(Minghui.org) The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), a non-governmental human rights organization headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, issued a statement about the Chinese government denying international travel for Wang Zhiwen, a well-known Falun Gong practitioner in Beijing. ISHR also condemned the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong.
The ISHR stated that 67-year-old Wang was among the first batch of Falun Gong practitioners to be arrested and sentenced to prison. Wang and another three main practitioner coordinators were sentenced to 16 year prison terms on December 26, 1999. The sentence was broadcast via all TV stations in China. The CCP government intended to intimidate all Falun Gong practitioners and block protests.
During his imprisonment, Wang's hair turned gray within a few months due to physical and mental mistreatment and torture. Wang was incarcerated for 15 years and released on October 18, 2014. Wang was healthy before imprisonment, but developed high blood pressure and had a stroke while imprisoned. He was locked in a brainwashing center in Changping for one week after being released, and has since been under house arrest. The government dispatched two people to patrol near his home every day, and installed four surveillance cameras to monitor him.
Wang's daughter, Danielle Wang, went to Beijing with her husband in early August to help her father to leave China. But a border patrol agent at customs claimed that Wang's passport had been canceled, and cut off a corner of it to invalidate it. Wang's daughter and her husband returned to the U.S., forced to leave her father in China.
ISHR listed the following requests to the CCP in the statement: Allow Wang to leave China, immediately stop the forced live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and bring those perpetrators to justice, close all forced labor facilities, release all prisoners of conscience, and stop the persecution of Falun Gong.
Background
ISHR is an international non-governmental human rights organization. It is the second largest human rights organization after Amnesty International. It is an observer in the European Council and a councilor for The United Nations Economic and Social Council. It was established in Frankfurt, Germany in 1972, and later set up branch offices in Austria, Sweden, England, and France. It now has branch offices in 35 countries.
