DEATH STATE
Executions, sterilisations and cannibal banquets – Inside China’s brutal history as Communists celebrates 100 years
VILE executions, brutal torture, forced sterilisation, cannibalism and concentration camps — these are just some of the horrors the Chinese Communist Party has inflicted on its own people.
And meanwhile, China's dictator Xi Jinping today hailed the party as heralding the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation", as the centenary celebrations of the oppressive movement were choreographed in true totalitarian style.
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Putting on a glossy and carefully stage-managed image to the rest of the world, the Communists have attempted to airbrush their horrific history of show trials, executions, some of the worst torture imaginable, let alone alleged genocide.
Forced sterilisations of the Uyghur people, brutalisation of political opponents, massacres of protesters and more. The party is celebrating 100 years, but how many lives has the ideology "disappeared"?
All day today Mao-suited party faithfuls, creepily gushed praise on the ruling Party, which today bragged about being on the brink of dominating 21st century Earth.
Speaking today in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Xi wore a suit favoured by his predecessor Mao Zedong, who from the same podium proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949.
But Mao, whose enormous portrait dominates the square, was one of the modern world’s worst tyrants — creating a murderous regime as he futilely attempted to realise his twisted vision of socialism.
Anyone who stood in his way was executed, or imprisoned in cruel labour camps, or starved to death in famines thanks to the portly dictator's ruinous farming policies.
An estimated 65 million Chinese perished during Mao's rule.
And the rule of Chairman Mao was just the start of the Communist Party's abuse of human rights — with the present regime believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined.
China executes more people every year than all other countries put together, and its use of capital punishment remains wrapped in a tight veil of secrecy
Sacha Deshmukh
In its 100th year, the party which now has absolute rule over 1.4 billion people, has delivered a selective version of history.
Films, "red tourism" campaigns, and books dance over the regime's history of violence — and no mention is made of the brutal atrocities believed to continue.
Mr Deshmukh, the interim CEO of Amnesty International UK, told the Sun Online: "Under successive leaders, the Chinese authorities have crushed all peaceful opposition — from the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 to generation after generation of lawyers, human rights activists, and religious and ethnic minorities.
"The recent mass internment and torture of hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang has been particularly shocking."
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Mr Deshmukh went on: "Using a vast network of ‘transformation-through-education’ centres, the Chinese authorities are attempting to force people to submit to a nationalistic, Communist Party-dominated view of the world.
"China executes more people every year than all other countries put together, and its use of capital punishment remains wrapped in a tight veil of secrecy.
"And after persecuting millions of people with its notorious one-child policy for more than 30 years, even now China is still trying to control people’s life choices with its three-child maximum."
Mao unleashed the frenzied "Cultural Revolution" during the 1960s, which historians view as a veiled attempt to eliminate all opposition.
All professionals – doctors, teachers, lawyers – were targeted in the great purge of the middle classes.
Mao knew, and feared, being challenged by educated or skilled people.
Friends, neighbours, and even family members denounced each other whether they were guilty or not — with executions including beheadings —boilings, disembowelment, live burials and stonings.
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During the Cultural Revolution there were several dozen cases of ritual cannibalism of "class enemies".
Children of the victimised were also killed, lest they reaped revenge in the future.
The Communist Party, keen to maintain the legend of Mao, has suppressed the atrocities of the so-called Cultural Revolution — where it has been recorded "flesh banquets" were held — often with the approval of local officials.
It is claimed hundreds of people were eaten during this period — although there is no evidence it was the official policy of Mao, or the Communists.
Nevertheless, hysteria and hatred were deliberately whipped up, and as in Nazi-era Europe, this led to appalling atrocities.
Mao died in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping assumed power — liberalising the economy and opening the doors to the West, offering up cheap labour, paving the way for the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party, while the USSR imploded in the late 80s.
But horrific human rights abuses continued — and anyone falling foul of the Communist Party faced the abyss of mental or physical death.
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Some prisoners during the 1980s report being forced to wear metal helmets before having their heads beaten against walls.
Other methods of torture include being hung by the arms and beaten, being tied up or shackled in painful positions and being given electric shocks.
The world realised just how oppressive the Communist Party still was during the 1989 crackdown on student-led democracy protesters in Tienanmen Square — where today’s celebrations of the ruling party have been taking place.
China has never given an official figure on how many people died, but estimates vary from several hundreds to up to 2,600.
Following the massacre, thousands of people were detained, tortured, imprisoned or executed after unfair trials charged them with "counter-revolutionary" crimes.
And today, human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghur Muslims against their will over the past few years.
Hundreds of thousands have been incarcerated in a network of what the state calls "re-education camps" — but what has been dubbed by some as "concentration camps".
There is also evidence they are being used as forced labour in factories producing goods for well-known western brands.
Women are said to have been being sterilised and some former camp detainees have also alleged they were tortured and sexually abused.
And from the 90s and into the 00s it is claimed China sought to "eradicate" the Falun Gong religious movement, allegedly carrying out tactics such torture, organ harvesting, forced labour and "re-education".
Victims claimed they were horribly tortured such as having pins pushed under their nails, given electric shocks, been force-fed and other methods designed to inflict maximum pain and humiliation.
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China is still claimed to use cruel torture methods, claim human rights groups.
Tools of torture include iron restraint chairs —and the dreaded "tiger benches".
This nightmarish torture tool, which campaigners say is still in use today, involves tightly bounding an individuals’ legs to a bench.
Bricks are then gradually added under the victim’s feet, forcing the legs backwards.
Communist China's human rights abuse does not stop with torture.
For the country has been branded the world's worst executioner.
The totalitarian state kills thousands of people every year using firing squads, lethal injections and mobile death vans.
The body count believed to be larger than the rest of the world's combined total of 657.
The true numbers of those killed by the Communist Party are thought to be staggeringly high — but the regime keeps them closely concealed as state secrets.
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Amnesty' International China researcher Kai Ong previously told The Sun Online how China often holds mass rallies to announce people being sentenced to death in medieval-style public trials.
Ms Ong said: "Each June, local governments often hold mass sentencing rallies, in which students, teachers and the public are invited to witness the court handing down death penalty to individuals convicted of drug-related crimes."
Firing squads and lethal injections are two favourite methods of execution.
Killer jabs were legalised by the regime in the 90s and are sometimes administered in one of the state's mobile "execution vans".
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Today also marks the 24th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule — a date once met with mass demonstrations against Beijing inside the former British colony.
One year ago, China imposed a draconian national security law on the city in response to huge, often violent, pro-democracy protesters.
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The measure has seen activists charged, anti-China slogans criminalised and even the closure of a critical newspaper as the law sinks the once freewheeling city into what Amnesty International calls a "human rights emergency".
Four activists marched with a banner near the official anniversary reception Thursday — tailed by 200 police officers, a fraction of the thousands deployed across the city to deter pro-democracy groups from mobilising.
CCP 100 : Xi warns China will not be 'oppressed' in anniversary speech
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