Could the area in which the Uighur live be characterized as Central Asia? It makes me think of Session 10 February 2018
Central Asia, would that include Kazakhstan and surrounding areas? I came to think of this, as I was reading an interview with an ethnic Kazakh, Sayragul Sauytbay that lived in Western China. The topic of the article is her experience of the difficult lives of Uighurs and Kazakh people in Western China who do not fit in with the present industrial and economic developments. On the surface they are Muslims and have a different culture than the dominant Han Chinese?
Headmaster's job interview ended up in a nail chair in Chinese prison camp.
27. dec 2019, 06:39Peter Mills - interview: Amalie Hovøre
In China, about a million people are currently in reform camps. TV 2 has met one of the few prisoners who have managed to escape.
The interview hadn't even started yet, when the candidate had a black bag pulled over her head.
She had never applied for the job, and in fact, the woman inside the bag had no idea that she was about to be headhunted.
It had begun with a phone call where a man had ordered the 41-year-old school inspector to meet up at a specific address, send a message to a foreign phone number and then wait.
She did not dare to be disobedient.
The wait was long.
It was almost morning, when four armed men came in, pulled the bag over her head and led the woman into a car.
After a long drive in silence, she was supposed to get a job offer she couldn't say no to.
Disappeared
The woman in the car is called Sayragul Sauytbay, and in her new job, forced confessions, constant monitoring and torn off fingernails were a part of everyday life.
A daily life that is still taking place - right now - in China, where, according to UN figures, around a million people are sitting in so-called 'Re-education camps'.
The pictures below are of prisoners who have just arrived by train to one of the camps. They were published by activists in september 2019.
[This is a clip from the video Woodsman posted]
Sayragul Sauytbay came to see the interior of the camps in 2017, and she is one of the few people in the West who themselves have experienced how the Chinese camp system works, and who dares to tell about it.
TV 2 has met her in Sweden, where she has been granted asylum.
Sayragul Sauytbay is an ethnic Kazakh, and belongs to the Muslim minority in the area. Before she barely got out of China, she lived in Xinjiang province, near the border with Kazakhstan.
It is today one of the world's most closed areas, where residents are being subjected to mass surveillance, and which the Chinese are accused of committing crimes against humanity.
What crimes like this look like, Sayragul Sauytbay knows quite a bit about.
For several years she experienced, how friends and family members suddenly disappeared during the night, and a November day in 2017, she then sat there in a car herself with a black bag over her head.
Was she now also herself missing?
In fact, it was the fear of disappearing that had led her to show up at the address where the armed men had put the bag over her head.
- I thought there's no other way. I can't say no, if I say no, I'll probably disappear. Then my family can't find me, tells Sayragul Sauytbay.
The camp
After the drive, she was taken out of the car, into a building, and when the bag was pulled off, she was sitting in a small room.
- This is the Education Center, the scared woman was informed.
[Picture: "Fence around one of the re-eduction camps. The picture is from Dabancheng. Photo: Thomas Peter / Ritzau Scanpix"]
She had no idea she had just arrived at a re-education camp.
What such a camp was really like, she didn't know either.
Sayragul Sauytbay had only heard about them from the Chinese media, who said that the camps was created to educate people, and she associated them with something peaceful.
You can see a clip from one of the Chinese films about the camps below here.
- We didn't know it was such a scary place, Sayragul Sauytbay says.
It turned out she hadn't ended up in the camp as an ordinary prisoner.
While she was in the little closed room, the candidate was presented with the contract of employment.
Prohibited thoughts
The job was as a language teacher in one of the camps where inmates had to learn Chinese. Many Uighurs don't speak the language, but Sayragul Sauytbay does.
- It was a multi-page document. It said something about the camp rules that I should follow. And then there was a contract of employment. I had to work as a teacher, she explains
She did not dare to do anything else but sign.
- I had no choice, if you refuse or ask questions, you lose your life, says Sayragul Sauytbay.
Exactly why she was headhunted for the new job, Sayragul Sauytbay doesn't know, but she has a hunch.
She may have thought forbidden thoughts.
Sayragul Sauytbay has grown up in a muslim family in Zhaosu County, near the border to the current Kazakhstan.
Here lived Sayragul Sauytbay
[This one is different than that which appears in the article, and instead of one there are two]
When she was a child, the Muslims in the area didn't risk being picked up by the police at night.
At that time, China was still an underdeveloped country, Xinjiang province was situated in the outskirts of China, and the ethnic Chinese were not particularly interested in the area.
But that was to change.
The underground is so rich in oil that in the old days it could be picked up from cracks in the ground with buckets.
