Letter to Innisfil Enterprise

26-02-2007
Ms Carol McPherson, Editor
The Innisfil Enterprise
Box 222
Belle Ewart, ON L0L 1C0

Dear Ms. McPherson:

When I read your article "Innisfil hosts Chinese business delegation" (Fri. Jan. 19) I, as an Innisfil resident, hung my head in shame. The article dealt with a delegation of Chinese businessmen from the China State Construction Engineering Corporation who were in town to see what Innisfil has to offer in terms of potential industrial development. There was no mention in the article that China is a brutal Communist totalitarian tyranny and that Chinese businessmen are part of that tyranny.

Councilor Bill Pring traveled to Beijing, China two years ago to see CSCEC's work and came back impressed. Was Mr. Pring allowed to travel freely around China on his own or was his itinerary prearranged by the Chinese government? Can Mr. Pring speak Mandarin or any other Chinese language? If not, did he provide his own interpreter or did he rely on Communist flunkies to translate for him and on the statements of Communist officials who could speak English? How does he know he did not see the Chinese version of the Potemkin village? Fawning on Chinese autocrat Hu Jintao's cruel regime is like fawning on that of the late Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.

Developer Mario Cortellucci is responsible for talks with the delegation from China. If South Africa were still ruled by a white minority would Mr.Cortellucci and the Innisfil councilors roll out the red carpet for white South African businessmen who were in favour of apartheid?

Freedom House rates all the world's countries on a scale from "1" (best) to "7" (worst) in both political and civil rights in its annual survey of freedom. The 2007 survey gives Canada a rating of "1" in both categories. China is "7" in political rights (no better than when Mao Zedong ruled the country) and "6" in civil rights (only slightly better than under Mao). Tibet and Hong Kong are rated separately. Tibet is rated "7" in both categories (no better than under Mao). Hong Kong is somewhat better being rated "5" in political rights and "2" in civil rights. However, China could snuff out Hong Kong's freedoms at a moment's notice. Taiwan, the only part of China the Communists never conquered and to all extents a separate country, is rated "2" in political rights and "1" in civil rights. China still claims Taiwan as part of China and has stated it is justified in invading Taiwan to rejoin it to China.

Iran is rated "6" in political rights. Iranian voters do get to choose among various shades of Islamic fundamentalists in elections. Even this pittanceis more than China has. Elections are a sham; the results have been decided in advance by the Communist Party. Not only can the Chinese not change their government in free elections, they cannot lobby for a change in the system without risking prison. They cannot even change the system from within. You cannot join the Communist Party unless you show you will be loyal to its self-serving machine. The only way to advance up through the ranks is with the approval of those above you and they will not allow anyone to advance who is not one of their kind.

Amnesty International reports that China's human rights situation has deteriorated since 2003 when Hu Jintao consolidated his hold on power. As both President of China and Communist Party Secretary he is as absolute a dictator as was Mao. Human Rights Watch backs up A.I.'s claim. Its 2007 report demonstrates that human rights worsened in China during 2006. It has called upon Canada to take a more proactive role in promoting human rights in China. According to H.R.W.Chinese border guards gun down unarmed Tibetans trying to flee the country. Transparency International ranks the world's countries according to how open and corruption-free they are. Canada is in 14th. place in its corruption perceptions index; Taiwan is 34th.; China is 70th. Reporters without Borders ranks the world's countries according to how free their media is. Canada is in 16th. place; Taiwan is 43rd.; China is 163rd. Only five other countries are worse than it. In China the government owns all the media. It heavily censors the Internet and imprisons anti-government bloggers.

China protests any attempts to bring its sordid human rights record before the world as interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. It uses its influence in international organizations like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization to frustrate attempt to call it to account for its anti-democratic atrocities. However, it has no qualms about interfering in the affairs of other countries. For example, the Chinese government has brought pressure on other governments to close down the New Tang Dynasty Television Network, which operates among Chinese outside China, because of that network's anti-Communist stance(link).

