Aujourd’hui le 25 avril, le soleil se lève ici à Melbourne en Australie.

En ce jour, les gens se réunissent pour commémorer l’Anzac Day. L’Anzac Day rend hommage au Corps d'armée australien et néo-zélandais (Anzac Corps) pour leur courage et leur endurance en Turquie pendant la Première Guerre mondiale.Même les jeunes gens sont ici pour célébrer les actes de courage du Corps d’armée de leur pays.

[Daniel Herszberg, parent d’un Anzac]:
« Nous avons pensé que se serait une bonne occasion pour réfléchir et réviser cette expérience unique qui a contribué à créer l’identité australienne. »

Ce groupe d’Anzac est le seul qui a quelque chose d’important en cours aujourd’hui. Les adeptes du Falun Gong, une pratique de méditation, font un appel ferme contre la répression en Chine qui a commencé, il y a dix ans. En ce jour, en 1999, plus de 10.000 pratiquants de Falun Gong ont protesté pacifiquement à l’extérieur du complexe Zhongnanhai du Parti communiste chinois pour la liberté de la pratique de méditation.

[Mme Wang, pratiquante de Falun Gong]:
« Nous avons  simplement demandé un environnement où nous serions libres de pratiquer le Falun Gong, et la permission d’avoir des livres à lire »

Cet appel est considéré comme le premier grand rassemblement des pratiquants de Falun Gong à Pékin Et ils ont continué à en appeler au cours des dix dernières années. Donc, qu’est-ce qui donne à Mme Wang et à de nombreux autres pratiquants le courage de prendre la parole contre la persécution?

[Mme Wang, pratiquante de Falun Gong]:

« En Chine si on est a la recherche de la justice, il n’y a aucun endroit. Après être venue ici, mon fils a été arrêté. Je crois que si nous n'allions pas defendre les pratiquants de Falun Gong, alors qui le fera? »

La persécution contre le Falun Gong a été lancée plus tard, à la fin de l’année, soit le 20 juillet 1999.Mme Wang a été attristée pendant nombre d’années parce qu’elle ne pouvait ni parler du Falun Gong ni pratiquer en public. Maintenant cependant, depuis qu’elle est en Australie, elle est assez courageuse pour en parler.

[Mme Wang, pratiquante de Falun Gong]:
« Nous voulons que plus de gens comprennent la situation des droits humains en Chine. Et nous voulons sensibiliser le public à notre sujet, afin que tout le monde puisse avoir une meilleure compréhension au sujet du Falun Gong.'

Mme Wang parle avec courage, même si son fils est toujours détenu en Chine à l’heure actuelle.

[Mme Wang, pratiquante de Falun Gong]:
« Mon fils a été enlevé par la police pour avoir distribué des documents au sujet de la démission du Parti communiste chinois. Depuis son arrestation, il a été condamné à trois ans d’emprisonnement.Pendant bien des années à venir, le 25 avril sera un jour en Australie et partout ailleurs dans le monde où on continuera à rendre hommage à ces gens qui osent être courageux.

[Mme Wang, pratiquante de Falun Gong]:
« Bien que le Falun Gong a subi une forte répression en Chine, les pratiquants de Falun Gong n’ont pas abandonné leur foi et ils vont tous tenir le coup jusqu’à la fin, jusqu’à ce que le PCC cesse la persécution contre le Falun Gong. »

Kathryn Shakespear, NTD, Melbourne, Australie.

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_french/2009-04-29/868731532218.html

大唐的贞观盛世，是中国历史上不可多得的辉煌时期；当时的国都长安，也是个极为繁华热闹的城市。一天，一位白衣书生路过长安城内的一个算命摊子前面，见到一位向围观的民众声称他能够预知一切的白髯老者。

白衣书生觉得此人过于狂妄，便问道：“老先生，那么您是否知道长安城内何时将下雨？雨量又为何？若所言不中，在下可要砸您的摊子了。”

算命老者若有所思地看了看那白衣书生，摸着自己的长胡子闭上了眼，嘴里念念有辞，随后说道：“明日午时，长安城必下雨三吋三分。”书生听罢，大笑扬长而去。

这是一个脍炙人口的传说。为何白衣书生大笑而去？原来他乃是司掌降雨的龙王化身，降雨的时刻与多寡都由他来掌握。料想那算命先生必然要栽跟头了吧！谁知龙王刚回到汾河龙王宫后不久，就接到了玉皇大帝的圣旨，写道：“明日午时，于长安城降雨三吋三分。”

