The world will never be a safe place until China is free of the communist regime.The Chinese people want democracy freedom culture and peace. So does the West.Only by peacefully turning our back on the communist regime can the Chinese people realize a True Chinese renaissance is within their sights.A new era is before us lets together choose goodness over evil peace over violence love over hate.
The highest principles of Truth Compassion and Forbearance have forged a new epoch for humankind.
Introduction 1.Falun Gong, which emerged in China in the early 1990’s, is a spiritual practice promoting the self-improvement of the body, mind, and spirit. The guiding principle of Falun Gong is “Truth, Compassion, Forbearance”. Falun Gong contains five sets of simple, gentle meditation and exercises.It promotes self-awareness and moral and ethical behaviour in an individual’s thought and actions. Falun Gong encourages people to live upright and harmonious family lives.Practitioners of Falun Gong strive to practice in an open and dignified manner.Falun Gong teaches people to always think of others and be kind and benevolent toward people in all circumstances.The teachings of Falun Gong require and promote treasuring all lives and socially acceptable activity.The teachings of Falun Gong prohibit homicide, suicide and criminal activity.The practice of Falun Gong is voluntary and practitioners are free to participate or not to participate according to their own individual wishes. Practitioners pay no money to practice or participate in Falun Gong.While practitioners consider Master Li the teacher, practitioners are encouraged to think for themselves. Testimony from Expert Witness
2. In a court hearing in Canada November 17, 2003, Professor David Ownby, one of the very few in the world who did field work and research on Falun Gong stated:
“In North America, Falun Gong practitioners are fairly well off, they’re very well educated, the generally live in nuclear families…They often work in computers or finance or, a lot of people in physics, engineering…They’re better educated, more wealthy, live in better houses than the average Canadian”.
3. In his testimony (November 17, 2003), Professor Ownby comments that unlike cults, Falun Gong has no mandatory financial obligations, isolation of practitioners in communes or withdrawal from the world.
4. Similarly, with respect to the Chinese regime’s allegations of murder, etc, Professor Ownby testified (November 17, 2003) that he had not come across any such homicidal tendencies and that in fact a basic tenet of Falun Gong is “that life is to be respected”. He also stated that
“Nothing in (his) research would connect Falun Gong practitioners with organized crime or with criminal behaviour of any sort”.
5. As for the repeated accusations that Falun Gong encourages practitioners to withdraw from society and to break from their families, he stated “This is simply not the case”and added:
“Falun Gong members remain within society. In a vast majority, they live within nuclear families. They go towork, they send their kids to school…”
6. His conclusion was that Falun Gong was not a cult and its practices were not dangerous. He found “quite little harm” in Falun Gong principles. In his International Journal article, far from seeing evil in Falun Gong, he comments: “My impression … is of innocence…and (that there is) little in the practices of North American practitioners that causes concern”.
7. Reference should also be had to Professor Ownby’s findings that the bulk of Canadian Falun Gong practitioners are very well educated, usefully employed and successful and have close family ties. Judgement from Ontario Human Rights Tribunal
8. Ontario Human Rights Tribunal Finds Falun Gong a Protected Creed under Ontario Human Rights Code:
Western scholars of religion would characterize Falun Gong as a new religious movement. The essence of Falun Gong is spiritual elevation. Falun Gong practitioners believe in the existence of gods and divine beings in the cosmos. Its leader, Li Hongzhi, has written a form of ‘scripture.‘ His message is profoundly moral. " -Quote from news release by Ontario Human Rights Commission after judgement rendered by the Tribunal Court Judgement
9. In a May 13, 2008 judgment, Appeal Court of Montreal ruled that the local Chinese newspaper La Presse Chinoise defamed Falun Gong and the founder of Falun Gong when the paper used word-for-word propaganda of the Chinese regime to describe and attack the Falun Gong and the founder. Comments from CSIS, FBI, and RCMP, and Police Force
10.The Hate Crime Unit of the Police Service in Edmonton considers the Chinese Regime's propaganda against Falun Gong (distributed by the Chinese Consulate in Alberta) hate incitement. In the Edmonton Police report regarding one of the cases, in the Edmonton hate crime unite police's investigation report, it stated:
"It is in my professional opinion that the literature being disseminated by the accused [Chinese consulate staff in Calgary] does constitute hate as indicated by the supreme court in the Keegstra decision, ...."
“It should be noted that CSIS, FBI, and RCMP National Security have explainly verbally that Falun Gong does not pose a security threat to Canada.”
“Canada security, law enforcement and non government agencies and organizations have identified Falun Gong as a peaceful religion that pose no threat to the security of the country…. Some examples of organizations that confirm this verbally and through documentation are:
Comments from Governor General, and Members of Parliament
"They cultivate the will to live in peace with themselves and in harmony with the universe, thus learning compassion for others and helping to create a more open and tolerant society." - Her Excellency Adrienne Clarkson, former Governor General of Canada
"What we are witnessing today in China is the "criminalization of innocence" – the criminalization of a spiritual meditation exercise group – thereby subjecting all its members to intimidation, prosecution, persecution, and imprisonment, for no other reason than that they espoused the basic, fundamental values of Truth, Compassion and Forbearance." - Hon. Irwin Cotler, former Minister of Justice
DEFAMATION AND HATE IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE PERSECUTION In 2001 A Washington Post investigative report stated that the Jiang Regime admits to three tactics in its persecution campaign against Falun Gong: state sanctioned violence, high-pressure propaganda, and brainwashing.The report quotes a Chinese official stating, “none of it would be working if the propaganda hadn’t started to change the way the general public thinks.” Hate materials combined with slander, fabricated stories, and distorted facts have been forced into every facet of Chinese society, through all Chinese media, all levels of PRC government, work units and communities, to turn public opinion against Falun Gong.This hate has created an environment of hatred and contempt toward men, women and children who practise Falun Gong and apathy from much of the Chinese populace who turn their backs to the documented and nation wide torture and death of Falun Gong people. In Amnesty International’s 2001 report titled, The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called ''heretical organizations,'' it states, “…the Chinese government launched a massive propaganda campaign to denounce the practice and the motivation of its founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi… the impartiality of the government's information is questionable. Furthermore, the information published by the government leaves many essential questions unanswered.” PERSECUTION SPREADS TO CANADA In the 2004 National Post Feature article titled, “Falun Gong persecution Spreads to Canada,” it details how for the past seven years, Falun Gong practitioners in Canada have been living under suppression by the anti-Falun Gong campaign instigated by the Chinese Communist Regime and implemented through the Chinese Embassy and Consulates in Canada. (http://dawn.thot.net/fofg/feature14.html)
Remarks prepared for a Parliamentary Forum on Human Rights in China 27 May 2009, Ottawa
China engages systematically in forced labour in all forms of detention facilities - prisons which house sentenced criminals, administrative detention for those not yet charged, and re-education through labour camps. A 1998 declaration of the International Labour Organization (ILO) commits all member states, including China, to eliminate forced labour. The Government of China reported to the ILO that its constitution prohibits forced labour and that
there is a national policy of eliminating all forms of forced labour.
China is not a country with an independent judiciary and the rule of law. There is no means in China of enforcing the promises in the Constitution. What the Constitution of China says is not a reliable indicator of what is happening in China.
The Constitution of China provides:
"Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration" [1].
"Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.
No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion" [2].
Yet, these freedoms do not exist in China.
So, when the Government of China says that there is a constitutional provision, its statements may be and often are smokescreens, exercises in hypocrisy. That is true of its statements to the ILO on forced labour.
The same can be said about policy. China has many policies which diverge from reality. Indeed, the Government of China refers so often to the state constitution and Government policies when the reality is the opposite that the very Government reference to these standards should be an indicator that something improper is happening in China.
A policy area with which I am familiar is organ harvesting, the killing of prisoners for their organs to be used for transplants. David Kilgour and I have written a report that some of those prisoners are Falun Gong practitioners detained for their innocent beliefs [3].
The Government of China denies the conclusion of our report and says that those who are in prison merely because they are Falun Gong practitioners are not killed for their organs. Yet the Government does not deny that some prisoners are killed for their organs and that these prisoners are the primary source of organs for transplants in China.
Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu, speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou in mid November 2006, acknowledged that executed prisoners sentenced to death are a source of organ transplants. He said:"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners."
The dispute David Kilgour and I have with the Government of China is which sort of prisoners are killed for their organs. The Government of China says that the prisoners killed for their organs are all prisoners sentenced to death. Why we disagree with the Government of China, why we conclude that prisoners sentenced to death are not the only prison source of organs for transplants in China, I put to one side for now. I invite you to read our report to see how we came to our conclusions.
The point I want to make here is that the Government of China, at the same time as it admits sourcing organs from prisoners, has a policy of not sourcing organs from prisoners. In a news release dated 5 October 2007 the World Medical Association announced at the annual General Assembly in Copenhagen that the Chinese Medical Association agreed that organs of prisoners and other individuals in custody must not be used for transplantation except for members of their immediate family.
Liu Zhi of the Chinese Medical Association's international department said that the agreement with the World Medical Association has no legal effect. He nonetheless expressed the hope that the agreement would influence Chinese 500,000 doctors and government decisions, a hollow wish as long as China does not have an organ donor system or a law sourcing organs from the brain dead cardiac alive.
Chinese government hypocrisy on forced labour could not be more blatant. Forced labour in detention is not an abuse of Chinese law. It is the law. The Chinese Law on Prisons stipulates that prisons may punish a prisoner who is able‑bodied but refuses to work [4].
The United States signed a memorandum of understanding with China in 1992 committing the Government of China to ensure that prison labour products are not exported to the United States. The US in 1994 signed a statement of cooperation which in principle allowed US officials to gain access to Chinese production facilities suspected of exporting prison labour products. The US China Economic and Security Review Commission in its report to Congress for 2008 wrote that:"the Chinese government has not complied with its commitments" under the 1992 and 1994 agreement "making it impossible for U.S. officials to conduct complete and useful investigations of such allegations".
Speaking to US journalists in November 1993, in answer to a question about the desire by rights groups to inspect prisons, then Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said, "I believe that if the Red Cross does put forward such a request..., we would give positive consideration to that request." The Red Cross did put forward such a request, and there was no positive consideration.
