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. Email: faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/
  • P.R.C.'s NEW FORCED SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN AGAINST FALUN GONG
  • HONG KONG WORKER FIRED FOR LEGAL SPIRITUAL PRACTICE, ...
  • BUT H.K. ACTIVISTS AND RUSSIAN PARLIAMENTARIAN STAND UP FOR FALUN GONG

FORCED "MILLION SIGNATURE" CAMPAIGN BY COMMUNIST PARTY

The PRC regime under Jiang Zemin has started a campaign to collect a million signatures denouncing Falun Gong in time to bring them to Geneva for the United Nations Human Rights Commission this month. They are intended to show "the will of the people" in a China that is supposedly experiencing a "Golden Age of Human Rights." However, the petition drive itself is only serving to perpetrate even more human rights abuses. For example, high-level officials at the Beijing Steel Corporation have forced every employee to sign the statement attacking Falun Gong by threatening to cut their jobs, their pay, their pensions, and their housing if they refuse to sign. The corporation has even sent the document to the homes of their retired employees to be signed. Anyone refusing to sign is also in danger of being forcibly sent to a "transformation class," which generally means beatings and psychological torture until one changes one's mind. Even schoolchildren are not spared: Sources say that in one elementary school in the city of Daqing, two policemen stand ready to lift the children up by the elbows to force them to sign the petition if they appear reluctant. When a particular second grader still refused to sign, school administrators notified the local police sub-station. Police then took the parents from their respective work units and placed them under detention because they are both Falun Gong practitioners.

FIRED BY HONG KONG COMPANY FOR PRACTICING LEGAL RIGHT

HONG KONG, March 5 (The Times) Evian Wong started practising her Falun Gong breathing exercises shortly after the Hong Kong handover in 1997. Every morning she meets fellow members of the group in a park on her way to work. Now she has paid a price for supporting an organisation which is legal in the former colony: she has lost her job. She is a victim of changing official attitudes under pressure from Beijing, which have, in turn, led to a changing approach to civil liberties. Hong Kong is on the way to becoming "just another Chinese city", local experts say. Her employer at a trading company was worried that his business would be affected if customers and officials found out about Mrs Wong's breathing exercises. "My boss knew from the beginning that I was practising Falun Gong," she said. "He agreed that it wasn't affecting my work. When China launched its big crackdown, he asked me to practise only at home and not in a park." Mrs Wong felt she had won the argument after telling her employer: "This is my right." But the situation changed again when the Hong Kong Government came under pressure from Beijing.

CITIZENS DECRY HONG KONG GOVERNMENT'S ATTACK ON FALUN GONG

HONG KONG, Mar 4, 2001 -- (Reuters) Protesters accused the Hong Kong government on Sunday of undermining the territory's autonomy by toeing Beijing's line in criticizing the controversial Falun Gong spiritual movement. Eight pro-democracy activists condemned senior officials' recent criticism of the Falun Gong, with the latest being remarks by Security Secretary Regina Ip this week that the group was "heretical" and encouraged superstition. ... "I hope Mrs Ip, when she sees [our protest], can understand the feeling members of Falun Gong have -- when you are accused of being superstitious and actually you just have your own religious belief," said Gary Fan, a spokesman for the protesters, who belonged to the Social Democracy Forum. "We think Mrs Ip doesn't have concrete evidence that members of Falun Gong violate Hong Kong law," he added. "In human history, there have been so many tragedies being caused by different kinds of government who used the same excuse (that they are) superstitious, to control, to suppress ... their religious belief," Fan said....

RUSSIAN PARLIAMENTARIAN TAKES A STAND AGAINST PRC PERSECUTION

Mr. S. A. Kovaliov, an influential parliamentarian of Duma in Russia and the Chair of the Human Rights Commission of Duma, recently attended a press conference held by Falun Gong practitioners in Russia. He spoke to the Russian and Chinese media who were present, including reporters from China's state-run People's Daily. Following are excerpts from his speech:
  • "It is not China here?we have constantly been paying attention to the pressure from the Chinese diplomats. Any such kind of pressure from the diplomats of a country with that goal absolutely cannot be tolerated. Such activities of the Chinese diplomats will bring grave consequences. Chinese diplomats' pressure and interference to Russian practitioners is a serious interference of the internal affairs of Russia, and has gone beyond the limit and scope of diplomatic conduct."
  • "...About the self-immolation incident, if there was indeed such an event, then the question is: was this event organized? The key point is not whether these people were Falun Gong practitioners or not, but rather whether this Falun Gong practice encourages, demands, or forces them to pour gasoline onto themselves and set themselves on fire. As far as I know, however, the Chinese authority has no evidence, other than propaganda, to prove that this spiritual movement has caused any one's self-immolation..."
  • "I seriously doubt the legitimacy of the Chinese government's persecution of this spiritual movement. Such things are absolutely not allowed in Russia..."

CHINA OPENS ANNUAL LEGISLATIVE SESSION, FALUN GONG ATTACKED

BEIJING, Mar 3, 2001--(Agence France Presse) China's annual legislative session opened Saturday with deliberations that included the crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual group and curbing Taiwanese independence. ... Ye Xuanping, vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) ... urged the delegates to follow the leadership of the Communist Party (CCP) with President and party boss "Jiang Zemin at the core." Ye also raised the government's fight against the banned Falun Gong... "We must be fully aware that the struggle against the Falun Gong cult will be complex, protracted and acute," Ye said.

NEWS FROM INSIDE CHINA

[Yanqing County Detention Center, Beijing] 70 year old woman sexually abused and tortured On January 2, 2001, a female practitioner, over 70 years old, being held at the Yanqing Country Detention Center was forcefully dragged to the courtyard by the police officers, beaten severely, hit with police clubs, and shocked with a stun baton to her genitals and other sensitive areas. The police did this to her because she refused to give out her name and address. As a result of this torture, her face became swollen and deformed, her cheeks and lips had been severely bludgeoned, her face had four huge blisters from the electric shocks, and a large proportion of her body turned black from the bruising. [Xiangfan City, Hunan Province] Practitioner mentally traumatized by torture in a mental hospital Practitioners Zhou and Wan (a nurse from a hospital) insisted on practicing Dafa and not giving up their spiritual belief. Consequently, they were forcibly committed to a mental hospital. There, they were tortured with electric shock and were injected with nerve-damaging drugs. The police on duty told them: "A normal person can't even endure one pill but I'll make you take ten pills each time!" Zhou was forced to stay in the hospital for more than two months. During his stay, sometimes he was tortured for hours at a time. This normal, healthy college student was abused so severely that when he was finally released from the hospital after his family made a strong appeal to the authorities, he was left mentally disordered.
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. Email: faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/

Category: Falun Dafa in the Media