Olympic Reporters’ Guide to Labour Camps Published

Olympic Reporters’ Guide to Labour Camps Published
Booklet provides driving directions to notorious labour camps, urges coverage of media taboo

August 1, 2008—To help foreign reporters overcome the Chinese regime’s media censorship and shed light on closely shielded rights violations, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) released today a detailed guide to detention facilities located within miles of Olympic venues and known for their severe abuse of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.

The guide, entitled “Torture Outsidethe Olympic Village: A Guide to China’s Labour Camps,” isavailable online athttp://www.humanrightstorch.org/news/guide-to-olympic-village-labor-camps/or as a 22-page downloadable PDF at:http://xiuxian.no-ip.info/rescue/upload_images/CIPFG_Labour_Camp_Guide_EMAIL.pdf

“Many of us have heard stories aboutChina’s gulags, but when you discover how close some of thesehellholes are to Olympic venues, it’s sickening,” says CliveAnsley, China Monitor for Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada and NorthAmerican President of CIPFG.

The guide details seven detentionfacilities, in or near Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Tianjin,Qinhuangdao, and Shenyang, and includes:

• Map: Amap showing the location of the facility, the location of theclosest Olympic venue, and English-language directions to the campfrom the nearest airport and train station.

• Description of facility: Aphoto, general description of the facility, details of its prisonerpopulation, overall conditions, and the name, address and phonenumber (if available).

• Products and show tours:Products known to have been manufactured at the site and detailsof prior show tours to the facility, when relevant.

• Individual cases: Briefindividual case summaries of current and former prisoners ofconscience, the abuse they have suffered in custody, and whetherthey are available for interview.

“We hope this guide will drawinternational attention to the innocent individuals held at theselocations,” says Ansley. “It should particularly aid journalistsin investigating the plight of adherents of the Falun Gong, who makeup a huge percentage of labour camp detainees and have suffered abrutal campaign of persecution for nine years.”

Noteon censorship: Contrary to promises of“complete freedom” for foreign media, the Chinese authoritieshave blocked access to Falun Gong-related websites from the OlympicMedia Center in a deal struck with the International OlympicCommittee. To circumvent such censorship, CIPFG suggests thefollowing measures:

• Request thatcolleagues outside China e-mail or fax a copy of the guide to youinside China.

• Usecircumvention tools available at http://www.internetfreedom.org/to access the guide despite the censorship.

Once you haveobtained a copy, please re-post it on other websites, blogs, etc. Bycreating multiple copies on the web, the Chinese regime’s blockingof the original becomes obsolete.

TheCoalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG)was established to unite international human rights organizations,legal experts, medical institutions, NGOs and governmentrepresentatives around the world to participate in and independentinvestigation of the Chinese communist regime’s imprisonment,torture, killing, and organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.Since August 2007, it has also sponsored the Human Rights TorchRelay, a global grassroots campaign to raise awareness of, and stop,the Chinese communist regime’s human rights crimes against allvictimized groups prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

ENDS

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