CHINA CRISIS NEWS BULLETIN #73 [12/28/2000]
Monitoring News of the Persecution of Falun Gong
FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER- Contacts: Gail Rachlin 212-501-8080, Erping Zhang 917-679-6944, Feng Yuan 917-912-3301, or Levi Browde 914-720-0963. Email: faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/
- HOW ONE CHINESE CITY RESORTS TO ATROCITIES TO CONTROL FALUN DAFA
- THOUSANDS RALLY IN TAIPEI CITY FOR THOSE SUFFERING UNDER THE PERSECUTION ACROSS THE TAIWAN STRAIT
- APPALLING NEW TACTICS REVEALED IN BEIJING'S DESPERATE CRACKDOWN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, December 26, 2000 WEIFANG, China -- Rising out of the North
China Plain in a jumble of dusty apartment blocks and crowded roads, this is an
unremarkable Chinese city in every respect but one: Local police regularly torture
residents to death. Since the beginning of the year, when police killed a 58-year-old
retiree, at least 10 more Weifang residents have died in police custody, according to
relatives and a human-rights monitoring group. All were practitioners of the spiritual
group Falun Dafa, which the central government banned last year. Across this country of
1.3 billion, at least 77 Falun Dafa adherents have now died in detention, according to
reports by human-rights groups. Weifang, which has less than 1% of the national
population, accounts for 15% of those deaths.
...Instead of just threatening to ruin local officials' careers, [the governor of
Shandong] Mr. Wu's colleagues in the provincial government started to fine them as
well. The new twist was simple: The provincial government fined mayors and heads of
counties for each Falun Dafa practitioner from their district who went to Beijing. The
mayors and county heads in turn fined the heads of their Political and Legal
Commissions, holding them responsible. They in turn fined village chiefs, who in turn
fined the police officers - who administered the punishment. The fines varied from
district to district, but in one Weifang district the head of the Political and Legal
Commission was fined 200 yuan per person protesting in Tiananmen Square, or about $25
-- a potentially ruinous amount given that his monthly salary is only about $200,
according to one of the official's colleagues. The fines were illegal; no law or
regulation has ever been issued in writing that lists them. Officials say the policy
was announced orally at government meetings. "There was never to be anything in writing
because they didn't want it made public," says a member of the city's Political and
Legal Commission. Thus a chief feature in torture victims' testimony is that they were
constantly being asked for money to compensate for the fines... For example, the most
recent prisoner to die in Weifang, Xuan Chengxi, was killed in October after officials
asked him repeatedly for money, according to two people who tended to his wounds before
he died. All the members of his family, however, were Falun Dafa practitioners and had
lost their jobs, leaving them unable to pay. Police responded by beating him with
rubber truncheons and dousing him in cold water for several hours before he fell into a
coma and died, the witnesses say. Weifang city officials -- many of whom now privately
worry that the crackdown has been a terrible mistake -- say none of the police directly
involved in the deaths have been reprimanded. In fact, the three officers who oversaw
Ms. Chen's interrogation have since been promoted, they say, true to the tradition of
giving local authorities a free hand, no questions asked...
The effects on society of such systematic brutality is hard to gauge. None of the
deaths have been reported in the Chinese media. Only those directly touched by the
crackdown know of its scope and ferocity. In a country of 1.3 billion, most are
ignorant and many accept the state-run media's explanation that Falun Dafa is a
dangerous cult, a mind-controlling organization that must be crushed at all costs to
preserve stability. But in a small city like Weifang, word of the deaths has spread
quietly. In the city's impressive kite museum, a curator's eyes widen when he is asked
about the killings. "No one can talk about these things," he says, unpacking boxes of
the city's trademark wood-framed kites wrapped in brightly colored silk. "But a lot of
people know."
PRACTITIONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD CONGREGATE IN TAIPEI TO BRING ATTENTION TO THE PLIGHT OF PRACTITIONERS IN CHINA
AFP, Taipei Times, December 25, 2000, TAIPEI: Some 3,000 followers of the Falun Gong [group] from 20 countries marched in Taipei yesterday in support of their counterparts persecuted by the government in China. The Falun Gong practitioners marched quietly through the bustling part of the city to the accompaniment of Buddhist music. The large crowd, which included about 600 practitioners from abroad, held aloft pictures showing Chinese Falun Gong followers who were allegedly arrested, tortured or stood trial. Many of the crowd wore yellow T-shirts bearing Chinese characters meaning "truthfulness," "compassion" and "forbearance..." Chang Ching-hsi, the organizer of the rally... verified statistics suggested that 103 Chinese had already died in China after being detained for either practicing or promoting Falun Gong. A Chinese Australian, Zhang Cuiying, testified at the rally that she had been jailed for five months in China for practicing Falun Gong exercises on Beijing's Tiananmen Square during a trip to China in defiance of China's ban... Earlier on Saturday, hundreds of followers had gathered in Taipei's National Normal University stadium to share their Falun Gong experience. On Saturday night around 3,000 people had held a vigil in Taipei to back Chinese Falun Gong followers. The crowd held candles and recited the poems and writings of Li, who was unable to attend the two-day gathering in Taipei. Li was not with his followers here because he felt "the timing is not appropriate," according to Hung Chi-hung, deputy secretary general of the local Falun Gong Research Center. Hung said Li chose not to attend the rally for fear it could be seen by Beijing as politically motivated. There are an estimated 100,000 followers of Falun Gong in Taiwan... organizers said the movement was growing at a rapid pace.TAIPEI, Dec 24, 2000 -- (Reuters) Taiwan Vice President Annette Lu, reviled by Beijing for her pro-independence stand, lent support on Saturday to China's outlawed Falun Gong spiritual sect in a move certain to further anger the Chinese. Lu, denounced by Chinese state media as "the scum of the nation", attended a rally staged by about 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners from 15 countries in central Taipei in a show of support for the sect. "I wish you success in your character cultivation and martial art practice," Lu told the adherents who held fluorescent glow sticks to mourn mainland brethren either dead in Chinese custody or still languishing in prison. There was no immediate comment from Beijing...
NEWS FROM CHINA
[Mainland China] Corrupt Policemen Scheme to Sell the Organs of Jailed Falun Gong
Practitioners - According to insiders, some corrupt police officers in Mainland
China are plotting with greedy doctors to consider selling the human organs of Falun
Gong practitioners for huge sums of money. One source indicates that a certain
hospital in the city of Shijiazhuang, specializing in Chinese medicine, has received 6
such requests. Everyone, especially the families of the practitioners who are in jail,
are asked to pay close attention to this development. The only way to protect these
innocent people is to expose the inhuman acts of the police.
[Qianlianghu] 60 Year-old Man Burned by Qianlianghu Police - Cao Guohua, the
head of the Qianlianghu local police station, arrested a 60 year-old Falun Dafa
practitioner and his wife. In order to force him to admit to handing out flyers about
Falun Dafa, the police brought him into a room and hung him on the doorframe after
tying his hands. Then they heated a metal screwdriver on a hotplate until it was red-
hot. Because he didn't "confess," the guard pressed the burning screwdriver on both
sides of his chest all the way to his back, without stopping. When the screwdriver
cooled down, the guard reheated it. Still unable to get any confession, they forced
the victim's wife to pay 1,000 Yuan to release him. Upon arriving home there were more
than 40 burn marks upon his body that were counted by neighbors and his wife. His cell-
mate had told him that this method of torture was used on others before him.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER-
Contacts: Gail Rachlin 212-501-8080, Erping Zhang 917-679-6944, Feng Yuan 917-912-3301,
or Levi Browde 914-720-0963. Email:
faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website:
http://www.faluninfo.net/
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
