Chris Stigall, a Philadelphia-based radio host, told The Epoch Times that critical race theory is the racial version of Marxism. (Courtesy of Chris Stigall) Censorship & Socialism
A Philadelphia-based radio personality, Chris Stigall, told The Epoch Times that critical race theory (CRT) is not only showing up in our schools and military but also in other places—even in churches. He believes that CRT is the racial version of Marxism.
Stigall hosts two different radio shows each day and produces a daily podcast as well. According to his website, “Talkers Magazine” has listed him as one of the “100 Most Important Radio Hosts in America” since 2009.
For the past week, Stigall has produced multiple programs on one topic: CRT. He told The Epoch Times that by the time he was able to return to church and his children were able to return to school after the lockdowns last year, he felt as though something radical had hijacked these institutions.
“I got back to church, and we were immediately hit with a critical race theory sermon, which was not anything that had been in my church before. My kids started to get hit with this ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness’ stuff that is code for this critical race theory.”
According to criticalrace.org, “critical race theory is an academic movement which seeks to link racism, race, and power … Critical race theorists argue that American social life, political structures, and economic systems are founded upon race, which (in their view) is a social construct.”
Stigall explained his understanding: CRT teaches white people that they are always guilty no matter how much they apologize. And it sends an even worse message to non-white people—that they are always disadvantaged, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
In his opinion, CRT is a “purposeful provocation … It pits people against one another, from day one, just by virtue of who they are.” And he believes that this is totally antithetical to everything that America has striven to achieve as individuals.
Because of CRT teachings in schools, Stigall decided to pull his youngest child out of the public school system. He said his youngest child is still quite impressionable, and he doesn’t want her to be steeped in this toxic ideology.
The radio host saw how his older children became so sincerely confused since the term “racist” was being thrown at them just because they are white. His biggest concern is that if the children are “fed a steady diet of ‘you are a bad person,’ how long do kids get that message before they do become really nasty, awful, hostile people?”
Stigall understands that Marxism divides people according to their economic status: the wealthy people are oppressive, and the poor people are oppressed. Similarly, CRT is the racial version of Marxism. “It’s a deconstruction. That oppressed, oppressor dynamic is exactly the same as Marxism. [CRT] is just a different angle of looking at it,” he said.
‘Sounding the Alarm’
Stigall mentioned that a Chinese lady gave a “beautiful testimony” on CRT during a recent Loudoun County School District (LCSD) board meeting. Stigall said he trusts those Chinese immigrants more than any Ivy League academic on this topic since they really lived under such repression. Therefore, they understand it better than anybody else. “They are the ones that are shouting the loudest and sounding the alarm the loudest because they have seen it, and they are warning the rest of us. Don’t let it happen here,” he commented on those Chinese immigrants.
The LCSD board meeting which Stigall referred to was held on June 8. The Chinese lady, Xi Van Fleet, said during the meeting that CRT-related teaching is “the American version of Chinese cultural revolution.” She further emphasized that CRT is rooted in “cultural Marxism” and “it should have no place in our schools.”
The radio host further said it’s not enough to simply ban CRT from schools. Americans also need to go on the proactive and offensive by asserting that schools teach the greatness of this country, “we’re now going to insist our public schools teach the 1776 curriculum, not that 1619 curriculum.”
He warns that the theory is present in more than just our education system. It broke his heart that CRT is preached from the pulpit of his church. Stigall tells others to be on the lookout, “whether it’s our military, our police, our city council, our churches, and our schools. It seems to be infecting everywhere,” he said.
Stigall is not alone. More and more local parents and even school board members have stood up to oppose the teaching of CRT in schools. East Penn parents Maureen and Christopher Brophy filed a lawsuit against East Penn School District on June 14. According to the complaint, earlier this year, the Brophys requested that their children don’t have to take lessons relating to “systematic racism, white fragility, religion, white privilege, Black Lives Matter, and police brutality,” but the request was declined by the school district superintendent.
The Brophys’ attorney Catherine Smith told The Epoch Times in an email that she would not provide any further public comment since minor children are involved in this case.
Another recent example was the Pennsylvania Souderton Area School District board meeting on June 17, the school board president Ken Keith announced: “In Souderton, we are not following or teaching critical race theory in our schools, any more than we are following or teaching Marxism or Communism.” His speech was interrupted by a 30-second round of applause.
Moreover, Pennsylvania state Reps. Russ Diamond and Barbara Gleim recently introduced House Bill 1532, or the Teaching Racial and Universal Equality (TRUE) Act, which aims to ban the teaching of CRT ideology across the commonwealth. It had collected at least 28 sponsors by press time.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (C), standing with former leader Hu Jintao, attends the celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on July 1, 2021. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images) Chinese Regime
In a speech marking the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, its leader CCP Xinjiang said that foreign forces would get their “heads bashed” if they attempted to bully China. He added that the regime would “smash” any attempts from self-ruled Taiwan to claim formal independence.
In his hour-long address from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Xi vowed to bind the CCP to all Chinese people, pledged to strengthen China’s military, and sang high praises of Marxism.
In the over 80-degree temperature outside, Xi was the only one who wore Mao Zedong-style grey tunic suit, while all the other male CCP leaders dressed in black suits with ties.
During Xi’s speech, the about 70,000 selected audience members who sat at the square all applauded at the same time, at the same speed, and without enthusiasm. After Xi’s speech, it rained, an unlucky omen in Chinese culture. During the whole process, the CCP senior leaders and the audience kept their poker faces, even while shaking hands.
Hu Jintao, the former CCP leader, and Wen Jiabao, the former premier, participated in the celebration, but their predecessors Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji didn’t show up, which is unusual in the CCP’s history.
“The purpose of the CCP’s celebration is just showing its force … which is hiding its weakness in both domestic and diplomatic affairs,” Su Tzu-Yun, director of the Defense Strategy and Resources Division of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times.
Su noted that the CCP regime is struggling economically, politically, with the Taiwan Strait issue, and in relations with other countries.
