Red Flags Over New Haven

by Paul Bass | April 21, 2006 12:41 PM | | Comments (8)

Red and yellow banners, dueling megaphones, meditators and marching band members turned downtown New Haven into a battleground of protest and response Friday as China’s president came to town. The confrontations brought to the surface the global debate underlying Yale’s decision to take the lead among Western universities in embracing the China Miracle.

Chinese President Hu Jintao motorcaded into New Haven for a scheduled 11 a.m. address at Sprague Hall. Hu scheduled three main stops in a whirlwind U.S. tour to visit Bill Gates in Seattle, George W. Bush in Washington, and Yale President Rick Levin in New Haven. The last stop reflected how, under Levin, Yale moved faster than other American universities to establish ties with the world’s fastest-growing industrial nation. Levin’s gambling that engagement is the West’s best strategy for promoting human rights and international cooperation. (Click here to read his latest comments on the subject.)

For additional photos of the street scene, click here. Click here to read about Hu’s speech and here to read about students’ efforts to write anti-Chinese graffiti on Beinecke Plaza.

The raucous protests and counterprotests greeting Hu Friday showed how contentious a debate Levin has thrust Yale into. Helmeted cops sealed off streets and kept thousands of protesters and Chinese advocates to the perimeters of College and Elm streets, Temple and Wall streets, and Grove Street. Only one arrest was reported, when an angry Chinese demonstrator threw a water bottle at an adversary and accidentally struck Lt. Peter Reichard instead, according to police spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester.

Yellow “Free Tibet” headbands and smocks and banners flowed on the streets alongside the red banners of Chinese government supporters. “Welcome President Hu Jintao to the United States” competed for attention with “Stop Jian Zenin Exporting Terrorism.” Every block or so the two sides would try to drown each other out, speaking louder, pumping up the music, beating on drums, sometimes yelling in each other’s faces.

Zeqir Berisha wrapped himself in the American flag — literally. He pranced along Elm and College Streets yelling “Death to the Communists!” and inviting people to chant “USA! USA!”

Berisha, who’s 63, left Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia 37 years ago and came to Waterbury, where he found construction work until his retirement. He marched across College Street to a retinue of red flag-waving Chinese government men.

“USA! Commie bastard! Stupid!” Berisha yelled into the face of Ming Eng (shown in the second photo at the top of this article). Eng picked up his megaphone and unleashed a stream of responses at Berisha — in Chinese.

Supporters of the Falun Gong, a religious organization group banned in China, waved banners, distributed newspapers and spoke through megaphones about the persecution of group members. Some, like Dai Zhi Zhen, shown here with her six year-old daughter Chen Fa Du, traveled from as far as Sydney Australia, to protest Hu.

Dai, who’s 43, said the Chinese government murdered her husband, Chen Chengyong. “He went to Beijing and handed a letter to the Chinese government: ‘Falun Gong is good. Stop the killing. Stop the persecution.’ They arrested him. They tortured him until he was killed.

“A quarter of a million children became orphans because their parents were killed. I fly all the way here. I want to say: Help us stop the killing. Give the children a normal life.’”

Another Chinese refugee who came to New Haven from Sydney, with a detour to protest Hu’s D.C. visit, was Joseph Mack. Mack, an engineer, said his family fled Shanghai in the early ’50s after Mao came to power. “I saw the executions of lots of people,” he said.

On College Street Friday, Mack distributed copies of a newspaper he writes for called The Epoch Times. It included a front-page story about the Chinese government harvesting organs from Falun Gong supporters in a prison camps and covering up the “labor camp slaughter.”

The Band Plays On

Across the street a Chinese government marching band set up on the Green beside a phalanx of Falun Gong supporters blaring recorded music.

Cheering on the band was a 39 year-old who gave his name as Wenhung and said he’s a Yale medical student. “They tell lies,” he said of the protesters. “Most of the supporters don’t know the truth about the Falun Gong. The Falun Gong try to control other people’s minds. It’s a cult. They get crazy.”

Does he believe the Chinese government has arrested and persecuted any of the group’s members?

“Maybe a few. A few errors maybe happened.”

The band, meanwhile, packed up and travelled two blocks north to the corner of Wall and Temple streets. There it waded into a wave of Falun Gong and Free-Tibet protesters covering the sidewalk and, against the gentle but firm push of city cops, half of the street itself.

As the band struck up a number, two Falun Gong protesters stopped inches from their faces. They held placards detailing murders of dissidents during the Cultural Revolution and today. A drummer (in picture) skipped a beat, stepped forward toward one of the placard-bearers, and spit on the sidewalk by her feet. Then she stepped back and resumed the rhythm.

Comments

Posted by: nicole | April 21, 2006 3:46 PM

help to stop this horrible persecution against the innocent pratitionners of Falun Gong and all the human beings again, in life, in China!!!

