Between Heaven and Earth

Rally and Grand Parade Celebrate Falun Dafa Day in Hong Kong

2009-05-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

Epoch Times Staff May 13, 2009

Falun Gong practitioners of Hong Kong celebrate World Falun Dafa Day and wish Mr. Li Hongzhi a happy birthday. (Li Ming/Epoch Times)

HONG KONG —May 13, 2009 is the tenth anniversary of the World Falun Dafa Day, and the seventeenth anniversary of Falun Gong being taught to the public. Also, it is the fifty-eighth birthday of Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong. To celebrate the upcoming holiday, Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong staged a grand assembly and parade on Sunday, May 10. Many local people, mainlanders, and foreign tourists stopped to watch along the parade route.

According to the coordinator of the event, because Hong Kong is so close to mainland China, we hope that by having this event, they will want to tell their fellow Chinese in the mainland: "Falun Dafa is wonderful." In the meantime, they hope that more people will learn the facts and then step up to stop the Chinese Communist Party's persecution.

The harmonious music of the Falun Gong exercises rises over the Recreation Complex at Cheung Sha Wan in Kowloon at 10 am, as hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners start their group exercises there.

The resounding music of the Divine Land Marching band played during the afternoon marking the start of the celebration activities.

The Divine Land Marching Band parades through Hong Kong. (Li Ming/Epoch Times)

Mr. Leung, a local resident came specially for the events. “I have participated many times!” he said, and he felt that “truthfulness-compassion-forbearance” is rooted in practitioners' hearts, so they're in perfect order. “Since there are Falun Gong practitioners, not only is there hope in China, but hope in the entire world. As long as the CCP still exists, the world won't be very promising,” he commented emotionally.

Tourist from Mainland China: 'Stunning! Super!'

Around 2 pm, the grand parade started with the Divine Land Marching Band, they routed through the busiest streets in Kowloon. All the practitioners in the float held all kinds of banners and flags, which drew attention from many local residents and tourists. Many tourists from mainland China expressed their surprise. A young female tourist told the reporter: “I am from the mainland, and have never seen this before, I feel stunned!” the other female tourist holding up Falun Gong related fliers and a DVD said happily: “Super!” and added few times: “I support Falun Gong!”

The parade drew the attention of Hong Kongers. (Li Ming/Epoch Times)

Many people took pictures behind the scenes along the route. A young tourist from mainland China said excitedly: “I have never seen this in mainland China, it's my first time even in Hong Kong, this is very exciting, very interesting!” A senior tourist said: “It's a liberal and democratic society in Hong Kong, you can say whatever you want, people have freedom.”

A lady holding a child said she believed in her heart: “It's different in mainland China, and Hong Kong is different (from China), I feel they are two different worlds.” She also said that she's supportive of Falun Gong's peaceful efforts to stop the persecution.

A Special Wish on Mother's Day

2009-05-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

Asking for freedom of prisoners of conscience

Epoch Times By Jin Pang May 10, 2009

Jin Pang and her mother (left). (Jin Pang)

If I knew this day would come, when I could not talk to my mom on Mother¹s Day, or even find out if she was safe and unharmed, I would have cherished every single moment I spent with her.

Sunday will be a sad day for me. It will be the first Mother’s Day in my life that I can¹t talk to my Mom. Instead, I will be worrying about her wellbeing, because she has been held for over nine months in a detention center in China, simply for her belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation practice banned by the communist regime.

On July 9, 2008, to “prepare” for the Olympics, about a dozen police broke into my parents’ home in Weifang, Shandong Province, and confiscated three laptops, two desktop computers, a digital camera, some bank deposits, Falun Gong informational materials and other personal belongings worth an estimated 50,000 yuan (about $7,000). On the same day, about 100 other Falun Gong practitioners were also arrested in the same city.

Three weeks later, on July 29, 2008, just one week before the Beijing Olympics, the police took away my parents while they were at a friend’s house, and held them in the Weifang City detention center. Afterwards, they ransacked my parents' house again and took many valuable personal belongings, including the rest of the bank deposits. My father was released one month later because he doesn’t practice Falun Gong, but my mother has been detained ever since.

This isn’t the first time that my mother has been persecuted for her belief. She has been practicing Falun Gong and following the core principles of its teachings—Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance—since 1995, when people from all walks of life were performing the Tai-chi like exercises in almost every park in China. As with millions of others, Falun Gong benefited my mom both mentally and physically, curing her dermatosis and greatly improving her disposition.

But the Communist Party, irrationally fearing that Falun Gong’s increasing popularity could be a potential threat to its power, banned it in 1999, and has been carrying out a ruthless campaign against it since then.

In January 2000, my mom and eight other Falun Gong practitioners began practicing the exercises quietly in a public square. After a few minutes, all of them were arrested and taken to a local police station. That night, they were detained in a cold cement cell that was less than nine square meters, where they were shocked with electric batons and beaten with spiked clubs.

After 11 days of torture, my mom had lost a front tooth, the skin all over her body was burned, and her legs were full of bruises and covered in blood. She was released after the police extorted 2,000 yuan (about US $300, more than a month’s average salary in that city) from my father.

During the past 9 months of detention, no family members were allowed to see my Mom. I don’t have any information about her. I am afraid they may be torturing her again. On many nights, I have awakened in tears after dreaming about her.

My mother isn¹t the only one in this situation. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, over 8,000 Falun Gong practitioners throughout China were detained before and during the 2008 Olympics, and 104 were persecuted to death, which brings the total death toll to 3263 in the ten-year persecution.

It may be hard for people who live in the free world to imagine someone being persecuted for doing things we take for granted here, such as reading religious teachings, doing yoga-like exercises and downloading information about human rights from the Internet.

But that has not stopped many kind-hearted Americans from lending their generous support. From the 3,000 Missourians who signed petitions to rescue my Mom, to the 18 state representatives and senators, to Congressman Blunt, Congressman Clay, and Senator McCaskill, who wrote to the Chinese government or Secretary Clinton about my mother's case, I can see the spirit and founding principles that make this nation truly great. I am deeply touched by all the support given to me.

There are also many other sons and daughters whose mothers have been imprisoned, tortured and even killed in this persecution. Most of them endure their grief silently, as they are not as fortunate as I to have this opportunity to tell their mothers' stories.

May all the mothers who are prisoners of conscience be set free! This is my special wish on this Mother’s Day.

Jin Pang is a graduating MBA student in Missouri State University in Springfield, MO.

China and the Falun Gong:Abraham L. Halpern

2009-05-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

May 4, 2009 - Letter To the Editor:

Re “After 10 Years and 2,000 Deaths, China Still Presses Its Crusade Against Falun Gong” (news article, April 28):

NY Times: At a meeting of the World Psychiatric Association in 2004, the Chinese Psychiatric Society agreed to allow an independent review committee to investigate reports of involuntary psychiatric “treatment” of non-mentally ill Falun Gong practitioners.

In short order, however, the Chinese government forbade such interference in its internal affairs.

In subsequent years, many American and other foreign psychiatrists have visited China, but no inspection of any of the maximum-security psychiatric institutions has taken place. Reports of misuse of psychiatry in China persist.

Abraham L. Halpern
Palm Beach, Fla., April 28, 2009

The writer is emeritus professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College.

After 10 Years and 2,000 Deaths, China Still Presses Its Crusade Against Falun Gong

2009-04-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

By ANDREW JACOBS

Published: April 27, 2009

NY Times: BEIJING — In the decade since the Chinese government began repressing Falun Gong, a crusade that human rights groups say has led to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of practitioners and claimed at least 2,000 lives, the world’s attention has long since shifted elsewhere.

The drive against the spiritual group has eliminated its leadership, decimated the ranks of faithful and convinced many Chinese that the group is an “evil cult,” as the government contends. But 10 years on, the war on Falun Gong remains unfinished.

In the past year, as many as 8,000 practitioners have been detained, according to experts on human rights, and at least 100 have died in custody. Among them were Yu Zhou, 42, a popular Beijing musician, and Cao Changling, the 77-year-old vice director of a paper plant in Wuhan, whose bruised body was returned to his family by the police last summer just as China was reveling in the glory of the Olympic Games.

In recent months, scores of practitioners have been given long prison terms, including Zhang Xingwu, a retired physics professor from Shandong Province who last week was sentenced to seven years after the police found Falun Gong literature in his apartment, according to family members.

The continued crackdown highlights the difficulty of eradicating a movement whose adherents stubbornly cling to their beliefs, but it also provides a window into the psyche of an authoritarian government that, despite its far-reaching power, remains deeply insecure.

From the outset, the group, which at its peak claimed to have millions of followers around China, insisted that it wanted only legal recognition, not political power. But the country’s top leaders were alarmed by the group’s ability to attract a devoted following from so many citizens — from retired functionaries to pimple-faced college students.

The decision to ban the group entirely was made after 10,000 Falun Gong adherents staged a silent protest outside the gates of Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party’s leadership compound in Beijing, to complain about reports in the state-run media that the group said were defamatory. Security forces apparently had no advance knowledge of the demonstration, which took place on April 25, 1999, and they began treating the group as a threat to national security.

“Even a soccer team with an organization like Falun Gong might have produced the same reaction,” said T. Kumar, the Asia advocacy director for Amnesty International.

Although the propaganda juggernaut has eased in recent years, Falun Gong remains a toxic subject in China. Few academics will speak about it on the record, and the Internet is scoured clean of information that might be construed as sympathetic to Falun Gong, an amalgam of Buddhism, mysticism and qigong, the traditional exercise regimen that remains broadly popular here.

For the Falun Gong devotees who practice in secret, the only glimmer of hope has come from a small but growing number of lawyers who have dared to take on their cases. Even if the legal efforts have mostly come to naught, until recently Falun Gong detainees were denied even the right to a lawyer.

Last week, Jiang Yu, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, reiterated the government’s long-held stance that Falun Gong warrants suppression because it emphasizes meditation and the paranormal over modern medicine. “The Falun Gong cult violates human rights by controlling people’s minds,” he said in response to a reporter’s query.

Among experts based outside the country, there is broad consensus that the government’s efforts have not done much to advance its own interests, at least internationally, where it has been dogged by allegations that it uses torture to crush believers into submission.

‘The excesses and the savagery have really lowered the quality of the government and harmed its reputation abroad,” said Jerome Cohen, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Chinese law. “They’re paying a high price for the cruelty to these people.”

According to Falun Gong followers and Chinese lawyers who take on their cases, that cruelty continues unabated.

Among those swept up in the purge were Yu Zhou, the musician, and his wife, Xu Na. They were stopped for speeding in January 2008, according to their lawyer. After the police found Falun Gong materials in their car, both were detained. Ten days later, Mr. Yu’s sister was told that her brother was gravely ill, the result, she was told, of a hunger strike complicated by diabetes. His sister, Yu Qun, says her brother did not have diabetes. She contends that he died at the hands of his captors.

The family’s efforts to probe Mr. Yu’s death have been thwarted by the police and prosecutors, who refuse to allow an autopsy or even issue a death certificate.

Ms. Xu, who is a well-known poet and painter, was given a three-year term.

“I don’t understand why this happened to them because they didn’t do anything to break the law and they weren’t promoting the group,” Ms. Yu said.

According to former detainees and human rights organizations, Falun Gong detainees are frequently subjected to harrowing abuse, particularly those who refuse to swear off their faith. Bu Dongwei, 41, a longtime adherent who spent three years in a labor camp, said he was forced to share a room with about 30 people, most of them petty thieves and drug addicts who were encouraged to abuse the Falun Gong detainees.

Mr. Bu, a trained geneticist, was given asylum in December and now lives in Los Angeles.

While the group’s initial goals were official legitimacy and an end to persecution, the ceaseless campaign against them has radicalized many adherents, especially those living outside China. In cities around the world, Falun Gong devotees — and their offbeat re-enactments of torture and gory visual aids — have become a common sight.

Falun Dafa, the organization that oversees the movement from its headquarters in New York, is led by Li Hongzhi, a former grain clerk who began spreading his mystical brand of qigong in 1992 but fled China before the crackdown began. Once known for charismatic preaching, he has spent much of the past decade living a reclusive life in Queens.

David Ownby, the author of “Falun Gong and the Future of China,” said that Mr. Li and his followers may have made a tactical mistake by massing in Beijing, but that the Communist Party erred by interpreting their actions as a threat to its rule.

“If either side had played their cards more intelligently, Falun Gong could have been co-opted by the government,” said Mr. Ownby, who is a professor of East Asian studies at the University of Montreal. He added, “This horrific loss of life could have been avoided.”

The great protest that changed the face of China forever

2009-04-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

By Editor Thursday, April 23, 2009

CFP: It was on April 25, 1999, that Falun Gong first gained worldwide attention when some 10,000 adherents petitioned the central government in Beijing. Those gathering asked officials to release 40 practitioners who had recently been subjected to police abuse and unlawfully detained, and called for protection of their right to practice their beliefs in peace.

Falun Gong is a peaceful meditative practice called “qigong” that offers its adherents improved health and well-being through gentle exercises and teachings that espouse the values of truth, compassion, and tolerance. First introduced in 1992 by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the practice quickly grew and even had the support of many Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in China.

However, a small circle of politicians in China grew leery of Falun Gong as the practice grew increasingly popular. False accusations against the practice began appearing in state-run media in 1996, with Falun Gong books being banned from publication the same year. By 1998 the Chinese government estimated there were over 70 million practitioners in China. Individuals within the Public Security Bureau (PSB) continued escalating infringements upon the group by dispersing members at exercise sessions, searching homes, and confiscating property. Practitioners reported these abuses to the government 18 times between 1998 and 1999 using the form of lawful, nonviolent public appeals.

