Vancouver Sun: [Canadian Foreign Minister] Manley looking into allegations China threatened Falun Gong members in Canada

OTTAWA (CP) - Canadian authorities will investigate whether Chinese diplomats have threatened and intimidated Canadian followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley said Wednesday. But Manley said he has no evidence that China has carried its repressive war on the outlawed religious [group] to Canadian soil.

"We don't call in ambassadors because somebody writes a letter," Manley said outside the Commons. "We'll have to investigate."

A group of Canadian Falun Gong practitioners alleged Wednesday in a letter and at a news conference that they've been the target of a systematic campaign of "direct interference, threat, intimidation, and assault by Chinese foreign officials right here in Canada."

And they accused Chinese consular officials in Toronto of inciting hatred against Falun Gong at a public rally there last month.

"It should distress any Canadian citizen that a foreign government would publicly rally Canadian citizens to condemn the spiritual or religious beliefs of other Canadian citizens," Rocco Galati, a lawyer for the Falun Gong Association of Canada, told a news conference.

He accused Chinese diplomats of "seeing Canadian citizens exercising their freedom of association and belief as an internal Chinese problem on Canadian soil and acting as if they were in Shanghai."

The subject of foreign diplomats' actions in Canada has been a sensitive one since a Russian attaché ran down and killed an Ottawa pedestrian 12 days ago, allegedly while drunk at the wheel. The man exercised diplomatic immunity and returned to Russia, where he's expected to face trial.

Officials at Foreign Affairs knew of past allegations of drunk driving involving the diplomat and Manley has ordered an investigation into why the problem wasn't addressed before it turned deadly.

Irwin Cotler, a Liberal MP who is representing a jailed Falun Gong member in China, said the allegations against the Chinese must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.

"If we would be concerned - as we ought to have been - with diplomats engaged in impaired driving, then we have to be concerned with diplomats who may be engaged in uttering threats and engaging in criminal conduct," said Cotler.