"human rights violations"

I've been reading tonight a report into human rights abuses in China: particularly practitioners of falun gong, which I had never heard of until tonight. I don't understand what falun gong (or falun dafa) actually is but here is a report upon its early days in the 1990's by Ian Johnson.

The 2010 United Nations report on the horrifying medieval methods the Chinese authorities are now apparently using to stamp out falun gong needs to be known more widely. (It includes the modern equivalent of the rack and frequently ends in the death of the victim.)

When people mention" human rights violations" in China do we ever really know what that actually means? I've never heard it being discussed or debated or even qualified. The trouble is that the words have such a wide range that they have become almost trivial to us in the west. "A violation of my human rights" can mean anything from not being able to walk into a shop upwards. In China it can mean being tortured to death. The words have become inadequate.

. . . . which is just as well.

even the blankest dreariest, shoddiest prayer bears fruit. . . . .

David Stancliffe in a sermon at easter (Durham Cathedral website)

"So we are invited into the bleeding wounds of Christ; we are invited to lose our private and sterile immunity and risk ourselves in him.  We are invited to step into a countercultural solidarity with the poor, the dis-eased, the broken in order to find an immunity that is not of our own private making, but of his giving.  This is his gift to you this day, and whenever you are taken out of yourself and drawn into his wounded side to share his divine nature."

woodbine willy again:

"Broken, bleeding, but unconquered, very God of God to me.
All that showy pomp of splendour, all that sheen of angel wings,
Was but borrowed from the baubles that surround our earthly kings."