After a Tianjin-based magazine wrongly accused Falun Gong, some 40 practitioners were violently seized and detained by police when they peacefully voiced their concerns. Tianjin city officials afterward advised practitioners to go to Beijing to express their grievances, since the PSB was involved. Acting in accordance with their constitutional right to assemble and appeal, on April 25, 1999, over 10,000 gathered outside Beijing’s Office of Appeals, located beside Zhongnanhai, home to the Communist Party’s top leadership.

The gathering was peaceful, silent, lawful, and did not obstruct traffic. Practitioners requested the release of those detained in Tianjin, a lifting of the publishing ban, and freedom from police harassment when exercising. Initial talks with then-Premier Zhu Rongji led to a resolution and the release of those detained. However, Zhu’s handling of the situation was later overturned by then-Party head Jiang Zemin, who misrepresented April 25 as “the day that Falun Gong lay siege to the Government.”

In July 1999, Jiang outlawed the practice and began a violent campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong, leading to large-scale imprisonment, torture, and the deaths of adherents. According to a 2006 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, 66 percent of reported victims of torture in previous years were Falun Gong practitioners. To date, the deaths of 3,253 practitioners as a result of persecution by the Chinese authorities have been confirmed by the Falun Dafa Information Center.

April 25 was a principled response to police brutality and months of illegal activity by security personnel. What’s tragic is that the lawful, nonviolent gathering was seized upon by the Chinese regime’s head, Jiang Zemin, as an excuse to launch a campaign bent on ‘eradicating’ Falun Gong.

Saturday’s vigils will continue the tradition of peaceful demonstration begun by the Falun Gong on April 25, 1999 renewing calls for the Beijing regime to end a ten-year campaign of suppression. Falun Gong practitioners and their supporters will participate in candlelight vigils and rallies mostly outside Chinese embassies and consulates in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and other cities around the world. Victims of the persecution who have escaped from China and individuals who were present at the original April 25th appeal will be participating in these activities.

Marie Beaulieu,
Victoria, BC

Confidential Documents Portray Persecution of Falun Gong

2009-04-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

'Not guilty' verdicts banned

By Zhang Haishan
Epoch Times Staff Apr 2, 2009

Some lawyers who’ve defended Falun Gong adherents (L-R): Lee Subin, Mo Shaoping, Guo Guoting, Jiang Tian-Yong, Li Heping (The Epoch Times)

“Not guilty”is not allowed. That is the directive in one of two top-secret Chinese documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times that reveal some of the inner workings of the Chinese regime’s continuing persecution of Falun Gong. These documents provide a mixed picture of a crackdown made more severe even while officials worry that a court might choose not to go along with it and defense lawyers seek to prove the persecution is illegal.

The persecution of Falun Gong officially began on July 20, 1999, almost ten years ago. When the persecution began, it received very prominent media coverage in the state-run media and featured show trials of Falun Gong adherents.

In recent years, the regime’s strategy has changed. Media do not report on cases brought against Falun Gong adherents, and the courts, the legislature, and the police have enforced the persecution largely out of sight of the public.

Orchestrating the persecution behind the scences hs been the 610 Office, an extra-constitutional office with power over all levels of the state’s bureaucracy established for the purpose of persecuting Falun Gong. The regime has denied that the 610 Office exists.

The two documents confirm the existence of the 610 Office and show that office seeking to manage the persecution.

A document issued by the Qingdao Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Feb. 27 is said to be on the authority of a “unified directive from the Central, Provincial, and Municipal Party Committees.”

According to the document, Qingdao City is required to “strictly eliminate, investigate, guard against, and control the Falun Gong adherents; prevent Falun Gong adherents from watching and disseminating the New Tang Dynasty TV program; coordinate relevant departments to strengthen measures to control the Internet, radio, television, telephone, and fax; prioritize online publicity and strengthen foreign propaganda,” and so on.

According to Mr. Erping Zhang of the Association for Asian Research, “The detailed list of actions the Qingdao City officials are required by this document to take, including making sure that Falun Gong adherents not disseminate TV programs, suggests that the Falun Gong they are enjoined to ‘control’ are in fact very active.”

Prohibiting ‘Not Guilty’ Verdicts

A 610 office in Shenyang City issued this secret document on Feb 10, 2009. It provides a few pieces of detailed information about how the 610 office controls the legal processes in cases dealing with Falun Gong. Double click on the photo to see a larger image.(Photo provided by a CCP official)

A document issued on Feb. 10 by the 610 Office of the Tiexie District in Shenyang City describes various judicial processes used in persecuting Falun Gong.

The document requires that, “City courts implement internal audit systems, check guidelines, and strictly carry out orders to ensure ‘not guilty' verdicts are denied to Falun Gong adherents. Otherwise, the first case of a ‘not guilty' verdict will be a national political joke.

“Those charged can be, according to the individual's transformation [‘transformation' refers to coercing a Falun Gong adherent to denounce Falun Gong, inform on other Falun Gong adherents, and apologize for practicing Falun Gong], performance, and evidence, given a sentence reduction, deferred, or freed. However, the not-guilty verdict is absolutely not allowed.”

Zhang commented, "The ban on 'not-guilty' verdicts for Falun Gong adherents is not new—for ten years persecuted Falun Gong adherents have in most cases not even been allowed a trial. What is new is the need the 610 Office now feels to try to enforce 'not guilty' verdicts. The 610 Office clearly fears that a court might return such a verdict, and so they issued this document. This document is a testimony to how the Falun Gong adherents have been changing the situation in China so that the failure of the persecution is now anticipated by those charged with enforcing it."

Emerging Defense Lawyers

According to the analysis of a lawyer in Mainland China, the persecution of Falun Gong has no legal standing. According to this lawyer, the documents obtained by The Epoch Times are in fact encouraging and instigating regime officials at all levels to commit crimes.

Many more lawyers are coming out to defend Falun Gong adherents. In court, these lawyers base their defense on the claim that the Chinese law does not prohibit practicing Falun Gong or telling others the facts about Falun Gong and its persecution.

Recently, there have been reports of nine attorneys representing 13 Falun Gong adherents in Qingdao, seven lawyers pleading not guilty for Zhong Fanqing and 10 other Falun Gong adherents, and ten lawyers pleading not guilty for 6 Shenyang Falun Gong adherents.

The 2008 Shenbei Case

Around the time of the Olympic Games, four Falun Gong adherents in Shenbei, in the New District of Shenyang City, were arrested. They were Xi Changhai, Wang Sumei, Sun Yusu, and Huo Fefu. Xi Changhai is a retired 60-year-old elementary school teacher, and Sun Yusu and Huo Defu are both from the same village.

According to insiders, there was serious disagreement in the handling of the case. A public-security-bureau-level official of the Shenbei New District, suggested going through the formalities and releasing the accused.

However, the head of the local 610 Office, Sun Yong-Gang, insisted on complying with the regime’s policy and dealing with the Falun Gong adherents quickly and severely.

As a result, at the end of 2008, the Shenbei case concluded with heavy sentences. Wang Sumei was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Xi Changhai, 11 years, Sun Yusu, 8 years, and Huo Fefu, 6 years.

The sentences given the four in Shenbei appear to be part of a pattern. The Falun Dafa Information Center reports in a recent article since the end of the Beijing Olympics "a significant increase in the number of Falun Gong adherents being sentenced via criminal trials to lengthy prison terms."

The harshness of the verdicts in Shenbei pushed for by the 610 Office, occurring in the context of at least one official's ambivalence in enforcing the persecution, perhaps mirrors the essence of the confidential documents recently obtained by The Epoch Times.

Read the original Chinese article here.

Trade Minister Urged to Raise Human Rights Issue on China Trip

2009-04-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

Falun Gong practitioners seek release of family members, supporters

By Cindy Chan
Epoch Times Staff Apr 6, 2009

Falun Gong practitioners Chen Guizhi and Yao Lian with David Kilgour, former Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), on Canada’s Parliament Hill April 6, calling on Trade Minister Stockwell Day to urge China to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

OTTAWA—On the eve of International Trade Minister Stockwell Day’s trip to Japan and China on Tuesday, Canadian Falun Gong practitioners are calling on him to urge China to stop the persecution against their practice and release all prisoners.

Among the jailed practitioners are ten who have close Canadian family ties.

At a press conference on Parliament Hill on Monday, Yao Lian said she worries about her husband every minute. Ma Jian was sentenced to labour camp for two and a half years in April 2007.

It has been 767 days and Ms. Yao has not been able to get any information about her husband. “You cannot imagine how long these 767 days [have been] for me,” she said.

Yao herself had been arrested and tortured more than once in China for practising Falun Gong.

“My personal experience tells me my husband might face brutal beatings and corporal punishment, sleep deprivation, brainwashing classes aimed at crushing his spirit, and even organ harvesting.”

David Kilgour, former Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), knows a great deal about this subject. He and Winnipeg-based international human rights lawyer David Matas launched an investigation in 2006 and have released a report confirming allegations that the Chinese regime is using Falun Gong prisoners of conscience as a live organ bank to supply an illicit trade in human organs.

“From eventually 52 kinds of proof, we concluded beyond any doubt that the government of China since 2001 has killed without any form of prior trial thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in order to sell their vital organs for high prices to ‘organ tourists,’” Mr. Kilgour said at the press conference.

Mr. Day will be travelling to China to open six new trade offices. Mr. Kilgour wants to encourage him to raise the issue of unfair trade, in particular the export of products made by forced labour.

Falun Gong practitioner Chen Guizhi, 62, told of her experience. She served more than four years in a labour camp in China.

Under appalling conditions, the prisoners were forced to work without pay from about 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., sometimes until midnight, to fill high quotas, Ms. Chen said. She sewed purses, knit sweaters, packed tea, and made toys, among other tasks, and some of these products were for export.

“If we couldn’t finish our quota, the punishment could be extending our terms,” Ms. Chen said in her statement translated into English.

Forced labour product export is unfair trade “in one of its worst abuses,” and Mr. Kilgour hopes Mr. Day will raise this issue when he is in China.

“Cheap goods” from China have been dominating most world markets in recent years and can be linked to the loss of manufacturing jobs in Canada and elsewhere, and “slave labour is certainly one reason for this phenomenon,” Mr. Kilgour said.

Following Mr. Day’s speech at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce last Friday, an audience member asked him to raise the issue of human rights to the Chinese government during his trip.

Mr. Day noted that “the issue of human rights and the promotion of trade are not mutually exclusive. This has been a part of our policy.”

Canada was the second largest donor to the earthquake-devastated region of China, and Mr. Day will be visiting the reconstruction taking place there, with “significant parts” being done with Canadian wood products and housing products, Mr. Day said.

In October 2002, prior to then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s meeting with then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin at the APEC summit, Mr. Day co-sponsored a House of Commons motion that eventually led to the release of several Falun Gong practitioners in China. Conservative MP Scott Reid had introduced the motion to ask Mr. Chrétien to raise the issue of 13 jailed practitioners who had close Canadian family ties. The motion passed unanimously.

Falun Dafa Association of Canada (FDAC) is also seeking the release of all supporters and defenders of Falun Gong, in particular renowned lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gao Zhisheng, who has been severely tortured and whose cause was recently championed by Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

In 2006, en route to the APEC conference in Vietnam, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his government will uphold “important Canadian values” in the context of human rights and “not sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

These words were “very encouraging for all the people suffering in China. We are hoping our government will stay true to the words,” said FDAC spokesperson Lucy Zhou.

Falun Gong Reports Persecution to the U.N.

2009-04-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

By Arleen Freeman
Epoch Times Staff Mar 31, 2009

L–R: FLGHR European delegate, Mr Yang Liu; torture victim Haiyan Wang; U.N. Arbitrary Detention group Chairwoman-Rapporteur Ms. Manuela Carmena Castrillo (Spain); witness Yu Wang, U.N. Special Rapporteur Mr. Philip Alston (Australia); FLGHR Chairman, Dr (Courtesy of Falun Gong Human Rights)

Brainwashing, beatings, torture, and death in custody are what Falun Gong practitioners reported to the United Nations Human Rights Council at its March session.

The United Nations held the 10th U.N. Human Rights Council session in Geneva March 2-27. An organization called Falun Gong Human Rights (FLGHR) arranged for a number of Falun Gong practitioners who the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had persecuted to attend the meeting. They told their stories, thus helping the listeners to understand the brutality the CCP committed against them.

Delegates from numerous governments and human rights organizations developed a deeper understanding and many were moved to tears as they listened attentively to the practitioners’ personal stories of torture and abuse.

As the CCP continually denies its severe human rights violations, many do not fully realize the severity and the scale of its persecution of Falun Gong and other groups. When the victims showed the scars from being tortured and discussed their suffering, it helped the U.N. delegates understand the reality taking place in China under the CCP.

One example is Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Haiyan Wang from Guangdong Province. She was a fashion designer, living with her family before the persecution started in 1999. After the persecution started, the CCP detained her six times, put her into a labor camp twice, searched her home twice, and extorted money from her family members twice. In one incident on June 13, 2002, when she distributed materials about Falun Gong in a shopping center, 610 officers beat her and threw her to the ground, causing damage to her right eye and her brain. The 610 office was created by the CCP to oversee the wide scale effort to persecute Falun Gong.

She lost consciousness, but the police did not send her to the hospital. Instead, they took her back to the detention center to continue persecuting her. When they finally hospitalized her the next morning, the doctor found her eye tissue had been bruised, she had lost hearing in her left ear, and she suffered pain and partial paralysis in her legs. The doctor recommended immediate hospitalization, but the CCP, afraid that she would expose their torture of her, pulled out the IV and oxygen tube and brought her back to the Guangzhou Dongshan Detention Center.