[Picture: "Tarim oil field in the Xinjian province in 2005. Photo: China Newsphoto/Scanpix Denmark"]
For many years the remoteness of the area meant that oil was allowed to remain in the soil, but when China's economy started to grow in the 1990s, everything was going to change.
At that time, Sayragul Sauytbay was studying medicine. She got a job at a hospital, but then she changed her career and started teaching. The Chinese state trusted her, and she came to lead the running of five preschool classes.
There were more children in the province because the number of settlers was growing exponentially. Millions of ethnic Han Chinese came to work in the oil industry, and suddenly two people with different language, culture and religion had to live side by side.
The Han Chinese is the largest ethnic group in China, and the meeting between the two cultures was not going well.
[Picture of "A Han Chinese with a club during the riots in 2009. Photo Peter Parks /Scanpix Denmark"]
In 2009, there were violent riots in the province, where Uighurs and Hankins were fighting.
In a matter of days, according to the Chinese authorities, 197 people were killed before the Chinese military put a damper on the situation.
The ethnic unrest led many of the locals to seek community in islam, and like so many other places in the world began, the Chinese state to fear Islamic terrorism.
There were several bloody attacks and riots, including in 2014, when armed men drove two cars through a marketplace throwing explosives in the city of Urumqi.
China's response to Islamic terrorism was, among other things, a ban on headscarves and long beards.
[Text below the picture:] "The Xinjiang province has been hit by terror several times. In 2014, 31 lost their lives, while over 90 were injured during such an attack. According to the Chinese, it was Islamic terrorism. PHOTO: Str / Scanpix Denmark"
As tensions between Han Chinese and Uighurs grew, Sayragul Sauytbay was married. She had two children, and as time passed, the little family began to dream of freer frames in neighbouring Kazakhstan.
Freer frameworks, however, were not something the Chinese state liked.
The net is tightening
In 2014, the authorities seized Sayragul Sauytbay's passport as part of an increased control of Public Employees.
The majority of the province's remaining Muslim population got their passports revoked in 2016, but right before that, Sayragul Sauytbay's husband and children succeeded in obtaining an exit visa to Kazakhstan.
She herself was waiting for a visa, while the control of the authorities was tightening up more and more.
The authorities put cameras up all over the cities, and suddenly having all the Uighurs hand over dna samples, sound samples and biometric data, so that their whereabouts could be traced - according to Human Rights Watch.
Even going out the back door of your home could result in a police interrogation.
Officially, it was all an attempt to "remove the ideas and ideology that support terrorism", even in the propaganda films "The long battle 1-3".
This involved, among other things, the removal of mosques of Muslims and the construction of parking spaces in their cemeteries.
[Pictures 1 2 ]
In January 2017, the authorities started arresting Uighurs with family abroad.
Also Sayragul Sauytbay.
She was taken to an interrogation, where the police would know exactly where her husband and children were gone, and why they had traveled to Kazakhstan. When the interrogation was over, she was ordered to tell her husband to come home and Sayragul Sauytbay was forbidden to talk about the interrogation.
But the family did not return to China, so Sayragul Sauytbay had to go through several interrogations, and in november of 2017, she was then told to meet up at the address from which she was abducted by the four armed men.
[Picture 1, 2]
When she had signed her employment contract, she received a uniform and was taken to her new home: a tiny bedroom with concrete bed and a thin plastic mattress.
She didn't know she should be happy.
Because this was one of the good cells.
Sayragul Sauytbay found out later, that the ordinary prisoners in the camp lived within cells of 16 square meters with a small plastic bucket in the corner as a toilet.
But they weren't single cells like hers, here lived about 15 prisoners in each cell, and the rules were strict.
[Picture of place where camp is located: 2011 2019]
All prisoners were given two minutes each to go to the bathroom daily, and the plastic bucket was only emptied once a day.
If it was full, you'd have to squeeze your legs till the next day.
The prisoners were constantly chained to their hands and feet, even when they were asleep, and they were under constant surveillance.
- There were four cameras in the corners and in the middle of the ceiling, that could follow you. We were only allowed to sleep on the right side if you did not, you were brought to punishment. They could check 24 hours a day, says Sayragul Sauytbay.
The cell was even the prison sanctuary.
What the movies didn't tell you.
When they were not locked up, were the prisoners, among other things, taught in Chinese, culture, law and political ideology by Sayragul Sauytbay, but the lessons reminded most about the nursery classes, she was used to.
Here, the authorities interfered in even the slightest of details.
- I had to teach exactly as it said on the paper, and in the hours there were two armed police officers in the room says Sayragul Sauytbay.