Persons are routinely detained in China without charge or for long periods before a charge is laid. Forced labour occurs in administrative detention and the euphemestically labelled re-education camps as well in prisons where sentenced criminals are kept.
Once the practice of Falun Gong was banned in 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners travelled to Beijing to protest or to unfold banners calling for the group's legalization. People came almost daily. Author Jennifer Zeng, formerly of Beijing and now living in Australia, writes that by the end of April 2001 there had been approximately 830,000 arrests in Beijing of Falun Gong adherents who had been identified.
Those who revealed their identities to their captors were shipped back to their home localities. Their families were implicated in their Falun Gong activities and pressured to join in the effort to get the practitioners to renounce Falun Gong. Their workplace leaders, their co‑workers, their local government leaders were held responsible and penalized for the fact that these individuals had gone to Beijing to appeal or protest.
To protect their families and avoid the hostility of the people in their locality, many detained Falun Gong declined to identify themselves. The result was a large Falun Gong prison population whose identities the authorities did not know. As well, no one who knew them knew where they were.
There are no statistics available of practitioners who were arrested but refused to self identify. From our interviews with released Falun Gong practitioners, we know that the number of those who did not self identify is large. But we do not know how large.
Arrested Falun Gong practitioners were initially sent to administrative detention centres. Those who recanted were released. Those who did not recant were tortured. Those who recanted after torture were released. Those who did not recant after torture disappeared into the re-education through labour camps. The US State Department's 2005 country report on China[5] indicates that its police run hundreds of detention centres, with the 340 re‑education‑through‑labour ones alone having a holding capacity of about 300,000 persons. The Department of State's Country Reports for 2008 state:"Some foreign observers estimated that Falun Gong adherents constituted at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in the country's reeducation‑through‑labour camps...."[6]
An extremely large group of people subject to the exercise of the whims and power of the state, without recourse to any form of protection of their rights, provides a potential source for organ harvesting of the unwilling. These detention facilities are not just forced labour camps. They are also potential forced organ donor banks.
The investigations which led to the report David Kilgour and I wrote had many chilling moments. One of the most disturbing was the discovery of a massive prison/detention/labour camp population of the unidentified. Practitioner after practitioner who eventually was released from detention told us about this population. A collection of some of their statements is set out in our report.
What these practitioners told us was that they personally met the unidentified in detention in significant numbers. We have met many Falun Gong practitioners who were released from Chinese detention. Yet, except for those detained during the early days of Falun Gong repression, we have yet to meet or hear of, despite their large numbers, a practitioner released from detention who refused to self identify in detention from the beginning to the end of the detention period. What happened to these many practitioners? Where are they?
I went to Geneva in November 2008 to meet with the United Nations Committee against Torture about the report of Government of China on compliance the Convention against Torture. The Committee, in its November 2008 concluding observations, wrote:"While noting the State party's information about the 2006 Temporary Regulation on Human Organ Transplants and the 2007 Human Organ Transplant Ordinance, the Committee takes cognizance of the allegations presented to the Special Rapporteur on Torture who has noted that an increase in organ transplant operations coincides with "the beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners]" and who asked for "a full explanation of the source of organ transplants" which could clarify the discrepancy and disprove the allegation of organ harvesting (A/HRC/7/3/Add.1). The Committee is further concerned with information received that Falun Gong practitioners have been extensively subjected to torture and ill‑treatment in prisons and that some of them have been used for organ transplants (arts. 12 and 16).The State party should immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture and used for organ transplants and take measures, as appropriate, to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished [7]."
We are independent from the Government of China and the Falun Gong community. The Committee against Torture did not mean to suggest anything different. What they were proposing was an investigation independent from the Government of China with which the Government of China would nonetheless cooperate by giving access to Chinese territory, documents, places of detention and witnesses in China without fear of intimidation or reprisals.
The reaction of the Government of China to these concluding observations was this:"some biased committee members, in drafting the observations, chose to ignore the substantial materials provided by the Chinese Government, quote and even fabricated some unverified information. Running counter to the ethics of justice and objectiveness, they attempted to politicize the review by squeezing some unreal and stigmatized comments into the concluding observations, which China firmly opposes [8]."
The Chinese Government reaction, by referring to "some biased committee members" suggests that some members of the Committee were biased and others were not. Yet, the Committee recommendations were unanimous. Either all the Committee members were biased or none were.
The Government of China as well makes wild general accusations. It accuses the Committee of fabricating information without indicating what that information is which was supposedly fabricated. Nor does it indicate what are the comments in the Committee's concluding observations the Government considers unreal and stigmatized.
Despite the vagueness of the reaction, it is apparent that the Government of China did not accept the concluding observations of the Committee in their entirety. When it came to the Universal Periodic Review, a procedure of the UN Human Rights Council in which the human rights record of every UN member state is reviewed periodically, the Government of China was a lot more specific.
I went to Geneva again, in January, this year and lobbied governments to raise the violations identified in our organ harvesting report when China's turn came up at UN Universal Periodic Review Working Group. At the very least, I asked states to request China's compliance with foundational rights, the respect for which would have made the violations we identified impossible. Many delegates did speak out for these foundational rights during the two hours of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group allocated to these speeches, but to no avail. The Government of China rejected virtually all these rights.
The Universal Periodic Review Working Group came out with a report tabulating the recommendations of states which spoke during debate. The Government of China reaction, which followed immediately upon release of the report, gave us a clear idea of what its earlier words had meant. It accepted some recommendations, mostly from other gross violator states which commended the Government of China for its efforts and encouraged it to keep on doing what it was doing. It added that it would consider other recommendations. There was also a long list of recommendations the Government of China rejected out of hand.
At the Universal Periodic Review Working Group, Canada recommended that China implement the recommendations of the Committee against Torture. The Government of China explicitly, in writing, rejected this recommendation.
Canada, the United Kingdom, Hungary, the Czech Republic, France, Sweden and New Zealand recommended that China abolish all forms of arbitrary detention, including re-education through labour camps. The Government of China said no to this recommendation.
Forced labour is an abuse of the rights of those in detention in China. It also harms workers around the world by undercutting the prices of products free workers produce for wages, contributing to global unemployment in a time of economic downturn. And it sets the stage for organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
Allowing outsider access to Chinese places in detention is not an end in itself. It is rather a means to an end, to assess compliance with international standards, to ensure that abuses in detention are not occurring.
Something similar can be said of forced labour. Ending forced labour is an end of itself. But it is also a means to an end. Ending forced labour and allowing independent investigators to visit places of detention would be important steps towards ending abusive organ sourcing from Falun Gong practitioners.
Canada should have legislation banning the importation of goods produced through forced labour. The Government of Canada should negotiate an agreement with the Government of China committing the Government of China to ensure that prison labour products are not exported to Canada. The agreement should allow Canadian officials to gain access to Chinese production facilities suspected of exporting forced labour products.
The fact that China has not respected similar agreements with the United States is no reason to abandon the effort to stop the export of forced labour products from China. Where the efforts of one country, the US, have failed, the efforts of many countries may succeed. In any case, at the end of the day, when it comes to promoting respect for human rights, we can never rest content with no as an answer.
David Matas is a Winnipeg based international human rights lawyer.
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[1] Article 35
[2] Article 36
[3] Bloody Harvest: Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China at <www.organharvestinvestigation.net>
[4] Article 58
[5] U.S. Department of State 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - China, March 8, 2006. (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm)
[6] 2008 Report on International Religious Freedom: Chinahttp://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/eap/119037.htm
[7] Concluding observations of the UN Committee against Torture on China UN Document number CAT/C/CHN/CO/4, 21 November 2008 paragraph 18(C).
[8] Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Qin Gang's Remarks on Concluding Observations of United Nations Committee against Torture on China's Compliance with the Convention against Torture
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre and 10 full years since the merciless persecution of Falun Gong began, I feel compelled to use my limited time today on these issues, despite those who say any criticism of China's party-state should be muted during the present world economic crisis. Both, including the use of mostly Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in forced labour camps, are haunting testimonials against a totalitarian political system, which has over the past two decades also encouraged "anything goes" economics. Tiananmen Massacre
In the spring of 1989, hundreds of thousands of Beijing residents, led by university students, took their complaints against corruption by officials to the streets following the sudden death of reform-minded former Party Secretary Hu Yaobang. Taking advantage of the presence of foreign journalists covering the visit to China's capital by then Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, the demonstrators demanded political reforms towards democracy and the rule of law. Their raw courage inspired demonstrations across the country unprecedented since Mao seized power in 1949. Almost a hundred million Chinese participated in one way or another (1.). The protests continued even after the Party declared martial law and brought in thousands of armed soldiers.
Children of the Dragon, published in 1990 by the NGO Human Rights in China, captures many realities of the period well because most of the voices in it are survivours. For example, Cao Xinyuan, then a sculptor in Beijing: "We kept trying to tell the soldiers that no-one wanted to overthrow the government. We only wanted to get rid of corruption. We wanted political reforms."
Deng Xiaoping characterized the events as a "counterrevolutionary riot", but ordinary citizens offered more accurate perspectives. Wuer Kaixi, one of the protest leaders, noted, "We repeatedly communicated to senior levels of the government that if they wished the students to withdraw they had to 'give them a ladder to stand down', so to speak,or else they would not go."
Ousting Zhao Ziyang
Literary critic Su Wei wrote:
"...Li Peng and the other elders had a premeditated plan. They were plotting to oust (liberal Party Secretary) Zhao Ziyang and undo a decade of reforms. As the government continued to provoke the students, it therefore became more and more difficult to ask the young people to behave rationally."
Zhao lost his job as martial law was declared and lived nearly 16 years under house arrest until his death in January 2005.
Hu Ping, leader of the 1980 student movement, remarked: "The spectacular pro-democracy movement in 1989 showed eloquently that the Chinese people will pursue democracy and freedom with compassion and self-sacrifice."
