Geography Reference
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religious practices. The Epoch News is an English-language newspaper
with ties to Falun Gong, and its Chinese version (Dajiyuan)isoften
among the most popular newspapers in North American Chinese
communities. It seems certain that Falun Gong will remain a thorn in
the side of the Chinese Communists for some time to come. Religious
persecution in China is focused for now on Falun Gong, and perhaps
on militant Islam in Xinjiang as well, but waves of it have coursed
through the history of the People's Republic of China, and it may well
return to some extent in the future. Religious tolerance and freedom
are important indicators of the maturity and freedom of a country,
and where they are lacking, freedom in general is also lacking.
D. Human Rights Abuses
Chinaispricklyaboutcriticismsofitshumanrightsabuses.The
Chinese Communists do not see in human rights concerns the same
potential for political and social turmoil that they do in organized reli-
gion, but they still remain surprisingly touchy about the subject, per-
haps because they are more concerned about their international
image than about the human rights of their subjects at home. China
is a signatory nation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in late
1948. The text of the UDHR clearly and unambiguously outlines spe-
cific inalienable rights possessed by every individual throughout the
world, regardless of the country in which they were born or in which
they reside. People enjoy human rights simply by virtue of being
human beings, and human rights transcend and trump considerations
of national sovereignty and national territorial borders.
China frequently claims to abide by the UDHR, but its actions belie
its words. China today often seeks desperately to argue that human
rights are culturally and nationally relative concepts and not the abso-
lute, unambiguous rights as outlined in the UDHR. Chinese Commu-
nists and the Chinese intellectuals who serve them sometimes also
attempt to cast aspersions over the entire concept of human rights by
caricaturing it as an instance of anachronistic Western pushiness or
cultural imperialism.
Every year the U.S. Department of State issues a report on human
rights in other countries, including China, and every year China responds
with its own report detailing American human rights issues, thus focus-
ing on the accuser rather than on the substance of the accusation.
But it is not just the U.S. government that accuses China of having a
very poor human rights record. Amnesty International regularly
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