The school day often ended with singing lessons, where prisoners had to learn the Communist songs of the regime.
Music teaching is also presented in this way in the regime's films about the camps.:
[Link to video]
The prisoners' food was rice soup except on Fridays when pork was served, if they were lucky.
Sayragul Sauytbay ate it.
The unlucky prisoners didn't get pork - they ended up in "the black room."
- It was an area where we weren't supposed to come. There were no cameras. It was a torture area, says Sayragul Sauytbay.
The first time she saw someone going in there was in the middle of one of her classes.
- The police came and took some people away. The room wasn't far from where we lived, and for 24 hours we could hear screams and people asking for help. Strange noises came from in there, and it was a nightmare for us, say Sayragul Sauytbay.
Not everyone came back from there.
- Some disappeared, but some came back with bad injuries, some with no nails and some with bruises and red marks, telling Sayragul Sauytbay.
The victims were not allowed to talk about what had happened when they came back.
The black room
But Sayragul Sauytbay soon found out herself about what was going on inside the "black room".
She worked also as an interpreter, and an attempt to help an elderly woman in the camp went wrong.
The 84-year-old woman was arrested for having used a telephone, and Sayragul Sauytbay was asked to translate.
- She said, "I'm 84 years old and Nomad. I'm Kasakh, I live from mountain to mountain, and I've never used a phone." I was just trying to translate what she said and tell them she was innocent. That's why they took me to the black room to torture me, say Sayragul Sauytbay.
First she was electrocuted.
- They took me in and beat me with electric batons. Seeing the torture tools was so scary. There were' black chairs', they call themselves' Tiger chairs', and they're running power through them. There were chairs with nails in the side, but what scared me most was torture tools that looked like needle spikes, thin and pointy, hung up in a row.
For the next two days, there was no food or water.
When she came out for a ride in the nail chair, she felt helpless.
- Then I realized we were just some kind of living corpse, she says.
[Video link]
But it's not the torture chamber she remembers today as the worst experience.
- One day, they took more than 100 of us to an open spot. They chose the youngest girl, she was about 20 years old, says Sayragul Sauytbay.
The girl was pulled out in front of the others.
- Then she stood there before us, and even though she had really done nothing wrong, she confessed all her sins, errors and crimes crying. They forced her to say it with her own mouth, says Sayragul Sauytbay.
Then came the punishment.
In front of all of us, the Chinese jailers took turns to rape her one by one. We were powerless, no man or woman could say anything to stop them. It is something I cannot forget how we were powerless victims, she says.
[Five second video clip that show the facial expression of Sayragul Sauytbay.]
If you showed emotions on an occasion like this, you risked being taken for punishment.
Sayragul Sauytbay had to suppress her emotions, and she suffered from insomnia in the camp. She says she lost eight kilos after the gang rape incident.
Back to reality
According to Sayragul Sauytbay, the prisoners in her camp were only behind the fence because of their ethnic roots.
- What we did wrong was we weren't Hann Chinese. To be Uighur or Kasakh, that is wrong, she says.
Just listening to the region's folk music could be enough to end up in a camp, says Sayragul Sauytbay.
She's certain that she ended up there herself because her family had moved to Kazakhstan.
But one day in March 2018, it was over.
The police came and took her.
[Picture: "A tower for the guards at a re-eduction camp in Hatan. Photo Greg Baker /Ritzau Scanpix."]
After a drive with a bag over her head, she found herself again in front of her home.
- They took the contract I signed at the beginning and said, "Look, anything you tell, you'll be punished for it. You can't say anything. As of tomorrow, you can go back to work, and you can say you've been to an educational conference," says Sayragul Sauytbay.
The next morning, she was back at work. No one asked where she'd been, and she tells herself she didn't say anything about the camp.
And yet the authorities weren't done with her.
After just a few days of freedom, her job was given to someone else, and Sayragul Sauytbay was taken back to interrogation.
- They said I had two faces and had been dishonest. I had to get back to camp. Not as a teacher, but as a prisoner for one or three years, she says.
Escape through the neighbor's garden
This time, however, Sayragul Sauytbay was given a few days to hand over the tasks to her successor. While it was going on, she could live at home under the supervision of the Chinese authorities.
- I figured if I go back in there as a prisoner, I'm not getting out alive. It was already two and a half years ago, I had seen my children, and then one of them just a baby, so I thought that I had to find a way to give my child a hug, say Sayragul Sauytbay.
She decided to cheat the Chinese surveillance.
