Alex Neve

Secretary General

Amnesty International Canada

(English-speaking branch)

December 7, 2000

Reports of the arrest, imprisonment and torture of Kunlun Zhang starkly bring home to

Canada two of China's most pressing human rights issues -- the ongoing, serious persecution of Falun Gong followers, and the widespread use of torture throughout the country.

Amnesty International has documented, with growing alarm, the increasing numbers of Falun

Gong practitioners who have been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured in China. The number of practitioners who have now died in custody, or shortly after release on medical parole, continues to mount. Those deaths have invariably followed reports of torture, which we know to be rampant in China.

The campaign against Falun Gong is part of a massive crackdown on followers of religious and spiritual movements in China, and is politically motivated. Falun Gong followers have simply sought to exercise peacefully their fundamental rights to freedom of belief, association and expression. Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the Chinese authorities to cease the arrest, imprisonment, torture and deaths of Falun Gong followers.

We know much about the suffering of Kunlun Zhang, a Canadian citizen, and of his wife, Zhang Shumei, a landed immigrant, because of their connection to this country. Their daughter Lingdi, also a Canadian citizen, has spoken movingly of her fears for their well-being. We join Lingdi, and the many concerned Falun Gong practitioners in Canada, in demanding that the Chinese authorities release Kunlun Zhang immediately.

We expect the Canadian government to do the same. Amnesty International has, on many occasions, pressed the government to raise human rights issues with Chinese authorities. We have expressed serious concern that Canada has, since 1997, failed to speak out forcefully in bodies such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights about China's disastrous human rights record.

The imprisonment of Kunlun Zhang, and reports that he has been tortured, give particular reason for an unequivocal intervention by the Canadian government with Chinese officials -- nothing less than a clear demand that he be released.

As the Prime Minister prepares for the Team Canada Mission to China in February there will be many opportunities for this case to be vigorously pursued. Human rights must be an absolute priority in Canada's relationship with China. Prospects for trade cannot be pursued at the expense of the basic human rights of Kunlun Zhang; nor the many thousands of other men, women and children who are unjustly imprisoned, tortured and killed throughout China.