FALUN GONG NEWS BULLETIN

Monitoring the Falun Gong Human Rights Crisis in China

• Center for Investigative Reporting: “Beijing Olympic Chief Linked to Torture”
• 15-Year-Old Orphaned as Mother Dies in Custody
• MSNBC: China’s Organ Harvesting Questioned Again by UN Special Rapporteurs
• Prisoner of Conscience Cao Dong’s Wife Writes Open Letter Detailing Official Torture, Family Harassment and Lack of Due Process
• Human Rights Watch Report: Lawyers Who Defend Falun Gong Face Punishment
• USA Today: “In China, a battle over web censorship”; Falun Gong adherents among “hacktivists” cracking “Great Firewall”

Center for Investigative Reporting: “Beijing Olympic Chief Linked to Torture”
April 24, 2008 – “The president of Beijing's Olympic Organizing Committee was once found liable for torture in a U.S. federal court, a review of court records by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.”

“…In an extensive legal opinion, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco determined in 2004 that Liu Qi was responsible for the illegal detention and torture of two Chinese nationals and a sexual assault against a French woman in China….The lawsuit alleged that as mayor, Liu directed security forces to violently crush the Falun Gong. The plaintiffs claimed that Liu’s forces subjected them to severe beatings, sexual abuse and ‘electric shocks through needles placed in [the] body.’”

For more information visit: http://centerforinvestigativereporting.org/node/3625
For a summary of the case and relevant legal documents visit: http://www.cja.org/cases/liuqi.shtml

15-Year-Old Orphaned as Mother Dies in Custody for Practicing Falun Gong
May 8, 2008 – The Falun Dafa Information Center has learned of the death of Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Zhou Huimin (???), based on reports from her son and corroborated by sources from within China. Ms. Zhou passed away at Qingyang District People’s Hospital in Chengdu city, Sichuan province on March 15, 2008. She was 44 years old.

“Just a few days ago, I turned 15. [Also] just a few days ago, my kind and healthy mother was tortured to death,” wrote Zhou Hanyang, the son of Zhou Huimin, in a letter received by the FDIC last month. “During the 198 days since my mother was arrested, we worried and feared for her day and night. With great sorrow, I remember the days I spent together with my mother and mourn her.”

Full story: http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=9521

MSNBC: China’s Organ Harvesting Questioned Again by UN Special Rapporteurs
May 8, 2008 – Two United Nations Special Rapporteurs have reiterated their previous findings on China's organ harvesting. Once again, they requested the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the source of organs for the sudden increase in organ transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000.

Citing recently published 2008 annual reports of the UN Special Rapporteurs, the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group (FalunHR) applauds the joint request that Ms. Asma Jahangir and Mr. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Religion or Belief and on the Question of Torture, sent to the Chinese government.

Full story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24516546/

Prisoner of Conscience Cao Dong’s Wife Writes Open Letter Detailing Official Torture, Family Harassment and Lack of Due Process
April 8, 2008 – Yang Xiaojing, the wife of prisoner of conscience Cao Dong, published a letter addressed to the international community. Cao is a Falun Gong practitioner who was sentenced to five years in prison for meeting with European Parliament Vice-President Edward McMillan Scott in Beijing to discuss rights abuses.

“…right after his meeting with Edward McMillan-Scott, [Cao] was arrested and detained in the Beijing Security Bureau Detention Center. He was handcuffed to a chair for more than a month. The cruel torture caused massive hemorrhaging in his stomach,” writes Yang in the letter.

“…As his wife, I started to look for a defense lawyer for him in August, 2007...I consulted lawyer Li Heping. …Lawyer Li Heping was beaten up by police for several hours. All the materials that I gave him were taken away…My home was ransacked. Although the police didn't find any Falun Gong materials, they still took me away to a hotel. They interrogated me…”

Complete text of letter: http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=9522

Human Rights Watch Report: Lawyers Who Defend Falun Gong Face Harassment
April 29, 2008 – “Chinese lawyers who take cases seen by the government as politically sensitive or potentially embarrassing face severe abuses ranging from harassment to disbarment and physical assaults,” Human Rights Watch said in a new report. Among the cases highlighted in the report were lawyers such as Gao Zhisheng and Yang Zaixin who had defended Falun Gong practitioners and subsequently faced threats, disbarment, beatings, and/or detention.

“…On October 19, 2005, one day after Gao [Zhisheng] published a scathing open letter to the top state leaders about abuses against religious and Falun Gong practitioners, he received an anonymous threat by phone: ‘We know where you live and we know where your daughter goes to school.’ The next day Gao and his wife verified that their 12-year-old daughter was indeed followed by plainclothes police officers…” (pg. 34)

“…An attorney from impoverished Guangxi province, Yang Zaixin, was dismissed from his law firm in January 2006 after he took a series of sensitive cases, including those of defendants accused of being members of the banned Falun Gong.” (pg 48)

For more information visit: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/28/china18656.htm

USA Today: “In China, a battle over web censorship”; Falun Gong adherents among ‘hacktivists’ cracking ‘Great Firewall’
April 23, 2008 – “If an Internet user in China searches for the word ‘persecution’, he or she is likely to come up with a link to a blank screen that says ‘page cannot be displayed.’”