但是，不服气的龙王，却故意将降雨时间延后一个时辰，而且刻意加大雨量。完事后，龙王便前往算命老者处要砸他的摊子了。就在即将动手之际，那位老者说道：“我早已看出阁下是龙王了。先别急着砸我的摊子，自保要紧哪。”随后告知龙王，由于他违反玉帝旨意，使降雨时辰延后且雨量加大，造成人民伤亡，将于明日午时三刻将其处刑。最后龙王果然难脱此劫，问斩于天庭。

这位料事如神的算命先生又是何人？他便是盛唐奇士袁天罡。袁天罡精于易卜与相学，他与另一位司天监李淳风合着的《推背图》一书，可说是中国历史上家喻户晓的预言名著。此书预言了从唐代以后的中国历代兴亡以及重大历史事件，以正统皇朝为中心，记载了千百年来的国家剧变。

李淳风于阴阳五行的造就，也深得当代人士的推崇和赞誉。一日午后，李淳风正与友人于门外弈棋，见有一赤色马与一黑色马相继跳入河中。其友人也喜占卜，故与淳风提议卜算哪匹马会先离开河中。

友人屈指一算，口中念念有辞后道：“赤马将先上岸。因‘赤色’与‘马’(十二生肖中为“午”)均属五行之火，双火为炎，表火势极旺，故该马将先上岸。”

但见淳风不加思索道：“马与赤色自然都属火，而河流属水，赤马入河无异火投水中而熄之象：火熄而先见黑烟升起，故黑马先上岸。”

友人心中不快，正想反唇相讥时，只见黑马果如淳风所料，先行纵跃上岸；而随后离水的赤马脚步蹒跚，暗合“水克火”之理。友人见状，不得不服。◇

Chinese victims of torture often post their stories to online forums, hoping to expose what happens in China's notorious detention centres. Today we bring you a few of these stories, but please note: The footage you're about to see includes graphic images and content.

Those who read medieval storybooks will know about people being hung, drawn and quartered, and probably feel glad that times have changed since then.

But there are reports that this very torture method is being used on political prisoners in China, and has claimed several lives.

Testimonials posted to website Clearwisdom.net say detained Falun Gong practitioners have had their limbs stretched in four directions, in an effort to have them renounce their belief in the practice.

They say two metal beds are placed side by side, and the victim's arms and legs are fastened to the four outer bedpoles using ropes or handcuffs. Bricks are then wedged between the two beds, forcing them apart. The more bricks are placed, the more the victim's limbs are stretched, disclocating his joints and tearing his tendons.

The latest report is from the Weining Detention Centre in Benxi, a city in China's northern coastal province of Liaoning, where Mr Lee Qinghuan was tortured this way for seven days straight, and died early this month.

There are more than 20 similar reports about the Weining Detention Centre, with victims claiming they were stretched for up to 24 days.

Since the Chinese Communist regime outlawed Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, more than 2000 Falun Gong practitioners have passed through Weining, and dozens have died or been driven to mental breakdown.

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_china/2009-04-30/645067716408.html

Falun Gong members re-enact Chinese torture methods used on their practitioners during a demonstration in Sydney. According to the Chinese regime, such torture is completely legal. (Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images)

On April 23, 2009, the Chinese regime’s spokeswoman claimed that, since it had persecuted Falun Gong “in accordance with the law,” it had broken no laws. The spokeswoman reiterated its slander that Falun Gong deprives others of their human rights by “controlling people's minds, resulting in the illness, disability or even death of many innocent people and practitioners,” and that the persecution of Falun Gong “shows that the Chinese government cares for its people.”

This spokeswoman failed to explain how the Falun Gong group deprived others of their rights, whether they were the rights to freedom of belief, expression, association, or other rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps the “human rights” referred to were from the CCP’s Orwellian newspeak dictionary.

As for “causing illness, disability or even death,” after ten years of the CCP’s persecution that itself has resulted in immeasurable illness, disability and even death, one would expect there to be an abundance of court proceedings and investigation records on these purported homicides or bodily damage cases, but the spokeswoman failed to produce any. These are all interesting topics to analyze, but that will be for another article.