Ms. Wang’s ordeal continued until 2005, when she managed to escape on foot to Thailand and eventually to the United States. Due to the lack of medical attention, she became permanently blind in her right eye.

Ms. Wang nearly died four times; the CCP forced her husband to divorce her and extorted 17,000 yuan from her family; yet even in Thailand, she spent 408 days in the Immigration Detention Center in Bangkok.

When Haiyan Wang told the delegates about her and her fellow practitioners’ experiences, many of them were moved to tears.

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Hongchang Liu was detained seven times. On Feb. 9, 2001, the police beat him so severely that they broke his ribs. He managed to escape from prison, and remained homeless to avoid arrest. After being homeless for 97 days, they found and arrested him, sentencing him to five years in prison.

During those five years, Mr. Hongchang suffered beatings, brainwashing, and torture. He was also a witness when five Falun Gong practitioners, who had been detained with him, were tortured to death.

New Zealand practitioner Ms. Yu Wang appealed for her mother Ms. Lijin Zhu, who was arrested on Feb. 1, 2009. She is being held in the Banqiao woman’s labor camp in Tianjin.

Dr. Shizhong Chen, Chairman and spokesperson for FLGHR, introduced the victims to many U.N. delegates. Dr. Chen pointed out that very few manage to escape from China as Ms. Haiyan Wang and Mr. Hongchang Liu did. Out of a population of 1.4 billion, nearly one thousand practitioners who the CCP has persecuted have escaped. Every one of them witnessed their fellow Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted or even tortured to death.

Likewise, there are several thousand overseas Falun Gong practitioners like Yu Wang, whose family members have been persecuted in China. As this suggests how extensive the persecution really is, Dr. Chen appealed to the U.N. that society should help Falun Gong practitioners, because they are the defenders of human conscience.

Slandering the Falun Gong

2009-03-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

Published in The Vancouver Province March 31, 2009

I'm appalled at your sensationalist piece that makes the Falun Gong group appear like criminals guilty of bribery. This is simply a case of Chinese immigrants not understanding the laws around freedom of the press in Canada who perhaps thought they could buy a paid ad in a paper to replace a piece that defamed their faith.

The piece from Asian Pacific Post was laced with the Chinese Communist party's slanderous propaganda on Falun Gong and the APP issued several similar pieces after that.

So I can't say I entirely blame the Epoch Press manager for getting paranoid and having second thoughts about printing this bad piece slandering his faith.

Whether the Falun Gong are dancing, playing music in a marching band or simply meditating, it seems most of their activities are interfered with by the Chinese Consulate -- and this has been happening on Canadian soil as well as in China for 10 years.

Why does Canadian media, like APP, carry the hate speech of these communist dictators? And if one Falun Gong adherent makes an honest mistake does it make all of them bad? Not so.

Marie Beaulieu, Victoria

Falun Gong Barred From Montreal St. Patrick’s Day Parade

2009-03-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

By Joan Delaney
Epoch Times Staff Mar 20, 2009

The Tian Guo Marching Band The Tian Guo Marching Band performs at the St. Patrick's Day parade in Chateauguay, Quebec, on March 15, 2009. The parade, which included 60 contingents, was led by Tian Guo.

Montreal Falun Gong practitioners were told they were not allowed to participate in the city’s popular St. Patrick’s Day parade last Sunday because they are “political.”

An email from Beverly Murphy, VP of organization with the United Irish Societies of Montreal, to Falun Gong coordinator Zhu Ying, said the group will not be allowed entry “due to the political nature of your contingent.”

Ying, however, believes pressure was put on parade organizers by the Chinese embassy to bar the Falun Gong contingent, which includes the Tian Guo Marching Band. The group has participated in the parade for the last five years.

“One of their committee members told our practitioners clearly that they received a letter from the Chinese embassy. That was after the parade in 2008. But this person did not want his name to be made public.”

Gerald Showers, spokesperson for United Irish Societies of Montreal, denies this.

“That’s not true. We were never contacted by any government. We tried to just tell them were an open book and there’s no Chinese government that’s going to tell us who we should or should not have in the parade.”

In an email exchange between Murphy and Ying, Murphy wrote: “You mention that you have handed out these pamphlets in previous parades but it was not brought to our attention until after last year’s parade.”

The issue of the letter from the Chinese embassy was raised by Chengzhi Jin during a meeting with the organizing committee on March 12 which Ying attended.

“Their [the committee’s] lawyer, McConomy Leverman, said, ‘I’m warning you, be very careful what you say,’” Ying says.

Showers insists the group has been excluded because Falun Gong practitioners handed out pamphlets at last year’s parade.

“We invited them to a meeting to explain our position,” he says. “I said, ‘I may sympathize with you but the parade is not the place to voice your opinion or your concerns about what’s going on in China.’”

Ying says the group likes to hand out flyers to raise awareness of the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong adherents in China. However, an offer to not hand out pamphlets during the parade this year did not change the committee’s decision, she says.

Falun Dafa Association of Canada spokesperson Lucy Zhou says the group is not political but rather works to expose the ill treatment of their counterparts at the hands of the Chinese regime.

“Trying to protect and raise awareness about the human rights of innocent people in China does not make Falun Gong a political group, and it should therefore not be shut out of any event in Canada including a St. Patrick’s Day parade.”

Zhou says the Chinese embassy and consulates have a history of interfering with events that include Falun Gong.

Last May, organizers of Ottawa’s Tulip Festival dropped the Tian Guo Marching Band, scheduled to perform at the opening ceremony, for fear of upsetting the Chinese embassy, as the embassy had partially funded the event.

Speaking in the Ontario provincial legislature at the time, MPP Randy Hiller said that “the Ottawa Tulip Festival, in partnership with the Embassy of China, banned Falun Gong.”

“This government gave the tulip festival $300,000 and with it they became the latest voice of silence,” he said.

After the incident whipped up a media storm, festival organizers issued an official apology and allowed the band to play.

Zhu says there are plans to take the current matter before a human rights tribunal, adding that she finds it odd that after five years the group is suddenly banned from the Montreal parade.

“It’s so weird. We always had a good relationship with them [the organizers].”

Matas: Canada’s CBC taking the Communist Party of China’s stance on Falun Gong???

2009-03-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

National Post:

Posted: March 17, 2009, 5:21 PM by NP Editor David Matas, CBC

When it comes to covering Falun Gong, both the English and French branches of CBC have adopted a view of the world disturbingly similar to that of the Communist Party of China.

Falun Gong is a spiritual movement that combines ancient Chinese traditions, Buddhist and Taoist practices, and qi gong exercises. Founder Li Hongzhi began writing and speaking about Falun Gong in 1992. The movement took off, growing to a Chinese government estimate of 70 to 100 million practitioners by 1999. The growth was partly attributable to encouragement by the Chinese government itself, which was impressed by Falun Gong’s health benefits.

But in 1999 then-President Jiang Zemin — out of jealousy that something an outsider proposed could become so popular while his own “Three Represents” writings languished in confusion and obscurity — spurred the government to ban the practice. To justify the banning, the Communist Party of China (CPC) developed a conspiracy fantasy. All those individuals engaging on their own or in small groups in harmless, indeed healthful, exercises, the CPC alleged, were part of some vast organization aimed at overthrowing communist rule.

The persecution began first by arrests, then by torture, then by disappearance. It did not take long, as David Kilgour and I concluded in a report released in July, 2006, for the disappeared to become the source of organs sold to transplant tourists for huge sums.

In 2007, the CBC announced that it was broadcasting a TV documentary by Peter Rowe on the persecution of the Falun Gong in China, which featured our report. But the government of China leaned on the CBC, and the CBC pulled the show. It was replaced in the scheduled time slot with an old documentary on Pakistan.

The CBC went back to the producer and asked for changes. He initially balked, and then made some edits. But the changes he made weren’t enough for Beijing. The CBC made more changes on its own after the producer refused to co-operate anymore, and then broadcast its concocted product.

Not to be outdone by the CBC, French-language Radio Canada went one further in a show that aired in Oct., 2008.

The origins of that broadcast originate with La Presse Chinoise, a Montreal-area Chinese weekly newspaper, which in 2001 published standard Communist Party propaganda against Li Hongzhi and the Falun Gong — material that was, according to the Quebec Court of Appeal, defamatory. The libels eventually led Falun Gong practitioners to protest in front of the offices of the La Presse Chinoise.

Radio Canada reported these protests in a way that would have warmed the heart of the most hardened Chinese Communist Party bureaucrat. Falun Gong was depicted as an organization that is “highly structured” with “no shortage of money,” composed of different organs working in lockstep. This mythical organization was then blamed for tension in Montreal’s Chinatown — because some practitioners had the nerve to protest their being libelled by La Presse Chinoise.

Radio Canada preyed on the ignorance of the Canadian public to propagate the Communist Party line, blaming the victims for protesting their victimization, adding to the propaganda by describing the Falun Gong as “little known and bothersome,” “whose presence creates malaise.”

Why are CBC and Radio Canada behaving as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party? Is it the identification of one bureaucracy with another? Is it nostalgia for the socialist values that the Communist Party used to embody?

Whatever the explanation, the distortions the public broadcaster brings to China and the Falun Gong are regrettable. When it comes to reporting on China and the Falun Gong, it is time CBC/Radio Canada started to reflect Canadian values instead of Chinese Communist Party values.

National Post

David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg.

The Human Rights Future of Communist China: David Matas

2009-03-11T16:04:00.001-07:00

The Human Rights Future of Communist China
By David Matas
Remarks prepared for a University of Manitoba forum on the Future of China 5 March 2009

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Communist Party of China has engaged systematically in human rights violations against its people from the moment it seized power. For most of its rule, the Communist Party kept China as a hermit kingdom, disengaged from the rest of the world.

The Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the collapse of Communism in Eastern and Central Europe terrified the Chinese rulers. They realized that more than their socialist ideology was at risk. Their own careers, their accumulation of wealth and privilege, their immunity from prosecution for the crimes they had committed hung in the balance.

So they shifted from communism to capitalism, abandoning an ideology they understood was no longer tenable. Being capitalist meant being part of the global economy. A shift from communism to capitalism meant a shift from isolation to engagement.

Has this shift improved the human rights picture in China, made China more of a right respecting state? In my view, regrettably not. I come to the conclusion from personal experience.

David Kilgour and I wrote a report in which we came to the conclusion that China hospitals had been harvesting organs from detained Falun Gong practitioners and selling the harvested organs for huge sums to transplant tourists. Our report came out in a first version in July 2006 and a second version in January 2007. Today I do not want to talk about that report except tangentially, but rather what I experienced of the Communist Party of China from doing that report.

1. Gao Zhisheng

My first shock came from our efforts to get into China for the purpose of doing research about our report. Because I am an immigration lawyer in Canada I know that an application for a visa is more likely to succeed when the application is accompanied by an invitation from someone in the country from which the visa is sought. We cast about in several directions for an invitation from China to do this work. The person who responded was Gao Zhisheng.

David Kilgour and I asked for a meeting with the Chinese embassy in Canada to discuss terms of entry. Our request for a meeting was accepted. But the person who met with David Kilgour was interested only in denying the allegations and not in arranging for our visit. So we never made a formal visa application and never submitted Gao's invitation to the Chinese embassy.

Shortly thereafter, on August 15, Gao was arrested, tortured, prosecuted for inciting subversion, convicted on December 12, and sentenced on December 22 to three years suspended for five years. Though the jail sentence was suspended, he went into house arrest where he remains to this day.

2. Censorship

Once our report came out, Chinese authorities did their best wherever we went to try to shut us up. Wherever we went, the Chinese consulate, if they knew about the event, would call up the local hosts urging cancellation, suggesting that hosting the event would be considered an unfriendly act towards China and that our event represented a security threat to the institution.

i) Melbourne On a trip to Australia, in August 2006, David Kilgour spoke on our report at a forum in Melbourne hosted by Liberal Party member Victor Perton. The Melbourne Chinese consulate sent a letter to all members of the Legislative Assembly asking them not to attend the forum.

ii) Helsinki

Similarly, when I was in Finland in September 2006 meeting with the Finnish parliamentary human rights committee, their chair informed me that the Chinese embassy had called, urging them not to meet with me. The chair replied that embassy officials were welcome to meet separately with the committee, but that the committee would nonetheless meet with me.

iii) Tel Aviv

I went to Israel to speak on May 30, 2007 at a symposium on organ transplants at Beilinson hospital near Tel Aviv. When I arrived in Israel on the Sunday before the event, I was told that the Chinese embassy had asked Israeli Foreign Affairs to cancel the event at which I was asked to speak.

The Foreign Affairs Assistant Deputy Minister Avi Nir and the Health Assistant Deputy Minister Boz Lev put the request to the Beilinson hosting hospital, which refused. Foreign Affairs and Health then asked the hospital to withdraw the invitation to me to speak even if the program continued. The hospital refused that too.

Foreign Affairs and Health then asked the hospital to withdraw the invitation to Roy Bar Ilan, a Falun Gong practitioner, to be part of the closing panel. This the hospital did, even though the program, as advertised even on the day of the event included his name.

iv) San Francisco

I was scheduled to speak 5 April 2008 at San Francisco State University. The organizers of this event bought a display ad in the San Francisco Chronicle advertising the event, an ad the Chinese consulate in San Francisco could not miss. Shortly before the event, the University cancelled the venue, citing security concerns.

