Spanish Radio Programme Focuses on Chinese Forced Labour Camps

On January 20, 2013, the Spanish national radio station, Cadena Ser, broadcast an interview with lawyer Carlos Iglesias and Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Fenghua Zhao which exposed the underworld of Chinese labour camps.

On January 7, 2013, Mr. Meng Jianzhu, head of the Chinese Law Enforcement department, announced that the regime would soon stop running forced labor camps. This announcement has brought Chinese labour camps, the “most notorious and inhuman system on earth,” to the attention of national and international media.

Mr. Iglesias said in this interview that although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been trying to break away from its long-term international image of abusing human rights, in fact it has never stopped its human rights violations against religious people and the Chinese public as a whole. Evidence exists that genocide is happening right now in China. Under various pressures from diplomats to Sino-EU human rights dialogues, the new Communist Party leader is trying to cover up China's crimes and whitewash its image, but what we see now is still that the CCP is brutally torturing and murdering its own people, including millions of Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) believers.

Mr. Iglesias also mentioned in this program, that in addition to what the international community knows about labour camps—that they use labor to “transform” prisoners--Chinese labour camps are hiding some dark secrets. Imprisoned in these facilities are millions of innocent people: some are political dissidents, but most of them are different religious believers. These people have been stripped of the most basic human rights and rights to appeal and are forced to do hard labour every day. They are brutally tortured and even killed, and their organs are sometimes removed from their live bodies and sold to make huge profits for the CCP. In many cases, Chinese citizens are thrown into labour camps without any legal procedures and treated as slaves to process products that are imported by many western countries, including Spain. Mr. Iglesias pointed out that every day westerners are consuming products that are made in those labour camp prisoners in China. These innocent people in Chinese labour camps are forced to work over 14 hours a day with no pay. The Chinese regime can send a citizen there for up to four years without any legal procedures, and it can do unbelievable things to harm those innocent prisoners.

In the interview, Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Zhao told her story of being abducted twice, then taken to a labour camp and tortured for her belief. She also calls for attention to be drawn to her friend Qu Yuemei and her family’s well-being in China.

The second time Ms. Zhao was illegally detained by the police, she experienced horrid torture like force-feeding and being chained in a cage for 24 hours. After four months of torture, she was “transformed” from a healthy human being to someone chronically ill with failing muscles. Too frail to walk, she was carried out of the police station on a stretcher. Without any legal procedures, she was sentenced to three years in a labour camp. If it were not for the fact that the labour camp refused to take her, she wouldn’t have survived. She says that of the Falun Dafa practitioners she knows, over ten have been tortured in labour camps and three were tortured to death.

Ms. Zhao is extremely worried about the safety of her fellow practitioners in China. She says that the CCP is persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners without any legal procedures, and the police are rewarded for brutally in torturing practitioners. Even criminal inmates who help police torture Falun Dafa practitioners are promised a reduction in their prison sentences.

Ms. Zhao asked the media to cover her friend Qu Shumei and her family’s ordeal. Her friend Qu has been in and out of Chinese labour camps in Dalian three times. Police in the labour prison used physical and sexual torture to force her to give up her belief. The guards incited a prisoner in the same cell as Qu to sexually assault her and put pepper powder on her wounds. On December 17, Ms. Qu was abducted by Chinese police again. Her husband had previously also been sentenced to 12 years in 2002 for his belief in Falun Dafa; therefore their ten-year-old child became an orphan.

When the interviewer asked Mr. Iglesias about the Jiang case, he said that in 2003 Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan and three other CCP senior officials were sued in the Spanish national court for genocide and for brutally torturing Falun Dafa practitioners. One of the CCP officials who were sued is Bo Xilai, the ex-head of the department of commerce who recently was removed from his post and also from the communist party. Bo is believed to be responsible for removing and selling imprisoned Falun Dafa practitioners’ organs.

Mr. Iglesias said that Chinese Falun Dafa practitioners are not only facing brutal torture, but are also victims of inhuman live organ harvesting. The independent investigation by David Kilgour and David Matas in Canada, concluded that this unbelievable crime has taken place. Foreign organ buyers are drawn to China by its market trade of live organs. Starting from $150,000, they can buy fresh livers, hearts and kidneys. Most of these organs are removed from living Falun Dafa practitioners in Chinese prisons.

Mr. Iglesias also added that the legal case against the five CCP ex-senior officials are backed by strong evidence from testimonies of tortured Falun Dafa practitioners, testimonies of practitioners’ relatives, reports from different international organizations, Human Rights Watch and the UN Human Rights Committee. Genocide is happening in 20th century China, and those five criminals will be brought to justice in court once they step out of China.

Founded in 1926, Cadena SER is the oldest and most popular national radio station in Spain. In 2012 their they were listened to by 4.6 million people.