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Three important human rights issues converged in San Francisco's Chinatown this past weekend at a rally held by The Epoch Times to support the nine million people who have renounced the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), raise awareness about the Global Relay Hunger Strike for Human Rights, and expose a recently revealed concentration camp in China where Falun Gong practitioners' organs have been removed for sale while they are still alive.
Over one hundred people gathered in Portsmouth Square last Saturday, where participants gave speeches in front of signs such as "Support 9 Million Who Quit the CCP, Welcome a New World without Communist Tyranny."
The movement of quitting the communist party has been in progress since December 2004, shortly after The Epoch Times editorial series Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party was published. Since then, over nine million people have renounced the CCP and its affiliated organizations, with around 20 to 30 thousand people from around the world quitting every day.
The Nine Commentaries exposes the history and nature of the communist party, particularly in China, approaching it from different angles, including the effects of the destruction of culture. Many people who have stepped away from the Party say that it is an act of conscience rather than of politics.
Just last month, human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng began a relay hunger strike to protest the wanton disregard for human and civil rights in China. The relay has since spread around the world, with thousands of participants. Those hunger striking do so usually for 24 hours.
The local branch of The Epoch Times has taken a lead in organizing a relay hunger strike here in the Bay Area to complement the hunger strikes taking place elsewhere, and so far over 90 people have participated in the last two weeks.
"We are conducting this hunger strike in order to give a stronger message, because this is something serious," said Maria Daly, an Epoch Times staff member and participant in the hunger strike, on the human rights situation in China.
This recent local relay hunger strike began on March 9, the day that a previously secret concentration camp was revealed to the world by a journalist who defected to the U.S. Since then, another witness, whose ex-husband was a surgeon in the camp, has come forward to confirm that this camp, known as Sujiatun , indeed exists.
According to the informants, the camp is solely used for Falun Gong practitioners, and has been in existence since 2001, but no information was leaked because no prisoner who went in ever came out alive.
The witness told The Epoch Times in an interview, "Organs harvested from live bodies are worth far more than organs taken from dead bodies. Many Falun Gong practitioners were still alive when their organs were taken. After their organs were cut out, some of these people were thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt, thus leaving no evidence."
"Many in the group believe that governments haven't given a very firm message to the [Chinese communist] regime so far, they have been very soft, waiting, hoping that things in China, the human rights situation, will improve. But we can see from these concentration camps that it's getting worse," Daly continued.
Many hunger strikers plan to protest in Washington, D.C. this coming weekend, hoping to gain the U.S. government and the President's support on the matter, and possibly launch an investigation into the concentration camp.
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