06 Dec 2010
News on Events Inside China
FDIC: Urgent Appeal: 25-year-old Woman Unable to Walk from Sexual Abuse in Hebei Labor Camp
FDIC: Elderly Falun Gong Practitioner Dies at Labor Camp within Days of Arrival
Wall Street Journal: Chinese Twitter Clone Rejecting Falun Gong Messages
News on Events Outside China
Wired: Digital Weapons Help Dissidents Punch Holes in China's Great Firewall
The Epoch Times: Capricious Singaporean Laws Used to Target Meditator
The Epoch Times: Six thousand Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners form golden lotus flower
FDIC: Urgent Appeal: 25-year-old Woman Unable to Walk from Sexual Abuse in Hebei Labor Camp
Nov. 14: "A 25-year-old kindergarten teacher was severely sexually abused in a Hebei Labor Camp in June 2010, the Falun Dafa Information Center has learned. Months after the attack, she continues to have trouble walking and her family has been denied access to visit her. The Center urges the international community to investigate her case and pressure the Chinese authorities for her immediate and unconditional release. Police abducted Ms. Hu Miaomiao (胡苗苗), a Falun Gong practitioner from Chaigoupu Town in Hebei province's Huai'an county, from her home on the morning of June 15, 2010. Without informing her family, she was quickly sent to the Hebei Province Women's Re-education Through Labor Camp in Shijiazhuang. [...] In June, they tortured Ms. Hu by repeatedly stabbing broom handles into her vagina, causing her severe physical and psychological trauma.[...] She remains in extreme pain. To read more: http://faluninfo.net/article/1098/?cid=84 Background on rape and sexual assault of Falun Gong practitioners in custody: http://faluninfo.net/topic/14/ FDIC: Elderly Falun Gong Practitioner Dies at Labor Camp within Days of Arrival
Nov. 9: "An elderly man from northeast China who police abducted in September to force him to renounce Falun Gong died in custody on October 30, 2010. As 61-year-old Mr. Zhang Qingjun (张庆君) sought to resist the forced conversion efforts, he was quickly sent from the informal brainwashing facility to a labor camp in Jilin province. According to sources inside China, he died just eight days after arriving there. Zhang's detention and death are tied to a reinvigorated three-year, multi-billion dollar campaign initiated in 2010 to target Falun Gong practitioners across China for intensified "transformation" efforts. The campaign was revealed in a series of internal Communist Party documents, some of them posted online, released by the Falun Dafa Information Center last month (news)." To read more: http://faluninfo.net/article/1097/?cid=84 Wall Street Journal: Chinese Twitter Clone Rejecting Falun Gong Messages
Nov. 28: "A Chinese Twitter-style website that was shut down last year at a politically sensitive time appeared to have been resurrected Friday, though it wasn't the same site users remember. [...] In tests, messages mentioning recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, the Dalai Lama and the words "free Tibet" all successfully posted to a Fanfou account and were visible to followers of that account. But the service rejected messages containing the words "Falun Gong," the name of a spiritual [group] banned in China, responding: "Sorry, the message failed to send, it may contain inappropriate content. :(" To read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/11/28/return-of-the-china-twitter-clone/ U.S. State Department: 2010 Religious Freedom report cites ongoing persecution, torture of Falun Gong practitioners Nov. 17: "There were credible reports from NGOs and international media that detentions of Falun Gong practitioners increased around sensitive dates. In certain areas neighborhood groups were reportedly instructed to report on Falun Gong members; monetary rewards have been offered to citizens who informed on Falun Gong practitioners. Family members reported the harsh treatment of Falun Gong practitioners, including the use of torture. Falun Gong practitioners were also subjected to detention in psychiatric hospitals on the orders of public security officials. Falun Gong practitioners detained in psychiatric hospitals were reportedly administered medicine against their will and subjected to electric shock treatment. [...] In January 2010 authorities detained Guo Xiaojun, a former lecturer at a Shanghai university and confiscated Falun Gong materials from his home. Although detained, Guo had not been charged with any crime during the reporting period. [...] In March 2010 Li Yaohua and her daughter Zhang Yibo of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region were sentenced to three and a half and one and a half years in prison respectively for practicing Falun Gong. They were reportedly physically abused by police in detention. To read more: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2010/148863.htm Wired: Digital Weapons Help Dissidents Punch Holes in China's Great Firewall Nov. 1: "The curt knock on the door of his hotel room woke Alan Huang with a start. He looked at the clock: 5:30 am. [...] He groggily undid the lock--and found a half-dozen police officers in the corridor. The cops were there, they said, because the 37-year-old software engineer was a follower of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Huang ended up packed into a cold cell with 20 other men, sleeping on the floor in shifts and forced to clean pigpens every day. [...] After a very long two weeks and the help of a few American politicians, Huang and two other US-based Falun Gong practitioners who had accompanied him were released. 'I got lucky because I was a US resident,' he says. 'Others were not so lucky.'