A resident today of Ottawa, who witnessed the events, remembers:
"We shouted, we argued, we begged, we bribed the soldiers, pleading with them not to raise their arms against the defenceless people. However, the government was not to be deterred from its plans for 'restoring stability' at any cost... Among the victims were my colleagues, students, classmates and a former boyfriend. My heart ached and raged with anger when I saw stacks of bodies, many crushed in half, in the hospitals in the days that followed."
China's rulers had sent in tanks and machine guns for a bloody massacre of fellow citizens.
The two days that traumatized much of the world were consistent with a forty-year record of brutality against their own people.
The preface of Quelling The People (1992) by Timothy Brook, a Canadian academic, captures the essence of what then occurred: "On the night of June, 3 1989, tens of thousands of soldiers armed with assault rifles forced their way into the city of Beijing and drove unarmed student protesters from the central square at Tiananmen. When hundreds of thousands of citizens and students blocked their paths, the soldiers opened fire. On the morning of June 4, thousands lay dead and dying in the streets, the hospitals and the homes of Beijing." 'Retired Emperors' Decision
According to the respected journalist, Liu Binyan, those who made the decision were "largely controlled by eight senile 'retired emperors', all over eighty years, who did not hold formal office in the Party or government but who prop up their rule through brute force and lies...To Deng as to Mao, people are nothing more than instruments: in wartime, they serve as soldiers; in peacetime, they are hands for production..."
Liu was twice expelled from the Communist Party, repeatedly persecuted and died in exile for speaking the truth.
To divert the ensuing international outcry and re-assert its claim to legitimacy, which was effectively nullified worldwide by the massacre, the Party turned its attention towards economic growth. In short order, China was refashioned into the world's factory, churning out low-cost, often unsafe, consumer items made by women and men enjoying minimal work safety and virtually no social programs, pensions or environmental standards. This included prisoners of conscience who toil without any pay in forced labour camps.
The Tiananmen Massacre and forced labour camps are examples of the party-state's oppression of one fifth of the world's population and its continuing failure to honour basic human rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
China's Gulag
Forced labour as a consequence of human trafficking is all too common in many parts of the world today, but only the party-state of China uses it to punish and suppress Chinese citizens for political dissent or religious beliefs. Any Chinese national can be sent to a camp without any form of trial for up to four years upon committal by a simple police signature. No appeal is possible. Mao closely duplicated the work camp model set up in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, which in China alone continues today.
In China, only Falun Gong inmates in the camps are used as a live organ bank to be pillaged for sales to foreigners. Medical testing is required before organs can be matched with recipients, but only Falun Gong prisoners in the camp populations are tested medically on a regular basis.
Since the 1950s, a vast network of labour camps has existed. In the estimated 340 camps across China as of 2005, up to 300,000 "workers" toil in inhuman conditions for up to sixteen hours daily without pay, producing a wide range of consumer products, mostly for export in violation of World Trade Organization rules.
For example, Montreal resident Ms. Guizhi Chen, 62, was subject to four years of forced labour without pay in two different labour camps camp. Among the products, some for export, she made were purses and sweaters, worked on for an average of twelve hours daily. In the first facility she occupied, located near the outskirts of Beijing, about half of the other 700 female labourers were Falun Gong practitioners. In the second, located far from the capital, there were about 300 women labourers, again with approximately half being Falun Gong. Only the Falun Gong practitioners in both, she says, were examined medically with blood tests and x-rays. Mocking Universal Human Rights Declaration
Such practices anticipated the Party's intransigence against calls to improve human rights. They are fully consistent with Beijing's rejection of the recommendations advanced by a number of governments, including Canada's, in a recent Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Commission.
Among the recommendations rejected by the government of China: ending all forms of arbitrary detention, including labour camps; guaranteeing freedom of belief and the right to worship in private; implementing the recommendations of the UN Committee Against Torture, which included references to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and organ pillaging from them; and ensuring that lawyers can defend their clients without fear or harassment.
Trade with China, where no media freedom exists, has been a costly proposition for many. In the words of Phelim Kine who pinpointed the consequence of unfree media there:
"The truths of corruption, public health scandals, environmental crises and abusive local authorities may be inconvenient...( but to) smother the reporting of these truths has contributed measurably to other global debacles, including recall of tainted food and toys."
These and a host of other violations of normal international trading practices contributed to Canada's bilateral trade deficit rising in China's favour from $3.9 billion in 1997 to $26.8 billion in 2006, while costing many manufacturing livelihoods across Canada. Fighting spirit of the people
The Chinese government continues to deprive the people of China of basic human rights and the rule of law. While the world closed ranks and collectively condemned the Tiananmen killings, much of the international community today have averted their attention from the forced labour camps, which continue to operate as instruments of oppression and vehicles for illegal trade practices.
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Beijing's June 4 bloody crackdown of the student-led democratic movement, the regime has intensified its crackdown against human rights activists, according to Roseann Rife, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Deputy Director. “Most worrying is the complete disregard for national laws and the obstructions thrown in front of lawyers trying to do their jobs.”
It is clear that there has been no substantive improvement on human rights in China over the past twenty years. As John Delury of Malaysia's New Strait Times writes: "Sure enough, urban development, investment, and gross domestic product growth accelerated throughout the 1990s, but so did the gap between urban winners and rural losers."
Such discrepancies and the consistent oppression of dissenting groups and ordinary citizens have led to more than 80,000 mass disturbances across the country last year, by Bejing's own admission, a sign that the regime has not been successful in crushing the fighting spirit of the Chinese people.
Conclusion
As the world experiences the economic crisis and seeks China's cooperation in dealing with its challenges, it is tempting to overlook Beijing's human rights record. We must remind our leaders that to equivocate on China's record is a departure from Canada's own values of human dignity and rule of law. We must caution them that trade with China at any price is costly both for the people of China and the peoples of the world. We must remember the sacrifices of victims of the massacre and other abuses. We must demand that, instead of mocking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, China should honour its provisions.
FDIC: Police Covering Up Falun Gong Death in Custody at Top Tourist Attraction; Man Dies within Days of Arrest for Writing “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is Good” May 20: “Security forces in Fujian and Hubei province are seeking to cover-up the death of a Falun Gong practitioner who was killed in custody last month two days after being detained while on a field trip with his workplace. They have reportedly arrested his family members, whose whereabouts are currently unknown.
Mr. Fu Ziming (付自明) died in custody on April 19, two days after being detained by police in the vicinity of Wuyi Mountain Scenic Area of Fujian Province, a popular tourist destination in southeast China and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
On April 17, while visiting the Mt. Wuyi area, Fu wrote in crayon on a rock “Falun Dafa is good; Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” Fu’s actions were apparently recorded by a nearby surveillance camera and that evening, he was taken from his hotel by agents from the management department of the local police station operating under Wuyi Police Department. Two days later, he had died, reportedly from torture.”
China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group: Beijing lawyers Li Chunfu and Zhang Kai Beaten for Representing Re-education Through Labour Camp Death Case May 14: “Lawyer Li Chunfu, from Beijing Globe Law Firm, and Lawyer Zhang Kai, from Beijing Yijia Law Firm, went to the home of Falun Gong practitioner Jiang Xiqing (江锡清), 66, in Jiangjin District of Chongqing Municipality to discuss with his two sons about the medical examination report concerning the sudden death of their father. Jiang suddenly died in a local Re-education Through Labour Camp on January 28 this year. After they have chatted for about two hours, four public security officers suddenly came to question the two lawyers … Lawyer Li’s hands suffered many scratches after being handcuffed and his ears after his face was slapped by the public security officers…. Lawyer Zhang was kicked into another room where his shoes and belt was forcibly put off. He was pushed into an iron cage and he was handcuffed during the 30-minute interrogation.”
New Tang Dynasty TV: May 13th – Soul of a Nation May 12: An in-depth half-hour long documentary examines the practice of Falun Gong, its cultural and philosophical origins, and its growth in China in the 1990s. On the 10th World Falun Dafa Day, marking 17 years since the practice was first introduced to the public, the video features original footage from exercise sites inside China, commentary from leading Chinese scholars and experts, and interviews with Falun Gong adherents, including ones who were later tortured in custody, about how and why they began practicing.
China Digital Times: Baidu’s Internal Monitoring and Censorship Document Leaked At the end of April, an employee from Baidu, China’s leading search engine company, leaked a compressed folder containing documents outlining the company’s internal monitoring and censorship policies. According to China Digital Times, “Baidu… has a long history of being the most proactive and restrictive online censor in the search arena.”
A review of the terms identified for censorship reveals a significant number dedicated to Falun Gong or related topics. Censored terms include coded variations on the practice’s name, terms related to the sale of organs and allegations of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, Freegate (a popular tool for circumventing internet censorship created by Falun Gong adherents based outside China), Gao Zhisheng (a Chinese lawyer known for calling for defending Falun Gong) and references to the Nine Commentaries (a series of editorials published by the Epoch Times that analyzes the CCP’s history and has sparked a wave of symbolic resignations from the party and related youth organizations; the publication is widely distributed in China by Falun Gong adherents as part of an effort to encourage people not to participate in the persecution by placing it within the broader history of the CCP’s brutality against the Chinese people). Also listed are general terms like ‘human rights protection,’ ‘freedom of expression,’ and ‘Communist Party.’
The above would indicate not only the degree to which Falun Gong is one of the most taboo subjects in China today, but the extent to which ordinary Chinese are barred from accessing even basic information on one of the largest-scale political persecutions in the country’s recent history.
Voice of America editorial: Falun Gong Adherents and Defenders Should Not Be Persecuted May 20: In an editorial said to reflect the views of the U.S. government, Voice of America stated: “Chinese practitioners of the spiritual movement Falun Gong continue to be severely repressed in China. Tens of thousand of Falun Gong practitioners in China have been arbitrarily detained since the spiritual movement was banned as a "threat to social and political stability" in July 1999… Defenders of Falun Gong practitioners are also persecuted. Falun Gong members and their defenders should not be harassed, detained, or tortured by Chinese authorities for exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and religion.”