“The CCP regime tried to transfer Chinese people’s focuses from their dissatisfactions on the regime to foreign affairs by [targeting the West and Taiwan],” Su commented.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (C), standing with former leader Hu Jintao, attends the celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China on July 1, 2021. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Xi’s Speech
Xi, the CCP’s most powerful leader since the regime’s founder Mao Zedong, addressed his speech in a communist tone, in which he claimed that he represented all CCP members and even all Chinese people, on Thursday.
“The CCP is in solidarity with Chinese people, will live together and die together,” Xi said. “Any attempts to separate the CCP from Chinese people will absolutely fail. The over 95 million CCP members and the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people will never allow such a scenario to happen.”
Then Xi spoke as a representative of all Chinese people.
“Chinese people would never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us [the CCP and China]. Anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” Xi said.
Xi claimed that unifying Taiwan is the CCP’s historical task. He then said: “All sons and daughters of China, including compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, must work together and move forward in solidarity, resolutely smashing any ‘Taiwan independence’ plots.”
Xi closed his address by wishing for the CCP to never be disintegrated.
Chinese women sing at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China on July 1, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Commentary
Commentators didn’t express much concern about the threats Xi delivered, but all noticed that the facial expressions of Xi and other senior CCP leaders were dignified during the celebration.
“They should be happy to celebrate the party’s centennial … They were anxious and panicked,” Su Tzu-Yun said. “It’s a reflection of the difficult situation that CCP is facing.”
The U.S.-based political commentator Chen Pokong commented in his independent media channel on July 1: “Xi Jinping read his speech without any emotion on his face, which is like reading a condolence.”
Talking about Xi’s threats, Su said he didn’t worry that the Beijing regime would unify Taiwan by force in a short time, but still suggested: “Taiwan should strengthen our self-defense forces.”
Taiwanese Mainland Affairs Council stated on July 1 that the Taiwanese people rejected the CCP’s one-sided principles, and the core values of Taiwanese society are “democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law.” The council urged Beijing to follow Taipei’s diplomatic suggestions, which are “peace, reciprocity, democracy, and dialogue.”
The Chinese regime claims the island as its own, despite the fact that Taiwan is a de facto independent country with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.
Four members of Hong Kong League of Social Democrats are marching on streets to urge the Beijing regime to release all political prisoners in Hong Kong on July 1, 2021. (Song Bilong/The Epoch Times)
As the CCP celebrated its centennial, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists face increasing pressure of arrest and protested in the city. They urged the Beijing regime to release all the detained political prisoners and dissidents.
According to the U.S.-based organization Dui Hua Foundation, which is dedicated to collecting data on political prisoners in China, the CCP regime had detained 44,932 political prisoners as of March 31.
A computer image created by Nexu Science Communication together with Trinity College in Dublin, shows a model structurally representative of a betacoronavirus which is the type of virus linked to COVID-19, better known as the coronavirus linked to the Wuhan outbreak, shared with Reuters on Feb. 18, 2020. (NEXU Science Communication/via Reuters) cover-up
Alternatives needed in case Chinese regime won’t cooperate, they say By Alex Wu July 1, 2021 Updated: July 1, 2021 biggersmallerPrint
A group of internationally renowned scientists has issued another open letter calling for a new, thorough inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic by an international investigative team. The letter also provided solutions to the possible scenario of the Chinese communist regime not cooperating with such an investigation.
On June 28, the Paris Group published the open letter with major French media Le Figaro. The group is made up of 31 leading scientists and doctors from countries around the world, including France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, India, Australia, the United States, Canada, and Japan.
The letter notes that COVID-19 has been raging around the world for more than a year, but the origin of the virus hasn’t been identified.
A report by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) team that visited Wuhan, China, a year after the outbreak to seek its origins—now shown to have included key members with a clear conflict of interest—was inconclusive and raised doubts globally, especially in Western countries.
“We believe that the joint study process that the WHO is currently calling for, in its current form, does not satisfy the conditions to be credible due to serious structural gaps,” the letter reads.
The letter also addresses the Chinese regime’s attempt to erase related data, pointing out: “The measures taken by the Chinese government to hide the origins, and stop Chinese experts from sharing certain essential information and detailed data clearly show that the current process, without significant changes, has no chance of putting a complete or credible inquiry in place for all possible scenarios.”
The letter states that it’s “particularly regrettable that no exhaustive inquiry on all the plausible origins has been undertaken, and that none is planned.”
“We ask for a new scientific inquiry into all the plausible origin hypothesis, which has unlimited access to all the pertinent files, samples, and staff in China, and elsewhere if necessary,” the scientists urge in the letter.
The direction of the investigation should include the possibility of the virus leaking from the laboratory, the letter suggests.
Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 23, 2017. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)
If the Chinese regime won’t cooperate in such an investigation, the group has suggested launching an international investigation mission without China’s participation, led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Group of Seven Industrial Countries (G-7), or other institutions.
“A well-organized and concerted effort, free of interference, drawing on all available sources of information and involving a large number of experts, may well end up providing unambiguous evidence supporting one particular hypothesis regarding the origins of the pandemic,” the letter reads.
The suggestion is based on the fact that sufficient data are available worldwide for such an inquiry, the scientists argue.
The letter further suggests that the inquiry would also need the cooperation of the United States and the European Union in sharing documents and data.
The letter comes at a time when more evidence is emerging, with the international community now turning focus to the virology lab in Wuhan that has been conducting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in cooperation with the Chinese regime’s military.
This is the fourth open letter this year calling for a new independent and thorough inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. The Paris Group issued another two letters earlier this year. In March, the first letter stated that an inquiry into the role of major science journals in concealing information of the pandemic, such as The Lancet, is in order.
They issued a second open letter on April 7, condemning the WHO’s report. The letter received significant coverage in French newspapers.
A giant digital sign is seen at Facebook’s corporate headquarters campus in Menlo Park, California, on October 23, 2019. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images) Media & Big Tech
Facebook users have recently reported being sent warning messages from the social media giant relating to “extremists” or “extremist content” in recent days.
“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?” one of the purported messages read. “We care about preventing extremism on Facebook. Others in your situation have received confidential support,” it adds before offering the button to “Get Support,” which ostensibly leads to another Facebook page about extremism.
