How China is using Winter Olympics to whitewash regime’s execution vans, concentration camps, black jails & torture
CHINA has been accused of using the Winter Olympics to try to "whitewash" the regime's disturbing record of torture and executions.
The world's eyes have descended on Beijing as the glitzy opening ceremony kicked off the 2022 games.
But hidden from view are the hideous human rights abuses allegedly carried out like clockwork by the regime.
Gory executions, brutal torture and "concentration camps" are just some of the vile measures the Communist regime has allegedly inflicted on its own people for decades.
Human rights organisations have insisted Chinese authorities should not be allowed to use the Winter Olympics as a "sportswashing" opportunity to improve its tarnished reputation.
As with the 2008 Summer Olympics, it's feared China will put on a glossy and carefully stage-managed image to the rest of the world as the Communists attempt to airbrush their horrendous history of show trials, executions, and some of the worst torture imaginable - let alone alleged genocide.
Ahead of the games, China has been determined to crush any sign of dissent, and officials have warned that even foreign athletes who make political statements would be subject to "certain punishment".
But leading human rights organisation Amnesty International has blasted China for "sportswashing" in an attempt to "deflect attention" from its "abysmal human rights situation".
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Alkan Akad, China researcher at Amnesty International, told The Sun Online: "The Chinese government is using the Olympics to try to improve its global image, capitalising on the glamour, prestige and public interest of sport to gloss over its deplorable human rights record. "
He added: "With the 2022 Games, the Chinese government aims to showcase how China has grown since the 2008 Summer Games.
"It wants to highlight China’s superpower status and deflect attention from its abysmal human rights situation. This amounts to sportswashing."
The expert warned the human rights situation has actually got worse since 2008 - and called on the world's governments to push for change in China.
In its 100 year history, the Communist party has run a murderous regime which is believed to be “the world's most prolific executioner".
Thousands are thought to perish each year at the bloody hands of authorities using firing squads, lethal injections and mobile death vans.
The true numbers of those killed by the Communist Party are thought to be staggeringly high - but the regime keeps them closely concealed as state secrets.
With successive leaders over this period, the regime has crushed peaceful opposition with anyone falling foul of the Communist Party facing the abyss of mental or physical death.
In 2020, the global figure of at least 483 recorded executions excludes the thousands of executions believed to have been carried out in China.
And horror stories from people holed up in China's hellish "black jails" have emerged ever since Xi Jinping became president as citizens are snatched off the streets and thrown into cells.
Human rights are deeply and widely disregarded by the regime. And the situation has certainly worsened in recent years
Roger Garside
So-called black jails, or Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), see people denied all contact with the outside world, interrogated non-stop for a total of up to six months - with officers given virtually free reign to coerce confessions from, torture, threaten and mistreat victims.
Human rights activist Peter Dahlin was confined to a “suicide-padded” cell with just two silent guards for company, watching his every move for 23 days after 20 police stormed his Beijing flat in the dead of night.
The 41-year-old was deprived of sleep, access to his embassy, the right to exercise or even to sunlight - with his only source of relief from his own thoughts was exhausting late-night interrogation sessions - between six and 12 hours long.
Meanwhile, human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghur Muslims against their will over the past few years.
Hundreds of thousands have been incarcerated in a network of what the state calls "re-education camps" - but what has been branded by some as "concentration camps".
There is also evidence they are being used as forced labour in factories producing goods for well-known western brands.
Women are said to have been being sterilised and some former camp detainees have also alleged they were tortured and sexually abused.
And from the 90s and into the 00s it is claimed China sought to "eradicate" the Falun Gong religious movement, allegedly carrying out tactics such torture, organ harvesting, forced labour and "re-education".
Victims claimed they were horribly tortured such as having pins pushed under their nails, given electric shocks, been force-fed and other methods designed to inflict maximum pain and humiliation.
Amnesty's Mr Akad added: "Since early 2017, huge numbers of men and women from predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang have been arbitrarily detained.
"They include hundreds of thousands who have been sent to prisons in addition to hundreds of thousands – perhaps even a million or more – who have been sent to internment camps.
"Torture and other ill-treatment is systematic in the camps and every aspect of daily life is regimented in an effort to forcibly instil a secular, homogeneous Chinese nation and Communist party ideals."
Roger Garside - who previously worked as a Professor of China Studies at the US Navy Post-Graduate School - says Chinese authorities purposely keep their rules "ambiguous" in a bid to snare anyone at their will.
"Human rights are deeply and widely disregarded by the regime," the former diplomat told the Sun Online.
"And the situation has certainly worsened in recent years.
"There aren't clear rules - there is very deliberate ambiguity in drafting laws, so ultimately the law is whatever the party deems it to be at any time.
"Laws are drafted with careful ambiguity so that, on politically sensitive matters, the crucial decision about whether 'subject A' has broken the law or not is ultimately determined on political grounds by the Communist party.
"It is in effect and visible constantly. There are no clear red lines. People living in China are not citizens, they are inhabitants. To be a citizen is to have rights.
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"They are not citizens, they are subjects of this regime. And because of deliberate ambiguity in the law, people know they have to exercise self-control and self-censorship.
"China’s constitution puts the Communist Party above the law and recognizes no limits to its authority. The Party acts as the supreme arbiter of truth and falsehood, right and wrong."
