Chinese President Hu Jintao and George W. Bush agree on at least one thing: torture. Together, these two champions of inhumanity addressed reporters - though took no questions - at a stately welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn lawn last week.
Intended to be a tightly scripted, ceremonial affair - no pesky questions from reporters, no awkward allusions to human rights abuses - this empty photo-op served two overarching purposes. First, to help our Boy King appear more presidential at a time when even a Fox News poll has his approval rating at 33% (put in perspective, Nixon’s was at 31% during the Senate Watergate hearings, as details of his misdeeds were broadcast nightly into every living room in America). Second, this red carpet treatment overtly showcased Bush administration support for the Chinese leadership, despite its well documented and ongoing anti-democratic rule, which includes, among other institutions, no freedom of the press - any outside news infiltrating China is censored, word for word, by the state (with the help, you’ll be proud to know, of American ISP providers like Yahoo, MSN and Google).
But this orchestrated affront to liberty - during which both leaders shamefully extolled the value of “human rights” while simultaneously, as a result of their directives, untold numbers of innocent human beings continue to be tortured - was shattered when a Chinese woman interrupted President Hu’s address. She cried, "President Bush, stop him from killing! President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong!" (It turned out she had obtained a press pass legitimately as reporter for a Falun Gong newspaper.)
Falun Gong, a religious practice in China, was banned by the state in 1999. Since then thousands of its members have gone missing to “labor re-education camps” - likened by many to the concentration camps run by the Nazis - where they are tortured, experimented on by teams of doctors and murdered, and their organs then harvested. The Chinese government declared Falun Gong members enemies of the state - similar to enemy combatants here - so they are accorded no legal representation whatsoever, and no trial. They just…disappear.
Subsequent to the protester’s appeals to stop Mr. Hu's murderous regime, she was dragged from the proceedings by Secret Service, whereupon Hu continued his address as though the woman’s cries were but a passing ill wind. The sour whiff of truth.
The coverage of the same scene in the mainstream media was typified by this account filed by The Associated Press:
“In a surprise outburst that cast a diplomatic shadow, a screaming protester confronted President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao and interrupted the welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn Thursday. Bush later apologized to the Chinese leader.”
“Surprise outburst,” “cast a diplomatic shadow,” “screaming protester,” “confronted,” “interrupted the welcoming ceremony.” The nerve. The gall. Jolting them with her selfish concern for human life. Throwing cold water on their Orwellian pomp.
The article continues: “‘President Bush, stop him from killing,’ the woman shouted, to the surprise of hundreds of guests spread across the lawn on a sunny, warm day. ‘President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong’ - a banned religious movement in China.” What kind of sick, twisted person would disrupt a ceremony on such a “sunny, warm day”? And hey, sister, don’t you know you’re barking up the wrong tree? Asking our Bleeder-in-Chief to stop killing and persecution is like asking a fat man to order a salad in a bakery. Oh, and that in-depth description of Falun Gong, “a banned religious movement in China”- not another word about their suffering or the brutality of Mr. Hu and his government in the rest of the article.
Then, with no tongue in cheek or irony in sight, there’s this: “Outside the White House gates, hundreds of banner-waving protesters loudly demonstrated against Hu's visit. The clamor could be heard faintly during an elaborate lunch Bush gave in Hu's honor.” Injustice is served lavishly by these torturers-in-arms. They dine in gluttonous splendor as muffled protests to their deeds whistle in the background like moral tinnitus.
The AP article goes on to report, “The Web sites of the state-run China Central Television and the official Xinhua news agency made no mention of the protest. Both said that ‘Bush held a solemn ceremony to welcome Hu.’” Isn’t it comforting to know just how close our own mainstream media’s coverage is to that of China’s state-controlled news?
Thank Hu from the bottom of my heart.