Redstate editor Kira Davis, who said was sent a screenshot of the message from a friend, wrote: “Hey has anyone had this message pop up on their FB? My friend (who is not an ideologue but hosts lots of competing chatter) got this message twice. He’s very disturbed.
And others reported getting a warning that they may have been “exposed to harmful extremist content recently,” without elaborating. The message then alleges that “violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment,” similarly offering a “Get Support” option.
“Facebook randomly sent me this notice about extremism when I clicked over to the app. Pretty weird… The Get Support button just goes to a short article asking people not to be hateful,” wrote another user on Twitter in a July 1 post.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to CNN on Thursday that the social media giant is currently running the warnings as a test.
“This test is part of our larger work to assess ways to provide resources and support to people on Facebook who may have engaged with or were exposed to extremist content, or may know someone who is at risk,” the spokesperson said.
Epoch Times reporters who accessed Facebook were not able to reproduce the warning messages or access the “Get Support” page. https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=jackphillips5&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1410639053796429831&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fpretty-weird-facebook-starts-sending-extremist-content-warnings-to-users_3883194.html&sessionId=2cbf1dedb7abc8c481bc0207407d5e3b3146bd6f&siteScreenName=EpochTimes&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px
The messages come after Democrat lawmakers have repeatedly targeted and pressured CEOs of Big Tech firms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft, essentially accusing them of allowing “extremism,” misinformation, and cyberbullying. Simultaneously, they’ve faced criticism from Republicans who accuse the company of censoring conservative voices.
Conservatives, including former President Donald Trump—who has been banned from the social media platform for two years—have argued for the revocation of Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which serves as a liability shield for online publishers.
But these warning messages are sure to trigger even more negative feedback against Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, over fears that the company is attempting to stifle free speech. On Twitter, as screenshots of the warning messages were being shared en masse on Thursday, many users expressed concern over the direction Facebook is taking.
The Epoch Times has contacted Facebook for comment about the messages.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (front C) attends the fourth plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 13, 2018. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images) US-China Relations
The Chinese Communist Party regards the United States as an enemy and utilizes American’s kindness to grab resources and develop itself, according to a veteran ideology professor for the party’s Central Party School.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) teaches the people to hate the United States … has consistently, from 1949 to this day, promoted anti-American sentiment,” CCP insider and retired professor Cai Xia wrote in an article published by the Hoover Institution on June 29 (pdf). “The words I have been most familiar with since kindergarten and primary school are phrases such as ‘stop the American imperialist wolves,’” she said of her experience growing up in communist China.
Cai then gave an example of the result of the CCP’s anti-American education. “Once, I bought a toy pistol and gave it to a six-year-old boy. The boy played with it and blurted out: ‘Kill the Yankees.’”
Perceiving the United States as its enemy, the CCP regime uses any method it can to benefit from America.
Believing “there can never be too much deception in war,” Cai wrote, “the CCP took advantage of opportunities for economic and cultural exchanges to sneakily acquire economic, commercial, technological, political, and military intelligence. In particular, the theft of high-tech research results is not only carried out in foreign companies within China but also by Chinese students and scholars who go abroad and may be required to ‘cooperate’ with certain agencies to filch various information.”
However, although Americans have been cheated by the CCP for over 40 years, many U.S. elites “still regard the CCP regime as an authoritarian one,” Cai resigned.
She warned that they have not realized that “China has turned into a refined form of neo-totalitarianism.”
“Relying on unilateral good wishes and illusions, they adhered to engagement, which caused the policy to have a certain ‘appeasement’ effect in reality,” Cai said of the prevailing approach by the U.S. government.
She warned that the “totalitarian system” of the CCP’s rule is “the greatest threat to American security and world peace, and the CCP regime has no moral compass” because “the CCP utilizes everything to achieve its aims.”
“They think that as long as the purpose is achieved, any means can be used (the ends justify the means),” Cai wrote.
She urged Washington to see the CCP’s true face clearly, which can help the nation and its people to take the right actions to protect itself as well as the world.
At the same time, Cai believes that “the CCP may suddenly collapse” because the regime “has the ambition of a hungry dragon but inside, it is a paper tiger.” Anything can happen in a totalitarian regime, she said.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (center) and lawmakers stand for the anthem during the closing session of the rubber-stamp legislature’s conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on March 11, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
70 Years of Hatred, 40 Years of Deceit
Cai’s essay is titled “China-US Relations in the Eyes of the Chinese Communist Party.” She spends most of the 28 pages talking about U.S.-China relations from the Chinese perspective. As a professor who used to give communist ideological lessons to senior CCP officials, Cai concluded that the CCP had hated the United States for over 70 years and has deceived it for over 40 years.
From 1949—the year that the CCP seized control of the Chinese mainland—to 1969, the United States and China have had bad diplomatic relations, although both parties met for ambassador-level meetings over 100 times in Geneva, Switzerland, and Warsaw, Poland.
In China, the CCP’s education has taught people to think that the United States is the biggest enemy of the country and the Chinese people, Cai also warned of the regime’s propaganda efforts.
Things started to change when Beijing’s closest communist ally, the Soviet Union, started to challenge the CCP in 1958, when then-leader Mao Zedong and Soviet head Nikita Khrushchev couldn’t agree with each other on multiple issues. In March 1969, the Soviet Union and China clashed over a small islet on the Ussuri River—China called it Zhenbao Island and the Soviets called it Damansky Island—marking the start of worsening Soviet-China relations.
“Choosing the United States in the confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at that time helped the CCP to rely on the strength of the U.S. to reduce Soviet threats,” Cai wrote. On the diplomatic side, the CCP was actively building up relations with the United States throughout the 1960s, although it kept teaching its people that the United States was still the enemy.
On Jan. 1, 1979, the United States and China formally established diplomatic relations, and the U.S. helped China develop its economy with a hope that a “China under the CCP’s rule would become more liberal, even democratic, and a ‘responsible’ power in the world,” Cai wrote.
Ten years later, the CCP has killed its own people who asked for democracy and freedom in Beijing, resulting in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Cai said then CCP leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the regime to “hide our capacity, to bide our time,” when dealing in foreign affairs. He tried to convince Washington that China’s market is huge and promised that the regime welcomed foreign companies to participate in this market.
