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PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Visual Artists Guild joins nine other human rights and pro-democracy organizations today in front of the Consulate of the Peoples Republic of China to protest its continuous violations of human rights.
Follows is the statement presented by Tony Gabriele, President of Visual Artists Guild.

hand         In its 73 years of history, the Peoples Republic of China has caused the deaths of approximately 70 million people in China.  These deaths started with the so-called land reforms in targeting landowners and businessmen in its early days, and continued with the Hundred Flowers Movement of targeting intellectuals and the persecution of Christians and missionaries in the 1950s.  Later, death continued with the Great Leap Forward, during which over 40 million Chinese died of starvation from 1958 to 1962.  It was the biggest man-made famine in the history of the world.  Even these deaths were not enough to learn, as deaths followed with the Cultural Revolution, in which Chinese youths were encourage to attack their teachers, and other respected community members, and even their own families.
        All these deaths were the result of systemic problems of bad governance in China that also made it the poorest per capita country in the 1970’s.  Facing economic collapse, China had to start economic reforms yet the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 ended any hope of political reforms.
        The systemic political problems continued with China's 40 years of one child policy, that trampled on the rights of the Chinese women with forced abortions and sterilization.  The effect is now clear with the imbalance of the genders in China where the recent case of the Chained Woman highlights the trafficking of women. 
         The persecution of Catholics, House Church Christians, Falun Gong adherents, Tibetans and Muslims continue to this day. At this time, the Uyghur genocide and the loss of freedom in Hong Kong are the latest crimes against our fellow human beings.  But, the list of extreme human rights abuses carried out by the Chinese Communist Party is endless, and it would be impossible to name them all.
        Visual Artists Guild calls on the world to impose sanctions on the government of China until such time when the world will welcome it to the global village.  Those of us who are here today are very fortunate to be informed about what is really going on the world’s most powerful and populous dictatorship.  That knowledge of such human suffering also morally obligates us to do whatever we can to inform the rest of the world.