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/