This is the basic rule that the CCP regime had followed since then, Cai wrote. She gave an example of how the CCP has cheated Americans by selling this promise.
“It is precisely because the CCP has seen through the American capitalists’ strong desire for the Chinese market that it knew that big business would willingly pressure the U.S. government to make concessions. Therefore, the CCP couldn’t care less about criticisms of its human rights violations, and it has become increasingly repressive domestically,” Cai wrote.
However, these American enterprises and businessmen haven’t received the treatment they expected in China.
“[The CCP] will use enticing language to lure multinational companies into China. But then, these companies will soon find that they have fallen into a trap: they must transfer their technologies or face shutdown. After acquiring the foreign technology, China often figures out ways to force these companies to leave the Chinese market,” Cai wrote. “Elon Musk’s Tesla company is experiencing this situation now.”
At the same time, the CCP regime has kept up its brainwashing of the Chinese people, including CCP officials, to be loyal to the party and treat the United States as their enemy.
“After 1989, the CCP continued to strengthen its ‘crisis education’ within the party, emphasizing that if the CCP fell from power, as in the former communist party-states, tens of thousands of cadres could be incarcerated or killed, and most party members and cadres would face unemployment and difficulties in making a living,” Cai wrote.
Student hunger strikers from Beijing University relax as several hundred students start an unlimited hunger strike as the part of mass pro-democracy protest against the Chinese government at Tiananmen Square on May 14, 1989. (Catherine Henriette/AFP via Getty Images)
Threats & Ambitions
Cai said the CCP regime started to have the ambition to control the world in 2008, when “China hosted the Olympic Games” and the United States “fell into the subprime financial crisis.”
Since then, the CCP has tried to involve itself in global rule-making like at the World Trade Organization. It had also busied itself with building a modern military “aimed at the United States,” expanding its overseas propaganda activities, and penetrating overseas “media, finance, economy, technology, education, think tanks, museums, and other fields and institutions.”
Cai pointed out that the CCP has restricted foreign scholars entering China, preventing them from sharing their mentality of free thought in China. The regime controls communications between Chinese scholars and foreign officials. At the same time, “the CCP’s ‘long arm control’ has reached Chinese students and Chinese organizations across the U.S., and the party has even set up CCP branches in American universities [to steal the know-hows and influence the free world],” Cai wrote.
Cai pointed out that Chinese current leader Xi Jinping is the most aggressive one, whose target is clearly the United States.
The CCP regime amended its National Defense Law on Jan. 1. Cai pointed out that one item specifying, “The State’s military activities are to prevent and resist aggression, prevent armed subversion and division, and defend national sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, security, and development interests,” has a special meaning behind it.
“These two key terms, ‘division’ and ‘development interests,’ have profound implications: one is for Taiwan; the other is a threatening signal for all countries, and most importantly the U.S., that China’s military will go to war with whoever prevents the CCP from unifying Taiwan and whoever affects China’s development interests,” Cai wrote.
Chinese troops march during a military parade in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
Cai, 68, was raised in a military family and joined the army in 1969. After retiring from the military, Cai became a CCP official in 1978. In 1992, Cai started her life at Central Party School as a postgraduate student.
In 1997, Cai became a lecturer at Central Party School to teach CCP ideology and politics. In 2000, she received the Doctor of Laws degree from the school and became a professor. She retired in 2012.
In 2020, when COVID-19 spread in China, Cai was in the United States as a tourist, and couldn’t return to China as planned.
In June 2020, an audio recording of Cai criticizing Xi Jinping was leaked online. Two months later, the CCP regime announced it was revoking Cai’s party membership and stopping her retirement benefits. She has remained in America since.
A convoy of People’s Liberation Army tanks pass in front of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Oct. 1, 1999, during a national day parade. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images) Chinese Regime
Editor’s Note: Some of the accounts in this article contain graphic and disturbing details of torture and other forms of degrading treatment.
Founded in July 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has wreaked death and destruction on the Chinese populace for a century.
Armed with the Marxist ideology of “struggle” as its guiding principle, the CCP has launched scores of movements targeting a long list of enemy groups: spies, landlords, intellectuals, disloyal officials, pro-democracy students, religious believers, and ethnic minorities.
With each campaign, the Party’s purported goal has been to create a “communist heaven on earth.” But time and again, the results have been the same: mass suffering and death. Meanwhile, a few elite CCP officials and their families have accumulated incredible power and wealth.
More than 70 years of Party rule have resulted in the killing of tens of millions of Chinese people and the dismantling of a 5,000-year-old civilization.
While China has advanced economically in recent decades, the CCP retains its nature as a Marxist-Leninist regime bent on solidifying its grip on China and the world. Millions of religious believers, ethnic minorities, and dissidents are still violently repressed today.
Below is a summary of some of the major atrocities committed by the CCP in its 100-year history.
Anti-Bolshevik League Incident
Less than a decade after the Party’s founding, Mao Zedong, then the head of a communist-controlled territory in southeast China’s Jiangxi Province, launched a political purge of his rivals known as the Anti-Bolshevik League Incident. Mao accused his rivals of working for the Anti-Bolshevik League, the intelligence agency of the Kuomintang, which was China’s ruling party at the time.
The result was that thousands of Red Army personnel and Party members were killed in the purge.
The one-year-long campaign that started in the summer of 1930 marked the first in a series of movements helmed by the paranoid leader that only grew bloodier and broader with time. The mass carnage lasted until Mao’s death in 1976.
While there’s no record showing exactly how many CCP members were killed during the campaign, Chinese historian Guo Hua wrote in a 1999 article that within a month, 4,400 of the 40,000 Red Army members had been killed, including dozens of military leaders. Within a few months, the CCP committee in southwestern Jiangxi had killed more than 1,000 of its non-military members.
At the end of the movement, the Jiangxi CCP committee reported that 80 to 90 percent of the CCP officials in the region had been accused of being spies and executed.
Family members of senior officials were also persecuted and killed, the report said. The torture methods inflicted on CCP members, according to Guo, included burning their skin, cutting off females’ breasts, and pushing bamboo sticks underneath their fingernails.