In "The Black Book of Communism" (published originally in France as "Le livre nor du communisme") Stiphane Courtois and his colleagues at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris demonstrated that Communism is, and always has been, a criminal enterprise by which Communists enrich themselves through plunder, murder, deceit and theft. This has been true since 1917 when Nikolai Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and established the Soviet Union. Lenin made Joseph Stalin and his mass murders inevitable. Communists have made every country they have ever ruled worse. Wherever they have gained control they have slaughtered people by the millions  65,000,000 in China alone and still going on. Communists are neither ignorant nor misguided; they are evil. Would the Innisfil councillors and Mr. Cortellucci like to live in China as non-Communists?

As I was writing this letter the Innisfil Enterprise for Fri, Jan. 26 arrived. On page 5 there was a photo of members of the Innisfil town council with the delegation from the China State Construction Engineering Corporation. Suppose a delegation from the Ku Klux Klan were to come to Innisfil looking for a location for their international headquarters, would the town council welcome them and have their photo taken with the Klansmen? Mayor Brian Jackson was in the middle of the photo. Is the incongruity of his entertaining people, who persecute those who pray, then his sponsoring a prayer breakfast a few weeks later not obvious to him?

Former Canadian Liberal member of parliament and human rights activist, David Kilgour, has labelled China's economic policy "carnivore capitalism" . There is no collective bargaining in "The Workers' Paradise" (Ha, Ha!). Any workers who try to bargain are imprisoned or even executed. Workers have to toil for low wages in unsafe conditions and in a polluted environment while the Communists like those entertained by our town council - live in affluence. The Canadian Labour Congress has sounded the alarm about the conditions Chinese workers must endure and has tried to intervene on their behalf. Because of China's low wage scale, Chinese businessmen are able to sell their products and build projects cheaply on the open market thereby undercutting products and projects made by businesses which pay their workers well and, thereby, putting hundreds of thousands of non-Chinese workers out of work worldwide. Goodyear Rubber, for example, has stopped manufacturing tires in Montreal because it can make them more cheaply in China, and has thrown 800 Canadian workers out of work in the process. Most countries have a trade deficit with China. Doing business with Chinese Communists just encourages them to perpetuate their self-serving autocracy and to play us for suckers. It also disheartens Chinese human rights activists making them think we don't care about them.

China commits massive amounts of technological piracy. The Chinese Redberry wireless email device, for example, is a brazen theft of the Canadian Blackberry. Doing business with Chinese businessmen is like doing business with the Mafia. China uses the money from its ill-gotten gains to buy businesses throughout the world thereby increasing its influence in foreign countries.

If any government deserves to be branded as a "rogue state" and as part of an "axis of evil" it is China. Indeed, it is the most dangerous rogue state in the world because of its size, population, sound economic basis, massive military machine and armaments industry. It can, therefore, wage a prolonged war  something no Islamic Fundamentalist state can do. It sells arms to anyone wanting to buy, terrorists included  no matter what they want to do with the arms.

The Innisfil councillors and Mario Cortellucci may not know all the information I have included in my letter. However, they must know China is a totalitarian state with concentration camps and tens of thousands of political prisoners. I am sending complimentary copies of this letter to them. Will the truth they now know have any impact on their future policies or will it be business as usual?

Innisfil has named an ice rink at the new Multi-Use Recreational Facility after Mario Cortellucci because of his generous donation of $2,000,000 to it. I propose naming something at the MURF after the Dalai Lhama in honour of his lifelong struggle for freedom for his native Tibet against Chinese oppressors. When Nelson Mandela and Andrei Sakharov were imprisoned by the South African and Soviet governments respectively, the city council of Washington, DC renamed the streets the South African and Soviet embassies were on after Mandela and Sakharov. I propose renaming Innisfil Beach Road after imprisoned Chinese blogger, Shi Tao, who was betrayed to the Communist authorities by Yahoo. Future Chinese delegations will have to travel on a street named after a Chinese political prisoner to get to the Innisfil town hall. Will any of the Innisfil councillors be willing to introduce motions in favour of my proposals? I won't hold my breath waiting.

Yours truly,
Barry Kendall
Lefroy, ON

Cc. all members of the Innisfil town council