The organizers at the last minute rescheduled the event to the Nikko Hotel. The University put up signs saying the event, not just the venue, had been cancelled. The organizers placed helpers at the University to redirect people.

v) Gold Coast

On 7 July 2008, organizers hired a theatre at Bond University in the Gold Coast for a Chinese human rights forum August 4 where I was scheduled to speak. The person taking bookings was new and had everything cleared from superiors. The University said they would notify all their students and staff about the forum internally. The organizers were also allowed to put up posters around the campus promoting the event for 4 August.

On 28 July, three weeks later, and one week before the event, the organizers received an e-mail that said in its entirety:

"This is to advise that the venue is no longer available for your event. A credit has been processed against your credit card."

Vice-Chancellor Robert Stable, when one of the organizers managed to reach him, said that he and the Committee met and decided the event was political and that they don't allow political events from outside. No matter what was said, he didn't care and said that the decision was final. The event was rescheduled to the Life Education Centre in Broadbeach.

In the case of San Francisco State University and Bond University, I do not know that the local Chinese consulates had contacted the universities asking them to cancel the events. But I do know that these consulates would have been derelict in what they considered to be their duty if their had been no such contact. Moreover the substantial delays between the arrangements and the cancellations at both universities as well as the wide publicity the planned forums were given meant that the local Chinese consulates likely would have been aware of them.

vi) The CBC

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced that it was broadcasting on November 6 a TV documentary by Peter Rowe on the persecution of the Falun Gong in China which featured our report.

The Government of China contacted the CBC and the CBC pulled the show. It was replaced with an old documentary on Pakistan because, so the CBC spokesman said, recent turmoil in Pakistan made the rebroadcast timely.

But, as it turned, out timeliness was not the concern. The CBC went back to the producer Peter Rowe and asked for changes. He initially balked and then made some. But the changes he made were not enough. The CBC made more changes on its own after the producer refused to cooperate further.

The CBC version of the documentary was broadcast November 20. Since the original version had already been aired and is now available on You Tube, it is possible to compare the two.

What are the differences? It did not surprise us to find that the deletions were hard evidence to substantiate our findings of the mass killings of Falun Gong. One item deleted was the playing of tapes of telephone admissions from hospitals in China acknowledging that they were selling Falun Gong organs. Chinese government denials remained.

The additions were typical Chinese propaganda. The CBC on is own, for instance, added this screen to the documentary:

"Amnesty International does not have conclusive evidence to back up the allegation the Falun Gong are killed for their organs."

It should be obvious that silence is not evidence of anything. Amnesty International silence on a human rights violation is not proof and not even evidence that a violation is not occurring. The organization does not claim to be a verifier or source or encyclopedia of all human rights violations.

The CBC, before the commercial which led into the documentary, flashed on screen with footage of Falun Gong practitioners a bit of Chinese propaganda straight up: "China regards Falun Gong as a cult". For people who know nothing about the Falun Gong that sort of introduction was bound to mislead.

3. Evidence destruction

A second Chinese government reaction to our report was destruction of the evidence on which our report was based. Much of the evidence in our report comes from the Government of China itself, from hospital web sites and Chinese medical research. The Government of China has been systematically taking down or altering the sites on which we have relied.

We have electronically archived all our source material. Any one who wants to see what we saw can go to the links in our report and see our source material. However, this alteration and destruction of the original sources means that updating our report becomes difficult. We know what the situation was at the time the report was written. However, we know less about the situation today because the types of information we got yesterday are not available today.

4. Counter Propaganda

A third Chinese government reaction to our report was counter propaganda. The counter propaganda either misrepresents our report or denies the sources without foundation. Here are a few notable examples.

i) A claim of rumour

At the symposium on organ transplants at Beilinson hospital near Tel Aviv where I spoke on May 30, 2007, the Chinese Embassy to Israel circulated a statement at the symposium that the report David Kilgour and I wrote on organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners contains:

"verbal evidence without sources, unverifiable witnesses and huge amount of unconvincingly conclusive remarks based on words like "probably", "possibly", "maybe" and "it is said", etc. All these only call into question the truth of the report."

Yet, all one has to do to is to look at the report to see that every statement we make in our report is independently verifiable. There is no verbal evidence without sources. Where we rely on witnesses we identify them and quote what they say.

The report is on the internet and is word searchable. Anyone who searches it can see that the words "probably", "possibly", "maybe" and the phrase "it is said" are not used in our report, not even once.

ii) Shi Bingyi

One basis for our conclusion that Falun Gong practitioners were the primary source of organs for transplants was the large increase in transplants coincident with the start of persecution of the Falun Gong. Yet, the only other significant source of organs for transplants, prisoners sentenced to death, remained constant.

To document the overall increase in transplants, our report cited Shi Bingyi, vice-chair of the China Medical Organ Transplant Association. We indicated that he said that there were about 90,000 transplants in total up until the end of 2005.

Yet there were approximately 30,000 transplants done in China before the end of 1999 and 18,500 in the six year period 1994 to 1999 inclusive. That meant that transplants went up from 18,500 in the six year period prior to the persecution of the Falun Gong to 60,000 in the six year period after the persecution of the Falun Gong began. Since the death penalty volume was constant, that left 41,500 transplants in the six year period 2000 to 2005 where the only explanation for the sourcing was Falun Gong practitioners.

UN rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak asked the Chinese government to explain the discrepancy between organs available for transplants and numbers from identifiable sources. The Chinese government, in a response sent to Professor Nowak by letter dated March 19, 2007 and published in the report of Professor Nowak to the UN Human Rights council dated February 19, 2008, that

"Professor Shi Bingyi expressly clarified that on no occasion had he made such a statement or given figures of this kind, and these allegations and the related figures are pure fabrication."

Moreover, the Government of China, lest there be any doubt, asserted that

"China's annual health statistics are compiled on the basis of categories of health disorder and not in accordance with the various types of treatment provided"

Shi Bingyi was interviewed in a video documentary produced by Phoenix TV, a Hong Kong media outlet. That video shows Shi Bingyi on screen saying what the Government of China, in its response to Nowak, indicates he said, that the figures we quote from him he simply never gave. He says on the video:

"I did not make such a statement because I have no knowledge of these figures I have not made detailed investigation on this subject how many were carried out and in which year. Therefore I have no figures to show. So I could not have said that."

Yet, the actual source of the quotation is footnoted in our report. It is a Chinese source, the Health News Network. The article from the Network is posted on the official website for transplantation professionals in China, . The text, dated 2006-03-02, states, in part, in translation:

"Professor Shi said that in the past 10 years, organ transplantation in China had grown rapidly; the types of transplant operations that can be performed were very wide, ranging from kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, lung, bone marrow, cornea; so far, there had been over 90,000 transplants completed country-wide; last year along, there was close to 10,000 kidney transplants and nearly 4,000 liver transplants completed."

Though the Government of China has taken down many of the citations in our report, this citation remains. The original source of the information remains available within China through an official website source.

Moreover, the information in this article continues to be recycled in Chinese publications. The official web site of the Minister of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China posts a newsletter of June 20, 2008 at < http://wwww.most.gov.cn > which states:

"Up to date, China has performed some 85,000 organ transplants, only next to the United States in number. In recent years, China performed organ transplants on more than 10,000 patients a year...Liver transplants have exceeded 10,000 in number... Heart transplants went over 100 in number..."

The number of 90,000 transplants in 2006 and 85,000 transplants in 2008 do not match and call for an explanation only those who provide the statistics can give. What is striking about the later article, aside from the statistical mismatch, is that it flies in the face of the official Chinese statement to Professor Nowak that China's health statistics are compiled on the basis of categories of health disorder and not in accordance with the various types of treatment provided.

So what we have is a statement from Shi Bingyi on an official Chinese web site which remains extant to this day, a statement which Shi Bingyi publicly denies ever having said. Moreover, despite the continued presence on this official website of a statement showing that Shi Bingyi says what we wrote he said, the Chinese government accuses us of fabricating the words we attribute to Shi Bingyi.

Neither the Government of China nor Shi Bingyi claim that Health News Network has misquoted or misunderstood what Shi Bingyi said. There has been no effort to hide or mask or take down from the internet the publicly posted article of the Health New Network where Shi Bingyi is quoted. The continuation of this article on an official Chinese web site at the same time as China is removing from the internet so much other information about organ transplants which we used to come to our conclusions amounts to a continuation to assert what is to be found in this article.

iii) Lu Guoping

If the statement from Shi Bingyi is strange, the statement from Lu Guoping is stunning. One trail of evidence which led to our conclusion of organ harvesting was investigator phone calls. Our investigators called hospitals throughout China, pretending to be relatives of patients who needed transplants, asking the hospitals if they had organs from Falun Gong practitioners for transplant. The justification for the questions was that, since Falun Gong is an exercise regime, the Falun Gong practitioners would be healthy and their organs would be healthy. Our callers got recorded admissions throughout China that hospitals did have Falun Gong organs for sale.

One such admission came from Lu Guoping at Minzu Hospital of Guangxi Autonomous Region. He said, on a recording, that his hospital used to have organs from Falun Gong practitioners, but no longer has them. He referred the caller to a hospital in Guangzhou and assured the caller that this hospital had Falun Gong organs. Here are some of the exchanges:

The Phoenix TV documentary which interviewed Shi Bingyi also interviewed Lu Guoping. In this documentary, Lu Guoping acknowledges having received the call from our caller. He confirms that he referred our caller to a hospital in Guangzhou. He acknowledges that the caller asked whether that hospital used organs from Falun Gong practitioners. What changes in the documentary is the answer he said he gave. In the TV interview, he says:

"I told her I was not involved in the surgical operations and had no idea where the organs come from. I told her I could not answer her questions. She then asked me whether these organs come from prisons. I replied no to her in clear cut terms"

On the video, Dr. Lu is presented with a partial transcript of the call made to him found in our report. He reacts by saying:

"The record of the phone call does not conform to the truth. Many parts of it have been distorted or mutilated. The report says that when I was asked where the organs removed from Falun Gong people came from, prisons or detention, houses I said they came from the prisons. But this was not my answer....The report also says that when the person who called me asked whether we have to go to the prison to select body organs I answered yes and added we have to go there to make the choice. This question was actually not raised at all then."

There is no indication in the Phoenix TV documentary that we have a recording where Dr. Lu says in his own voice the words attributed to him in our report. Nor does either the doctor or the interviewer make any attempt to explain how we could possibly have got the voice of the doctor on a recording saying what he denies saying, interspersed seamlessly with what he admits saying, if he did not say what he denies saying. The suggestion left by the documentary is that we have altered a transcript. Because there is no acknowledgement of a recording, there is no suggesting we have altered the recording.

So here we have on our recording an admission from a doctor that he used to go to a prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. He does not just say that someone else did this. He says that he used to do this himself. Moreover, we have a further admission that the voice we have on our recording is the voice of the very person our recording says he is. This is as close to a smoking gun as we are ever likely to get.

5. Threats

At Columbia University, an organization titled the Columbia University Chinese Students and Scholars Association had posted this threat on its web site in April 2007 when I was speaking there on our Report: "Anyone who offends China will be executed no matter how far away they are".

When I spoke at the forum in Broadbeach, Gold Coast, Australia August 4, 2008, the forum was connected through the internet to participants in China, over 150 in total. The local as well as the internet participants asked questions after the formal presentation was over. One of the internet participants was a Chinese government police official. This is the question, in translation, he asked me:

"Are you afraid of death? You are brutally interfering in our Party's internal policies. Are you afraid of our revenge? Our revenge against you, we'll take revenge against you, are you not afraid of that?"

6. Universal periodic review

David Kilgour and I expressed regret that China had chosen to reject so quickly so many basic recommendations made in the report of the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review. We were dismayed that China had chosen systematically to reject those recommendations which would prevent the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to be used in transplants and which would make possible the bringing to justice any perpetrators of this abuse.

David Kilgour and I condemned the Government of China for its refusal to support the UPR recommendations to:

i) guarantee all citizens of China the exercise of religious freedom, freedom of belief and freedom of worshipping in private. As Canada in its statement to the Working Group noted, respect for this freedom includes respecting the freedom of belief of the Falun Gong;

ii) publish death penalty statistics. As the UN rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak and UN rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Asma Jahangir have both pointed out, the provision of these statistics is necessary to determine if any explanation can be given for the discrepancy in the number of transplants between the years 2000 to 2005 and the numbers from identifiable sources of organs for transplants other than Falun Gong practitioners.

iii) abolish all forms of arbitrary detention. The detention of large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners without charge and without information about their location facilitates their abuse.

iv) implement the recommendations of the Committee against Torture of November 2008. The Committee had recommended that China conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture and used for organ transplants and take measures, as appropriate, to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished,

v) take effective measures to ensure that lawyers can defend their clients without fear of harassment. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng who has defended Falun Gong clients has been tortured and disappeared. He was released briefly in February and, after he released a statement about his torture, was rearrested.

Conclusion

What I see from the work David Kilgour and I have done in attempting to spread awareness of our report is that Chinese engagement with the rest of the world has not led to increased respect for human rights in China. On the contrary, it has led to Chinese government attempts to expand repression abroad.

Chinese global engagement has meant that we can no longer just focus on what is happening in China in order to combat Chinese government human rights abuses. We must be vigilant about the efforts of the Government of China abroad.

............................................................................................................................

David Matas is a Winnipeg based international human rights lawyer.

Gao Zhisheng’s Wife and Children Arrive in the U.S.