Mao attends a conference related to arts and literature in Yan’an in 1942. (Public domain)
Yan’an Rectification Movement
After becoming Party leader, Mao kickstarted the Yan’an Rectification Movement—the first ideological mass movement of the CCP—in 1942. From the CCP’s base in the secluded mountainous region of Yan’an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province, Mao and his loyalists employed the familiar tactic of accusing his rivals of being spies in order to purge senior officials and other Party members.
All told, about 10,000 CCP members were killed.
During the movement, people were tortured and forced to confess to being spies, wrote Wei Junyi in a 1998 book.
“Everyone became a spy in Yan’an, from middle-school students to primary school students,” Wei, who was then editor of state-run news agency Xinhua, wrote. “Twelve-year-olds, 11-year-olds, 10-year-olds, even a 6-year-old spy was discovered!”
The tragic fate of the family of Shi Bofu, a local painter, was recounted in Wei’s book. In 1942, CCP officials suddenly accused Shi of being a spy and detained him. That night, Shi’s wife, unable to cope with her husband’s likely death sentence, took her own life and that of her two young children. Hours later, officials found her and the children’s bodies and publicly proclaimed that Shi’s wife had a “deep hatred” toward the Party and the people, and thus deserved to die.
A Chinese landowner is executed by a communist soldier in Fukang, China. (Public Domain)
Land Reform
In October 1949, the CCP took control of China, and Mao became the regime’s first leader. Months later, in the regime’s first movement, named Land Reform, Mao mobilized the nation’s poorest peasants to violently seize the land and other assets of those deemed landlords—many of whom were just more-well-off peasants. Millions died.
Mao, in 1949, was accused of being a dictator and admitted to it.
“My dear sirs, you are right, that is just what we are,” he wrote, according to China File, a magazine published by the Center on U.S.–China Relations at Asia Society. According to Mao, communists in power should be dictatorial against “running dogs of imperialism,” “the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie,” and “reactionaries and their accomplices,” who were associated with the opposition Kuomintang.
Of course, the communists decided who would qualify as a “running dog,” a “reactionary,” or even a “landlord.”
“Many of the victims were beaten to death and some shot, but in many cases, they were first tortured in order to make them reveal their assets—real or imagined,” according to historian Frank Dikötter, who has painstakingly chronicled Mao’s brutality.
The 2019 book “The Bloody Red Land” chronicles the story of Li Man, a surviving landlord from southwest China’s Chongqing. After the CCP came into power, officials claimed that Li’s family had stashed 1.5 metric tons of gold. But this wasn’t true, as the family had been bankrupted years earlier due to Li’s father’s drug addiction.
Having no gold to give to the CCP, Li was tortured to the brink of death.
“They took off my clothes, tied my hand and feet to a pole. They then tied a rope around my genitals and tied a stone to my feet,” Li recounted. He said that they then hung the rope on a tree. Immediately, “blood gushed out from my belly button,” Li said.
Li was ultimately saved by a CCP official who sent him to the home of a doctor of Chinese medicine. Even after suffering severe injuries to his internal organs and genitals, Li still counted himself as lucky. Another 10 people who were tortured at the same time as Li all died. Over the next few months, Li’s close relatives and extended family would be tortured to death, one after another.
As a result of the torture, Li—who was 22 years old at the time—lost his manhood. During the CCP’s subsequent movements, Li would be tortured several more times, costing him his eyesight.
A starving family, date unknown (Public domain)
Great Leap Forward
Mao launched the Great Leap Forward in 1958, a four-year campaign that sought to push the country to exponentially increase its steel production while collectivizing agriculture farming. The goal, as Mao’s slogan goes, was to “surpass Britain and catch up with America.”
Peasants were ordered to build backyard furnaces to make steel, leaving farmland in severe neglect. Moreover, overzealous local officials who were afraid of being branded as “laggards” set unrealistically high harvest quotas. As a result, peasants had nothing left to eat after turning over the bulk of their crops as taxes.
What ensued was the worst man-made disaster in history: the Great Famine, during which tens of millions died of starvation, from 1959 to 1961.
Starving peasants turned to wild animals, grass, bark, and even kaolinite, a clay mineral, for food. Extreme hunger also drove many to cannibalism.
There are recorded cases of people eating the corpses of strangers, friends, and family members, and parents killing their children for food—and vice-versa.
Jasper Becker, who wrote the Great Leap Forward account “Hungry Ghosts,” said that Chinese people were forced to engage—out of pure desperation—in selling human flesh on the market, and the swapping of children so they wouldn’t eat their own.
Across 13 provinces, there were a total of 3,000 to 5,000 recorded cases of cannibalism.
Becker notes the cannibalism in China in the late 1950s and early ’60s likely occurred “on a scale unprecedented in the history of the 20th century.”
Chinese historian Yu Xiguang in the 1980s found an archival photo from his hometown in Hunan Province. It purportedly showed a man named Liu Jiayuan standing beside his 1-year-old son’s head and bones. Liu eventually was executed for murder.
Yu later interviewed Liu’s surviving family members in the 2000s to verify the story. He wrote in a report: “Liu Jiayuan was extremely starved. He killed his son and cooked [the flesh into] a big meal. Before finishing his food, his family members found his crime and reported him to the police. He then was arrested and executed.”
As many as 45 million people died during the Great Leap Forward, according to historian Dikötter, author of “Mao’s Great Famine.”
Communist Party cadres hang a placard on the neck of a Chinese man during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The words on the placard state the man’s name and accuse him of being a member of the “black class.” (Public Domain)
Cultural Revolution
After the catastrophic failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao, feeling that he was losing his grip on power, launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in an attempt to use the Chinese populace to reassert control over the CCP and country. Creating a cult of personality, Mao aimed to “crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road” and strengthen his own ideologies, according to an early directive.
Over 10 years of mandated chaos, millions were killed or driven to suicide in state-sanctioned violence, while zealous young ideologues, the infamous Red Guards, traveled about the country destroying and denigrating China’s traditions and heritage.
It was a whole-of-society endeavor, with the Party encouraging people from all walks of life to snitch on co-workers, neighbors, friends, and even family members who were “counter-revolutionaries”—anyone with politically incorrect thoughts or behaviors.