“…It's a reflection of the stifling, bizarre and sometimes dangerous world of Internet censorship in China….Fighting the censors every step of the way is an army of self-described ‘hacktivists’ such as Bill Xia, a Chinese-born software engineer who lives in North Carolina…Invoking the hit science-fiction movie The Matrix, Xia has compared what he does to giving Chinese Web surfers a ‘red pill’ that lets them see reality for the first time…”

“…Xia admits he had little interest in politics until the Chinese government banned the spiritual group Falun Gong in 1999 and started persecuting its members. Xia is a member of the group.”

Full story: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080423/1a_cover23.art.htm

FALUN GONG NEWS BULLETIN

Monitoring the Falun Gong Human Rights Crisis in China

Worldwide Vigils Mark April 25th Falun Gong Appeal

Practitioners of Falun Gong marked April 25 last Friday with candlelight vigils around the world, renewing calls for the Beijing regime to end a nine-year campaign of suppression that has recently escalated with the approach of the Olympics. It was on April 25, 1999, that Falun Gong first gained worldwide attention when some 10,000 adherents petitioned the central government in Beijing. Those gathering asked officials to release 40 practitioners who had recently been subjected to police abuse and unlawfully detained, and called for protection of their right to practice their beliefs in peace. Falun Gong practitioners and their supporters participated in candlelight vigils and sit-ins outside Chinese embassies and consulates in New York, Washington DC, London, Paris, Sydney, and other cities around the world.

Media Alert: http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=9519

Falun Gong Arrests and Deaths in Custody Escalate as Olympics Approach

Chinese security agencies have been conducting large-scale arrests of Falun Gong adherents throughout China in recent months as authorities step up efforts to “stamp out” the practice in advance of the Olympic Games in August. Since January, the Center has been receiving regular reports from adherents and their families inside China of door-to-door searches and arrests. According to statistics compiled from these reports, there have been at least 1,878 arrests across 29 provinces, major cities, and autonomous regions.

In an alarming and related trend, the Center has received reports indicating adherents in China are being killed in custody within days, or even hours, of being detained by the authorities. Among those reportedly killed in custody shortly after detention was folk musician and Beijing resident Yu Zhou (see below).

For more information:

“Hundreds of Falun Gong Adherents Arrested in ‘Preparation’ for Olympics:” http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=9517
“Falun Gong Deaths Escalate as Olympics Approach:” http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=9518

Sunday Times (London): Yu Zhou Dies as China Launches Pre-Olympic Purge of Falun Gong

April 20, 2008 – “Members of a peaceful Chinese spiritual movement say that more than 1,500 of its supporters have been detained in the run-up to the Olympic Games and that one of them, a popular folk singer, has died in custody….

The official media have not reported the arrests, but there has been lively discussion among music fans on Chinese websites over the fate of the singer Yu Zhou, 42. “Another beautiful soul has left the world,” commented one distraught fan.

Falun Gong representatives said Yu was arrested on January 26 while returning home from a concert in Beijing. His family were called to the Qinghe district emergency centre on February 6 to view his body, which was covered in a white sheet…..

Yu won a following among young Chinese for his mellow folk ballads. His group, Xiao Juan and Residents from the Valley, released two successful CDs and appeared on the Phoenix television channel.”

Full Story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3779899.ece

Weekly Standard: Carrying a Torch for China

Ethan Gutmann, author of Losing the New China, has called for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics because of the severity of the persecution of Falun Gong, including evidence of organ harvesting from detained adherents of the practice:

April 21, 2008—“Beijing's was always a blackmail bid….The blackmail bid took place in clear sight of the mindbending persecution of Falun Gong, an operation that had already mobilized China's state security forces on a scale that dwarfs the current Tibet crackdown….I have interviewed some of the survivors. Roughly half of the Falun Gong practitioners who have emerged from the camps describe physical exams aimed at determining the health of their internal organs, along with close examination of corneas. Ears, genitals, and the other parts of the body usually scrutinized in medical exams--all of which have no value in the organ market--were routinely ignored…

…As an indigenous Chinese movement, rather than a separatist one, Falun Gong has taken a neutral position on boycotting the Chinese Olympics, sensing correctly that it has become a matter of Chinese “face” that the Olympics continue. But we in the West have our own version of face, a genocide line that cannot be crossed without our identity beginning to crack. No matter how much we ignored the crying, the persecution of Falun Gong demonstrably crossed that line, and even if the Chinese leadership calls off the torch relay or makes an effort to resolve the Tibet situation, it is too late for this Olympics.”

For more information visit: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/986himak.asp

Daily Mirror: Annie Yang reveals Olympic torch guards place her into labour camp.

The story of how Falun Gong practitioner Annie Yang was taken from her home by Chinese special police and tortured for a year in a labour camp was reported in detail in Britain’s national newspaper The Daily Mirror.

The brigade of guards—the Flying Dragons—who took her from her home were the same who donned blue tracksuits and accompanied the Olympic torch in its progress around the world.

“When I saw the torch in London being guarded by men in blue tracksuits, it brought back terrible memories,” she told the newspaper. Also covered in the article was the story of Wenjian Liang, sister of a Nottingham resident who was sentenced to a labor camp last year and remains in custody.

For more information visit: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/04/12/annie-yang-reveals-olympic-torch-guards-place-her-into-labour-camp-89520-20380214/

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