2009-03-11T15:48:00.001-07:00

Epoch Times Staff Mar 11, 2009

Share: Facebook Digg del.icio.us StumbleUpon Facebook Digg del.icio.us StumbleUpon

Related articles: China > Democracy and Human Rights

Gao Zhisheng, his wife, Geng He and two children. (The Epoch Times )

Updated 5:51 p.m. EDT, March 11, 2009

According to the Global Association for the Rescue of Gao Zhisheng, China’s famous human rights lawyer's wife Geng He and their two children arrived in New York on March 11.

The Friends of Gao Zhisheng and the Global Association for the Rescue of Gao Zhisheng indicated that Geng He and her two children entered Thailand and immediately filed for an asylum application with the U.N. Refugee Agency. They were then speedily accepted as refugees by the U.S. government and safely arrived in the United States on March 11.

Ms.Sherry Zhang of the organization Friends of Gao Zhisheng expressed deep concern for the well being of the family” “This family has suffered greatly, particularly the daughter. She is a 16 year old child who has suffered physical and mental abuse at the hands of the Chinese regime. The son is five and one-half years old, and has also suffered. He tends to be very emotional.

“The family needs a stable life. We are very happy the U.S. government has helped them.”

Ms. Zhang also commented on how the family’s escape will affect Gao Zhisheng: “The Chinese regime has been using the family as a hostage . We are sure that their being in the United States is a big comfort to Gao. We don’t know his exact whereabouts but believe he is in the hands of the police.

“We also believe he is being brutally tortured right now, and we are now even more concerned about his safety. The Chinese regime may even try torture him even more to try to find out the location of this family.”

The Friends of Gao Zhisheng and the Global Association for the Rescue of Gao Zhisheng expressed special thanks to those who have helped in the rescue of Geng He and her two children. Special thanks were also given to the U.S. government who quickly approved Geng He’s application and admitted them into the U.S. They also expressed gratitude to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

To help Geng He and her family, The Friends of Gao Zhisheng and the Global Association established a “Gao Zhisheng’s Family Aid Foundation.” The account information is as follows:

Future China Foundation, a special account for the support of Gao's family: 781817259
Check title: Future China Foundation
40-46 Main Street, Suite 201, Flushing, NY 11354 USA
Routing No: 021000021
Swift No: Chasus33 (foreign wire)

Read this article in Chinese

OPEN LETTER TO PM FROM CANADIAN FRIENDS OF GAO ZHISHENG

2009-03-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

You can find it here and here.

Dear Prime Minster Harper,

We are writing to appeal to you and your government to intervene on our behalf for the immediate release of the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated lawyer Gao Zhisheng by the Chinese government. We are also appealing for your continuous support for the courageous struggle for human rights for all by the Chinese people in general and Mr. Gao in particular.

In 2001, Gao was named one of China's top ten lawyers. At the time, he donated a third of his time to victims of human rights violations, representing miners, evicted tenants and others. However, the party-state unleashed its full wrath after he wrote to officials at a high level in the Chinese regime, calling for an end to government persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, though he is not a Falun Gong practitioner himself.

The regimes' persecution of Gao started with removing his permit to practise law, an attempt on his life, having police attack his wife and 14-year-old daughter and four-year-old son and denying the family any income. It intensified when Gao responded in the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi by launching nationwide hunger strikes calling for justice and human rights in China.

In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power", although international pressure appears to have caused a suspension of the sentence for five years.

On June 24, 2007, Gao was kidnapped by the Chinese government in order to prevent him from attending an award ceremony in the United States. The American Board of Trial Advocates selected Gao to receive the prestigious Courageous Advocacy Award; they had wished to present the award to Gao personally in California on June 30, 2007.

In September 2007, Gao was abducted after writing an open letter to the U.S. Congress to explain the human rights situation preceding the 2008 Olympics.

Predictably, Gao did speak out again when he was released. In his most recent article a few weeks ago, he wrote about over 50 days of excruciating torture. His letter included this:

“Then, the electric shock batons were put all over me. And my full body, my heart, lungs, and muscles began jumping under my skin uncontrollably. I was writhing on the ground in pain, trying to crawl away. Wang [one of the lead torturers] then shocked me in my genitals.”

Gao wrote further describing his ordeal in a separate incident: “Then two people stretched out my arms and pinned them to the ground. They used toothpicks to pierce my genitals. I can't use any language to describe the helplessness, pain, and despair that I felt then. At a point like that, language and emotion do not have the power to explain.”

In his account, Gao said that the torturers mentioned they were using the same torture methods that they had earlier refined on Falun Gong practitioners. He admitted that he had tried to kill himself to stop the suffering, and that he believed God helped him to come back from the brink of death.

Since his recent letter, Mr. Gao has disappeared again, presumably re-arrested, to the great concern of many in China and elsewhere. For his full account, please see enclosed "Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia." More information can also be found at www.david-kilgour.com in the Human Rights section.

Human rights organizations have long documented continued persecution by the Chinese government of its own citizens in violation of basic human dignity. In response, the party-state in Beijing has continuously ignored worldwide criticism of its appalling human rights record. Most recently, during the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Human Rights, the Chinese authorities rejected almost all the recommendations aimed at promoting democracy and human rights made by all the EU member states and by Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland as well as Canada.

Gao’s memoir A China More Just, published the Fall of 2007, in English in the United States, captures such a record in compelling words:

"For we will experience and witness how the greatest people on earth banished this suffering once and for all! I am moved by an ardent hope that by articulating it, I may in some way help to relieve China of the crushing burden on her back. ...... Whatever the case, these are words that tell a tale both of the people’s violent, sanguinary, bitter pain, as well as of the noble character, dignity, and resoluteness of the freedom fighters who are counted among them. Yet no words, however strong, can possibly describe the darkness and terrible barbarity of today’s dictators in China, nor the tragic annihilation of Chinese culture that they have perpetrated."

Well-wishers of China had long hoped that the country’s economic growth would be accompanied by increased respect for human rights and the rule of law. The reality has been quite the contrary; instead of honouring the obligations prescribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which China is a signatory, blatant human rights violations persist.

The excuse used by the Chinese party-state for persecuting Gao Zhisheng is that Falun Gong must be eradicated. Falun Gong is an exercise and spiritual community, which promotes "truth, compassion and forbearance." Falun Gong is only one of the faith groups and voices of dissent being persecuted in China. There are other courageous heroes like Gao in China, virtually unknown and unsung outside their own land, who face impossible odds and stand as witnesses of the truth as corruption, bribery, extortion, brutality, threats, and outright murder take place on a daily basis.

Having courageously sought justice for vulnerable groups such as the poor, the disabled, and the persecuted, Gao's story is a light shining in the darkness, and a reminder that all of us must stand up for what we believe and affirm.

The Chinese government has wrongly accused Mr. Gao and other critics of China's human rights records of interfering with Chinese affairs when in fact Mr. Gao is by far one of the country's truest patriots. He follows the footsteps of Lu Xun, one of China's most outstanding modern authors, who argued against a cultural environment obsessed with saving face and repeatedly called for social change, democratic development and respect for human dignity.

By failing to stop gross and systematic human rights violations, or acting so often as the perpetrator of cruel abuses of their people, the regime in Beijing is acting like the lord of Cai in the legend of Bian Que whose warnings about disaster was ignored by the ruthless and conceited ruler. By allowing injustices of many kinds to spread, the party-state is working to the serious detriment of a country, which has made many great contributions to world civilization in its history.

This month, the Chinese Parliament, National Congress of People’s Representatives, will meet in Beijing to discuss the country’s plans for what the Chinese President Hu Jintao calls a “harmonious society.”

Chinese leaders should realize the profound irony of its pursuit of “harmony” in face of its own violent offense against its own very narrow interpretation of human rights. They must be made to understand that social cohesion cannot be achieved until the party-state stops its violent repression of the Chinese people.

As an emerging economic power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the government of China must stop the persecution and other abuses of its own people. Beijing should not be allowed to take its increased role in dealing with the current worldwide financial challenges as a free license to continued aggression on the Chinese people.

The Canadian government, particularly under your leadership, has been a strong supporter of human rights and rule of law in China. We urge you to continue to hold the Beijing regime to account for its continued violation of human rights and blatant disrespect for the rule of law. We call on your government to demand that Bejing release Gao Zhisheng immediately and provide proper medical treatment and other protection to him immediately.

Sincerely,

Canadian Friends of Gao Zhisheng

"Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia"
My account of more than 50 days of torture in 2007 by Gao Zhisheng

Written on November 28, 2007 at my besieged home in Beijing
Authorized to be released to international community on February 9, 2009

These words from me today will be finally revealed one day. It will expose its true face in today’s China. It will disclose the unimaginable heart and characteristics of the “ruling party” in China. Of course, these words will inevitably bring unpleasant and even upset embarrassed feelings to those global “good friends” and “nice partners” of today’s CCPIF these global “good friends” and “nice partners” still have some fear to the value of human conscience and morality in their hearts.

Today, the suddenly well off CCP has not only gained more and more global “good friends” and “nice partners” but also has made those perverted slogan such as “China is a country rule of law” lauder and lauder. Both will be disastrous to the progress and development of the human rights of the Chinese people.

Around 8 p.m. on September 21, 2007 the authorities notified me orally that I should go for a mind reeducation (reform) talk. I found there were some unusual things happening at this time. The secret police, who used to follow me very closely, kept a further distance. I was walking down the street one day and when I turned a corner, about six or seven strangers started walking towards me. I suddenly felt a strong blow to the back of my neck and fell face down on the ground. Someone yanked my hair and a black hood was pulled over my head immediately.

I was brought to a vehicle and was put in it. Although I couldn’t see, it seemed to me that it had two benches with a space in the middle. I was put in the space in the middle on the floor. My right cheek was on the ground. All of a sudden a boot was put on my face holding me down. Many hands started searching all over me. My belt was pulled off and then used to tie my hands behind my back. At least four people put their feet on me holding me down.

About 40 minutes later I was dragged out of the car. My pants were falling down around my knees and I was dragged into a room. No one had said anything at all to me until that time. The hood was pulled off of my head at this time. Immediately men began cursing and hitting me. “ **, your date of death has come today. Brothers, let’s give him a brutal lesson today. Beat him to death.”

Then, four men with electric shock prods began beating my head and all over my body. Nothing but the noise of the beating and my anxious breathing could be heard. I was beaten so severely that my whole body began uncontrollably shaking. “Don’t pretend to do that!” I was shouted at by a guy whom I later learned was named Wang. Then a very strong and tall (1.9 meters) man grabbed my hair and pulled me up off the ground. Then Wang began beating me on the face terribly. “**, you are not worthy to wear black clothes. Are you a Mafia leader? Pull off all of his clothes.”

All my clothes were pulled off and I was totally naked. Wang yelled again, and someone kicked me in the back of my legs, and I collapsed to the floor. The big guy continued to pull my hair and forced me to lift my head to see Wang. At this time, I could see that there were five people in the room. Four of the men were holding electric prods, and one was holding my belt. “You listen, Gao, today your uncles want nothing but to make your life worse than death. I tell you the truth, your matter is not only between you and the government. Look at the floor! There is not a single drop of water. After a while the water will be above your ankles. After a while you will learn where the water will come from.”

While Wang was saying this, the electric shock prods were put on my face and upper body shocking me. Wang then said, “Come on guys, deliver the second course!” Then, the electric shock baton was put all over me. And my full body, my heart, lungs and muscles began jumping under my skin uncontrollably. I was writhing on the ground in pain, trying to crawl away. Wang then shocked me in my genitals. My begging them to stop only returned laughing and more unbelievable torture. Wang then used the electric shock baton three more times on my genitals while shouting loudly. After a few hours of this I had no energy to even beg, let alone, try to escape. But my mind was still clear.

I felt my body was jerking very strongly when the baton touched me. I clearly felt some water sprinkled on my arms and legs as I was jerking. It was then I realized that this was sweat from me. I realized what Wang meant about the water.

It seems that the torturers themselves were also tired. Before the dawn came, three of them left the room. “We will come back later to give him the next course,” Wang said. The two left in the room, put a chair in the middle of the room and pulled me up and set me in the chair. One of them had five pieces of cigarettes in his mouth. One man stood behind me and the man with the cigarettes was in front. The man behind grabbed my hair and pulled my head forward and down. The other man used the cigarettes to fill my nose and eyes with smoke over and over. They did this with the utmost patience. After a while I didn’t have any feeling except for some tears dropping on my legs. This continued for about two hours.

Then some other guys came in replacing the previous two. My eyes could not see because they were now swollen shut. The new guys started talking, “Gao, are you still able to hear with your ears? I tell you the truth, these guys are experts in cracking down on Mafia guys. They are heavies. This time they are chosen specifically and carefully by the authority above for this purpose. Can you hear who I am? My last name is Jiang. I followed you to Xiajiang after you were released last year.”

“Are you the one from Penglai City, Shandong?” I asked.

“Yes, your memory is still good. I told you, you would come back sooner or later. When I saw you the way you behaved in Xiajiang, I knew you would be back. You even looked down upon our police. Shouldn’t we help you have a better lesson? You wrote that letter to American congressmen. Look at you, you traitor. What could you be given by your American lord? The American Congress counts for nothing. This is China. It is the Communist Party’s territory. To capture your life is as easy as stepping on an ant. If you dare to continue to write your stupid articles, the government has to make its attitude clear. Now, did you see that attitude tonight?” Jiang spoke slowly.

I asked, “How can you face the beating of Chinese and use Mafia tactics on Chinese taxpayers?”

“You are an object to be beaten. You know that in your heart better than most. Taxpayers count for nothing in China. Don’t talk about this term taxpayers.”

