

In Beijing alone, there have been at least 208 arrests across all 18 of the municipality’s districts and counties since December 2007.

BBC, the authorities are labelling any sect that does not submit itself to the control of the state as an “evil religion”.

Canadian lady in Tiananmen for Falun Gong

Shutting the Media out of Tibet and Other “Sensitive” Stories, Report,Human Rights Watch

Many Thanks to Human Rights Watch for putting together this information on media restriction in China

This report tells the awful truth in a very readable way. They are well researched in terms of communicating with the Foreign Correspondents Club of China and putting the responsibility on accurate sources like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Central Publicity Department, China Central Television (CCTV), instead of accrediting the whole country for these kinds of problems. I highly recommend reading this whole thing through as there are a lot of crucial facts that can be very useful in understanding the reality of the current China situation.

“Although the Chinese and foreign journalists were invited to interview people on the street in Machu most conversations quickly ceased as government officials accompanying the tour approached.”Tibetan monks at Xiahe’s Labrang monastery who did approach foreign correspondents during that tour on April 9 and openly spoke of government repression were reportedly later “imprisoned, beaten and in some cases subjected to electric shock torture,” as a punishment for speaking out.

……………..As a result, the majority of Chinese journalists produce news stories which reflect the safe reporting limits permitted by the system within which they operate. A Canadian journalist employed from April 2007-April 2008 at the English-language China Daily, the Chinese government’s flagship publication for foreign readers, described self-censorship as the norm among his Chinese colleagues. “Reporters here simply know what they can and cannot write—and they don’t challenge those limitations. Change isn’t coming from the bottom and certainly isn’t coming from the top.”²⁹