Here we will just focus on the “broken no laws” claim.

The first example is from the 2007 annual reports of three United Nations Special Rapporteurs: on Violence against Women, on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and on the Question of Torture.

On December 29, 2005, prompted by information submitted by the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, the three Special Rapporteurs sent a joint intervention to the Chinese government concerning Ms. Liu Jizhi, age 51, and Ms. Han Yuzhi, age 42, both of whom are Falun Gong practitioners, “On the night of 24 November 2005, Liu Jizhi was abducted by an estimated seven policemen. Her home was ransacked and all Falun Gong materials were seized. … [S]he was interrogated, beaten with rubber clubs and given electric shocks with stun batons.

“At approximately 2 p.m. on 25 November 2005, a police officer called He Xuejian took Liu Jizhi to a room, where he lifted her shirt and touched her breasts. He then gave her electric shocks on her breasts with a stun baton. Another police officer called Wang came into the room and encouraged He Xuejian to beat her up.

“After Wang left the room, He Xuejian raped Liu Jizhi. While raping her, he repeatedly slapped her in the face. He then brought Han Yuzhi into the same room and raped her too. Both rapes took place in the presence of another police officer, who made no attempt to intervene or prevent the incidents.”

The Chinese government responded on June 28, 2006, to the joint intervention, “The authorities promptly summoned the policed officer in question. In the ensuing questioning and investigation, it was ascertained that he was a temporary employee in the Dongchengfang Township Public Security Office. He admitted that, in the afternoon of 25 November 2005, he had taken LJ and HY in turn back to his hostel, where he had indecently assaulted LJ and had raped HY.”

So if the Chinese regime had broken no laws while persecuting Falun Gong, then rape, beating, and electric baton shocks must all be “in accordance with the law”—in the CCP’s dictionary, of course.

The second example, a group case, is from Opinion No.7/2003 adopted by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. This working group adopts an adversarial court deliberation style working method, hearing presentations from both the plaintiffs and the concerned government before adopting its opinion.

Opinion No.7/2003 concerns a group of Falun Gong practitioners incarcerated by the Chinese government, and reads, “The detention of Chen Gang, Zhang Wenfu, Wu Xiaohua, Liu Junhua, Zhang Jiuhai and Zhu Xiaofei is arbitrary, being in contravention of articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and falls within category II of the categories applicable to the consideration of cases submitted to the Working Group.”

So if the Chinese had broken no laws while persecuting Falun Gong, then violating articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights must be “in accordance with the law”—in the CCP’s dictionary, of course.

Example three is from a letter by the courageous human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng. In the letter, Mr. Gao noted what a torturer shouted at him while torturing him, “Didn’t you [curse word deleted] say the CCP uses torture? Now we are going to let you [curse word deleted] taste all of the tortures. Torture Falun Gong? Darn right. Every bit of it is true; what we are doing to you, the whole twelve courses, all came from there. Tell you what, who the hell cares if you will write about this. There is no way you are getting out of here alive!” [http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/11777/]

So if the Chinese had broken no laws while persecuting Falun Gong, the whole twelve courses of torture must be “in accordance with the law”—in the CCP’s dictionary, of course.

Yet, looking at its words rather than its acts, some people too often unwittingly comment on such a barbaric lawless regime, which persecutes not only Falun Gong, but also the Tibetans, the Uyghurs, Christians, democracy activists, human rights defenders, union activists, environmental activists, and anyone who dares to dissent, with such affirmative statements as, “China is making progress in the rule of law.”

It is precisely in the verbiage, “progress in the rule of law” that the deterioration in human rights hides. No other regime is as shrewd and shameless as the CCP in putting up an impressive, indeed even praiseworthy façade of human rights improvement: passing amendments to its constitution to protect human rights, passing legislation to prevent human rights violations, engaging in human rights dialogs, making promises on human rights improvement, participating in technical collaboration on human rights learning and training, appearing to consider recommendations on how to protect human rights, as in its most recent endeavor, developing a Human Rights Action Plan.