While he was saying this, someone else entered the room. I recognized the voice to be Wang’s. “Don’t talk to him with your mouth. Give him the real thing. Your uncles have prepared 12 courses. We only finished 3 last night. Your chief uncle doesn’t like to talk and so following you will see that you will have to eat your own S*** and drink your own piss. A toothpick will touch your light (sexual organs). Don’t you talk about torture by the Communist Party yet, because we will give you a comprehensive lesson now! You are correct, we torture Falun Gong. Everything is right. The 12 courses we’re going to give to you were practiced on the Falun Gong, to tell you the truth. I am not afraid of you if you continue to write. We can torture you to death without your body being found. You stinky outsider (meaning, not from Beijing)! What are you thinking even being here?”

In the following hours of torture I passed out several times, because of lack of water and food and heavy sweating. I was lying down on the cold floor naked. I felt several times someone come and open my eyes and shine a flashlight in them to see if I was still alive. When I would come to, I smelled the strong odor of stinky urine. My face, nose, and hair were filled with the smell. Obviously, but I don’t know when, someone urinated in my face and on my head.

This torture continued until around noon on the third day. I don’t know where I got the strength to endure, but somehow I struggled to get away from their grasp and began to beat my head on the table. I was shouting the names of my two children (Tiangyu and GeGe) and trying to kill myself. But my attempt did not succeed. I thank Almighty God for this. It is Him who rescued me. I truly felt God drag me back from that state and give me my life. My eyes were full of bleeding, though because of my head banging. I fell on the ground. Immediately, three people sat on my body. One was on my face. They were laughing. They said I used my death to try to scare them. They said they have just seen this too many times. They then continued the torture again until that night. I could not see anything with my eyes anymore. I could still hear my torturers though, and again they gathered after they had dinner.

One of them came and pulled my hair dragging me up. “Gao, are you hungry? Tell us the truth?”

I said, “I am very hungry.”

“Do you want to eat? Tell us the truth?”

I said, “I want to eat.” My face instead was slapped repeatedly, a dozen times or more, and I again collapsed to the ground. A boot stomped on my chest and I was shocked with the baton on my chin. I screamed. Then the baton was put into my mouth.

“Let’s see how different your mouth is from others. Don’t you want to eat? You said you are hungry. Are you worthy?” The baton was in my mouth but was not turned on. I didn’t know what they wanted to do.

Wang said, “Gao, do you know why we didn’t destroy your mouth? Tonight your uncles want you to talk the whole night. We want you to talk about nothing, but about how you are a womanizer. You are not allowed to say you are not one. You are not allowed to say there are just a few women, either. Don’t forget any details. You can’t leave any details out. Your uncles like this. We have slept and eaten enough, it’s your time to talk.”
“Why didn’t he talk? Beat him up brothers?” Wang shouted. Three batons began shocking me. I was crawling all over trying to get away still naked. After more than 10 minutes, I was shaking uncontrollably again.

I begged them. “I didn’t have an affair. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you.” I heard my voice was quivering.

“Are you becoming a fool? Let’s use the baton to light you and see if you start talking.” Then two people stretched out my arms and pinned them to the ground. They used toothpicks to pierce my genitals. I can’t use any language to describe the helplessness, pain, and despair that I felt then. At a point like that, language and emotion do not have the power to explain. Finally I made up stories, telling them about affairs that I had with four women. After more repeated torture, I had to describe how I had sex with each of these women. This continued until dawn the next day.

At that time, I was dragged to where I had to sign the transcript of my confession about my affairs. “If we send this out, you will become stinky dog’ s *** in half a year.” Wang said loudly. (After I was released, I learned that the day after the torture the interrogator named Sun Huo informed my wife about “the truth” they learned about my affairs. My wife told them it was none of their business; she said, “I still trust Gao.”)

After this torture for days, I often lost consciousness and was unable to determine the passage of time. I don’t know how long had passed. A group of them were preparing to torture me again. Another guy came in though and rebuked them. I could hear it was a deputy director from the Beijing PSB. I had seen him many times before. I thought him to be a good person. I could not see him though, because my eyes were still swollen. My whole body was beaten and unrecognizable. He sounded angry because of my condition. He found a doctor to attend to me. He said he was appalled and surprised. He said, “This torture doesn’t represent the Communist Party!”

I asked him, “Who directed this?”

He didn’t reply. I asked to be sent back home or even just back to prison. He didn’t reply. He brought my torturers back into the room and rebuked them. He ordered them to buy clothes for me and give me a blanket and food. He told me he would try his best to either get me back to prison or back home.

As soon as the deputy left, Wang began cursing me. “Gao, you even dream to go to prison? No, that is too easy. You won’t have any chance to do that as long as the CCP is still in power. Don’t even think about that.”

That same night, I was transported to another location but I didn’t know where, since I had a black hood over my head again. I was continuously tortured there again for another 10 days. Then one day, they put the hood on me again, and I was put into a vehicle. My head was forced in between my legs and I had to remain that way for more than an hour. The suffering was more than I could stand, and I wanted to die.

After another hour at a new location, the hood was removed. Four of the previous five torturers were not there. But, I saw the same group of secret police who used to follow me.

>From then on the physical torture stopped, but emotional torture continued. I was told the 17th Communist Party Congress was starting and that I had to wait for the higher authorities’ opinions about my case.

During that time some officials came to visit my cell. Their attitude was softer, and I was also allowed to wash my face and brush my teeth. Some officials proposed to me to use my writing skills to curse Falun Gong instead, and that I could charge whatever I wanted for doing that.

I said it is not a technical problem but an ethical problem. “So,” they proposed, “if that is too hard, then write articles praising the government, and again charge whatever you want.” Finally they proposed, “If you write what we direct and that you were treated well after prison and that you were fooled by Falun Gong and Hu Jia, things will go well. Otherwise, how can you find an end to your suffering? Think of your wife and children.”

In exchange, I did write an article that said the government treated my family well. I wrote the open letter to the U.S. Congress and gave the reason that I was fooled by Falun Gong and Hu Jia.

Before I was released to go home, though, I was brought to Xian city. I was brought to call Geng He (my wife). On the date of the midautumn festival, the authorities asked me to call my wife and comfort her since she was holding a protest and trying to commit suicide over the government’s treatment of our family. The content of the call was all designed by the authorities. (Later I learned that my wife’s response was also choreographed.) I could still not open one of my eyes at that time and since the call was being taped, I was told to explain that it was from myselfinflicted wound.

In the middle of November 2007, after I got home, I learned that my house was thoroughly searched again without a single document or search warrant. During those more than 50 days of torture, I had many strange feelings. For example, sometimes I could hear “death” and sometimes could hear “life.”

After the 12th and 13th day of my kidnapping, and when I could again partially open my eyes, I saw my body was in a horrifying condition. Not a single square centimeter of my skin was normal. It was bruised and damaged over every part.

Every day while I was being held, the experience of “eating” was unusual. Whenever I was at the point of starving, they would bring up “mantle” (steamed bread) and offer it to me. If I would sing one of the three famous revolutionary Communist party songs I could have some bread. My deepest desire was that I wanted to live until that was no longer possible. My death would be torturous for my wife and children, but at the same time I didn’t want to dirty my soul. But, in that environment human dignity has no strength. If you don’t sing these songs you will continue to be starved, and they will continue to torture you, so I sang.

When they used the same tactic though, pressuring me to write articles attacking Falun Gong, I didn’t do it. But, I did compromise by writing my statement saying the government didn’t kidnap and torture me and that they treated my family well. I did sign that document.

During these more than 50 days, more horrible evils were committed than I told here. Those evils were not even worthy of any historical records by any human governments. But those records will further enable us to see clearly that how much further the leaders of CCP are willing go in its evil crime against humanity in order to protect its illegal monopoly power! Those evils are so dirty and disgusting, that I don’t want to mention it at this time and perhaps will never mention it in the future. Every time when I was tortured, I was always repeatedly threatened that, if I spelled out later what had happened to me, I would be tortured again, but I was told, “This time it will happen in front of your wife and children.” The tall strong man that pulled my hair repeated this over and over during the days I was tortured. “Your death is sure if you share this with the outside world.”

This was repeated many times. These brutal, violent acts are not right. Those that did it, themselves, knew this clearly in their hearts.

Finally, I want to say a few words which won’t be liked by some folks. I want to remind those socalled global “good friends”, “good partners” called by the CCP that the increasing degree of brutality and coldness against the Chinese people by the CCP is the direct result of appeasement by both you and us (our own Chinese people).

Gao Zhisheng
Written on November 28, 2007 at my besieged home in Beijing

http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/PressReleases/2009.02.08_Gao_Zhisheng_account_ENG.pdf

Urgent Appeal: Elderly Tianjin Resident Sentenced to Labor Camp

2009-03-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

Urgent Appeal: Elderly Tianjin Resident Sentenced to Labor Camp for Distributing Falun Gong Leaflets, at Risk of Torture

15 other adherents sentenced to camp in one year; many tortured

27 Feb 2009

Ms. Zhu Lijin (left), a 61-year-old mother of New Zealand citizen Salina Wang (right), was sentenced without trial in Tianjin and is at risk of torture.

New York (Falun Dafa Information Centre) – An elderly resident of the city of Tianjin was sentenced earlier this month to over one year in a labor camp after police found her distributing leaflets about Falun Gong. She is one of 15 local adherents sentenced in recent months to this particular camp and is at grave risk of torture, the Falun Dafa Information Center reported.

Ms. Zhu Lijin, a 61-year-old retired government worker and mother of a New Zealand citizen, was arrested from the streets of Tianjin on February 1, 2009 while distributing information about Falun Gong to passers by. Security agents then searched her home without a warrant, confiscating computer equipment and Falun Gong literature. Within less than two weeks, on February 16, her family was notified that she had been sentenced for one year and three months without a trial. She is currently being held at Banqiao Women’s “Re-education through labor” camp.

“How can a lady over 60 years old handing out leaflets be considered such a threat to the Chinese Community Party? My mother is not a criminal and she has done nothing wrong,” says Zhu’s daughter Salina (Yu) Wang, a New Zealand citizen currently residing in New York. “She has the right to follow her belief and she has the right to tell people the truth about Falun Gong. These are basic human rights guaranteed under China’s constitution and international law.”

This is the first time that Zhu, who took up Falun Gong in 2005, has been imprisoned for practicing. After her arrest, her family was initially denied access to her, but has been allowed to visit her very briefly since her sentencing. She reportedly remains in fair physical health, but is already being subjected to efforts to force her to disavow her beliefs and has complained of insufficient nutrition at the camp. Should she remain committed to her faith, such efforts at “re-education” could quickly escalate into severe torture. As one Chinese government adviser told the Washington Post,"practitioners who are not beaten generally do not abandon the group" (link).

In particular, former prisoners from Banqiao RTL camp have reported a range of torture methods used to force adherents to renounce their beliefs, including shocking with electric batons, solitary confinement, forced-feeding, sexual abuse, and injection with unidentified psychiatric drugs. The labor camp authorities are also known to force detainees to work extremely long hours on tasks such as producing raincoats for export to Korea or sorting dried beans. As a result of such abuse, several adherents imprisoned there have suffered permanent mental or physical disability. At least two have been tortured to death (link).

Most recently, in November 2008, family members of an adherent named Gong Hui detained at the camp reported that she had been tortured to the verge of death after long periods of abuse and solitary confinement. She had become emaciated within just three months of detention there. Gong was arrested on August 13, during the period of the Olympic games, and arrived at the labor camp in September after being given a 15-month sentence.

"This is the time to urgently intervene on Zhu Lijin’s behalf," says Falun Dafa Information Center spokesman Erping Zhang. "The international community must not wait until news of her being tortured – or worse – makes its way out of China in order to take action."

Broader Crackdown

Zhu’s detention and sentencing would appear not to be an isolated case, but rather part of a larger crackdown on Falun Gong adherents in the city of Tianjin and nationwide that began in the run-up to the Olympics and has continued as the 10-year anniversary of the persecution approaches.

According to reports received by the Falun Dafa Information Center, at least 15 other female adherents in the city have been sentenced to Banqiao labor camp since April 2008, most for between 12 and 18 months. The actual number may be higher and this total does not include Tianjin residents sentenced to other camps and prisons in the city.

“If 15 adherents have been sentenced to one camp in one city alone, multiply that by the nearly 300 camps in the country and we’re looking at a minimum of 4,000 Falun Gong practitioners sentenced to labor camps in the past year,” says Zhang. “No wonder recent interviews with former detainees by the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group indicate that Falun Gong practitioners make up a huge percentage of the population in these camps.”

According to the CHRD study released in early February, "More than half of our 13 interviewees remarked on the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in RTL camps. They said Falun Gong practitioners make up one of the largest groups of detainees in the camp." (Full report)

The Falun Dafa Information Center is calling for:

International media and human rights groups to investigate the case of Zhu Lijin and the broader trend of multi-year prison and labor camp sentences being handed down to Falun Gong adherents before and after the Olympic games.
Foreign government representatives, particularly those from Tianjin’s sister cities - such as Philadelphia, Dallas, Melbourne, Milan, and Lodz - to write to their counterparts in Tianjin, urging the immediate and uncondition release of Zhu Lijin.

Gao Zhisheng Peace Prize nominee taken into custody Feb. 4

2009-03-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

Supporters fear for missing peace activist

By Matthew Pearson, The Ottawa Citizen March 2, 2009 4:04 AM

Supporters of a renowned human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee arrested in China last month will gather in front of the Chinese Embassy today to demand his release.

Gao Zhisheng was detained at his home in Shaanxi province on Feb. 4 by more than 10 security agents, according to Amnesty International. His current whereabouts are unknown, but the human rights organization says wherever he is, there's a good chance he's facing torture.