Huang has hunched shoulders and a round face thatched with bushy black hair; his bashful mien occasionally retreats into a nervous giggle. He's no charismatic revolutionary. But by 2002, he had assembled a dozen like-minded Falun Gong-practicing colleagues. In the small garage attached to his four-bedroom bungalow, they developed a digital weapon for their compatriots back in China: a program designed to foil government censorship and surveillance. Dubbed UltraSurf, it has since become one of the most important free-speech tools on the Internet, used by millions from China to Saudi Arabia." To read more: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/ff_firewallfighters/ The Epoch Times: Capricious Singaporean Laws Used to Target Meditator Nov. 17: "Mr. Chua Eng Chwee, 71 years old, has been meditating at the Esplanade underpass in downtown Singapore every day for 10 years--ever since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting practitioners of the Falun Gong belief. [...] In what appears to be a gross misapplication of the law, a Singapore judge has pronounced Mr. Chua guilty of four instances of vandalism and one charge of failing to leave the Esplanade when ordered by the police. In the prosecutor's closing argument, he asked the court for a fine of 2,000 Singapore dollars (US$1,532) and caning for each of the vandalism charges, and a fine of 20,000 Singapore dollars for the charge of failing to move on. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 23. [...] Given his long presence there, it was surprising when, within a one-week period in October of 2009, he was charged five times by police. He was one of seven practitioners to receive charges that week. The sudden rash of police actions coincided with the APEC summit being held in Singapore, which included China's leader Hu Jintao and a large Chinese delegation. These charges fit a pattern. In 2000, 2004, and 2006, practitioners in Singapore were also suddenly arrested, with their arrests coinciding with visits by Chinese officials. To read more: http://theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/46056/ For a detailed analysis of problematic legal proceedings against Falun Gong practitioners in recent years, see: "Strange Occurrences in a Singapore Court": http://www.temasekreview.com/2010/11/16/strange-occurrences-in-a-singapore-court/
The Epoch Times: Six thousand Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners form golden lotus flower
Dec 2: "Approximately six thousand Falun Gong practitioners in Taiwan gathered at the Taipei Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Nov. 27 to make a 295x394 feet formation of a lotus flower and the Chinese characters "Zhen Shan Ren" (meaning truth, compassion, forbearance). This is the first lotus flower formation Falun Gong practitioners have made (photo).
[...] Wu Qingxiang, who has designed the formation of Chinese characters for Falun Gong practitioners' activities for many years, said that the lotus formation was a bigger challenge than any design he had done before. He said that each of the twenty lotus petals had a different shape, and there were three layers of petals, making the formation difficult and challenging to create. On Nov. 27, Taiwan residents and foreign tourists, including mainland Chinese, stopped to admire and take photos of the formation."
To read more:http://theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/46858/ For additional comparison on Falun Gong in Taiwan versus Mainland China, see "What a Difference a Strait Makes": http://faluninfo.net/article/519/
http://faluninfo.net/article/1099/
