German Newspaper Bruchsaler Rundschau: "My Friends Are Being Persecuted"

They promote values such as Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, but in China they have been persecuted since 1999. They are followers of the Buddha School-based Falun Gong cultivation system. It is said that more than seventy million Chinese citizens regularly practiced the five graceful exercises that are supposed to bring body and mind in harmony with the universe. Those seventy million constituted a larger number than the members of the Communist Party in China, which is probably the reason why the former head of state, Jiang Zemin, put Falun Gong on a blacklist in China and ordered the persecution of its followers. [...]

Jing Wang said "Three of my friends were sent to forced labor camps, simply because they practiced Falun Gong." The thirty year old Chinese woman has lived in Germany for the past seven years. She studies German and Italian in Germersheim and lives with her husband in Bruchsal. The married couple has practiced the yoga-like exercises for the past five years. Ms. Wang's friends and many other incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners have to endure psychological terror, brainwashing, gross physical and psychological abuse, mistreatment and torture. One of those, once a successful young scientist, is now a broken man who does not even recognize his family anymore. Approximately 700 [900 at this writing ed.] of those mistreated people did not survive the torture and have died, states one of the Falun Gong information publications. Falun Gong has followers in more than fifty nations around the globe.

"We want to raise public awareness of this gruesome persecution," said Jing Wang. She and other Falun Gong followers are collecting signatures and sending postcards with appeal messages to politicians and all kinds of organizations, and not without success! Her friend Xiong Wei, a young mother, had been incarcerated in a [forced] camp for two years. She was released a few days ago. Foreign Minister Mr. Joschka Fischer had intervened on behalf of the young mother who was also a student in Germany.

"China persecutes Christians as well -- Catholics, Protestants in their underground churches, and also Tibetans," stressed the young Chinese woman. Aside from those, more than ten other meditation systems have been outlawed.

The Falun Gong followers are planning an event to raise awareness on January 30th 2004 in Bruchsal. They will have a booth in the pedestrian Mall.

Source: http://clearharmony.net/articles/200402/18125.html