Human Rights in China: Wife of Abducted Rights Defense Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Requests Urgent Help from U.S. Congress in Open Letter April 23: “My husband is an honest lawyer. Due to his professional capabilities our family once had a good income and living standard. … In 2004, he investigated and exposed the government’s actions against Falun Gong followers in the biggest political persecution case in mainland China and wrote letters to Chinese leaders three times requesting them to stop their attacks on Falun Gong. Though his actions did not violate China’s laws, but rather, upheld them, he was still continuously threatened by the government at all levels and his lawyer’s license was revoked.
The problems he personally encountered made him realize that, without changing the political system of China, there would be no way to lawfully ensure the safety, interests, and dignity of citizens. Therefore, time and again, within the framework allowed by the Chinese Constitution and the law, he initiated peaceful citizen demonstrations and petitions to expose and protest the problems of corruption in government and tyrannical rule.”
Canadian Prime Minister Sends Greetings for World Falun Dafa Day as Adherents Around the World Celebrate the 17th Anniversary of Falun Gong’s Introduction Practitioners from around the world celebrated World Falun Dafa Day on May 13, holding public events and sending greeting cards to Falun Gong founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi. Participating in such activities were adherents from North America, Australia, and Western and Eastern Europe, from Indonesia, India, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong in Asia, as well as from Israel, the UAE, and Iran in the Middle East. Most celebrations were marked by exercise demonstrations along with displays of traditional Chinese constumes, song, and dance. After breaking through the internet blockade, also sending greetings were adherents from dozens of towns and cities inside China.
Among government officials sending greetings to Falun Gong practitioners were Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Houston Mayor William White, and New York City Councilman and mayoral candidate Tony Avella. Harper stated: “As you celebrate the 17th anniversary of the introduction of Falun Dafa to the public, I commend the Falun Dafa Association of Canada for sharing your practices and traditions with the public. On behalf of the Government of Canada, I extend my best wishes for a joyous and memorable celebration.”
Founded in 1999, the Falun Dafa Information Center is a New York-based organization that documents the rights violations of adherents of Falun Gong (or “Falun Dafa”) taking place in the People’s Republic of China. In July of 1999 China’s autocratic Communist Party launched an unlawful campaign of arrests, violence, and propaganda with the intent of “eradicating” the apolitical practice; it is believed certain leaders feared the influence of the practice’ 100 million adherents. The campaign has since grown in violence and scope, with millions having been detained or sent to forced labor camps. The Center has verified details of over 3,000 deaths and over 63,000 cases of torture in custody (reports / sources). Falun Gong is a traditional-style Buddhist “qigong” practice, with roots in the Chinese heritage of cultivating the mind/body for health and spiritual growth.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER
Contacts: Gail Rachlin (+1 917-757-9780), Levi Browde (+1 646-415-0998), Erping Zhang (+1 646-533-6147), or Joel Chipkar (+1 416-731-6000)
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the most systematic persecution of one group since the Nazi persecution of the Jews. As a European Parliament Vice-President and longest-serving member of its Foreign Affairs Committee, I have for three years campaigned to draw attention to the brutal and systematic persecution by the Chinese regime of practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddha-school spiritual movement with 70 - 100 million adherents in 1999.
They have been persecuted, simply because Falun Gong is popular, by the most paranoid, brutal and arbitrary regime in world history, which has killed 70 million of its own people, 38 million through deliberate starvation. I write to urge you to initiate an inquiry into the systematic process of imprisonment without trial, escalating torture and the murder of thousands of innocent people under torture. This goes beyond man’s inhumanity to man: it amounts to genocide under Article 2 of the Genocide Convention.
The age of impunity is over and those who know what is taking place in China look to you to take action. As US Supreme Court judge Felix Frankfurter said, when told in 1942 by the Pole Jan Karski of what was happening in the Nazi death camps, “I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference."
Secretary-General, there is plenty of evidence of genocide in China, if only you would care to look, or listen to the UN rapporteurs on torture and religious freedom. Falun Gong is a spiritual and meditation movement that echoes traditional Chinese beliefs that humans are connected to the universe through mind and body.
The Chinese Communist Party describes it as a 'cult', whereas international jurisprudence suggest that a ‘cult’ should include financial commitment, alienation from family, disciplined organisation, brainwashing, anti-social behaviour etc, none of which apply to Falun Gong. Like all chi-gong (spiritual exercise) groups, Falun Gong has a ‘master’ whose book of exercises published in 1992 remains the only financial commitment for most.
My campaign began in May 2006, when I visited China on a fact-finding mission in preparation for a report on human rights and democracy for the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. In Beijing, at great personal risk to them, I interviewed two former prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners Cao Dong and Niu Jinping. Cao Dong was subsequently arrested and convicted of ‘meeting a distinguished foreigner’.
He was sent to Tianshui prison, being tortured to recant his religious convictions and to denounce his meeting with me. Niu Jinping appealed to me on behalf of his wife, Zhang Lianying, who had been in Beijing Forced Women's Labour Camp since June 2005, and so severely tortured that she suffered a coma in April 2007. The latter were subsequently re-imprisoned as part of Beijing’s pre-Olympic round-up.
Another of my contacts was Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng, sometimes known as the ‘conscience of China’, who represented a number of Falun Gong practitioners after his investigation into their persecution in 2005. Well-known in China for publicly denouncing the regime, especially for corruption, he wrote an open letter to the European Parliament through me in September 2007 (see Annex below) and another to the US Congress. He was then sentenced to prison on a charge of "subversion". After being temporarily released into house arrest, he was re-imprisoned and in 2008 so severely tortured that he twice tried to commit suicide. After his wife and children escaped through Thailand to the USA in January 2009, Gao was abducted by security forces and his whereabouts are currently unknown.
Gao’s friend Hu Jia, an environmental activist, was another of my contacts who was arrested and imprisoned in 2008 after he gave evidence by telephone to the European Parliament’s Human Rights Committee. He was then awarded the European Parliament’s annual Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Expression. Hu Jia’s wife Zeng Jinyan was named as one the 100 most important people on earth by Time magazine for her blogs in support of Hu Jia’s activities. These are only a few examples drawn from my own experience, but they demonstrate the extent of the Communist regime's paranoia and brutality against any activity which could threaten or destabilise it.
On 25 April 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners spent a day in peaceful protest in Beijing after police brutality against fellow practitioners in Tianjin city: people who were there have told me that this event was almost certainly organized by the security forces as a justification for the persecution which then began. Falun Gong practitioners are usually imprisoned under 'administrative detention' with no trial: often they refuse to give their names to protect their families. As members of a banned 'evil cult' they suffer particularly harsh treatment, often at the hands of other prisoners and even Falun Gong who have recanted (to demonstrate their rejection of the practice).
Ex-prisoners I have met, having ipso facto recanted, have suffered sleep deprivation for a period of weeks, then forced to stand motionless for several days, being prodded with sharp objects to keep them awake, followed by progressively brutal treatments involving electric prods - always including the genitals - excrement and general beatings. Zhang Lianying, who suffered a coma, wrote me a list of the 50 progressive tortures she suffered, which I submitted to the UN Rapporteurs on Torture and Religious Freedom, Dr Manfred Nowak and Mrs Asma Jahangir, both of whom I have met on a number of occasions: http://www.boycottbeijing.eu/resources/Nowak+and+testimony+080708.pdf
Manfred Novak believes that some two-thirds of those undergoing 're-education through labour' in China’s prison camps, modelled on the Soviet Union’s gulag, are Falun Gong practitioners. In testimony to the US Congress this year, Mr Harry Wu, a former inmate and now director of New York’s Laogai Research Center, estimates that there are some 900 such camps with between 3 – 6 million incarcerated.
Falun Gong outside China maintain contact with prisoners and record their torture and torturers where either can be identified: records exist of more than 3,000 who have been tortured to death since 1999. Of particular concern is that only Falun Gong - who neither smoke nor drink - are routinely blood-tested and blood-pressure tested in prison: this is not for their well-being. They thus become the prime source for the Peoples' Liberation Army's lucrative live organ transplant trade: more than 40,000 additional unexplained transplants have been recorded recently in China since 2001.
Although using body parts from executed prisoners has been routine in China (in one province alone there are 16 specially-converted evisceration buses) many believe, as I do, that live Falun Gong prisoners are quarried for their body parts. Indeed, Cao Dong told me that after his best friend disappeared from their prison cell one evening, he next saw his dead body in the morgue with holes where body parts had been removed.
Ten years later, the campaign of brutal repression of Falun Gong - once encouraged by Beijing for the wellbeing reportedly experienced by its adherents - shows no sign of easing. In my view, the persecution of Falun Gong amounts to genocide as defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;"
It is clear that Falun Gong are to the Communist regime what the Jews were to the Gestapo. Although millions died in the gulag it was from starvation, not systematic torture and liquidation as in China today. In your capacity as Secretary General of the United Nations, and on this ten-year anniversary, I urge you to take action to put an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Edward McMillan-Scott MEP Yorkshire & Humber, UK, Conservative Vice-President of the European Parliament .
ANNEX Letter to Edward McMillan-Scott from lawyer Gao Zhisheng, translated by intermediary: >From Beijing, China: received via email September 7 2007
Dear Mr. Scott, How are you? Writing to you is the only way of communication that I have at present. Although it is somewhat primitive or old fashioned, it is still much less primitive than the way my family and I have been handled by the Chinese Communist regime since last year.
Their open disregard of human feelings and conscience in their confinement and harassment against us is simply because we try to stick to human feelings and conscience. During such long period of loneliness, your words of concern have often been passed over, though the passing over itself has been also quite primitive. Yet, to my family, it is as if a thread of bright sunshine tearing through dark clouds to reach our hearts. On this occasion, please accept our appreciations!
Deep in my heart, I have never thought of gratitude for your persistence of condemnation against present-day Chinese evil dictatorship. In my opinion, we are common warriors conquering darkness. The Chinese Communist regime continues as an unprecedented evil regime on this planet. Its presence in China is the direct source of all sufferings and injustice there.
Its history is one of committing countless crimes and covering these countless crimes. In recent years, its economic expansion, which has been gained at the expense of sacrificing the environment, human justice, human ethics as well as fundamental human nature, has generated for the dictatorship even more brutality and fearful powerfulness.
