Dr. Shizhong
Chen has been active in projects concerning China for over
30 years. He has founded, co-founded, or been spokesperson
for a number of organizations concerning China, and has
spoken extensively on issues related to China.
Dr. Chen began his activism in 1989, when he helped to
organize supporting activities during the 1989 Beijing
Student Movement. Outraged by the June 4th Massacre, Dr.
Chen founded the Tiananmen Square Foundation, has served on
the Board of the Press Freedom Guardian, and was elected as
the vice president of The Independent Federation of Chinese
Students and Scholars in the U.S.
Upon learning the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China,
Dr. Chen founded the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group
in 2001, and has since submitted over 100,000 cases of human
rights abuses against Falun Gong practitioners to UN Special
Rapporteurs. He also founded and is President of the
Conscience Foundation, a non-profit organization to
publicize and remind people that the human conscience is the
very essence of humanity.
Dr. Chen has spoken extensively on the issue of human rights
in China. Since 2001, he has frequented meetings of the U.N.
Human Rights Commission in Geneva (now the Human Rights
Council), spoken to the Council, to Special Rapporteurs, and
at many forums to forward the cause of human rights. He was
a panelist at an annual meeting of the California Bar
Association, has spoken to Amnesty International’s US West
Region, and has made numerous appearances at various forums
and on radio and TV shows and interviews.
Among the books that Dr. Chen has authored or co-authored
are: Stories of Conscience, The Falun Gong Report, Falun
Gong, Humanity’s Last Stand, now in its third edition, and,
most recently, a comprehensive report on the extensive
psychiatric torture taking place in China.
In 2005, Dr. Chen conceived the idea of the Courageous
People, Spirited Land TV series and implemented the project.
The programs have since become very popular in China where
viewers have been disseminating them defying Chinese
regime’s prohibition.
From 2010, Dr. Chen has given a presentation on The
Renaissance of Chinese Culture over one hundred Rotary
Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Lion Clubs, and various colleges.
From 2012, Dr. Chen has been working with a group of
activists in China to use China’s current laws to defend
civil rights.
Dr. Chen was born in China in 1962. At 15, he entered the
gifted program at China University of Science and
Technology. He came to the U.S. in 1982 to study and
received his Ph.D. degree in molecular biology at University
of California, San Diego. He currently owns and runs a
molecular biology startup in San Diego.
Here is a link to one of the
manuscripts mentioned in Dr. Chen'sbio,
and may provide some background to a topic that will be covered
in our show: