The Chinese Communist Party's campaign against a NY-based performing arts group
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Leeshai Lemish: The Games are over, the persecution continues
Posted: October 07, 2008
The Olympics are over, but don’t look away from China just yet. The fates of thousands of ordinary Chinese arrested ahead of the Games hinge on what we do this autumn.
For people like my Chinese-American friend Si Yang, these roundups have struck too close to home. In April, Si called his parents in Hebei province only to discover that 20 officers had shown up and taken away his father and sister. Continue reading
Often in the news but rarely understood, Falun Gong is regularly associated with Chinese human rights issues. Leeshai Lemish gives his understanding of what Falun Gong practitioners actually believe
I would have laughed if ten years ago you told me that my search for a meditation practice would land me on Beijing’s blacklist. Continue reading
Leeshai Lemish looks at the history and causes of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong
‘If Falun Gong is benign, why is the Chinese government afraid of it?’ After nine years of persecution this basic question remains common. I’ll try answering it here. Continue reading
Leeshai Lemish tells of his and Ethan Gutmann’s journey into the persecution of Falun Gong
It was 2:00 am and we were sitting on the floor of a Bangkok slum. We had a flight to catch the next morning, but after interviewing Falun Gong refugees for a week we still couldn’t pull away from what they were telling us.
‘At first I thought it was just me. But then, one after another, more Falun Gong practitioners were brought into our cell’, Chen Jie said. ‘Their bellies, chest and backs were also covered with black bubbles from Continue reading
Christian, a Falun Gong practitioner, and a Tibetan Buddhist are sitting in a restaurant. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but it’s not funny to the three refugees who abandoned China in search for a persecution-free country and ended up in Cambodia. Take one young man, for example. When I met him in Cambodia for the first time, he looked like he would have a nervous breakdown if someone didn’t get him out to a safer place soon. Continue reading
Southern Gamble: Mainland China Swarm to Cambodia for Illusive Money, Limited Freedom
Leeshai Lemish
10/9/2004
PHNOM PENH – Mr. Wang sits in a red plastic chair on the concrete patio in front of his empty restaurant. His cigarette smoke disappears in the clouds of motorcycle exhaust emanating from the street on a Phnom Penh morning, yet his voice, thick with a northeastern-Chinese accent, easily overcomes the calls of peddlers selling baguettes and coconuts. One or two Mainlanders from the neighborhood frequent his restaurant to buy a few steamed buns and keep Mr. Wang company. Their business is slow, too, so they pass their mornings at his place sitting by a metal table, reading a Chinese newspaper and sipping tea hotter than the Cambodian summer.
Mr. Wang’s story is typical: a failed business in China, hope for prosperity abroad, and a family left behind and rarely called. Continue reading
Jose Canseco, with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2000, prepares to go to bat during a Spring Training game against the Philadelphia Phillies at the Florida Power Park in St. Petersburg, Florida. (Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
It’s not every day you feel sympathy for a guy like Jose Canseco. After all, he had once been the male American dream incarnate who had everything: good looks, huge biceps, an MVP trophy, a World Series ring, a relationship with Madonna, money, Corvettes, and superstardom. Still, he ungratefully blew it all with reckless driving, domestic violence and, with his new book, barefaced promotion of steroids as a way of life and betrayal of his former teammates. But after reading his book Juiced, I find myself feeling empathy- not anger or hatred- toward the former right fielder whose picture off the back of a Macaroni & Cheese box was once a collector’s item. Continue reading