The ethical values and conscience of the entire human race is being eaten away through “trade relations, Olympic Games” and other “state” visits. Mainstream politicians from the West are aware of the current phenomenon of gaining interests at the expenses of human traditional ethic values. This interest over fundamental ethics and virtue has become a common practice of international politics. Under this situation, anything unrelated to economic interests has been openly neglected for a long time.
About Chinese Communists’ bloody persecutions against Falun Gong, diplomats from all major countries in the world are all well aware of it yet they have also dreadfully and miserably become a part of the silent community on the entire mainland China. Compared with silence from Chinese people, the one from foreign governments looks especially disgusting. To some extent, this indifference paves the way for the Chinese regime’s ruthless crackdown against domestic dissidents.
The whole human race will pay a huge price for this numbness, because it has become a shocking humanitarian issue instead of a pure political one.
Today, I am not writing to compliment you, or to release my own complaints. The struggle against the Chinese Communist dictatorship is one for the human race, for lightness or for darkness, for civilization or for savageness. The cruel reality warns us that our peaceful struggle should never be relaxed! In today’s mainland China, changing the dictatorship peacefully has become a common wish.
Dear Mr. Scott, human civilization has entered current era, but this era seems to have no relation with Chinese Communist regime. Although it has got the technology to enter space, it has no intention, politically speaking, to give up its jungle games.
Now Chinese Communist Party is preparing its 17th National Party Congress. Its preparation is totally operated in darkness, while its subjects are like animals or private property handed over to the next ruler. This power succession like the mafia’s has lasted since Mao. The only change is today’s successors are all in Western suits. We must work hard to change it, even if it is purely for the humanitarian value. Dear Mr. Scott, when freedom finally arrives in China, I invite you to drink wine in Beijing, real good wine [in their first telephone conversation McMillan-Scott said he would give Gao vintage whiskey].
May 13, 2009 is the seventeenth anniversary of the introduction of Falun Dafa (also called Falun Gong) to the public, the tenth World Falun Dafa Day, as well as the fifty-eighth birthday of Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa. Mr. Li, respectfully called Master or Teacher by Falun Dafa practitioners, held the first Falun Dafa seminar on May 13, 1992 in Changchun City of Jilin Province and revealed Truth-Compassion-Forbearance as the characteristic of the universe. He has emphasized that Dafa practitioners should pay attention to the cultivation of their morality and virtue. Through cultivation, all Falun Dafa practitioners have improved their health, xinxing, and morality.
At present, Falun Dafa has been spread to one hundred fourteen countries and regions, and over one hundred million people have benefited from practicing Falun Gong. Falun Dafa books have been translated into over thirty languages and circulated around the world. Falun Gong has won over 1,500 awards and proclamations. In 2000, through the discussion by the Falun Dafa Associations in various countries, May 13 has been chosen as "World Falun Dafa Day" so as to celebrate this great day of mankind. This is the day that Falun Gong practitioners and the world's people celebrate together.
Falun Dafa has been spread to Five Continents and over one hundred million people have benefited from practicing Falun Gong
Falun Gong practitioners practice their exercises accompanied by soft and beautiful music. Such a gentle and harmonious scene may not be strange to many people. From Russia, which is close to the North Pole, to the South Island of New Zealand, near the South Pole, from chilly Northern Europe to hot South Asia, to North America, South America, Australia, or Africa, no matter what kind of language people speak and what races people belong to, people can always find Falun Gong.
On May 9, 2009, more than six thousand Falun Gong practitioners in Taiwan formed the shape of Zhuan Falun, the book that guides them to practice cultivation
Many practitioners indicate that after learning Falun Gong, they have benefited in both their bodies and minds. Besides their healthy bodies, they have also improved their morality. For example, Mr. Ma, a ninety-eight-year-old Tainan resident, who participated in the activity of forming the shape of Zhuan Falun, said that before he learned Falun Gong, he had suffered from all kinds of illnesses, and he had to rely on taking injections and medications to live, so his life was very miserable. Fortunately, he encountered and learned Falun Gong ten years ago, and before long, all his illnesses and suffering were gone; he felt as if he had been reborn. He said that he is very grateful to Master Li Hongzhi for the blessings
.Frank, a law school student in Germany, who will become a lawyer, said that Zhuan Falun has enabled him to truly understand the meaning of cultivation. Through practicing Falun Gong, Frank has obtained good health and harmony of his mind and body. His entire being has become harmonious. He has finished his school very smoothly.
The Chinese Communist Party relentlessly persecutes Falun Gong and Falun Gong practitioners resolutely resist the persecution .
On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started the all-out persecution of the benevolent Falun Gong practitioners. It has been confirmed that at least 3263 Falun Gong practitioners have been killed during the persecution. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been sent to prisons and labor camps. Thousands of practitioners have been injected with drugs that damage the central nervous system. Numerous practitioners have been sent to brainwashing centers, or forced to leave their homes and become destitute in order to avoid further persecution. Many labor camps have been exposed for removing Falun Gong practitioners' organs for profit while they are still alive.
Over the last ten years, Falun Gong practitioners have followed Mr. Li Hongzhi's guidance of "Not striking back when beaten and not swearing back when sworn at," and they, amidst the brutal persecution, resolutely keep clarifying the facts about Falun Gong to people and appeal to the world's people for stopping the persecution. For example, to help the Chinese tourists learn the facts of Falun Gong in a free country, Falun Gong practitioners in St. Petersburg, Russia have formed truth-clarification groups that take turns going to the train station to hand out informational materials. Over several years, no matter if it is cold or hot, and no matter if it is windy or raining, they have almost not missed a day. In 2006 summer alone, they gave out over twenty thousand copies of truth-clarification materials, which were all made by practitioners with their own savings.
The truth of Falun Dafa has been widely spread and the sense of justice is naturally in people's minds
Falun Gong practitioners' outlook of "thinking of others first" has moved the world's people, and the goodness of Falun Dafa has been increasingly recognized. From May 11 to 13, 2002, Falun Gong practitioners in the South Island of New Zealand, under the theme of "The World Needs Truth-Compassion-Forbearance," voluntarily worked in the organic garden in Christchurch City to thank the New Zealand government for its support of Falun Dafa. The national television station of New Zealand made a profound report of this activity, which was broadcasted to the whole country during prime time on a Sunday. Falun Dafa was also introduced.
In July 2008, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) handed the signatures collected during the global campaign against the persecution to officials in the headquarters of the United Nations' International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland. During the six-month long signature campaign, 1,215,793 people from 131 countries signed their names to appeal for an end to the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong.
"Dafa is being spread far and wide. Those who hear about it are looking for it. Those who have obtained it are delighted with it. The number of cultivators is increasing daily and becoming countless." ("Seeking Discipleship with Teacher" in Essentials for Further Advancement) The following are several dozen photos of Falun Gong practitioners' practicing their exercises. They cannot comprehensively show the entire picture of Dafa's spreading. However, even with this glimpse, people can still see that the light of Truth-Compassion-Forbearance has already shone all over the world, and that the world's people sincerely hope that the persecution can be stopped as early as possible so the Chinese people can regain the freedom of practicing Falun Gong.
Asia
In May 1998, before the persecution of Falun Gong, Shenyang City Falun Gong practitioners practiced the exercises together.
On November 15, 2003, nearly ten thousand Taiwan Falun Gong practitioners practiced the exercises in front of the Taiwan Presidential Palace and called for the public trial of Jiang Zemin and the ending of the persecution.
Japanese Falun Gong practitioners' group practice at Mount Fuji
Indonesian Falun Gong practitioners teach the exercises in a school
On May 13, 2008, Singapore Falun Gong practitioners celebrate the wide spreading of Falun Gong and wish Master Li Hongzhi happy birthday.
South Korean Falun Gong practitioners' group practice
During a Fa experience-sharing conference, Indonesian Falun Gong practitioners practice the exercises and form the characters of "Falun Dafa"
Malaysian Falun Gong practitioners send forth righteous thoughts together
Hong Kong Falun Gong practitioners' group practice in Standard Garden
Israeli Falun Gong practitioners hold banners on the street in front of Israel Supreme Court to protest the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong
Oceania
On May 13, 2008, Melbourne Falun Gong practitioners in Australia celebrated the spreading of Falun Dafa and wished Falun Gong's founder happy birthday
New Zealand Falun Gong practitioners hold a parade in downtown Wellington, New Zealand's capital, to protest the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong
The former Vice Premier of Papua New Guinea, an island county in the Pacific Ocean, and his family members learn Falun Gong exercises
Americas
Falun Gong practitioners' group practice in Washington D.C, USA
U.S. Falun Gong practitioners practice the exercises in Chicago
Toronto Falun Gong practitioners' group practice in Canada
Honduran Falun Gong practitioners' practice site in Lion Park, Tegucigalpa, the Capital of Honduras
On May 13, 2006, Peru Falun Gong practitioners celebrated the anniversary of Falun Dafa's spreading and wished Falun Gong's founder happy birthday
Falun Gong practitioners' group exercise in Mexico City, Mexico
Argentina Falun Gong practitioners send righteous thoughts in La Plata City
Falun Gong practitioners teach the exercises in the capital of Uruguay
Costa Rica Falun Gong practitioners practice and teach the Falun Gong exercises in San Jose National Park
Europe
In April 1995, the first Falun Gong Seminar was held at Nordgarden in Gotheborg, Sweden. This photo showed the Falun Gong practitioners' group exercise during the second Falun Gong seminar at Nordgarden. In 1997, Falun Gong practitioners taught the exercises during the first Falun Gong seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia
In March 2003, Falun Gong practitioners from various countries practiced the exercises in front of the gate of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland
Italian Falun Gong practitioners' group practice at Gran Paradiso Massif
Austria's Falun Gong practitioners' group practice
French Falun Gong practitioners' group practice under The Eiffel Tower
Falun Gong practitioners participate in the parade during Edinburgh Arts Festival, UK
During Spain's National Health Fair, a continuous stream of visitors comes to learn Falun Gong exercises On May 13, 2008, practitioners in Northern Germany celebrate the spreading of Falun Dafa and wish Master Li happy birthday
Falun Gong practitioners in Turkey demonstrate the exercises at Mersin Festival
Falun Gong practitioners promote and practice the exercises in Monaco Slovakian practitioners protest the persecution of Falun Gong in front of the Chinese Embassy Norwegian practitioners practice the exercises by the sea
Ukrainian practitioners promote Falun Gong and tell people the facts of the persecution of Falun Gong in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine
Falun Gong practitioners' group practice in Hague, The Netherlands Denmark practitioners went to Greenland to promote Falun Gong Finnish practitioners protest the persecution of Falun Gong in front of the CCP's Embassy
Africa Falun Gong practitioners' group practice in Johannesburg, South Africa Falun Gong practitioners teach the exercises in Dar es Salaam, the former capital of Tanzania A new Falun Gong practice site in Uganda
On May 13, 2004, Falun Gong practitioners in Ethiopia celebrated World Falun Dafa Day May 12, 2009
Police Covering Up Falun Gong Death in Custody at Top Tourist Attraction
Man Dies within Days of Arrest for Writing
"Truth Compassion and Forbearance is Good"
20 May 2009
New York—Security forces in Fujian and Hubei province are seeking to cover-up the death of a Falun Gong practitioner who was killed in custody last month two days after being detained while on a field trip with his workplace. They have reportedly arrested his family members, whose whereabouts are currently unknown.