The victims, who included intellectuals, artists, CCP officials, and others deemed as “class enemies,” were subjected to ritual humiliation through “struggle sessions”—public meetings where the victims would be forced to admit their supposed crimes and endure physical and verbal abuse from the crowd, before they were detained, tortured, and sent to the countryside for forced labor.
Traditional Chinese culture and traditions were a direct target of Mao’s campaign to exterminate the “Four Olds”—old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. As a result, countless cultural relics, temples, historical buildings, statues, and books were destroyed.
Zhang Zhixin, an elite CCP member who worked in the Liaoning provincial government, was among the victims of the campaign. According to an account reported by Chinese media after the Cultural Revolution, a colleague reported Zhang in 1968 after she commented to that co-worker that she couldn’t understand some of the CCP’s actions. The 38-year-old was then detained at a local Party cadre training center, where more than 30,000 staff members of the provincial government were being held.
While in detention, she refused to admit to doing anything wrong and stood by her political opinions. She was firmly loyal to the Party but disagreed with some of Mao’s policies. She was sent to prison.
There, Zhang suffered horrendously as officials tried to force her to give up her viewpoints. Prison guards would use iron wire to keep her mouth open and then push a dirty mop into it. They handcuffed her hands behind her back and hung a 40-pound block of iron from the chains. Provincial CCP officials even ripped out all of her hair, and guards would often arrange for male prisoners to gang-rape her.
Zhang attempted to commit suicide but failed, which caused prison officials to step up their control. Her husband was also forced to divorce her. By early 1975, Zhang had descended into madness. In April of that year, she was executed by firing squad. Before being shot, the prison guards cut her trachea to silence her. She died at the age of 45.
During Zhang’s detention, her husband and two young children were forced to renounce their relationship with her. Upon learning of her death, they didn’t even dare cry—for fear that they would be heard by neighbors who might report them for bearing resentment toward the Party.
The disastrous movement ended in October 1976, less than a month after Mao’s death.
The legacy of the Cultural Revolution goes far beyond the lives destroyed, according to Dikötter.
“It is not so much death which characterized the Cultural Revolution, it was trauma,” he told NPR in 2016.
“It was the way in which people were pitted against each other, were obliged to denounce family members, colleagues, friends. It was about loss, loss of trust, loss of friendship, loss of faith in other human beings, loss of predictability in social relationships. And that really is the mark that the Cultural Revolution left behind.”
A young orphaned Chinese girl sits in a crib at a foster care center in Beijing on April 2, 2014. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
One-Child Policy
In 1979, the regime launched the “one-child policy,” which allowed married couples to have only one child, in a campaign ostensibly aimed at boosting the standard of living by curbing population growth. The policy caused widespread forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and infanticide. According to Chinese Ministry of Health data cited by Chinese state media, 336 million fetuses were aborted from 1971 to 2013.
Xia Runying, a villager from Jiangxi Province who experienced forced sterilization, wrote in a public letter in 2013 that her family requested to postpone the surgery because of her poor health. The local official, however, said that they would do the surgery even if she had to be tied up with ropes.
She began to urinate blood and have headaches and stomachaches after the surgery. Later, she was forced to stop working.
The regime discontinued the one-child policy in 2013, allowing two children. On May 31, it announced that families could have three children.
A girl wounded during the clash between the army and students on June 4, 1989, near Tiananmen Square is carried out on a cart. (MANUEL CENETA/AFP/Getty Images)
Tiananmen Square Massacre
What started as a student gathering to mourn the death of reform-minded former Chinese leader Hu Yaobang in April 1989 morphed into the largest protests the regime had ever seen. University students who congregated at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square asked the CCP to control severe inflation, curb officials’ corruption, take responsibility for past faults, and support a free press and democratic ideas.
By May, students from across China and Beijing residents from all walks of life had joined the protest. Similar demonstrations cropped up all over the country.
CCP leaders didn’t agree to the students’ requests.
Instead, the regime ordered the army to quash the protest. On the evening of June 3, tanks rolled into the city and surrounded the square. Scores of unarmed protesters were killed or maimed after being crushed by tanks or shot by soldiers firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Thousands are estimated to have died.
Lily Zhang, who was head nurse at a Beijing hospital a 15-minute walk from the square, recounted to The Epoch Times the bloodshed from that night. She woke up to the sound of gunfire and rushed to the hospital on the morning of June 4 after hearing of the massacre.
She was horrified when she arrived at her hospital to find a “warzone-like” scene. Another nurse, sobbing, told her the pool of blood from injured protesters was “forming a river at the hospital.”
At Zhang’s hospital, at least 18 had died by the time they were carried into the facility.
The soldiers used “dum-dum” bullets, which would expand inside the victim’s body and inflict further damage, Zhang said. Many sustained grave wounds and were bleeding so profusely that it was “impossible to revive them.”
At the hospital gate, a critically injured reporter with the state-owned China Sports Daily told the two health workers who carried him that he “didn’t imagine that the Chinese Communist Party would really open fire.”
“Shooting down unarmed students and commoners—what kind of ruling party is this?” were his final words, Zhang recalled.
Then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who ordered the bloody clampdown, was quoted in a British government cable as saying that “two hundred dead could bring 20 years of peace to China,” a month before the massacre in May 1989.
To this day, the regime has refused to disclose the number killed in the massacre or their names, and heavily suppresses information about the incident.
Two plainclothes police officers arrest a Falun Gong practitioner at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on Dec. 31, 2000. (Minghui.org)
Persecution of Falun Gong
A decade later, the regime decided to carry out another bloody suppression.
On July 20, 1999, the authorities began a wide campaign targeting the estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that includes meditative exercises and moral teachings centered around the values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, a website for Falun Gong-related information, millions of practitioners have been fired from their jobs, expelled from school, jailed, tortured, or killed simply because they refused to give up their belief.
In 2019, an independent people’s tribunal in London confirmed that the regime had carried out forced organ harvesting “on a significant scale” and that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners were “probably the principal source.”
