[This is Part Two of a multi-part report on the Miami Human Rights Torch Relay event. Please see Part One: Human Rights Torch Shines in Miami.
The global Human Rights Torch Relay was initiated by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG), an international organization of legislators, government officials, and human rights activists who say that the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong is one of the most extensive and brutal repressions on earth, and one that has largely been unreported by world media.
CIPFG conceived the Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR) to take advantage of the media and popular attention focused on China as the Chinese regime bid for, won, and prepared for the 2008 Olympic Games.
With the eyes of the worlds on China, CIPFG reasoned, the world would finally be able to see the darker side of the Chinese regime.
HRTR was also seen as an opportunity to unite the numerous victims of Chinese repression around the world, for the Chinese regime reached far beyond China's borders, to interfere in the affairs of countries all across the world.
HRTR, it was hoped, would finally unite all the varied victims, to give them a unified voice loud enough to reach the public ear, so that the people of the world would finally see the true measure of the harm caused by the CCP.
With this in mind, HRTR organizers reached out to Tibetans, whose country was invaded occupied by the Chinese regime nearly six decades ago, and which has been occupied since; to the people of Darfur, who are the object of genocidal attacks by Janajaweed militia using Chinese arms supplied to the Sudanese government; to the people of Burma, who have suffered under repressive Chinese-armed and -funded military dictatorship since the early 1960's, and where Aung San Suu Kyi, who overwhelmingly won the only reasonably fair election Burma has seen in the past two decades, and who has been under house arrest for almost two decades since winning. This regime would long since have fallen were it not for the CCP propping it up.
Michael Andrews, who has spent the last four years as national coordinator for Amnesty International USA, addressed the terrible treatment the Tibetan monks have received at the hands of the Chinese regime. Hundreds of monks were jailed and beaten for protesting against "a government-imposed campaign which forced monks to write denunciations of the Dalai Lama," their spiritual leader. As other Tibetans joined the protests, the Chinese regime called up the army and expelled all journalists, effectively cutting off almost all information about what the CCP is doing to the Tibetan people.
As Mrs. Dong Than, President of The Vietnamese-American Community, describes it, "Thousands of Tibetans have been captured by the CCP army and hundreds have been killed."
At the Miami HRTR event, representatives of the Burmese people and also from the Save Darfur Coalition of Broward County came forward to tell the audience about the hardships their people face.
Ms. Mo Aung, from Free Burma, described how millions of victims of Cyclone Nargis are suffering without food, shelter, medicine, or drinking water, while millions of dollars worth of international aid sits undistributed, as Burma's generals decide whether to accept outside help. Though the world rushed to the assistance of the Burmese people, the ruling generals initially blocked all aid form entering the country despite the fact that the government was wholly unprepared and unable to deal with even a fraction of the death and damage.
Musicians Sing to Save Lives
There are many ways to spread the word that human rights violations in China and around the world, must end. The Miami Human Rights Torch Relay featured several local musical performers, all of who wrote songs specifically for the event, highlighting the persecution of Falun Gong in China, expressing sympathy with the victims of CCP oppression, and calling for and end to the CCP's widespread violations of human rights around the world.
Drew Parker has spent the past five years traveling the northeastern seaboard playing both indoor and outdoor shows for both large and intimate crowds. While traveling, Drew was touched by certain world issues, which have inspired some of his latest songs.
He sang one such song, "Mother China," a lament for the lost glories and the lost lives of a five-thousand-year-old civilization whose government is now imprisoning, torturing, and killing its own people, specifically Falun Gong practitioners, in an effort to maintain power.
Drew feels so strongly about the wrongness of this persecution, he is donating 100% of the proceeds from the song "Mother China" to charities active in ending the persecution of Falun Gong in communist China.
Latin-American influenced band Origen, composed of three Venezuelans, an Ecuadorian, and a Mexican, also performed a song written expressly for this event, called "Coexist."
Sung in Spanish, the lyrics expressed a wish that the long persecution of Falun Gong—and all persecutions based on prejudice and ignorance—might end, and that people who had been taught to hate that which is different might stop and look at themselves and learn to accept the differences.
Many of the musicians who attended the event had been unaware of the scope and the intensity of the oppression inside China; that so many were moved to speak out against it shows that the desire to see human rights and justice for all transcends social as well as racial and national boundaries.
[Part Two of a multi-part article.]
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