Many people, particularly those from the West, lament, “China has laws; it is just that they are not implemented.” Wrong. They have been implemented: as window dressing, to deflect international criticism, and to be able to declare with a straight face, as the thick-skinned spokeswoman did, that all the persecutions are “in accordance with the law.,”

The Chinese regime’s claim of “rule of law” is not difficult to see through, for no genuine rule of law will seek to persecute so many human rights lawyers for upholding the law, like Gao Zhisheng, the Yitong law firm*, Cheng Hai, Liu Yao, or Guo Feixiong. Yet it is behind the paper progress in the rule of law that China’s human rights conditions continue to deteriorate.

To cover up more human rights violations, the Chinese regime keeps coming up with more legislation “designed to protect human rights.” Many unwitting observers fall for this game of “progress on paper and deterioration in reality.”

Seeing how the regime’s National Human Rights Action Plan consists almost exclusively of more “progress in the rule of law,” and how the regime has claimed it carries on the persecution of Falun Gong “in accordance with the law,” it ought to wake some people up: the CCP’s legislation is never designed to protect human rights; on the contrary, it is designed to provide a cover for more human rights violations “in accordance with the law.”

*The Yitong Law Firm has represented Hu Jia, an AIDS activist who received the European Parliament's top human rights award last year and is now serving a three-year sentence for inciting subversion. Yitong has been a leading light in the "rights defense movement," See: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0225/p01s01-woap.html

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/16069/

Le 25 avril 2009, China Town, Flushing à New York. Ces gens, pour la plupart des Chinois et d’autres non, sont des pratiquants de Falun Gong, une pratique spirituelle chinoise.


Une pratique spirituelle interdite dans la Chine communiste depuis 1999, mais qui est quand même pratiquée par des millions de personnes à travers le monde.


Ils ont marché en mémoire de ce jour: il y a dix ans, juste avant la répression, quand dix mille de leurs compagnons pratiquants du Falun Gong ont tenu un appel silencieux à Beijing, pour demander un traitement équitable par les autorités.


Certains de ceux qui sont ici aujourd’hui étaient aussi présents ce jour là: le 25 avril 1999, un jour de paisible espérance et de détermination

[Shi Caidong, participant au 25 avril]:
« Je n’avais pas peur, pas du tout. Je ne pensais vraiment à rien d’autre. Nous avons juste présenté une simple requête : que nous puissions avoir un environnement sûr et paisible pour notre pratique spirituelle. »


Environ trois mois plus tard, le Parti communiste a lancé sa répression.
Des milliers ont été tués pendant dix ans, et le Falun Gong a fait un appel pacifique pour la fin de cette répression.


Et, à travers le monde, de plus en plus de personnes ont embrassé cette pratique traditionnelle chinoise. Ces personnes n’étaient peut-être pas présentes ce jour là, mais ça ne perd pas pour autant tout son sens. 


[Gwendolyn Weldon, une pratiquante du Falun Gong de New York]:
«Quand vous croyez en quelque chose vous devez le défendre. Et je pense que c’est ce qu’ils ressentaient en étant debout là-bas : «Nous voulons juste que vous sachez que nous sommes de bonnes personnes.»


Certains tiennent à la main une couronne avec la photo de pratiquants tués dans les prisons et camps de travail de l’état.


Chen Zixiu est décédée en 2000, la même année où l’homme, Michael Feltz, qui porte sa photo a commencé à pratiquer le Falun Gong. Il ne l’a jamais rencontrée, mais il aide à faire en sorte qu’elle ne soit pas oubliée.


[Michael Feltz, un pratiquant du Falun Gong de Boston]:
« …Tenant en main une photo d’une personne qui a été tuée par la persécution, je me sens très calme. Je ressens un sentiment de quiétude, si l’on veut, en respect pour ceux qui ont été tués par cette brutale persécution. »


NTD, New York.

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_french/2009-04-28/076639624741.html

Flushing Mob Continues to Incite Hate Against Falun Gong

Police attempt to disperse the pro-communist crowd, but this man refused to move, angering the police. (Sonya Bryskine/The Epoch Times)

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NEW YORK—On Monday morning, a Chinese mob continued to threaten Falun Gong practitioners as they have been doing over the last eight days. A group of them threatened to kill Epoch Times reporters and photographers who were at the scene reporting on the events.