Mr. Fu Ziming (付自明) died in custody on April 19, two days after being detained by police in the vicinity of Wuyi Mountain Scenic Area of Fujian Province, a popular tourist destination in southeast China and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Fu had traveled to the area as part of a group from the post office where he worked in his hometown of JianliCounty in HubeiProvince.
On April 17, while visiting the Mt.Wuyi area, Fu wrote in crayon on a rock “Falun Dafa is good; Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” With Falun Gong being a permanent taboo in China’s tightly controlled media environment, it is a common phenomenon for adherents to counter dehumanizing party propaganda by writing such expressions on a wall, banner, or homemade poster.
Fu’s actions were apparently recorded by a nearby surveillance camera and that evening, he was taken from his hotel by agents from the management department of the local police station operating under Wuyi Police Department. Two days later, he had died, reportedly from torture.
“What kind of regime arrests and kills a man for writing that Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance are good? It is horrific that such a peaceful act of free expression and belief has cost an innocent man his life,” says Falun Gong spokesperson Gail Rachlin.
“Mr. Fu’s case is a startling reminder of the life threatening danger Falun Gong practitioners face as soon as they are arrested, as well as the hazard that China’s pervasive surveillance system poses for innocent Chinese citizens.”
Since his death, security agencies – including the Public Security Bureau and the extra-legal 610 Office – in both Wuyi and Jianli have taken measures to cover-up the incident. According to recent media reports and interviews with people close to the case, the authorities have denied his death or sought to portray it as the result of a train accident (report).
One person at the police station in Jianli admitted briefly to a reporter that Fu’s corpse was in police custody. However, the individual hung up when probed about further details regarding the case, particularly about Fu’s family (report).
The authorities have meanwhile pressured the colleagues who traveled with Fu to Fujian to remain silent about the circumstances surrounding his death.
"We don't know where his corpse is,” a co-worker told a reporter from the Chinese-language Epoch Times. “However, it's impossible that it will be transported back here. It has been cremated out somewhere . My heart feels very bad [about Fu’s death].”
In a further effort to limit publicity, authorities in Jianli county also recently arrested his father and other family members. Fu’s father was reportedly taken into custody on April 23 and the remainder of his family the following day. They have since lost contact with the outside world and there exact whereabouts remain unknown.
The FalunDafaInformationCenter urges human rights groups and foreign media in China to investigate Fu’s death and the current location of his family members.
Background
The FalunDafaInformationCenter received reports of 104 Falun Gong deaths between January and December 2008, resulting from severe abuse in police custody or other forms of persecution. During the 16 days of the Olympics alone, ten Falun Gong adherents are confirmed to have died from abuse in custody (report). In several cases – the most prominent one being Beijing musician Yu Zhou – practitioners died in custody within days or weeks of their detention (news).
Efforts to cover-up the deaths of adherents or to fabricate circumstances surrounding such cases are common. Last week two lawyers seeking to investigate the death of a Falun Gong adherent in a labor camp were detained and beaten (news). Cover-ups are especially known to happen in instances that might otherwise draw public attention, given the suddenness of Fu’s death and the large number of acquaintances familiar with the case.
A selection of relevant phone numbers:
Wuyi Mountain Scenic Administration District Police Station: 86-599-5252283
JianliCounty Committee: 86-716-3262383
JianliCounty Politics and Law Committee: 86-716-3320550
Pan Ke, Director of the JianliCounty 610 Office: 86-716-3322942
Jiang Changhong, Associate Director of the JianliCounty 610 Office: 86-13339749209
National Security Team of Jianli County Police Department: 86-716-3322333
Fu Yuecheng, Chief of the national security team: 86-13872240188
HubeiProvince 610 Office: 86-27-87233234
Huang Zhaolin, Director of the HubeiProvince 610 Office: 86-27-87233496(Office), 86-27-87133985, 86-27-87234738(Home)
Waist drummers during the World Falun Dafa parade make their way through Sydney’s China Town. (Richard Sun/The Epoch Times)
Peaceful exercises on floats, girls in ancient Chinese costumes and a marching band consisting predominantly of Chinese faces were part of a parade that made its way through the heart of Sydney celebrating the spiritual practice Falun Dafa.
Some of the estimated 400 people who joined the World Falun Dafa Day parade had come from a nearby park where they had finished the practice’s exercises and meditation.
Situated in China Town, where activities followed the parade, mounted photos on display included images of large groups of Chinese doing the exercises, a common sight in parks throughout China during much of the 1990s.
Along with exercises, Sydney practitioner John Dellar said the practice consists of teachings based upon the principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.
“On the 13th of May 1992, Falun Dafa was introduced to the world in China,” said Mr Dellar. “Since then, in 17 years, Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, has become popular and cherished all over the world.”
A Falun Dafa practitioner holds the wreath of a fellow practitioner who has been killed for her beliefs in China. (James Burke/The Epoch Times)
Ten years ago the then ruler of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zhemin, fearing Falun Dafa’s popularity, instigated a massive and brutal persecution that continues today against millions of Chinese who adhered to the practice.
Dressed as an ancient Chinese emperor for Sydney’s World Falun Dafa Day parade. (James Burke/The Epoch Times)
“We know there are over 3,250 innocent people in China who have died simply because they hold this belief of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance,” said Mr Dellar.
“So we are here also to honour the practitioners in China who also keep continuing to help people in China and around the world know the truth that Falun Dafa is a wonderful practice – wonderful for your health, wonderful for your heart and wonderful for your mind.
A participant demonstrates one of the Falun Dafa exercises on a float that carries the book Zhuan Falun, which explains the principles of the practice. (James Burke/The Epoch Times)
A trumpeter from the Divine Marching Band during the World Falun Dafa Day celebrations in Sydney. (James Burke/The Epoch Times)
One of the floats during World Falun Dafa Day parade in Sydney enacting how Falun Dafa practitioners are being tortured for their beliefs in China. (James Burke/The Epoch Times)
A fan dancer during Sydney’s World Falun Dafa Day parade. (James Burke/The Epoch Times)
New York Times: “With New Software, Iranians And Others Outwit Net Censors” May 1: “By late autumn more than 400,000 Iranians were surfing the uncensored Web. The software was created not by Iranians, but by Chinese computer experts volunteering for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999.
… ntil now the Falun Gong ha devoted the most resources, experts said, erecting a system that allows the largest number of Internet users open, uncensored access…. Each week, Chinese Internet users receive 10 million e-mail messages and 70 million instant messages from the consortium.”
News-Leader (Springfield, Missouri): “A Mother’s Day Wish: End Persecution for Beliefs” May 10: “My name is Jin Pang. I'm a graduate student at MissouriStateUniversity in Springfield. Today will be a sad day for me. It will be the first Mother's Day in my life that I can't talk to my mom. Instead, I will be worrying about her well-being, because she has been held for over nine months in a detention center in China, simply for her belief in Falun Gong…
This isn't the first time that my mother has been persecuted for her belief…In January 2000, my mom and eight other Falun Gong practitioners began practicing the exercises quietly in a public square. After a few minutes, all of them were arrested and taken to a local police station. That night, they were detained in a cold cement cell that was less than nine square meters, where they were shocked with electric batons and beaten with spiked clubs….
May all the mothers who are prisoners of conscience be set free. This is my special wish on this Mother's Day.”
Des Moines Register: “Women Detail Their Torture in China Camps” April 26: “The mother and daughter sat cross-legged on the living room floor of their tiny Des Moines apartment, calmly describing the horrors of Chinese prisons and labor camps…. The retired doctor said she was watched constantly, that 40 prisoners, all Falun Dafa practitioners, worked day and night sewing garments and gloves in a tiny room.
“Those who refused to work were beaten and hung by their wrists for many hours,” she said. “We were starved if we didn't work fast enough.” Yang said her weight dropped from 140 pounds when she arrived at the prison to about 80 pounds when she was released after her health began to deteriorate. She was released after two years of imprisonment.
She didn't know that during that time, on Aug. 28, 2004, her husband died. Her daughter, Zhang, was arrested walking home from the funeral. She spent two years in China's infamous Masanjia prison camp.”
The Epoch Times: “Vice President of European Parliament Calls on UN for Genocide Investigation”; Prominent Author Reveals Research on Organ Harvesting May 4: “The Vice-President of the European Parliament [Edward McMillan-Scott] has submitted an application to the UN for the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China to be investigated under the UN Genocide Convention…
Ethan Gutmann, award-winning investigative reporter on China issues,…has been intensively interviewing over 100 people for a book on the fate of Falun Gong at the hands of the Chinese communist regime….
“Fifteen per cent [of the 50 Falun Gong refugees interviewed] had clearly been assessed for harvesting, in many cases, again and again, endless blood tests and urine tests and so on,” said Gutmann, who wasn’t expecting to find this information.