[Picture link: "There is massive video surveillance in the Xinjiang province - here it is outside the mosque in the city of Urumqi. Photo: Peter Parks / Scanpix Denmark"}
I created a scene, says Sayragul Sauytbay,
The windows of her home were wide open, so no one could doubt she was cooking.
Then she ran away.
Out through a window and in through the neighbor's garden.
From there she took a taxi to the border to Kazakhstan, where she sneaked out of China and shortly after was reunited with his children in the neighboring country.
- It was midnight when I arrived. It was my greatest desire to cuddle them again just once in my life, and I did say Sayragul Sauytbay.
[Picture: "Sayragul Sauytbay whent she waited for asylum in Kasakhstan. Photo: Ruslan Pryanikov /Scanpic Denmark"]
She had fled without passports, money and personal papers, and meeting with the authorities of Kazakhstan sent her nine months in jail, before Sweden offered her asylum.
- I don't know about my own future, but my kids are safe here, she says.
According to the Chinese Embassy in Sweden, we shouldn't believe her story. The Chinese say Sayragul Sauytbay has never worked in a re-education camp and has never been detained until she left China illegally. On the other hand, she's been charged with a corruption case.
- They try in different ways to silence me. Now that they've found out they can't stop me, they'll say I'm lying. She says that's the Chinese way to do it.
Her relatives still live in the Xinjiang province, and she has heard that her father and sister have been put in the camps.
Yet she will not be forced to remain silent.
- I know it. I saw it, and it's happening to us. I can do something for them. I felt powerless, but now I can talk. Why shouldn't I do that, she says.
She knows the Chinese won't offer her a new job if she ever comes back.
- I think they're gonna cut me up, she says.
See the mini-documentary ' Caught in China's secret camps-torture or education?'on TV 2 PLAY.
China like the rest of the world changes every day. Every year new people enter the working force and others leave. If the active time in the workforce is 50 years then there is a 2 % change per year, 1 in 50 being replaced. After WW2 the Americans when they came to Europe were often easily recognised for being loud and self-confident. Considering that they were from a rich country and had won a war, that was understandable. Now China is becoming rich. Rich Chinese can go abroad and own it in a way similar to what accomplished self-confident Americans could in Europe after WW2. Not so long ago I watched a documentary from Deutsche Welle DW and while the above personality feature may not be noticeable in North America what about other areas of the world like South East Asia?
Of course there can be no Gulags in China - in the literal sense - which should satisfy those who claim they don't exist.The Gulag (/ˈɡuːlɑːɡ/, UK also /-læɡ/; Russian: ГУЛаг, romanized: GULag, [ɡʊˈlak] (listen), acronym of Main Administration of Camps)[a] was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced-labour camp-system that was set up under Vladimir Lenin[10] and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s. English-language speakers also use the word gulag to refer to any forced-labour camp in the Soviet Union, including camps which existed in post-Stalin times.[11][12] The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as by NKVD troikas or by other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognised by many as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.
cassiopaea.org
cassiopaea.org
Overall the number is low in China, definitely, but as mentioned there are many people. The above transcripts were from 2010 and the number given was 0.9% If we make some rough estimates and say there are 1.5 billion people in China then 1 % will be 15 million people. If we then add that for psychopaths some professions are more attractive than others, and that they are attracted to positions where they can exercise power, then it is a fair estimate that within the ranks of the people who would be administering a re-education camp the number would not be less than 1%. If there are many re-education establishments then some may have an organization that is strongly influenced by pathological types. But then if there are 23 % of psychopaths in the US, 17 % in Russia, then a few psychopaths would not be enough one should think.
Re-education camps could be interpreted as a feature of "perstent implementation".Xinjiang leaks: Reporting on China's detention camps | The Listening Post (Lead) is a report from Al Jazeera English and they write:
The NYT and Human Right Watch were mentioned, but the bottom line was that a document was leaked about the re-education efforts was leaked, which the Chinese ambassador to the UK wisely said did not exist and was made up, which then the Chinese Government after all admitted did exist, but claimed was misunderstood by negative forces. Might this document they mention be the same that was mentioned by Palinurus Gulags in China?
The policies of the party based in a materialist ideology with a strong focus on results could contribute along with the occasional appearance of psychopathology and corruption to cases where very much force is used to achieve the goals. Add to this recollections among some people of how results were achieved in the days of Mao Zedong and during cultural revolutions and it should not be difficult to imagine that camps with excess use of force could exist.
Accepted fact? As an Australian the picture for you may be different, but maybe you are referring to this report or perhaps not, as it came out after your post:
They spend time on regurgitating the idea of Russian meddling in US election. That said the 60 minutes report is still interesting, but how much is true?