Posted by: Martial Bachoffner | April 21, 2006 4:17 PM

To respond to Wenhung, the medical student who believe ther is no persecution, why they arrested me and jailed me and expelled me out of China when I did a peaceful appeal on Tienanmen Square on May 13th 2002? I shouted out in chinese "Falun Dafa is good" and 2 policemen jumped on me.
Who lie?
Us, Falun Gong practitioners who appeal for the peace?
Or the Chinese Communist who let the SARS to be spread in China by saying nothing happend, saying no student was killed on Tiananmen Square with the pro-democracy movment?

I'm Falun Dafa practionner since July 1999 and I'm very proud about that.

Martial Bachoffner

Posted by: Joanna | April 21, 2006 4:45 PM

It's time to wake up Chinese who have been deeply brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for so many years. Please do your own research on what Falun Gong is about instead of simply believing in what you learnt from the CCP's false propoganda.

Will you still welcome Hu when you learnt that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were killed for organs and many more are being killed in many concentration camps in China?

Posted by: Richard LEGRAND-CASTOR | April 22, 2006 1:48 AM

it is not because the chinese governement have a success in economy that he is a good governement.

how they construct their economic power ? on the sufferings of their people.

a friend who is mix chinese and french went to shangai and told me for exemple a woman responsible of a little restaurant work 12 hours a day and 6 days on 7 and win only 60 us dollars for a month.

we have to be careful about the illusion of the chinese governement , like hither regime , the chinese regime will not eternally influence their own people.

Posted by: Leejun Taylor | April 23, 2006 6:54 PM

I’m sorry to say, the Chinese student interviewed by your newspaper, is not informed about what’s happening to Falun Gong. China has been very heavy handed persecuting Falun Gong practitioner since 1999. Just because China doesn’t tell you what’s happening, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening! I’m an American citizen; I was being kidnapped and interrogated by Chinese police over 10 hours in Beijing two years ago. When American Embassy and my American lawyer protested to the Chinese Foreign Affairs office, they denied the whole incident, they told us that don’t have any record of interrogating any American citizen on that day. My lawyer was present on the 2nd interrogation, but China denies it ever happened. How can you deal with the country and government lying in front of your face? My advise to my fellow Chinese and Chinese students, don’t ever trust what Chinese government is saying, because when they open their mouth, either is a lie or in denial of the facts.

By the way, the Chinese student, don't you ever call Falun Gong people crazy, they're the nicest people you'll ever know!

Posted by: PAUL TEDESCHINI | April 24, 2006 11:33 AM

VERY GOOD BERISHA!
Sono di origine Italiana. Mio Padre Emidio Tedeschini ( 1909-1989) era contro il fascismo di Mussolini e andò nel 1929 a Monaco ( Baviera- Germania ) dove si laureò in legge nel '33 ( dr.jur. E.T.). Nel fratempo salì al potere Hitler. Dove andare? Andò nel regno di Albania la quale nel '39 venne occupata da Mussolin e nel '43 da Hitler. Nel '44 l'Albania cadde sotto Stalin. Mio padre ha provaro le tre terribili dittature. I comunisti tolsero l'avvocatura dai tribunali e mio padre lo mandarono a fare il fruttivendolo. Morì nella vigiglia della caduta del muro di Berlino. Povero mio padre che il destino lo condanò a provare per 47 duri anni la terribile dittatura comunista! Oggi mi trovo in Italia con la mia famiglia grazie al popolo americano che distrusse il comunismo sovietico I COMUNISTI SONO ANCHE IN CINA! ATTENTI, VOI AMERICANI NON LI CONOSCETE!

Posted by: Ned | April 25, 2006 8:11 AM

Here's some good quotes from http://www.cultnews.com/index.php/category/falun-gong/

Li Hongzhi thinks that that gays are “disgusting� and somehow a “black substance� accumulates within the bodies of gay men. “Disgusting homosexuality shows the dirty abnormal psychology of the gay who has lost his ability of reasoning at the present time,� says Hongzhi. And one day he claims gays will be ‘’eliminated’’ by ‘’the gods.’’

Sounds like any other stupid religion, to me.

"Hongzhi also seems to be a racist. He has said that “mixed-race people…[are] instruments of an alien plot to destroy humanity’s link to heaven.� And that these interracial unions are somehow part of “a plot by…evil extraterrestrials.�

Yeah, Falun Gong - wonderful people, although hardly different than most religious people in the United States, no wonder the Falun Gong propaganda is so successful in the good ole' USA.

Posted by: Jeanne Mitchell | April 28, 2006 10:27 PM

I was there at Yale. I wanted to let President Hu Jintao know that the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is wrong, the recent news of organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners must stop immediately. He didn't start the persecution but he does have the opportunity to end it.

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