How many Falun Gong have been harvested for organs? “I come up with a total of 13,500 on the low end. On the high end 162,000 have been harvested,” said Gutmann, acknowledging that reliable data is hard to come by.”
Letter to the Editor: “A Missing Chinese Lawyer” May 9: …“Some persecuted Falun Gong practitioners in China have recently been represented by lawyers. But it should be noted that such lawyers themselves face severe repression for taking on these clients.
Urgent in this regard is the case of Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who was “disappeared” by police in China on Feb. 4 and has not been heard from since. Mr. Gao had represented members of Falun Gong and had written a letter to President Hu Jintao calling for an end to their persecution. He was later detained for two months and left a detailed account of torture he suffered at the hands of his captors.”
Martin Flaherty New York, April 28, 2009; The writer, a professor of international human rights at Fordham Law School, is vice chairman of the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers.
Letter to the Editor: “China and the Falun Gong” May 4: “At a meeting of the World Psychiatric Association in 2004, the Chinese Psychiatric Society agreed to allow an independent review committee to investigate reports of involuntary psychiatric “treatment” of non-mentally ill Falun Gong practitioners. In short order, however, the Chinese government forbade such interference in its internal affairs.
In subsequent years, many American and other foreign psychiatrists have visited China, but no inspection of any of the maximum-security psychiatric institutions has taken place. Reports of misuse of psychiatry in China persist.”
Abraham L. Halpern Palm Beach, Fla., April 28, 2009; The writer is emeritus professor of psychiatry at New YorkMedicalCollege.
(Clearwisdom.net) It has been seventeen years since Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) was first introduced to the public in May 1992. Falun Dafa takes the universal characteristics Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance as its principles, and practitioners have in general achieved good physical health, and upgraded their morality. Within several years, Falun Dafa spread all over China, and was warmly received by the people. On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party and Jiang's clique, out of jealousy, launched a brutal persecution against Falun Gong. However, the truth won't be overshadowed by power and violence. People who have kind thought have been inspired by the Fa principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Falun Gong has not been defeated by torture and lies; instead, with practitioners' peaceful efforts to clarify the facts, Falun Gong has been spread to five continents. India, known as Land of Buddha since the ancient times, is also blessed by Dafa.
India Falun Dafa Association Founded
Falun Gong values virtue and cultivates kindness. There is a tremendous effect on healing illnesses and keeping fit. Falun Gong does not charge money. There is no membership, people come or go as they please. Falun Gong is spread in society by word of mouth, without advertizing, and has won people's hearts all over the world.
India is the land where Shakyamuni imparted his Dharma, so it has been known as the Land of Buddha since the ancient times. The Indian people are receptive of Falun Dafa. The India Falun Dafa Association was registered in Mumbai in September, 2004, and has since been recognized by the Indian government. India, as a country with an ancient civilization, and whose population ranks No.2 in the world, has also been bathed in the Buddha's light of Falun Dafa. People who obtained the Fa spread the good news to others, and more people have thus been introduced to Falun Dafa and started practice.
The Indian version of the book, Falun Gong was published in February, 2003, and practice sites have been set up in many big cities, including Mumbai, New Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore and New Delhi.
On April 13, 2009, more than a thousand students
at the Police Training College in Delhi, capital of India,
do the Falun Gong exercise.
The Indian newspaper Deccan Chronicle published
an article on June 13, 2007 stating that Falun Gong's
free exercise teaching classes have become
more and more popular.
Teachers and students in over 80 schools practice Falun Gong in PE classes
Bangalore has the largest number of people practicing Falun Gong in India. At present, teachers and students in over 80 schools practice Falun Gong. In some schools, more than 3,000 students do the exercises in their PE classes. In Chintamani, a town near Bangalore, Principal Verkey of Jyothi School is a Catholic priest and principal. After personally practicing Falun Gong and having had the experience of Falun Gong's amazing effects, he shared his experience with teachers and students in his school. After practicing Falun Gong, both teachers and students noted that they had achieved better physical health. What is amazing is that some naughty students changed and became well-behaved and attentive in class, and they have generally made progress in their schoolwork.
For students keen on Falun Gong, the school especially arranged two classrooms for them to read Falun Gong books, which set a precedent in schools in India. In order to let practitioners have an independent place to study the Falun Gong books, exchange understanding and insights and do the exercises, Principal Verkey invested his life savings to purchase a piece of land of several acres near the school, and built a house for studying the Fa and doing the exercises. A general lack of medical resources in Indian society makes Falun Gong, which is taught completely free of charge, a gift from heaven.
Students in Jyothi School do the exercise together in a large group
Teachers and students in Vidya Jyothi School do the exercise together in a large group
When asked if they like or if they want to practice
Falun Gong, the teachers and students shouted, "
Yes," and held up their hands to express that they
want to practice Falun Gong.
Principal Verkey shared his cultivation experience of Falun Gong at a nationwide conference of principals with outstanding achievements in India, and his sharing aroused great interest in other principals from across India. They expressed their desire to invite Falun Gong practitioners to come to their schools to teach Falun Gong. Thus, Falun Gong has been rapidly spread in over 40 schools where Falun Gong is practiced in their PE classes. Both students and teachers have gradually improved their physical health and mental well being.
"Lun Yu" compiled into textbooks, precedent in India
Principal Mr. Sri Ram Reddy of Byreshawara School said that his school has added the English version "Lun Yu" [Preface of Zhuan Falun] in Zhuan Falun to their English textbooks, and placed it in the front, which initiated a precedent in India. There are more than 2,000 students in this school, and many teachers do the exercise and read the Falun Gong books on a daily basis. They are active in promoting Falun Gong.
Akhila, a teacher of the school lives near a park, where 60 people do the exercise in a group every morning, a result that Akhila has achieved from years of promoting Falun Dafa. There are many religions in India, and it is not easy for people change their original belief, but the Indian people are fortunate to receive the blessings of Falun Dafa.
English version "Lun Yu" (from Zhuan Falun) in the textbook
BEIJING -- I first met the now-disappeared lawyer Gao Zhisheng four years ago. He was not one to mince his words: "The China you see and the China we feel are totally different. Maybe you see only the prosperity and development in China and also the many legal rights that the Chinese people should have on paper," he said. "Every day, I feel the truth of the development of the rule of law in China."
That is chillingly true now. Gao, 45, was taken away by police on Feb.4, in what had all the markings of a black operation by China's shadowy security apparatus. Not a word from the government on his whereabouts.Not a word on his condition. Not even an assurance that he is alive.
Once named one of the best lawyers in the country, Gao's crime was to advocate for those who have no rights, most notably the followers of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong. Today, he is the one without rights.
For his crime, the secret police abducted Gao and tortured him for days on end. A kangaroo court convicted and sentenced him for subverting state power. His wife and two children, relentlessly harassed by police, finally escaped while under surveillance in January, fleeing for exile in the U.S.
This is the other China Gao was talking about, "a state with the characteristics of the mafia," he said, where no laws can protect lawyers like him. This China is a Stalinist anachronism: brutal and merciless when it encounters the most stubborn dissidents; thuggish when it thinks a good beating or detention on trumped-up charges will teach the appropriate lesson; merely intimidating when it believes that making some bluntly worded threats and scaring off a lawyer's paying clients will produce the desired results.
And this China gets results. There is a limit to how much intimidation and brutality most Chinese rights defenders can endure before deciding, finally, that it might be best for them and their families if they work within carefully defined boundaries. They remain under constant pressure even while operating in the mainstream, working in the China that is part of our more acceptable, comfortable discourse, the one where many earnest efforts are being made to improve rule of law, human rights, working conditions and environmental protections.
I don't need to describe this China because it is the one that the rest of the world engages with every day, the one that international institutions and NGOs work with, the one that multinational corporations invest in, the one that appears daily in the foreign media (despite many fine individual efforts to peer into and describe Gao's China). The Western democracies long ago concluded that engagement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is ultimately in the best interests of the Chinese people; Gao counters that engaging with the Chinese government is no different historically from "shaking hands with Stalin" at Yalta.
"I would like to remind those so-called 'good friends and partners' of the CCP around the world," he wrote in his first-person account of torture at the hands of the secret police, "that the increasing level of confidence of the CCP in treating the Chinese people with increasingly cold-blooded brutality and cruelty is the direct result of appeasement by both you and us [the Chinese people]."
Obviously, engagement at this point is not a choice. It is reality. Many Chinese rights defenders work diligently within that reality, and some believe unrestrained activism like Gao's undermines their cause, weakening reform-minded bureaucrats within the government, strengthening the hard-line security factions. What Gao calls appeasement, they would call realism, and vice versa. It is a debate with no clear winner, only differing shades of struggle. Gao, nominated last year for the Nobel Peace Prize, calls for more help from the West in that struggle. He blasts France and Germany for caring more about securing big Chinese purchase orders than about human rights.
He affords praise for American values, but says the U.S., too, has a "bottom line" in dealing with China, and it is not human rights.Gao's wife, Geng He, has pleaded for Congress to help. American diplomats have pressed the Chinese government repeatedly about Gao's case, never hearing so much as an acknowledgment that there is a case to discuss.
Gao was, in his way, grimly realistic about such things. Speaking about another lawyer who was in jail at the time of our interview, he said, "The regime does not have the right to do this, but they have the power to do it, and now that they've done it, no one can do anything about it."
Former Party head explains why the Chinese regime acted so ruthlessly By Tianlang Zhang Epoch Times Staff May 6, 2009
Ever since the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999, journalists, China scholars, the Chinese regime, and Falun Gong adherents have discussed the role played by the events of April 25, 1999. A letter by Jiang Zemin, head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999, sheds important light on this question.
On April 25, 1999, more than 10,000 Falun Gong adherents attempted to gather outside the Appeals Office in Beijing, but most ended up nearby in the vicinity of Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the CCP.
Falun Gong had been harassed and subject to a potential ban ever since 1996, long before the Zhongnanhai gathering. Many Falun Gong adherents gathered there out of concern that a ban was just a matter of time. They wanted to turn things around by appealing to the regime.
Falun Gong adherents have always said the behavior of those who gathered on April 25 was exemplary, and gave no cause for the persecution that was to come.
