The U.S. Department of Commerce said Thursday (Jan. 14) that it has placed China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) on the U.S. export control blacklist.
CNOOC is once again in the spotlight as the U.S. puts the company on the sanctions blacklist.
What is less well known is that CNOOC has been relentlessly following the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong since 1999, and many of its employees have been severely persecuted.
Xu Haitang’s Benefits Withheld by Illegal Re-education Through Labor Company for Millions of RMB
Xu Haitang, an employee of CNOOC Bohai Oil Company, is a Falun Gong practitioner.
Before practicing Falun Gong, Xu Haitang suffered from rheumatism, red and swollen finger joints, and pain all over his body; he also suffered from recurrent pneumonia, hyperthyroidism, stomach prolapse, chronic tonsillitis, insomnia, headaches, and other diseases. His illnesses made him “almost worse than death”.
After practicing Falun Gong, Xu Haitang became a good person according to Falun Gong’s “Truth, Kindness, and Forbearance” and his illnesses disappeared within a short period of time, and his fingers and joints are no longer red, swollen, or painful. In the workplace, Xu Haitang is strict with herself, no matter how much work is done, how dirty and how tired she is, she is dedicated to her work and is willing to work without regard to fame, fortune or reward.
Falun Gong consists of five sets of gongfu movements, which are miraculously effective in eliminating diseases and improving one’s moral level.
After the Chinese Communist Party persecuted Falun Gong in 1999, Xu Haitang experienced three home raids, four kidnappings, four detentions, two reeducation-through-labor sessions, and one brainwashing class persecution.
Xu Haitang stated to himself, “In June 2000, I was practicing gong in front of my home and was kidnapped on the spot to the Bohai Petroleum New Village Police Station, where I was forced to take a statement and make fingerprints, and videotaped to be broadcast on Bohai Petroleum’s closed-circuit television to slander Falun Gong, and was illegally detained for 10 days.”
“In mid-January 2001, while I was working in my unit, I was kidnapped by the Bohai Petroleum Research Institute to a brainwashing class at the Beitang Drug Rehabilitation Center. Two leaders from this section were involved. Zhao Tong, the head of the “610” (an illegal organization dedicated to persecuting Falun Gong) of Bohai Petroleum Company at that time, and He Xiaoqin, the director of Bohai Petroleum Research Institute, were responsible for the unshirkable responsibility.”
In 2001, Xu Haitang was illegally reeducated through labor for two years. “During that time, his hands were handcuffed to the iron bars of the upper bunk for 2 days and 1 night, and the tips of the handcuff teeth were deeply embedded in his wrists.”
While Xu Haitang was being persecuted, CNOOC Bohai Oil Company deducted his salary, bonus and provident fund, and did not give him a salary increase. Moreover, he lost the benefits to which the company’s employees were entitled.
After Xu Haitang retired, the company did not pay corporate wages, but only social security, directly causing an economic loss of nearly one million yuan, and his children were unable to continue their further education.
Li Mingfeng was illegally reeducated through labor after being illegally harassed by her workplace for a long time
Li Mingfeng, a retired member of the CNOOC Chemical Design and Research Institute in Hongqiao District, Tianjin, is a Falun Gong practitioner.
Because of her practice of Falun Gong, Li was repeatedly harassed by the security section of her workplace and then illegally reeducated through labor by the CCP.
In her complaint against Jiang Zemin, Li Mingfeng stated, “During the ten years from 1999 to 2009, every time when ‘April 25’, ‘May 13’, ‘July 20’ (i.e., April 25) and ‘July 20’ (i.e., April 25) were held, Li Mingfeng was forced to go to the labor camp. ‘ (i.e., April 25, May 13, July 20) and the Communist Party’s holiday ‘sensitive days’, police, neighborhood committees, street offices, and people from the (CNOOC) unit’s security department would come to the house to harass them. They were not allowed to leave the house, they were not allowed to leave the country, and their phones were tapped for a long time.”
On January 15, 2002, Li Mingfeng was illegally abducted and then held for two and a half years in the Tianjin Women’s Re-education Through Labor Camp. During this time, she was regularly beaten, forced to do slave labor, and was deprived of sleep.
At the Tianjin Women’s Labor Camp, Li witnessed the persecution of two Falun Gong practitioners to death.
Li Mingfeng said, “One, Li Shumin, died after the police forced her to run around the grounds for more than four hours, clamped her ten fingers with a bamboo pipe, pulled with a rope, put on a big hang (hanged), and put her in an iron cage.”
“There is another one called Zhao Dewen. The police instructed the drug addicts, one person pulled the hand, another person lifted the foot, cemetery to the ground. Zhao Dewen died of internal bleeding. They hung Zhao Dewen’s body on the door, saying it was a suicide, planting evidence to frame him.”
China National Offshore Oil has a “610” office dedicated to persecuting Falun Gong
According to Ms. Zhou Limin, spokesperson for the Falun Dafa Society of Canada, CNOOC is one of the most severely persecuted state-owned companies by the Chinese Communist Party.
CNOOC has set up a “610” office within the company, and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners includes dismissal, salary suspension, illegal imprisonment, kidnapping, detention, brainwashing, and detention in mental hospitals.
The Bohai Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of CNOOC, issued a document stating that if an employee is reeducated through labor, he or she will be dismissed from the company.
For example, Li Weizhen, a Falun Gong practitioner, went to work every day and was paid only $75 per month; he was illegally sentenced to 3.5 years in 2002; once his sentence was completed, he was dismissed from the company.
In April 2011, CNOOC focused on Falun Gong practitioners, requiring the establishment of so-called “help and education groups” to establish preventive and monitoring measures to ensure that they would not petition. The subordinate units were required to sign responsibility letters and to rate their performance, which were linked to “evaluation, promotion, and advancement”.
The illegal persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party has continued for 21 years, and for 21 years, the international community has continued to express its solidarity with Falun Gong for justice.
Voices of Justice from the International Community
On December 10, 2020, International Human Rights Day, 35 countries and regions and 920 political leaders across party lines joined a joint statement condemning the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong and calling on the CCP to immediately stop the persecution.
Their co-signed joint statement states, “The persecution suffered by Falun Gong in China is the most brutal persecution of a faith community today.”
On July 20, 2020, the 21st anniversary of the anti-persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued an official statement on that day demanding that the CCP must stop persecuting Falun Gong.
On July 20, Robert Destro, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Democracy and Labor, also met with five representatives of Falun Gong practitioners at the State Department. The State Department’s Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, Samuel Brownback, joined the meeting by telephone.
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