When I read the story of Sayragul Sauytbay, the lady of Kazakh ethnicity I posted about in this post I thought about the paradox that she, who had fled western China after a traumatic experience in the re-education system, had been granted asylum in Sweden, a country that on the one hand has been very welcoming, but which also has paid a very high price like grenade attacks, harassment of the police, no-go zones, the burning of cars and a higher incidence of violence. Usually the calls from political parties for a different policy from the Swedish Government are called right wing and worse, but what if Sweden adopted a parallel to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, what would it be like then?
The Uighur language apparently is not on the translation machines, so other than Kazakh one could
On the Wiki there is :
The name Dzungar people, also written as Zunghar (literally züüngar, from the Mongolian for "left hand"), referred to the several Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically they were one of major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation. They were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word "Dzungar",[1] and also called "Kalmyks". In 2010, 15,520 people claimed "Ööled" ancestry in Mongolia.[2] An unknown number also live in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan.Dzungar people - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
"Forrerst people" has by another source been taken to mean that they were forrest nomads, which makes sense as there was forrest in the north of Siberia.
The Dzungar people suffered a fate like that of the American Indians, it seems.
In 1759, the Qing Dynasty of China defeated the Jungar Mongols and completed the conquest of Dzungaria. Concurrent with this conquest, the Qing occupied the Altishahr region of Eastern Turkestan which had been settled by the followers of the Muslim political and religious leader Afaq Khoja. [6] [7]
After the Qing conquest, the Chinese began to incorporate Altishahr and the Tarim Basin into their empire. The territory came to be known as Xinjiang. Although the followers of Āfāq Khoja known as the Āfāqī Khojas resisted Qing rule, their rebellion was put down and the khojas were removed from power. [8]
Map of Altishahr (Xinjiang) relative to China
Beginning at that time and lasting for approximately one hundred years, the Āfāqi Khojas waged numerous military campaigns as a part of a holy war in an effort to retake Altishahr from the Qing.
Regarding the Kazakhs, there is another side of the activity of the Dzungars which is that they fought many battles with the people living in Kazakhstan which gave the people very many troubles. In Russian there are many youtube presentations that will tell the story. On this one can turn on translation, it also has map and the time it took place. Another video with English voice over has a different perspective:
In the above it sayt: "Amusana called for Chinese troops" This confused me because above we were told about Afaqi Khoja. Apparently there has been much division and several contributing factors: Here is what the Wiki about Amursana claims, which eventually brings one back to Afaqi Khoja or his descendants and followers here called Altishahr Khojas:Contents
- 1First Stage (1643–1718)
- 2Second Stage (1718–1723)
- 3Third stage (1723–1730)
- 4Fourth stage (1730–1756)
- 5Aftermath
Map of the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th century
[...]
Map showing Dzungar–Qing Wars between Qing Dynasty and Dzungar Khanate
[...]
During the entire period of the Kazakh-Dzungar wars, the Dzungars fought on two fronts. In the west, they waged an aggressive occupational war against the Kazakhs, and in the east as well with the Qing Dynasty. The Kazakhs also fought on several fronts in which from the east with Dzungaria, the west where they were disturbed by Yaik Cossacks, Kalmyks and Bashkirs who constantly raided the border, and from the south against the states of Kokand, Bukhara, and Khiva.
After the death of the Galdan Tsereng in 1745 which caused an internal strife and civil war, by the struggle of candidates for the main throne and the disputes by the ruling elite of Dzungaria, one of whose representatives, Amursan, called for Chinese troops. As a result, the Dzungar Khanate fell. Its territory was surrounded by two Manchurian armies, numbering more than half a million people along with auxiliary troops from conquered people. Abylai chose not to take sides. He sheltered Amursana and Dawachi before from attacks by the Khoshut-Orait King of Tibet, Lha-bzang Khan. However, once Amursana and Dawachi were no longer allies, Abylai Khan took the opportunity to capture herds and territory from the Dzungars. More than 90% of the population of Dzungaria who were mostly women, old people, and children killed by the Qing army . About ten thousand families of Dzungars, derbets, and Hoyts, led by the Noyan and Tsereng, fought hard and went to the Volga of the Kalmyk principality. Some Dzungars made their way to Afghanistan, Badakhshan, and Bukhara who accepted military services by local rulers with their descendants eventually converting to Islam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amursana#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHummel194410-2The history of Xianjing is complicated, but suppression of the Muslim Uyghurs and Kazakhs appears to be very much in line with the history of Chinese policies in the area over the last 500 years since the Oirat rulers blew their chances by creating problems due to greed and infighting. There are many lessons in the stories above including the problem of getting rid of a powerful helper when the less powerful no longer thinks he needs help, but has forgotten there often is a price to pay.