Gao, 44, was recognized in 2001 by China's Ministry of Justice as one of the country's top lawyers. But he fell afoul of authorities several years later when he began defending underground Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and human rights activists.

He has faced 24-hour police surveillance and bouts of imprisonment and torture ever since.

"We believe he is in danger, so we need to give him a voice," said protest organizer Grace Wollensak.

She said the lunch-hour protest may draw a small crowd, but encouraged people to write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Lawrence Cannon, minister of Foreign Affairs, to urge the Chinese government to release Gao immediately.

Wollensak, a member of the Falun Dafa Association, said Gao is a Christian, not a practitioner of Falun Gong.

Human rights advocate and former MP David Kilgour is set to speak at today's rally. He called Gao a "man of enormous courage" who has paid a heavy price for what he's done.

Kilgour, who has never met Gao, nominated the self-taught lawyer for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

"I would walk a long, long way on a cold day to shake his hand," Kilgour said. "He's one of my heroes and I put him up with (Nelson) Mandela, (Mahatma) Ghandi and Abraham Lincoln. I can think of few people I admire more than him."

Gao is part of China's growing domestic human rights community.

But Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, says the jailed attorney needs protection and urges the Canadian government to pressure its Chinese counterpart to release him.

"There is grave concern about his safety and we want the Canadian government to make it clear to the Chinese government that this is unacceptable," Neve said.

Earlier this month, a Washington-based non-profit Christian association that promotes religious freedom in China released a lengthy letter Gao wrote in 2007 after he was held and tortured for 50 days.

In it, Gao wrote that interrogators beat him with electric batons, pierced his penis with toothpicks and held lit cigarettes underneath his eyes to the point they were swollen shut.

Calls to the Chinese Embassy were not returned.

Brutal Torture and Disappearance of Renowned Attorney Demands a Clear International Response

2009-02-12T14:23:00.000-08:00

Falun Dafa Information Center

World Leaders Must Call for Release of Gao Zhisheng, End to Falun Gong Persecution

12 Feb 2009

FDIC: NEW YORK – Chinese security forces’ severe torture and disappearance of leading human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gao Zhisheng highlights the life-threatening danger facing Falun Gong adherents and those who come to their defense in China and must prompt a strong international response, the Falun Dafa Information Center said Thursday.

“Gao Zhisheng has repeatedly risked his life to stand up against injustice. He has been abducted and tortured largely for defending Falun Gong adherents publicly, exposing the atrocities they have suffered and calling upon the regime's leadership to end its campaign against this large group of ordinary Chinese seeking to practice their faith in peace,” says Falun Dafa Information Center spokesman Erping Zhang.

“His horrific treatment for doing so should be a wake-up call to the international community of the Chinese regime’s disregard for human rights and the rule of law. Gao’s case shows clearly that absent international pressure with teeth, China’s leaders cannot be depended upon to uphold the basic dignity and rights of their own people.”

Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese rights lawyer featured on the front page of the New York Times in 2005 and listed among the top three candidates for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize, relayed the brutal torture he suffered in police custody in 2007 in a statement released on his behalf on Monday and published by the China Aid Association and Human Rights in China. (statement)

Several days before the letter was made public, on Feb. 4, Gao was again abducted by Chinese authorities. His current whereabouts remain unknown and he is at severe risk of torture.

Torture Account

In the statement released Monday, Gao describes the treatment at the hands of Chinese security agents after he was abducted on September 21, 2007 for writing a letter to the U.S. Congress detailing abuses surrounding preparation for the Olympic games.

Gao describes in great detail being stripped naked, thrown to a concrete floor where several officials beat him and shocked him with electric batons all over his body, including on his genitals and in his mouth. On other occasions, Gao was pinned down while torturers pierced his genitals with sharp objects. During the abuse, his torturers repeatedly linked his treatment to that of Falun Gong, whose persecution he is known for publicly condemning:

“The 12 courses [of torture techniques] we're going to give to you were practiced on the Falun Gong,” Gao recounts one torturer named Wang saying. “We can torture you to death without your body being found.”

The torture lasted for 50 days. Gao says he was threatened that if he were to reveal the torture he had suffered, he would be abducted again and tortured in front of his wife and small children.

Gao was eventually moved to a regular prison cell where several officials suggested that he write articles attacking Falun Gong and praising the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that he could "charge whatever you want," implying the government would pay him large sums of money to do so. Gao refused.

International Appeal

Gao’s letter closes with a few thoughts directed at foreign governments and his fellow citizens: “Finally, I want to say a few words which won’t be liked by some folks. I want to remind those so-called global 'good friends', 'good partners' called by the CCP that the increasing degree of brutality and coldness against the Chinese people by the CCP is the direct result of appeasement by both you and us (our own Chinese people).”

China watchers frequently point to economic and political relationships with the Chinese regime and suggest that taking a strong stance on cases such as Gao’s or Falun Gong may damage the advancement of interests in other areas such as the economy, energy and the war on terror.

Zhang, however, says such views are shortsighted. “Free countries have never really benefited from appeasing nations ruled by tyranny,” says Zhang. “In the end, it always comes back to haunt us, and often in the worst of ways. The best partner for the international community would be a China in which decent, courageous individuals like Gao Zhisheng are honored, not tortured.”

“The decision to detain and torture such a high-profile figure could only originate near the top on the Chinese regime’s hierarchy. The Chinese leadership clearly evaluated the pluses and minuses of doing this to Gao and determined they could take these actions with relative impunity. It is time for the international community to tilt the balance of that cost-benefit analysis with a strong response.”

The Falun Dafa Information Center calls for:

The Chinese regime to immediately and unconditionally release Gao Zhisheng.
President Barack Obama and other world leaders to make a personal, public appeal to the Chinese authorities to release Gao.
The United States and other nations to take an unequivocal and public stance against the persecution of Falun Gong in China, which has further escalated recently. (news)

Additional background on Gao Zhisheng:

Beginning in 2004, Gao, a devout Christian, was the first of China's high-profile human rights attorneys to speak publicly against the persecution of Falun Gong. Gao also authored several open letters to Chinese leaders (letter 1 / letter 2 / letter 3) as well as the U.S. Congress (letter) detailing his own investigation into atrocities against Falun Gong. In 2007, Gao published a book, A China More Just, detailing his life and work defending a gamut of China's vulnerable groups.

Background

Founded in 1999, the Falun Dafa Information Center is a New York-based organization that documents the rights violations of adherents of Falun Gong (or “Falun Dafa”) taking place in the People’s Republic of China. In July of 1999 China’s autocratic Communist Party launched an unlawful campaign of arrests, violence, and propaganda with the intent of “eradicating” the apolitical practice; it is believed certain leaders feared the influence of the practice’ 100 million adherents. The campaign has since grown in violence and scope, with millions having been detained or sent to forced labor camps. The Center has verified details of over 3,000 deaths and over 63,000 cases of torture in custody (reports / sources). Falun Gong is a traditional-style Buddhist “qigong” practice, with roots in the Chinese heritage of cultivating the mind/body for health and spiritual growth.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER

Contacts: Gail Rachlin (+1 917-757-9780), Levi Browde (+1 646-415-0998), Erping Zhang (+1 646-533-6147), or Joel Chipkar (+1 416-709-8678)

Fax: 646-792-3916 Email: contact@faluninfo.net, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/

Matas/Kilgour condemn China for rejecting UN UPR recommendations

2009-02-11T10:40:00.001-08:00

News Release
For Immediate Release
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matas/Kilgour condemn China for rejecting UN UPR recommendations

February 11, 2009 - David Matas and David Kilgour expressed regret that China has chosen to reject so quickly so many basic recommendations made in the report of the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review, released today. David Matas stated:

"We are dismayed China has chosen systematically to reject those recommendations which would prevent the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to be used in transplants and which would make possible the bringing to justice any perpetrators of this abuse."

Matas and Kilgour condemned the Government of China for its refusal (Report paragraph 117) to support the UPR recommendations to:

1. guarantee all citizens of China the exercise of religious freedom, freedom of belief and freedom of worshipping in private [paragraph 43(h)]. As Canada in its statement to the Working Group noted, respect for this freedom includes respecting the freedom of belief of the Falun Gong;

2. publish death penalty statistics [paragraph 28(c), 31(b), 42(b), 56(c), 86(b), 96(a)]. As the UN rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak and UN rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Asma Jahangir have both pointed out, the provision of these statistics is necessary to determine if any explanation can be given for the discrepancy in the number of transplants between the years 2000 to 2005 and the numbers from identifiable sources of organs for transplants other than Falun Gong practitioners.

3. abolish all forms of arbitrary detention [paragraphs 28(d), 43(a), 82(e), 92(c)]. The detention of large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners without charge and without information about their location facilitates their abuse.

4. implement the recommendations of the Committee against Torture of November 2008 [paragraph 28(g)]. The Committee had recommended that China conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture and used for organ transplants and take measures, as appropriate, to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished,

5. take effective measures to ensure that lawyers can defend their clients without fear of harassment [paragraph 79(a)]. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng who has defended Falun Gong clients has been tortured and disappeared. He was released briefly last week and, after he released a statement about his torture, was rearrested.

David Matas and David Kilgour are co-authors of the report "Bloody Harvest: Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China" released in revised form in January 2007. David Kilgour is a former Minister of State for Asia an the Pacific in the Government Canada. David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; he attended the fourth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review February 2 - 13, 2009 in Geneva.

For further information contact David Matas at or 001-204-944-1831

---30---

Fueled by Olympics, Falun Gong Persecution Escalated Sharply in 2008: Report

2009-02-10T23:20:00.001-08:00

Falun Dafa Information Center

Falun Dafa Information Center Issues 2008 Annual Report as UN Rights Body Finalizes China Review

11 Feb 2009

FDAC: New York – The Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong escalated sharply in 2008 as China’s rulers took advantage of the Olympic games to catalyze and justify the large-scale arrest, imprisonment, and monitoring of Chinese citizens known to adhere to the spiritual practice, the Falun Dafa Information Center said in an annual report published on Tuesday. (Executive Summary / Full Report)

As the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) continues its review of China’s rights record this week, the Center called on the international community to publicly condemn the 2008 crackdown and take measures to prevent such abuses in the future.

“Rather than being a vehicle for improved human rights, the 2008 Olympics was a catalyst for worse persecution – not only before the games, but also after their conclusion, as an increasing number of innocent people are being sentenced to labor camps and prisons for up to 13 years,” said Falun Dafa Information Center spokesman Epring Zhang. “The Chinese regime essentially used the heightened security surrounding the games to further its own decade-long agenda of ’eradicating Falun Gong.’”

The report documents a variety of rights violations against Falun Gong adherents, both inside and outside China, that occurred in 2008. It draws on a wide range of sources including first-hand accounts from practitioners, their families, and human rights lawyers, Chinese government websites, foreign media reports, research by Amnesty International, and a thorough study by the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

The report’s key findings were:

There was a clear and sharp escalation in the campaign against Falun Gong adherents throughout 2008.
The escalation began prior to the Olympic games with door-to-door searches by security agents, increased surveillance, detentions, and deaths is custody. In the immediate aftermath of the games, there was an increase in sentencing, particularly to long prison terms, of individuals who had been held in pre-trial detention for months.
The increased persecution was nationwide and top-down: While large numbers of adherents were detained, harassed, and tortured in Beijing and other cities hosting Olympics venues, reports of abuse and official directives to target Falun Gong—particularly from the central 610 Office to its subsidiaries—emerged across the country. One of the deadliest provinces was Heilongjiang, which hosted no Olympic events.
In total, the Center received reports of over 8,000 practitioners having been detained in 2008 and 104 dying as a result of persecution—in many cases within weeks, days, or even hours of being taken into custody.
Falun Gong adherents continued to make up a significant percentage of detainees in “re-education through labor” camps and in prisons, making them the country’s largest population of prisoners of conscience.
Once detained, it remained commonplace for adherents to be subjected to severe torture—including sexual abuse and shocks with electric batons—to force them to disavow their faith.
Throughout the year, a small group of approximately 20 lawyers continued to defend Falun Gong adherents, despite Party directives banning such action. Many of them faced harassment, monitoring, disbarment, and even detention or torture at the hands of the authorities.
Falun Gong remained one of the most taboo topics of coverage for both Chinese and foreign news organizations reporting from China in 2008, with its websites blocked for the full duration of the Olympics. In at least one well-documented case, an adherent was sentenced to prison simply for downloading and circulating Falun Gong-related information from the Internet.

”For years, Falun Gong practitioners have been the largest population of prisoners of conscience in China, and that remains true today,” says Zhang. “It is imperative that the UNHRC and other international bodies place Falun Gong squarely on the table when addressing China’s human rights abuses and not permit CCP officials to side-step a critical issue that affects so many in China.”

Background

Falun Gong supporters lose appeal to retain structure on Granville

2009-02-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

By Keith Fraser, The Province February 10, 2009 7:01 AM

The Falun Gong supporters today lost a last-ditch appeal to prevent their protest site in front of Vancouver’s Chinese consulate from being dismantled.

Last month B.C. Supreme Court Madam Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein found that the protest billboard and small shed at the site on Granville Street violated the city’s bylaws and ordered them removed.

On Friday the protestors applied to stay the order pending the hearing of a full appeal, but this morning B.C. Court of Appeal Chief Justice Lance Finch dismissed the stay application.

Finch found that the protestors might suffer some harm to their cause by the order, but it does not rise to the level of “irreparable harm,” one of the requirements that must be met to uphold a stay.

He observed that if the protestors succeed on their full appeal, which may not be heard until September, they can rebuild the structure at that point.

