Jinyu Li: China's Appeal Offices are Gates to Prison for Falun Gong Practitioners

Jinyu Li is a Canadian citizen and an artist living in Montreal. Her husband, Shenli Lin, is a Chinese citizen and was an accountant in Shanghai before his detention in 1999. The two had been practicing Falun Gong since 1997. Below is a speech Jinyu made at a Toronto news conference on August 10, 2001. She confronted a visiting Chinese appeal delegation in Toronto the day before. The experience was similarly horrifying.

It has been a nightmare.

When Chinese president Jiang Zemin began his crackdown on Falun Gong, over night all the media started to spread lies and defame Falun Gong. My husband and I knew from our experience how great Falun Gong was. Falun Gong's principle, Truth-Compassion-Tolerance, represents the best part of human nature and the best values of Chinese culture. We decided to go to Beijing to tell the truth about Falun Gong to the government, hoping they would understand us.

On December 22, 1999, my husband and I went to the Public Appeals Office in Beijing. We saw dozens of plainclothes policemen at the entrance. Many Falun Gong practitioners were being arrested. But we managed to get in.

The staff at the office called for people who were appealing for Falun Gong to go into a big room. Once we got there, we were surprised to see many policemen in the Appeals Office. At this point, we lost all our freedom. They ordered us to sit on the cement floor. We were not allowed to talk. We were not allowed to go to the washroom. We were not allowed to eat all day.

The next day, three policemen escorted us back to Shanghai. Once we arrived, police sent my husband to a detention center. I was deported within 48 hours. Later, my husband was sent to a labour camp without trial for 18 months. He was due to be released last month, but his term was arbitrarily extended for six months.

My husband's brother was also arrested in an appeals office. He is now being detained in the same labour camp.

I never imagined that the appeals offices in China, which are supposed to protect the rights of Chinese citizens, could become gates to prison for innocent Falun Gong practitioners.

Note:

An Overseas Chinese Bureau Appeal Delegation held an "open house" on August 9th to take appeals from overseas Chinese. Dong Yiming, the Department Head of the Appeal Processing Office of China's National Appeal Bureau was part of the 6-man delegation.

When Jinyu went to talk to Dong Yiming about her husband being illegally arrested and detained in a labour camp, he tried to stop her. Jinyu and her husband were arrested when appealing at the Beijing Appeals Office. When Jinyu told Dong that it was a crime to arrest her and her husband when they appealed, Dong responded: "Even if it is a crime [to arrest people], we would still arrest you [in the appeal office]" Later, Jinyu tried to give Dong a newspaper about the truth about Falun Gong, Dong shouted: "I will call the police! I will call the police."