The protests have been linked to Zhou Yongkang, the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Political and Judiciary Committee, and involve the top diplomat at the Chinese Consulate in New York City, Consul General Keyu Peng.

Mob numbers were estimated to be around 600 people, spread out through different areas in Flushing throughout the day on Monday.

The Chinese mob threatened an Epoch Times photographer, "We will kill you!" (Sonya Bryskine/Epoch Times)	Two Chinese women led the crowd in shouting hate messages targeting Falun Gong. (Sonya Bryskine/Epoch Times)
A mob chants slogans inciting hatred against Falun Gong practitioners. (Sonya Bryskine/Epoch Times)	The man in blue told the photographer that he was an agent and was not afraid of getting his picture taken. He was loudly insulting Falun Gong. (Nadia Ghattas/Epoch Times)
A Chinese man shouts at one of the Falun Gong practitioners handing out material. He spit at the practitioner, who is now filing a complaint against him. (Nadia Ghattas/Epoch Times)	A Falun Gong adherent sings "Falun Dafa Hao" to the Chinese mob. Some of the mob even smile while holding a thumbs-down, indicating that they were sent by the Consulate to stir up trouble. (Genevieve Long/Epoch Times)
Chinese mobsters chant insulting slogans while surrounding a Falun Gong practitioner, who has a calm response. (Dayin Chen/Epoch Times)	A Chinese woman from the Communist Party led mob tears up a special edition about Chinese Communist control of overseas organizations and shouts at the person handing it out. (Dayin Chen/Epoch Times)
A crowd of Chinese people (L) shout at a Falun Gong practitioner who is handing out flyers. (Dayin Chen/Epoch Times)

Open Letter From European Parliament Vice President:

The Tenth Anniversary of the Persecution of Falun Gong in China

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Edward McMillan-Scott (L) Vice President, European Parliament poses with Hong Kong legislator Albert Ho next to a portrait of jailed mainland human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in Hong Kong, Aug. 26, 2006. McMillan-Scott had just returned from China on a hu (Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images)

H.E. Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General
United Nations
New York, April 25, 2009

Dear Secretary-General:

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the most systematic persecution of one group since the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

As a European Parliament Vice-President and longest-serving member of its Foreign Affairs Committee, I have for three years campaigned to draw attention to the brutal and systematic persecution by the Chinese regime of practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddha-school spiritual movement with, at one time, 70 to 100 million adherents.

They have been persecuted—simply because Falun Gong is popular—by the most paranoid, brutal, and arbitrary regime in world history, which has killed 70 million of its own people, 38 million through deliberate starvation.

I write to urge you to initiate an inquiry into the systematic process of imprisonment without trial, escalating torture, and the murder of thousands of innocent people under torture. This goes beyond man’s inhumanity to man: It amounts to genocide under Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. The age of impunity is over, and those who know what is taking place in China look to you to take action.

As U.S. Supreme Court Judge Felix Frankfurter said when told in 1942 by the Pole Jan Karski of what was happening in the Nazi death camps, “I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference."

Secretary-General, there is plenty of evidence of genocide in China if only you would care to look, or listen to the U.N. rapporteurs on torture and religious freedom.

A solemn procession in a New York City parade memorializing the Falun Gong practitioners who have been persecuted to death, on April 9, 2007. (Jeff Nenarelly/Epoch Times)

Falun Gong is a spiritual and meditation movement that echoes traditional Chinese beliefs that humans are connected to the universe through mind and body. The Chinese Communist Party describes it as a “cult,” whereas international jurisprudence suggests that a “cult” should include financial commitment, alienation from family, disciplined organization, brainwashing, anti-social behavior and the like, none of which apply to Falun Gong. Like all qigong (spiritual exercise) groups, Falun Gong has a “master” whose exercise book, published in 1992, remains the only financial commitment for most.

My campaign began in May 2006, when I visited China on a fact-finding mission in preparation for a report on human rights and democracy for the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. In Beijing, at great personal risk to them, I interviewed two former prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners Cao Dong and Niu Jinping.

Cao Dong was subsequently arrested and convicted of “meeting a distinguished foreigner.” He was sent to Tianshui prison, where he was tortured to recant his religious convictions and to denounce his meeting with me.

