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He Peirong
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I have been asked to brief the Sub-Committee on the treatment of two prominent activists who are supporters of Chen: He Peirong, also known as Pearl, who was instrumental in Chen’s escape, and Jiang Tianyong, a key member of Chen’s legal team.
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Blind activist Chen Guangcheng sitting in a wheelchair as he is accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke at a hospital in Beijing (Photo: Reuters)
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YINAN, SHANDONG, CHINA
- ChinaAid has just told the ASSIST
News Service
that it has
just learned that the nephew of blind, self-taught lawyer Chen
Guangcheng has been formally arrested and charged with “intentional
homicide,”
a crime that carries the death sentence.
The formal arrest of Chen’s nephew Chen Kegui took place on Wednesday, May 9, 2012, and the formal arrest notification with the charge of “intentional homicide” was given to Chen Kegui’s mother, Ren Zongju on Thursday May 10. They were executed by the Yinan County People’s Procuratorate and the Yinan Public Security Bureau.
“This is outrageous, it is totally unreasonable,” the blind activist told AFP by phone from the Beijing hospital where he is being treated for injuries sustained during the escape.
NEW YORK, NY (C-FAM) - The British government gave $268 million to the government of India for a program that forcibly sterilizes poor women and men, according to the Guardian newspaper. This news comes as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation prepares to co-host a family planning summit with the British government in London this July.
Melinda Gates recently dismissed the link between contraception programs and population control in a speech launching her new initiative. Titled “No Controversy,” her campaign intends to “change the global conversation around family planning” by discounting its association with abortion, coercion and immorality, and focusing on universal access.
Around the same time, India’s supreme court heard evidence of coercive mass sterilizations in filthy conditions.
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Pastor Youcef and his family
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Youcef without legal representation
Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has been in prison now for three years, convicted of apostasy and sentenced to hang. He awaits execution and is without legal representation. Now we learn that Youcef is facing a judge who is known in Iran as the “Judge of Death.”
Youcef is without representation because his attorney Mohammad Ali Dadkhah has been sentenced to prison for nine years for defending Pastor Youcef. Iran convicted Dadkhah of acting against Iranian national security and spreading propaganda against the regime. Dadkhah is on his way to one of the most dangerous prisons in Iran.
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Euro on the brink of collapse.
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France’s President Sarkozy is out and Socialism is in. In Greece, voters voted to stop spending cuts and to go back to the old system that bankrupted that nation. The result was an immediate impact on the stock markets in France and Germany and on the value of the Euro. Europe, which had been on the financial brink, may have just been pushed over the edge of an abyss by its own people. Will the U.S. follow?
These are all extremely troubling developments from the continent that gave us World War I, World War II, the Holocaust and Adolph Hitler.
"This announcement is important and reflect's Chen's wishes. We commend Secretary Hillary Clinton and US Ambassador Gary Locke for working on this after the initial deal fell apart," said Bob Fu, ChinAid President. "But it was the media who made this story a global phenomena, along with brave Chinese rights defenders, they kept the pressure on and it led to a good result. Chen is so widely popular now, Beijing probably wants him in New York as soon as possible."
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ChinaAid President, Bob Fu with Chen Guangcheng on the cell phone
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Chen Asks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Visit Him, Bob Fu’s Testimony attached
WASHINGTON,
DC— In a dramatic twist, the blind Chinese
activist and lawyer Chen
Guangcheng who has captured the headlines in
the past week spoke by telephone
directly to a Congressional hearing
on his plight and asked Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton to visit
him while she is in Beijing for high-level bilateral
talks.
Bob Fu called Chen Guangcheng through cell phone with
Chairman Smith and
Congressman Wolf during the hearing.
The impromptu phone conversation between Chen and the
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China was initiated by ChinaAid
founder and president Bob Fu, who
has been a long-standing champion
of Chen and who has been in regular contact
with him and his
supporters since Chen managed to escape his captors who have
held him
in extra-judicial house arrest since October 2010.
"The wave of terror that has swept Israel recently...requires a deep and thorough army operation against terrorist infrastructure in Palestinian cities," Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said in a statement.