That the US uses the leverages they can think of to influence China including accusations of China having Gulags is to be expected, but what might the reality be like?
Looking into who this person was, revealed in German Wiki if translated:just looked up the persons name who Paul Joseph Watson said up loaded some videos.
here is her twitter page.
Jennifer Zeng, - Twitter Search
The latest Tweets on Jennifer Zeng, . Read what people are saying and join the conversation.twitter.com
The link to the Israeli article is: Reason for arrest: Your thoughts. Jennifer Zeng wants Israelis to know what happens in China
Looking up Falun Gong one can find cases as those listed below:
Next a testimony from someone who stayed at another prison, which according to the article was closed down in 2013.
From the above it seems her name is Jennifer + Tsang/Zeng/Zengtsang/Z Tsang/
From the above we get that in China, Jennifer is unlikely. Also Jennifer would take three Chinese characters (珍妮弗) according to How to say Jennifer in Chinese?Every single character in Chinese has explicit meanings; in general a character refers either to a physical object like a tree or a flower, or a concept such as beauty or strength. Finding out a Chinese name is like writing a poem, as you need to express meanings in just 2 or 3 letters. Unlike English names, Chinese people write their family name (normally a single letter) first and then their given name (one or two letters).
There are over 700 Chinese surnames, but only about 100 are commonly used. A list of Chinese surnames can be found here [The link was not working].
Traditionally, Chinese given names are structured by a two-character pattern. The first part is the generation name that is shared by all members of a generation, and the last character is given to the individual person. The reason Chinese people write their surname first is to show respect to the ancestors. Actually, Chinese given names are all custom-made instead of choosing one from a list of created names like Dave, Alex or Victoria. Nowadays many young Chinese have only a one-character given name, due to the fact that many families have only one child.
My name is Ma Nan, Ma is my surname and Nan is my given name. Ma is ranked as the 14th most common surname in Mainland China; ‘ma’ literally means ‘horse’. Nan is a kind of wood – hard with a rich fragrance, it is quite precious. My parents gave me the name of Nan as this has the meanings of healthy and strong. Many Chinese are named after the aspirations that parents have for their children’s future such as the literal translation of luck, wealth and so on.
The Wiki is helpful regarding the alleged surnames "Tsang/Zeng/Zengtsang/Z Tsang/"
And about Zeng Zeng - Wikipedia
It seems to me the way she spell her surname comes up Tsang/Zeng/Zengtsang/Z Tsang/ is a variation over the same theme, none of which is the true Chinese character.
Apparently the first character is similar to the above "Zeng/Tsang" Might her Chinese Twitter name be written as the Chinese do with the surname first? For this one needs to look at the second Chinese Character of the Twitter name which is 錚 The dictionary gives us:
- 曾
céng
once already ever (in the past) former previously (past tense marker used before verb or clause)
Example Usage Show Strokes
- 曾
Zēng
surname Zeng
- 曾
zēng
great-grand (father, child etc)
The question now is if that last character, zhēng, could qualify as a name for a girl? Apparently it can, seee Chinese girl names with zheng However, there are six characters with a similar pronunciation but different meanings. I have inserted a [...] with letters to denote if they also can be used for boys and five out of six can, as I found out when comparing the girl's name with the boy's name Chinese boy names with zheng and only "征 (zhēng)铮 Trad. 錚铮 | Definition | Mandarin Chinese Pinyin English Dictionary | Yabla Chinese
铮 definition at Chinese.Yabla.com, a free online dictionary with English, Mandarin Chinese, Pinyin, Strokes & Audio. Look it up now!chinese.yabla.com
zhēng
clang of metals small gong
The meaning of these:
If one takes the above into consideration names like "Jennifer Zengtsang and Jennifer Z Tsang" can be seen as a western name "Jennifer" plus a Chinese first name ~ "Zeng"or the first letter of her first name "Z" plus a surname "Tsang".
As you suggest, it is an old photo. From one of her more recent Youtube videos, I made a screen shot.