Niu Jinping appealed to me on behalf of his wife, Zhang Lianying, who had been in Beijing Forced Women's Labor Camp since June 2005 and so severely tortured that she suffered a coma in April 2007. The two were subsequently imprisoned again as part of Beijing’s pre-Olympic roundup.

Another of my contacts was Christian human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng, sometimes known as the “conscience of China,” who represented a number of Falun Gong practitioners after his investigation into their persecution in 2005.

Well-known in China for publicly denouncing the regime, especially for corruption, he wrote an open letter to the European Parliament through me in September 2007, and another to the U.S. Congress. He was then sentenced to prison on a charge of “subversion.”

After being temporarily released into house arrest, he was imprisoned again, and in 2008 so severely tortured that he twice tried to commit suicide. After his wife and children escaped through Thailand to the U.S.A. in January 2009, Gao was abducted by security forces, and his whereabouts are currently unknown.

Gao’s friend Hu Jia, an environmental activist, was another of my contacts who was arrested and imprisoned in 2008 after he gave evidence by telephone to the European Parliament’s Human Rights Committee. He was then awarded the European Parliament’s annual Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Expression. Hu Jia’s wife, Zeng Jinyan, was named one the 100 most important people on earth by Time magazine for her blogs in support of Hu Jia’s activities.

These are only a few examples of some thousands that demonstrate the extent of the Communist regime’s paranoia against any activity that could threaten or destabilize the Party.

On April 25, 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners spent a day in peaceful protest in Beijing after police brutality against fellow practitioners in Tianjin City. People who were there have told me that this event was almost certainly organized by the security forces as a justification for the persecution that then began.

Falun Gong practitioners are usually imprisoned under “administrative detention” with no trial: Often they refuse to give their names to protect their families. As members of a banned “evil cult,” they suffer particularly harsh treatment, often at the hands of other prisoners and even Falun Gong who have recanted [and are forced] to demonstrate their rejection of the practice.

Former prisoners I have met, having ipso facto recanted, have suffered total sleep deprivation for a period of weeks, have then been forced to stand motionless for several days, being prodded with sharp objects to keep them awake, followed by progressively brutal treatments involving electric prods—always including the genitals—excrement, and general beatings.

Zhang Lianying, who suffered a coma, wrote me a list of the 50 progressive tortures she suffered, which I submitted to the U.N. Rapporteurs on Torture and Religious Freedom, Dr. Manfred Nowak, and Mrs. Asma Jahangir, both of whom I have met on a number of occasions.

Manfred Novak believes that some two-thirds of those undergoing “re-education through labor” in China’s prison camps, modeled on the Soviet Union’s gulag, are Falun Gong practitioners. … Falun Gong [practitioners] outside China maintain contact with prisoners and record their torture and torturers where either can be identified: Records exist of more than 3,000 who have been tortured to death since 1999.

Of particular concern is that only Falun Gong—who neither smoke nor drink—are routinely blood-tested and blood-pressure tested in prison. This is not for their well-being. They thus become the prime source for the Peoples’ Liberation Army's lucrative live-organ transplant trade: More than 40,000 additional unexplained transplants have been recorded recently in China since 2001.

Although using body parts from executed prisoners has been routine in China (in one province alone there are 16 specially-converted evisceration buses) many believe, as I do, that live Falun Gong prisoners are quarried for their body parts. Indeed, Cao Dong told me that after his best friend disappeared from their prison cell one evening, he next saw his dead body in
the morgue with holes where body parts had been removed.

Ten years later, the campaign of brutal repression of Falun Gong—once encouraged by Beijing for the well-being reportedly experienced by its adherents—shows no sign of easing.

In my view, the persecution of Falun Gong amounts to genocide as defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

It is clear that Falun Gong [adherents] are to the communist regime what the Jews were to the Gestapo. Although millions died in the gulag it was from starvation, not systematic torture and liquidation as in China today.

In your capacity as Secretary General of the United Nations, and on this 10-year anniversary, I urge you to take action to put an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

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Appendix: Letter to Edward McMillan-Scott from the lawyer Gao Zhisheng, translated by an intermediary:

From Beijing, China: received via email September 7 2007

Dear Mr. Scott,

How are you? Writing to you is the only way of communication that I have at present. Although it is somewhat primitive or old fashioned, it is still much less primitive than the way my family and I have been handled by the Chinese Communist regime since last year. Their open disregard of human feelings and conscience in their confinement and harassment against us is simply because we try to stick to human feelings and conscience.