He Lifang, a 45-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Qingdao, a city in Shandong Province, died after being detained for two months. His relatives said there were incisions on his chest and back. His face looked as if he was in pain, and there were wounds all over his body, according to Minghui.org, a website that serves as a clearinghouse for accounts of the persecution of Falun Gong.
A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng, Xinjiang Province, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
Suppression of Religious and Ethnic Minorities
To maintain its rule, the CCP regime transferred a large number of Han ethnic people to Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, where ethnic groups live with their own cultures and languages. The regime forced local schools to use mandarin Chinese as the official language.
In 2008, Tibetans protested to express their anger at the regime’s control. The regime, in response, deployed the police. Hundreds of Tibetans were killed.
Since 2009, more than 150 Tibetans have self-immolated, hoping their deaths might stop the regime’s tight control in Tibet.
In Xinjiang, the regime authorities have been accused of committing genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, including detaining a million people in secretive “political reeducation” camps.
Last year, the regime in Beijing set a new policy that mandated Mandarin Chinese-only teaching in some Inner Mongolia schools. When parents and students protested, they were threatened with arrest, detention, and job loss.
The regime also uses a surveillance system to monitor ethnic groups. Surveillance cameras were set up in Tibetan monasteries, and biometric data are collected in Xinjiang.
Eva Fu, Jack Phillips, Leo Timm, and Cathy He contributed to this report.
A Fulton County election worker removes absentee ballots for the U.S. Senate runoff elections from envelopes at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 5, 2021. (Elijah Nouvelage) Regional News
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he is pursuing taking over Fulton County’s elections operations, claiming the Atlanta-area county has habitually failed to count votes.
“I think people are saying, enough is enough,” Raffensperger told Just the News on Wednesday, adding: “I’m tired of it, but so is everyone else who lives in the other 158 counties” in Georgia.
Raffensperger, a Republican who was frequently criticized by former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election, added that he will invoke Georgia’s recent election integrity law that allows Georgia’s Elections Board to take over elections operations in localities that have issues with counting ballots.
The law, SB 202, was passed and signed into law earlier this year. The Department of Justice last week announced it would be filing a civil rights lawsuit against the measure.
When asked during the podcast about whether he would recommend the Elections Board to take over Fulton County by using the law, “Yes is the answer to your question,” Raffensperger responded.
“With SB 202, habitually failing counties can—actually the state election board can come in and replace the election director and really take over the governance of that,” he added, noting that he sought the ouster of a top Fulton County elections official but the county declined to do so.
During the podcast interview, Raffensperger cited a report released by an elections monitor, Carter Jones, in June that detailed alleged irregularities at a Fulton County vote-counting center in November.
“What [Jones] said was it’s all this mismanagement,” the secretary of state said, adding that county “mismanagement” and “dysfunction” erodes the public’s trust in the election system and “really lends itself to conspiracy theories.”
“So it needs to be fixed. It’s our largest county,” he said.
The Epoch Times has contacted Fulton County for comment.
His announcement comes in the midst of an investigation into Fulton County election forms regarding ballots’ chain of custody that allegedly went missing.
Amid claims that Fulton County can’t “produce all ballot drop box transfer documents,” Raffensperger said in a June 14 statement that his office is investigating. “Other counties that failed to follow Georgia rules and regulations regarding drop boxes” are also being reviewed, he added.
A spokesperson for Fulton County at the time appeared to dismiss the reports, telling The Epoch Times that officials “followed procedures for the collection of absentee ballots from Fulton County drop boxes.”
“We maintain a large quantity of documents and researching our files from last year to produce the ballot transfer forms. We have been in communication with the Secretary of State’s office to update them of our progress on this matter,” the spokesperson said.
Sacramento, CA — Thursday is the beginning of the new fiscal year for the state government, and it also brings a small increase to California’s gas tax.
Senate Bill 1, passed in 2017, increased both the gasoline tax and vehicle licensing fees. The extra revenue helps fund road projects in the state.
The initial gas tax increase was 12-cents, followed by a 5.6-cent increase in 2019 and a 3.2-cent increase in 2020.
SB1 allows the tax to increase with inflation, and the Board of Equalization reports that it will go up by another 0.6-cents on Thursday. The BOE notes that it will bring the state’s gas tax to 51.1-cents, which will continue to be the highest in the nation.
A Palestinian worker unloads a shipment of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines donated by Beijing in the West Bank city of Nablus, on March 29, 2021. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images) Chinese Regime
The communist regime in China uses healthcare and apps as weapons as part of its playbook, said an expert on China and the Indo-Pacific.
Cleo Paskal, an associate fellow at Chatham House and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that lessons could be learned from China’s neighbors, particularly India and the Solomon Islands, in understanding the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in a recent interview on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
“It is understanding how invasive and destructive and coercive the mentality of the Chinese Communist Party is—in terms of an individual’s right to think anything they want or believe anything they want, is imperative for understanding what we’re dealing with,” Paskal said.
She added: “In a Chinese-run world or Chinese-influenced world healthcare is used as a weapon to punish political dissidents.”
Paskal pointed to the example of Daniel Suidani, the premier of Malaita Province in the Solomon Islands and a prominent China critic. Since the South Pacific country ended its 36-year diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of China in September 2019, Suidani has continued to voice support for the self-ruled island and rejected Chinese investment in Malaita.
Suidani’s continued support for Taiwan—a de facto independent nation that China claims as a part of its territory—has put him at odds with the Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who enjoys a close relationship with Beijing.
About six months ago, Suidani came down with a brain disease that required CT scans but the Solomon Islands does not have the medical device. As a result, the premier began seeking foreign medical care but was financially strapped to pay for it.
Suidani approached the Sogavare government for financial aid for his medical care, but he rejected the money after learning that there were strings attached to it—he had to shake the hands of Sogavare in public. Earlier this month, Suidani’s senior advisor Celsus Talifilu told Al Jazeera that the premier refused the offer because “it would be like shaking hands with China.”Current Time 9:43/Duration 52:45 1x
Taiwan offered Suidani medical assistance and the premier arrived in Taiwan on May 26. His trip to Taiwan has angered both the Sogavare government and Beijing—with the former saying that it was an “unauthorized” trip that undermined the South Pacific country’s “one China” policy.