To justify its crackdown on Falun Gong, the CCP has always alleged that Falun Gong adherents tend to commit various crimes. These allegations are strongly denied by Falun Gong adherents, who point out that the alleged crimes all go against Falun Gong teachings.
Most journalists and scholars have argued that the Zhongnanhai gathering was a provocation that scared the CCP leadership and led directly to the persecution.
Prof. David Ownby, the author of “Falun Gong and the Future of China,” is quoted in a recent New York Times article providing an even-handed version of this theory. He said, “Mr. Li and his followers may have made a tactical mistake by massing in Beijing, but … the Communist Party erred by interpreting their actions as a threat to its rule.”
Mr. Ownby claimed, “If either side had played their cards more intelligently, Falun Gong could have been co-opted by the government.”
The experience of other religious or qigong groups casts doubt on Ownby’s thesis or similar ones from Western journalists or other scholars.
Underground Catholics and house church Christians have never gathered in front of Zhongnanhai, but have also been persecuted.
Another qigong practice called Zhong Gong, which claimed to have 30 million followers, had been trying hard to cooperate with the regime. It sponsored quite a few official ceremonies for the CCP, including ones celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth and the 60th anniversary of Communist Party Army’s Long March. Nonetheless, it was banned on the same day as Falun Gong.
‘A New Signal’ - the letter
The persecution was ordered by Jiang Zemin, the then-general secretary of the CCP, and a justification for it can be found in a letter that Jiang wrote to other CCP Politburo members on the night of April 25, 1999. In 2006, this letter was officially released and published in mainland China in volume 2 of a book called “Jiang Zemin’s Article Collection.” “A New Signal” was added as the title of the letter.
Jiang writes, “I feel very deeply sorry that we were not alerted earlier about such a kind of national organization, with many followers from the Communist Party, [Party or state] officials, scholars, soldiers, as well as workers and peasants. … With regard to the Falun Gong organization, we cannot underestimate the attraction of its religious color. The relevant departments must strengthen the research and preventative measures. Since the headquarters of Falun Gong is overseas, the possibility that this gathering was organized by overseas forces should not be excluded.”
In the letter Jiang returns again to the question of overseas connections: “Does Falun Gong have any connection overseas and to the West? Is there any ‘expert’ to plot and command this event? This is a new signal, which we must attach great importance to. The sensitive period has come. We have to take effective measures to prevent similar things from happening again.”
This letter was later printed by the Communist Party Central Office as a notice. A special remark was added: “Please be advised of the requirements of the Central Office: Study and Implement the notice. It is not for your comments and discussion.”
Different Levels of Explanation
After the persecution began on July 20, 1999, the CCP launched a worldwide campaign that claimed that banning Falun Gong was necessary because this practice had caused many tragedies in China. But in this letter Jiang is silent about the claims about Falun Gong that would be featured in his regime’s subsequent propaganda.
Instead, the letter shows him focusing on three aspects: Falun Gong is a national group with followers from all walks of life; Falun Gong has a religious character, which is fundamentally different from the atheism that is the basis of Marxism and Communism; Falun Gong is presumed to have connections outside China.
These same criteria can be used to explain why underground Catholics, House Christians, and Zhong Gong have also been harshly persecuted. Taking Tibetan Buddhism as a national organization for Tibet (rather than China), these criteria also help explain the harsh persecution of Tibetans. That Falun Gong was labeled by Jiang as a kind of national organization is particularly important. The CCP has never allowed any organizations independent of it to exist. For example, during the Cultural Revolution several national organizations were formed to safeguard Mao, and named themselves the Red Guard. After he finished using them, Mao banned them.
Jiang’s claim, though, that he was not alerted earlier about the national character of Falun Gong should not be taken at face value. The entire Party hierarchy was well aware by 1999 of the approximate number and extent of those who practiced Falun Gong.
Jiang says in the letter that “The sensitive period has come.”
He then goes on to say: “This is the largest scale gathering in Beijing since the 1989 political event. I have emphasized many times that we need to suffocate what seems to be the beginning of an unwholesome trend.”
The year of 1989 marked the student movement in Beijing, which was crushed by the CCP’s tanks and guns. Obviously, this gathering reminded Jiang of that movement, although Falun Gong adherents have never linked Falun Gong or the event on April 25 with the 1989 democracy movement.
Jiang is so sensitive to a mass gathering that he blames Party officials in the letter, “The occurrence of this event illustrates what a poor job on ideology and people some of our offices and departments have done!”
Jiang feels the need to cast his opposition to Falun Gong as an ideological battle that Falun Gong seems to be winning. He suggests: “We must stick to the education of officials and the people with a correct outlook on the world, life, and values. Can the Marxism, Materialism, and Atheism that our Communist Party members uphold not win the battle with what Falun Gong promotes? This is absolutely ridiculous!”
However, Politburo members, veterans of past Party campaigns, would not need to be reminded that the Party does not fight such battles on the grounds of "Marxism, Materialism, and Atheism” alone. Beginning on July 20, Jiang would turn all parts of society against Falun Gong adherents, and what he viewed as an ideological challenge would be met with mass detention, brainwashing, rape, and torture.
Once the persecution of Falun Gong started, Jiang Zemin and the CCP obscured the real reasons for it by leveling various untrue charges. Well-meaning interpreters of China have seen the persecution as an overreaction to a single day’s events. With this letter Jiang Zemin himself helps set the record straight.
Shoppers at a Wal-Mart store, do they know what they are buying? (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)
When Stockwell Day, Canada’s trade minister, visited China last month some called for Canada to form a wider and deeper commercial relationship with that country.
Derek Burney a former Canadian ambassador to the United States recently stated in the Canadian press for a wider and deeper commercial relationship with China, which sounds reasonable until one looks more closely.
He is, for example, rightly concerned that the trade balance has soared in China’s favour from $8.5 billion in 2001 to $28.8 billion by 2007, but does not explain how a bilateral investment treaty would create more exports for Canadians.
Burney argues that a treaty must give Chinese investors the right to invest in Canada’s natural resources, but they already have it. Recent examples include Sinopec increasing to 50 per cent its share in the Northern Lights oil sands project in Alberta and China National Petroleum earlier buying some oil sands leases.
China Minmetals, a branch of its mines ministry, earlier explored buying Noranda Mining, but was rebuffed when Canadian critics pointed out that that this would amount to a Chinese government takeover of a strategic asset in the Canadian economy.
Peter Navarro, a professor at the University of California, argues correctly that consumer markets across the world have been “conquered” by China largely through cheating on trade practices. These include export subsidies, widespread counterfeiting and piracy of products, currency manipulation, and environmental, health and safety standards so weakly enforced that they have made China a very dangerous place to work.
FACTBOX..GLOBAL FAIR TRADE With China
Mr Navarro says new trade legislation by all of China’s trade partners should achieve fair trade by the following:
1. All must refrain from illegal export subsidies and currency manipulation and abide by the rules of the World Trade Organization(WTO);
2. For currency manipulation, he supports what the bi-partisan US-China Commission has recommended to the American Congress: define it as an illegal export subsidy and add it to other subsidies when calculating anti-dumping and countervail penalties;
3. Every trade partner must respect intellectual property; adopt and enforce health, safety and environmental regulations consistent with international norms; provide decent wages and working conditions; and ban the use of forced labour;
4. Adopt a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy for anyone who sells or distributes pirated or counterfeit goods;
5. Defective and contaminated food and drugs must be blocked more effectively by measures which make it easier to hold importers liable for selling foreign products that do harm to people or pets;
6. Despite growing criticism, China’s party-state continues to trade its UN Security Council veto for energy, raw materials and access to markets from Angola to Burma to Zimbabwe. Increased monitoring and exposure of China’s party-state activities everywhere is important;
7. To reverse the ‘race to the environmental bottom’ in China, to require all to compete on a level playing field and to reduce acid rain and smog affecting populations abroad, all bilateral and multilateral trade agreements should henceforth include strong provisions for protection of the natural environment.
Canadian/Chinese values
Many Canadians allow our respect for the people of China to mute criticism of their government. When apologists for its party-state insist that the situation for a growing part of the population is getting better, many of us appear willing to overlook bad governance, official violence, growing social inequalities, widespread corruption and chronic nepotism.
The Chinese people want the same things as Canadians, including, respect for all, education, to be safe and secure, good jobs, and a sustainable natural environment. Living standards have improved on the coast and in other urban areas, but there is a cost. Most Chinese continue to be exploited by the party-state and firms, often owned by or contracted for manufacturing to multinationals, which operate today across their country like 19th century robber barons.
This explains partly why the prices of consumer products ‘made in China’ seem so low—the externalities are borne by workers, their families and the natural environment.
Conclusion
The attempted crushing of democracy movements, truthful journalists, Buddhist, Falun Gong, Christian, Muslim and other independent faith groups, human rights lawyers and other legitimate civil society communities in recent years indicates that China’s party-state must still be engaged with caution.
If its government stops abuses of human rights and takes steps to indicate that it wishes to treat its trade partners in a mutually-beneficial way, the new century will bring harmony for China, its trading partners and neighbours. The Chinese people have the numbers, perseverance, self-discipline, entrepreneurship, intelligence, culture and pride to make this new century better and more peaceful for the entire human family.
David Kilgour is Canada’s former Secretary of State for Asia and the Pacific and a long-serving Canadian member of parliament. The report he co-authored on organ-harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China can be read online at: http://organharvestinvestigation.net/.
I am dedicated to exposing the atrocities committed by the Chinese communist regime on prisoners of conscience especially Falun Gong practitioners and to help awaken the worlds conscience to say NO to the Chinese communist regime.
The world will never be a safe place until China is free of the communist regime.The Chinese people want democracy freedom culture and peace. So does the West.Only by peacefully turning our back on the communist regime can the Chinese people realize a True Chinese renaissance is within their sights.A new era is before us lets together choose goodness over evil peace over violence love over hate.
The highest principles of Truth Compassion and Forbearance have forged a new epoch for humankind.
china
human rights
torture
Falun Gong
Boycott the Olympic Games
2008 Olympic Games
Live Organ Harvesting in China