Outside court, city lawyer Tom Zworski said he expected the site would be removed sometime today.

Joe Arvay, a lawyer for the protestors, could not be reached for comment.

The protest site was set up seven years ago. The Falun Gong claim they have been persecuted by the Chinese government.

NGOs Question UN Agency’s Whitewashing of China’s Abuses

2009-02-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

OHCHR’s summary report excluded all complaints from NGO reports on the Chinese government’s gross and systematic human rights violations

By Online Friday, February 6, 2009

Canada Free Press: San Diego-The Conscience Foundation and China Aid Association today jointly issued an open letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, and member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), revealing that a summary report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had whitewashed China’s human rights abuses.

To view the full text of Open Letter please click here

On February 9, 2009, the UNHRC is to review China’s human rights records in its universal periodic review (UPR) procedure. Over twenty independent NGOs have submitted reports to UNHRC on China’s human rights conditions. OHCHR is responsible for summarizing these NGO reports for UNHRC.

After comparing it with those original NGO reports, the Conscience Foundation found that the OHCHR’s summary report excluded all complaints from NGO reports on the Chinese government’s gross and systematic human rights violations against multiple victims groups, including Falun Gong, Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and human rights lawyers and defenders and additionally, that the report used information from Chinese government-affiliated institutions to counter independent NGOs’ criticisms of the Chinese government’s human rights abuses. The Conscience Foundation’s detailed analysis of OHCHR’s summary report and how it effectively served to cover up China’s human rights abuses can be found at here

In the open letter The Conscience Foundation and China Aid Association request that High Commissioner Pillay look into the issue it has raised and take corrective measures. They also request that UNHRC postpone the UPR of China until a fair and objective summary report can be prepared to replace the current one. They believe the issue they have raised is serious not only because it undermines the fairness of the UPR of China, but more because it threatens the credibility of the entire UPR process. As it is, OHCHR’s summary report cannot serve as a fair and objective document for the UPR of China, and will render the UPR of China illegitimate.

In a separate letter on January 26, 2009, the Conscience Foundation’s affiliated Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group requested the Foreign Ministry of Canada to make a proposal to UNHRC to postpone the UPR of China. Canada, India, and Nigeria are the three member states chosen by UNHRC to facilitate the UPR of China.

Contact: Shizhong Chen, 1+858-366-5818, Arleen Freeman, 1+619-280-5177
Email: conscience@consciencefoundation.org

So what is Falun Gong?

2009-02-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

Irish Independent: The principles of Falun Gong were introduced by Chinese philosopher Li Hongzhi in Changchun, China, in 1992.

Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa, or just Dafa) is, according to the official website falundafa.org, "a high-level cultivation practice guided by the characteristics of the universe -- Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance."

Cultivation means "continuously striving to better harmonise oneself with these universal principles". Practice refers to the exercises -- five sets of easy-to-learn gentle movements and meditation. Falun Gong followers believe that cultivating oneself is essential; practising the exercises supplements the process.

"Over time, the principles of Dafa unveil the deepest and most profound truths of the universe," according to falundafa.org. "Following the principles, practitioners of Falun Dafa are able to reach very high realms, enlightening to the true meanings of life, and finding the path of return to their origins and true selves."

Followers believe that, while the exercises have deep inner meanings, they also help to reduce stress and can bring great improvements in health and fitness.

Today, Falun Gong is practised and cherished by over 100 million people in over 80 countries.

Falun Gong disciple Ming Zhao tells his horrifying story

2009-02-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

by John Meagher

Irish Independent: Life was looking rosy for Ming Zhao. It was the end of 1999, and he had returned from China after almost a year in Dublin studying on a scholarship at Trinity College. A top-grade computer science student, he was looking forward to spending time with his parents and three brothers, all of whom had carved a career out of computing.

While in Dublin, Ming had been dismayed to hear that the Chinese government had begun persecuting members of the spiritual Falun Gong movement, of which he was a follower.

Shortly after returning to China, he went to his local government appeals office in order to register his opposition to the persecution. He was arrested on the spot, detained for several days and his passport was confiscated.

It was an experience that didn't deter him from spreading the Falun Gong message of "truthfulness, compassion and tolerance". But his luck soon ran out. At a peaceful rally in Beijing in early 2000, he was one of several arrested. And so began two years of internment in a 'labour camp' where torture was a frequent occurrence.

Today, Ming, a 38-year-old Dublin-based web designer, recalls the nightmare of the Chinese justice system for many arrested Falun Gong followers.

"They used electric batons to shock us," he says. "They would tie me to a bed-board when giving me the electric shocks. It was incredibly painful -- the skin would go red immediately and the following day it would be black. Fear of the shocks was almost as bad as the shocks themselves."

His quiet, softly spoken voice only serves to heighten the trauma that he describes.

He was subjected to regular bouts of sleep deprivation. "The other inmates would be told not to let me sleep," he says. "It was terrible -- I thought I was losing my mind. And that's what they wanted, of course."

And there was worse to come in the Tuanhe 'Re-education through labour' Camp in Beijing. "They ordered inmates who were there for other crimes to beat me up. They were given special benefits for carrying out the beatings -- sometimes they were released early as a result. Once I was beaten so badly I couldn't walk for two weeks." Nor was he able to use the toilet. "My legs were so badly beaten I couldn't squat. It was an evil place."

The physical scars eventually disappeared, but the psychological wounds remain. He looks visibly distressed when recalling the beatings that he was frequently subjected to in captivity.

'My life is happy now, but I cannot forget. And thinking about what happened to me makes me realise that at this very moment there are thousands of Falun Gong followers who are experiencing the same sort of torture in prisons throughout China.

"And then there is the matter of the body-organ harvesting. Many Falun Gong followers have died in prison and their organs have been taken. The United Nations has written a number of reports about this practice, but it is something that the Chinese authorities have denied."

For most of Ming's two years in prison, his family did not know his whereabouts.

"The authorities did not inform them that I was in prison. My older brother only found out by chance -- he had gone to every prison in Beijing to try to find me."

Furthermore, he wasn't informed of his release date until the actual day. "Psychologically, not knowing when I was going to get out of prison was extremely difficult. There was no date for me to look forward to. Sometimes, I wondered if I would ever get out."

He believes the establishment's opposition to Falun Gong is inspired by a fear of mass mobilisation. When the persecution started in July 1999, an estimated 70 million Chinese were Falun Gong followers.

"The government spreads lies about Falun Gong -- it says that it is a cult, but it is not religious at all. It says we believe that sick people should not receive medicine and should commit suicide instead -- it's a lie.

"After the Cultural Revolution [Mao Tse Tung's violent campaign to rid the country of its liberal bourgeoisie] ordinary people kept their heads down and got on with their lives. There was a sense of fear. But Li Hongzu [Falun Gong founder] changed that. His teachings offered people a new way of looking at their lives."

Ming first read Li's introductory book, Falun Gong, in 1994 -- two years after it was first published. "It had a huge impact on me," he says. "It made me re-evaluate my life and my health improved as a result. It taught me to look at all aspects of the way I was living -- from meditation to food. It offers a balanced look at life -- I would recommend it to anyone."

Today, he estimates that there are about 40 dedicated Falun Gong practitioners living in Ireland. It is not known what proportion of the 70,000-odd Chinese living in this country follow the teachings.

After release from prison -- a move that was hastened thanks to international pressure led by then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern -- Ming returned to Ireland to complete his studies at Trinity. He enjoys life here, but hopes to return to China one day.

"My father saw me off at the airport and he told me not to come back to China because it would be too dangerous for me. He believed I would be arrested again if I returned."

That was in 2002 and he hasn't seen his father -- or any member of his family -- since. "I speak to them on the phone, but that's it. It is difficult being away from them. When this regime falls, I will see them again."

Ming believes political change is underway in China, with growing millions demanding greater freedom. "The mood is changing," he says. "The current head of the government is not as opposed to Falun Gong as his predecessor was, but the situation is still not safe."

Despite his suffering, and the uncertain future, Ming has no regrets about following the Falun Gong way or life.

"It has improved me as a person in a way that I could not have imagined. It has made me strong, too. One day I will be free to practise it in my own country. I'm sure of it."

Vancouver Falun Gong Rally to Continue Consulate Vigil

2009-02-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

By Joan Delaney
Epoch Times Staff Feb 4, 2009

Share: Facebook Digg del.icio.us StumbleUpon

The Falun Gong Loses Ground

2009-02-03T19:24:00.000-08:00

By Pete McMartin 02-02-2009

Vancouver Sun Blog: Late last week, B.C. Supreme Court Judge Sunni Stromberg-Stein ruled in her judgment, which can be read here, that gave the City of Vancouver the go-ahead to remove a row of billboards and a small shelter the Falun Gong had erected on a city-owned grass median in front of the Chinese consulate on Granville Street. I've written on the city's previous attempts to roust the Falun Gong away from the front of the Chinese consulate in a 2006 column you can read here, and again in a column for Tuesday's paper.

The city's preoccupation with the Falun Gong vigil, which the city has now pursued through the court for two years, and which promises to go on longer, since the Falun Gong will be filing an appeal, is always explained by the city as merely the wish to enforce its bylaw protecting the integrity of its streets. That integrity — so crucial, apparently, for a half-block strip along a residential area of south Granville — is compromised elsewhere by fruit stalls and sidewalk sandwich boards and ranks of newspaper boxes and bike stands and hot dog vendors all over town, but these uses, of course, are allowed under the city's bylaws. And lets not forget the nuisance of hundreds of beggars pedestrians must navigate around daily — beggars who often can be found on the same patch of sidewalk day after day.

But the passive and completely silent vigil protesting what the Falun Gong claims is institutionalized persecution by the Chinese government against them? This has inspired the city into action because the Falun Gong's row of billboards, and a yard-wide shack in which members can meditate in during inclement weather, sits on a city-owned grass median. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, the city has pursued this course despite the fact that in seven years only three documented complaints have been received. One of those complaints came from a consul general representing all the consulates in Vancouver, who fear, I guess, their own versions of Falun Gong-like shacks springing up on the medians in front of their consulates. Meanwhile, the Falun Gong protesters don't even do so much as litter. Passive? They make Gandhi look like a suicide bomber.

There are theories that have been suggested to explain why the city has moved against the Falun Gong, though these theories are impossible to prove. To appease the Chinese government. To appease the Chinese immigrant community. To remove potentially embarrassing public displays before the 2010 Olympics. Pick your conspiracy. The cause doesn't matter.

The effect does. What matters is the silence with which the city's move against the Falun Gong has been greeted. Where are the indignant howls of social activists? The angry editorials? The letters to the editor? Why, in a city that likes to think of itself as the centre of enlightened and virulent dissent, are there not more people who believe, who see, that there is more at stake here than the trespass of a few feet of city grass?

Between Heaven and Earth

Rally and Grand Parade Celebrate Falun Dafa Day in Hong Kong

A Special Wish on Mother's Day

Asking for freedom of prisoners of conscience

China and the Falun Gong:Abraham L. Halpern

After 10 Years and 2,000 Deaths, China Still Presses Its Crusade Against Falun Gong

The great protest that changed the face of China forever

Confidential Documents Portray Persecution of Falun Gong

'Not guilty' verdicts banned

Prohibiting ‘Not Guilty’ Verdicts

Emerging Defense Lawyers

The 2008 Shenbei Case

Trade Minister Urged to Raise Human Rights Issue on China Trip

Falun Gong practitioners seek release of family members, supporters

Falun Gong Reports Persecution to the U.N.

Slandering the Falun Gong

Falun Gong Barred From Montreal St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Matas: Canada’s CBC taking the Communist Party of China’s stance on Falun Gong???

The Human Rights Future of Communist China: David Matas

The Human Rights Future of Communist ChinaBy David MatasRemarks prepared for a University of Manitoba forum on the Future of China 5 March 2009

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gao Zhisheng’s Wife and Children Arrive in the U.S.

OPEN LETTER TO PM FROM CANADIAN FRIENDS OF GAO ZHISHENG

"Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia"My account of more than 50 days of torture in 2007 by Gao Zhisheng

http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/PressReleases/2009.02.08_Gao_Zhisheng_account_ENG.pdf

Urgent Appeal: Elderly Tianjin Resident Sentenced to Labor Camp

Urgent Appeal: Elderly Tianjin Resident Sentenced to Labor Camp for Distributing Falun Gong Leaflets, at Risk of Torture

15 other adherents sentenced to camp in one year; many tortured

Gao Zhisheng Peace Prize nominee taken into custody Feb. 4

Brutal Torture and Disappearance of Renowned Attorney Demands a Clear International Response

World Leaders Must Call for Release of Gao Zhisheng, End to Falun Gong Persecution

Background

Matas/Kilgour condemn China for rejecting UN UPR recommendations

Fueled by Olympics, Falun Gong Persecution Escalated Sharply in 2008: Report

Falun Dafa Information Center Issues 2008 Annual Report as UN Rights Body Finalizes China Review

Background

Falun Gong supporters lose appeal to retain structure on Granville

NGOs Question UN Agency’s Whitewashing of China’s Abuses

OHCHR’s summary report excluded all complaints from NGO reports on the Chinese government’s gross and systematic human rights violations

So what is Falun Gong?

Falun Gong disciple Ming Zhao tells his horrifying story

by John Meagher

Vancouver Falun Gong Rally to Continue Consulate Vigil

The Falun Gong Loses Ground

The Human Rights Future of Communist China
By David Matas
Remarks prepared for a University of Manitoba forum on the Future of China 5 March 2009

"Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia"
My account of more than 50 days of torture in 2007 by Gao Zhisheng