Being unfamiliar with the story, I had to read the plot in the Wiki:
If I translates this story into present time, it could mean the CIA, MI6 or Taiwan are paying criminal syndicates to smuggle malcontents out of China on the condition they later work for them and tell bad stories about the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party. Is Jennifer Zeng the equivalent of an Anna from the Guns of Navaronne? Is it possible to establish some solid links between her and Western intelligence services. I tried to find links between Falun Gong and western intelligence, but I did not yet get very far, except one could say that the Falun Gong is like a NGO, which are often employed, because certainly Falun Gong is not well liked by the Communist Party, in fact it is considered one of the Five Poisons, a topic I encountered in:
To put "Five Poison" into a cultural context, one understanding of this term is found in Chinese Buddhism which explains it as denoting five disturbing emotions:
Reading the above one wonders, if China has not learned from others Governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute#cite_note-ChinaU-1
To find the nearest Confucius Institute, see the list on their website. 孔子学院-关于孔院
fofg.org
faluninfo.net
www.falundafa-dc.org
Support from US Congress 2019-2020
Another support article writes:
bitterwinter.org
So far I can find evidence of support for Falun Gong, but to conclude that since they have support from groups that oppose the Chinese Communist Party, therefore all their claims are just lies, of that I'm not convinced.
en.minghui.org is the website of Falun Dafa, which one could say is a propaganda outlet promoting the Falun Dafa take on personal development. The Falun Gong - Wikipedia, mentions that
Falun Dafa was also a subject of a question in one of the earlier sessions, and Laura included the segment in The Ringing Cedars and Anastasia The response indicates that ritualistic practices lead to STS. The C's use the word germane, which for me is an uncommon word that I only meet in the sessions, if other readers are in the same boat, here it is: Definition of GERMANE has:
Next the copy of the relevant parts in the post:
How the above story ended can be found in another article where Gail Rachlin also appears in
I have no doubt there could be reason for Teng to reach a different opinion about Falun Gong than the one she set out with, but if she arrived at her conversion voluntarily is hard to know for sure.New Yorker Renounces Falun Gong
New Yorker Renounces Falun Gong
Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) _ Reports that Falun Gong followers were being tortured in Chinese jails prompted Teng Chunyan to risk all and come home from New York City. Now she too is in prison but insists she cherishes every moment there. In a prison interview, her first with a Western...www.sfgate.com
JOHN LEICESTER
Published 4:00 pm PST, Saturday, January 5, 2002
Associated Press Writer
BEIJING (AP) _ Reports that Falun Gong followers were being tortured in Chinese jails prompted Teng Chunyan to risk all and come home from New York City. Now she too is in prison but insists she cherishes every moment there.
In a prison interview, her first with a Western news organization since her arrest in May 2000, Teng said she has undergone a radical "mental transformation." No longer a crusader, she says Falun Gong is a cult that brainwashed her.
"I really treasure each day of my time here," said Teng, dressed in a blue prison uniform. "I think it's all the start of a new life. It's given me many opportunities to learn things that I didn't know before."
Her friends are shocked. They suspect that 38-year-old Teng, who lived in the New York City borough of Queens and ran a successful acupuncture clinic on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, has been abused and forced to recant.
What else, they ask, could prompt such a change of heart from a woman who would rise before dawn to practice Falun Gong's slow-motion exercises daily in parks?
"I don't understand how a person could change totally," said Janet Xiong, a New York City government employee who practiced with Teng. "I think she must be brainwashed."
The interview with Teng was given in response to an Associated Press request. Questions had to be submitted in advance. Prison officials sat in on the meeting, which also was monitored by foreign affairs and security officials.
Such constraints make it difficult to judge how freely Teng was speaking. But the interview gave insights into how China is dealing with a movement it has labeled a dangerous cult, and its efforts to discredit its leadership and drive away followers.
The prison where Teng shares a third-floor room with five other former Falun Gong followers opened in December 2000 and holds 102 women. Officials say most were convicted of such economic crimes as theft and corruption.
Its high walls are topped by barbed wire. Security cameras and armed guards keep watch. Inmates are up at 6 a.m. and in bed by 9:30 p.m.
Teng, a Chinese citizen who moved to the United States in 1990 and had permanent U.S. residency, returned to China early in 2000 on a self-appointed mission to expose Beijing's efforts to crush Falun Gong.
Chinese leaders banned the group in July, 1999, fearful that its multimillion-member following and organizational prowess threatened communist rule.
Thousands were confined to prisons or labor camps. Human rights groups and Falun Gong supporters abroad said dozens were dead from torture and abuse.
Police detained and punched, kicked and spat on followers who protested on Tiananmen Square, the huge plaza in the center of Beijing.
Operating under the pseudonym Hannah Li, Teng tipped off foreign reporters about protests and helped them meet practitioners. Some had been detained in a mental hospital. One man said he was fed psychiatric drugs.
"She was very proud of what she did. She felt she did something noble," Xiong said in a telephone interview. "I was impressed by her courage."
