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Just two weeks after four thugs smashed their way into the Hong Kong Epoch Times office and destroyed valuable printing equipment, two more break-ins targeted our offices this week, this time in Japan and Taiwan.
In total, seven thefts or acts of vandalism, some violent, have targeted Epoch Times offices and the homes of key staff in just five weeks.
Why?
Epoch Times readers know one reason. Our consistent, unabashed coverage of human rights abuses in China has drawn the ire of the communist leaders in Beijing. Indeed, in this week's edition, we offer an exclusive interview with a former journalist in China who insists he has documented the cover-up of over 400 bird flu cases at hospitals inside China. We also have a report on a secret concentration camp in China - corroborated this week by investigations from a human rights group - where Falun Gong practitioners' living hearts, lungs and livers are harvested for huge profits while their murdered bodies are cremated to destroy the evidence.
This certainly does not please the communist authorities. However, there is a bigger reason our newspaper has been targeted. And that is the book-length editorial "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" that we've published in a dozen languages and twice that many countries around the world.
The "Nine Commentaries" is history in the making, heralding the very disintegration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is written by Chinese who lived under the rule of the CCP themselves, and the in-depth history and nature of the CCP exposed in its pages has never been told before. Since its publication a year ago, over 9 million people--many from inside mainland China--have posted statements on our website renouncing membership in the bastions of China's party faithful–the Communist Youth League, the Young Pioneers, and the Party itself.
Tens of thousands more quit every day.
And the CCP isn't very happy about it. They're looking for clues leading them to the authors of the "Nine Commentaries." They're using cheap terrorist tricks and two-bit hucksters in attempts to intimidate us and stop our presses from printing.
On February 8, three thugs brandishing knives tied up and pistol-whipped Epoch Times global IT director Peter Yuan Li in his Atlanta home. They appeared at his door posing as water-delivery men. Leaving cash and jewelry behind, they ran off with Li's two laptop computers.
On February 28, four men armed with hammers crashed through the plate glass doors of the Hong Kong Epoch Times printshop. Threatening our staff with hammers raised, they went straight for our printshop's control panel. There the hammers started flying, bashing and battering critical computers and costly new plate-making equipment. They tried their best to put our Hong Kong daily out of business.
More attacks followed in Japan, where computers were stolen, New York, France and now Taiwan, where on March 13, thieves made off with every computer in our Taiwan Central Region office.
Taiwan police don't consider this a simple case of burglary. No fingerprints were left, but other valuables were. They too, believe that our computers, or more specifically our data files and contact information, were the targets. Local police in Taiwan have called in their federal colleagues to help, and are stepping up patrols and assistance to Epoch Times staff.
But the attackers and the instigators should bear one thing in mind.
A founding principle of The Epoch Times is the courage to speak up and report the facts, despite what dangers or threats we might incur. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in our Chinese coverage, and the four Epoch Times reporters who remain imprisoned in China today for embodying this principle should serve as a reminder.
The Epoch Times will not be scared or intimidated into silence. We will continue to report human rights issues in China, and we will also report prominently the repression we have faced in exercising this right to press freedom. If the goal in attacking The Epoch Times is to quell open discussion on the history and nature of the communist regime, the results will be only the opposite.
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