The Israeli government said that it will seize and hold Palestinian areas for “as long as the terror continues.”
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The Associated Press is now reporting that a close friend of blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng says Chen only agreed to remain in China after the Chinese government threatened Chen's wife.
Zeng Jinyan, a Beijing-based activist, told the AP via Skype on Wednesday that Chinese government officials forced Chen to choose between going into exile alone or staying in China with his family. Jinyan said that the Chinese officials told Chen if he left China his wife would be "beaten to death."
KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT - Kuwait's parliament approved the death sentence for Muslims who insult Allah, the Qu’ran, Muslim prophets, or Muhammad’s wives on Thursday. Christians and other non-Muslim minorities will be given a minimum prison sentence of ten years for the same offense.
Forty members of parliament voted in favor of the amendment, while six opposed it, in the second and final round of voting on May 3. The bill still needs approval by Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, before becoming law.
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Police bomb tech examining suspected IED (improvised explosive device) in a U.S. city. Photo credit: Police Times Magazine
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As part of its mandate to create stable and secure environments UN Police are working with international policing and law enforcement experts to find ways to prevent, disrupt and dismantle organized crime in post-conflict situations, according to Security Council officials. The UN Police assist domestic law enforcement authorities to establish mechanisms to deal with organized criminal activities, including drug production and trafficking, human trafficking, exploitation of natural resources and weapons trafficking.
"The Security Council remains gravely concerned about the threat of terrorism and the risk that non-state actors may acquire, develop, traffic in or use weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery," said the UN statement.
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He Peirong, known as Pearl, has been released from detention and has been interviewed by the BBC. Pearl has become known as the rescuer of blind activist Chen Guangcheng, having driven the car that brought him from Dongshigu village to Beijing.
Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, has been advocating for Pearl’s release. Littlejohn testified about Pearl at a hearing before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China yesterday, and Rep. Chris Smith took up Pearl’s cause. Littlejohn stated, “I am relieved and delighted that Pearl has been released – the day after the Congressional hearing at which her case was so strongly raised. Some say that quiet, back door diplomacy is the way to deal with the detention of Chinese human rights defenders. But human rights activists have found that high profile, public pressure is far more effective.”
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While the Obama White House all but ignores the powerful Hezbollah terrorist group, it is arguably the world's biggest and best equipped militant organization. Photo credit: Israeli National Police
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Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran in August 2005, Iran has extended and solidified its relations with several Latin American countries, especially Venezuela and Bolivia, both run by far-left leaders, according to an anonymous Israeli police source. With the help of proxy groups, Iran has increased its efforts to obtain a political foothold in the others this week, according to a terrorism analyst in Israel, who is a former U.S. police sergeant.
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Chen and family
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WASHINGTON, DC - Following dramatic confusion over his wishes regarding staying in China or seeking asylum in the United States, Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng has telephoned a US Congressional hearing to plead for help in his attempts to leave China with his family.
Chen said he feared for the safety of his family and wanted to meet visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton face-to-face, according to a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) online report.
Chen is still in a Beijing hospital sealed off by Chinese police, following a week spent at the US embassy which he left after initially accepting China's assurances of his safety.
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Zeng Jinyan's Tweets
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Later Zen Jinyan said on Twitter: Guangcheng called me and told me that he didn’t say, according to media, “I want to kiss you” to Secretary Clinton. What he actually said was “I want to see you.”
Here is additional information from Zeng Jinyan’s tweets:
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Safety promised by
China, Conflicting reports about Chen's willingness to leave U.S.
Embassy
BEIJING, CHINA – Blind Human Rights activist Ghen Guangcheng whose escape from house arrest in Communist China has become worldwide news (and is detailed HERE) has now left the U.S. Embassy in Beijing where he has been hiding.
The Chinese government has assured U.S. officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke that Chen will be treated humanely while he seeks medical attention for the years of abuse and torture at the hands of the Chinese government.
This is the political equivalent of an habitual wife beater saying, "Come home, baby and I won't punch you again."