After a brief visit to New York, Teng returned to China in May 2000.
This time, authorities were waiting. China's official Xinhua News Agency said she was detained while entering from Hong Kong.
Friends say they had tried to discourage Teng from her second trip.
"I didn't have a good feeling about it," said Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York. "She just said, `I have to go there.' She was being like Florence Nightingale, the savior of people."
A Beijing court tried Teng at a closed hearing on Nov. 23, 2000. The U.S. State Department called it "deeply disturbing." Seven weeks later came the sentence: three years in prison for "spying and leaking state secrets."
Teng said she resisted at first and only began to question her actions after 13 months in detention.
She was moved last June from a holding center to the First Division of the Beijing Women's Prison, a new section of a large penal complex in Beijing's southwestern suburbs.
"Only then did I really start my mental transformation," Teng said.
"In the detention center I met ordinary people. I saw their reaction to us and what I regard as the fairly extreme actions of some detained Falun Gong practitioners _ such as wanting to hunger strike or commit suicide.
"When I stopped standing on the side of Falun Gong and looked back on Falun Gong's actions as an ordinary person I saw that politically it really had played a role of resisting the government.
"I felt very, very sad when I realized that I really did bring harm to the country, to society and to my family."
Teng was interviewed in a prison reception room. She answered mostly in Chinese, switching occasionally into English.
She spoke coherently and looked relaxed, although physically she had changed.
As the pseudonymous Hannah Li, Teng wore her hair long and was elegantly dressed and made up. Now her hair was cut to collar length and looked greasy or gelled. She had rouged cheeks, lipstick, thinly plucked eyebrows and looked plumper, even a little puffy, around the face.
The New York chic that made Hannah Li stand out in Beijing was gone.
Her Falun Gong friends wonder what happened in the 18 months between her arrest and the November day when Chinese state media announced that she had shaken off a "spiritual shackle" and renounced Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, quoting unnamed witnesses who it said were detained with Teng, said she was abused.
"She was interrogated for hours on end on more than 50 occasions. She was forced to stand and squat in excruciating postures for days and nights at a time. And she was even fined 30,000 yuan ($3,600) as a `service charge' for her own captivity," said a written statement issued by Falun Gong's office in New York.
Falun Gong says practitioners are routinely tortured. By the end of 2001, it says, 334 had been killed, 500 imprisoned, more than 1,000 sent to mental hospitals and 20,000 detained in labor camps.
"They strip them of their clothes and hang them upside down. Crazy things to induce pain, almost to the point of death _ electric shocks, inside their private parts for the women; for the men in their mouths or their heads," Rachlin said.
The government says Falun Gong practitioners have committed suicide or died of ill health in custody. But it denies that followers are targeted for abuse. The government says it only imprisons hard-core organizers.
Teng said she hasn't been tortured or seen it happen to others. She likened the prison to a school.
"The living conditions are very, very good," she said. "We eat really well, like in a hotel and a little better than at home."
"I absolutely don't feel as if I have been brainwashed here," Teng said. "I think I was brainwashed by Falun Gong. Through transformation I really have escaped from that previous brainwashed state and seen the truth."
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing says its diplomats have not been allowed to visit Teng. The embassy said it requested access on behalf of her American husband. But because she is not a U.S. citizen she is not covered by a treaty letting diplomats see detained Americans.
Born the youngest of three children in Harbin in China's northeast, Teng went to the United States in 1990, according to her mother, Qiu Yunfang.
She married a Russian Jewish immigrant in 1998, Qiu said. They have no children. Qiu said her daughter had begun the process of applying for U.S. citizenship before she was arrested.
Xiong first met Teng in the summer of 1998 when she showed up for Falun Gong lessons in the Queens Botanical Garden.
By early 1999, Teng was coming almost daily for two-hour sessions starting at 5:30 a.m. and was introducing acupuncture patients to Falun Gong, Xiong said.
Teng said she turned to Falun Gong for help with health and personal problems, to attain its stated aims of "truth, compassion and forbearance," and "to bring honor to my family, to my parents."
"But the result was totally opposite," she said.
Now she talks about her "transformation" with the same fervor she once displayed for Falun Gong.
"We call this life after death. It's a sad but exciting process," she said.
She is due for release in May 2003.
Asked whether she was counting the days until then, she replied in English: "It will be a surprise to people _ I really don't. I cherish every single day here."
They claim:
There is much more in the article just quoted, but in short it is understandable, why a seemingly Chinese page like Truth on Falun Gong would interpret Falun Gong (along with Scientology) as a cult. In fact Falun Gong could fit the bill for a thread in New Age COINTELPRO