Meanwhile, in a statement issued on May 30, the Chinese embassy in the Solomon Islands said it had “registered concerns” with the Sogavare government over Suidani’s trip, and added that it “opposes any official contacts” between Taiwan and other countries.
“This is a situation where his [Suidani’s] personal position on China meant he was going to be declined healthcare. This is essentially an extraterritorial social credit system type control over the healthcare of an individual person,” Paskal explained.
She added: “If you don’t accept China in your heart, you’re going to be left to die. That’s fundamentally what was happening with Premier Suidani.”
The Chinese regime enforces a social credit system, which assigns each citizen a score of “social trustworthiness.” People can have points taken away from their social credit score by committing behaviors deemed undesirable by the CCP such as jaywalking. Those with low social credit scores are deemed “untrustworthy,” and thus deprived access to services and opportunities. They could be barred from traveling by plane or attending schools, among other things. Critics have slammed the system as a violation of human rights.
Apps
Beijing could also weaponize Chinese mobile apps in order to sow divisions within other countries, according to Paskal. She applauded the Indian government for banning Chinese apps, particularly popular video-sharing app TikTok and messaging app WeChat.
India has banned more than 200 Chinese apps, citing the apps’ collection of user data as a national security risk. China’s national intelligence law requires all organizations and citizens to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.”
Beijing could use the data collected by different Chinese apps for coercion and blackmail, Paskal warned.
Additionally, Paskal explained that since the Chinese apps also curated information, Beijing could try to “manipulate the people who have the app into believing certain things or heading in certain directions politically.”
“If you can create social division or exacerbate social division in another country, and paralyze it socially, damage it socially, China wins. It doesn’t mean countries don’t have social problems. It just means that there is a vested interest from Beijing; making those situations worse. And you can do that through apps like TikTok,” Paskal explained.
On June 9, the Biden administration revoked former President Donald Trump’s executive orders effectively banning TikTok and WeChat, and required the Commerce Department to conduct its own review of both apps.
Paskal warned that ultimately the CCP wants to influence the mind of every individual.
“So, be very aware. You are targeted. … The goal now of the Chinese Communist Party is political warfare—which is the front line of its attempt to achieve that number one position in terms of comprehensive national power is your mind,” she explained. Follow Frank on Twitter: @HwaiDerFollow Jan on Twitter: @JanJekielek
Portland Police deploy in Portland, Oregon on Nov. 4, 2020, during a demonstration called by the “Black Lives Matter” movement, a day after the US Presidential Election. (Kathryn Elsesser/AFP via Getty Images) Regional News
The entire Portland Police Bureau’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) has left their voluntary positions after an officer was indicted on a protest assault charge.
The team, which is responsible for providing public safety at crowd events when there was a threat of harm to the community, consisted of approximately 50 officers, all of whom resigned on June 16, the bureau announced.
Despite no longer serving as volunteers with RRT, the officers will continue with their regular assignments, the bureau said.
It comes just a day after Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced his team had indicted one member, Officer Corey Budworth, on one count of fourth-degree assault for physically injuring someone during an Aug. 18, 2020, protest.
“In this case, we allege that no legal justification existed for Officer Budworth’s deployment of force, and that the deployment of force was legally excessive under the circumstances,” Schmidt said in a statement on Tuesday. “My office will continue to do everything we can to ensure justice is done without error or delay and that we make sure our work and practices are rooted in fairness and equity.”
Schmidt noted that other use-of-force incidents are still under review and that his office has referred an investigation into Portland Police Det. Erik Kammerer’s use of force during protests to the Oregon State Department of Justice for review.
The indictment marks the first time a Portland police officer has faced prosecution for striking or firing at someone during a protest, according to The Oregonian.
Budworth was assigned to the Portland Police Bureau’s Rapid Response Team at the time of the alleged assault and prosecutors allege he used an “excessive and unlawful use of force” when he struck activist photographer Teri Jacobs in the head with a baton during a demonstration outside the Multnomah Building.
Multiple videos posted to social media show an officer, identified as Budworth, running after Jacobs and hitting her once in the head from behind, and then hitting her head again after she falls to the ground.
The Portland Police Association claim that Ms. Jacobs fell to the ground and that officer Bedworth had reason to believe she was getting back up to re-engage in her unlawful activities.
“Officer Budworth employed one last baton push to try and keep her on the ground, which accidentally struck Ms. Jacobs in the head. The location of Officer Budworth’s last baton push was accidental, not criminal,” they said in a statement on Wednesday.
“He faced a violent and chaotic, rapidly evolving situation, and he used the lowest level of baton force—a push; not a strike or a jab—to remove Ms. Jacobs from the area.”
However, in February, the city agreed to a $50,000 civil settlement for Jacobs in the case.
The Portland Police Bureau placed Budworth on administrative leave Tuesday, officials said.
“Unfortunately, this decorated public servant has been caught in the crossfire of agenda-driven city leaders and a politicized criminal justice system,” the Portland Police Association said in their statement on Wednesday.
“It is also important to know that Officer Corey Budworth is a committed public servant of the highest integrity. He has spent four of his six years as a PPB officer as a highly trained member of PPB’s Rapid Response Team (RRT). In his service with RRT and his deployment at hundreds of protests and demonstrations, Officer Budworth has never faced any sustained force complaints,” they added.
Portland has dealt with unrest—as riots have regularly taken place—since the spring of 2020. Some of the people who have committed crimes are members of the far-left, anarcho-communist Antifa network. Others have identified as Black Lives Matter activists.
Portlanders who spoke to The Epoch Times anonymously said that the violence is becoming worse and is unacceptable, despite being largely underreported by mainstream media.
One 44-year-old man who lives in a Portland suburb said, “There are brazen shootings and killings in broad daylight which did not happen before this past year. The violence is no longer limited to nights or certain neighborhoods.”
Another 64-year-old woman who works in the information technology field said that companies are also struggling to recruit new employees because Portland is now being perceived as dangerous.
Last week, the Portland Police Association announced it was relocating its headquarters because of repeated attacks by rioters, including members of the far-left network Antifa.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Portland Police Bureau for comment.