Gao Zhisheng is seen during an interview at his office in Beijing, November 2, 2005. (Verna Yu/AFP/Getty Images)

During such long period of loneliness, your words of concern have often been passed over, though the passing over itself has been also quite primitive. Yet, to my family, it is as if a thread of bright sunshine tearing through dark clouds to reach our hearts. On this occasion, please accept our appreciations!

Deep in my heart, I have never thought of gratitude for your persistence of condemnation against present-day Chinese evil dictatorship. In my opinion, we are common warriors conquering darkness. The Chinese Communist regime continues as an unprecedented evil regime on this planet. Its presence in China is the direct source of all sufferings and injustice there. Its history is one of committing countless crimes and covering these countless crimes. In recent years, its economic expansion, which has been gained at the expense of sacrificing the environment, human justice, human ethics as well as fundamental human nature, has generated for the dictatorship even more brutality and fearful powerfulness.

The ethical values and conscience of the entire human race is being eaten away through “trade relations, Olympic Games” and other “state” visits. Mainstream politicians from the West are aware of the current phenomenon of gaining interests at the expenses of human traditional ethic values. This interest over fundamental ethics and virtue has become a common practice of international politics. Under this situation, anything unrelated to economic interests has been openly neglected for a long time.

About Chinese Communists’ bloody persecutions against Falun Gong, diplomats from all major countries in the world are all well aware of it yet they have also dreadfully and miserably become a part of the silent community on the entire mainland China. Compared with silence from Chinese people, the one from foreign governments looks especially disgusting. To some
extent, this indifference paves the way for the Chinese regime’s ruthless crackdown against domestic dissidents. The whole human race will pay a huge price for this numbness, because it has become a shocking humanitarian issue instead of a pure political one.

Today, I am not writing to compliment you, or to release my own complaints. The struggle against the Chinese Communist dictatorship is one for the human race, for lightness or for darkness, for civilization or for savageness. The cruel reality warns us that our peaceful struggle should never be relaxed! In today’s mainland China, changing the dictatorship peacefully has become a common wish.

Dear Mr. Scott, human civilization has entered current era, but this era seems to have no relation with Chinese Communist regime. Although it has got the technology to enter space, it has no intention, politically speaking, to give up its jungle games. Now Chinese Communist Party is preparing its 17th National Party Congress. Its preparation is totally operated in darkness, while its subjects are like animals or private property handed over to the next ruler. This power succession like the mafia’s has lasted since Mao. The only change is today’s successors are all in Western suits. We must work hard to change it, even if it is purely for the humanitarian value.

Dear Mr. Scott, when freedom finally arrives in China, I invite you to drink wine in Beijing, real good wine [in their first telephone conversation McMillan-Scott said he would give Gao vintage whiskey].

Best regards,

Gao Zhisheng


 

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/16041/

The Communist Party of China represses every belief system it does not control. At one time, one could say that the Party would repress every belief system other than its own. But with the switch from socialism to capitalism highlighted by then president Deng Xiaoping's statement 1984 "to get rich is glorious", Communism in China was gutted of its ideological content. All that was left was the hollow shell of power to which the rulers have held on to for dear life. Despite ceasing to stand for anything except enriching and empowering its cadres, the Communist Party will not accept any other belief.

The Communist Party banned the practice of Falun Gong in 1999, a set of exercises with a spiritual foundation. At the time, the repression of the Falun Gong just seemed Communist Party business as usual. When the Communists are repressing every other community of belief they do not control, it is hardly surprising that they also banned the practice of Falun Gong.

What is striking about Chinese Communist repression of the Falun Gong is not so much the fact of repression as the extent of repression. Practitioners of Falun Gong are persecuted far more, far worse than adherents of any other belief.

Falun Gong has the ignominious honour of leading by far the parade of human rights victims in China. They represent two thirds of the torture victims. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture's 2006 report on his 2005 mission to China¹ indicated that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and ill-treatment in China were Falun Gong practitioners, with the remaining victims comprising Uighurs (11%), sex workers (8%), Tibetans (6%), human rights defenders (5%), political dissidents (2%), and others (persons infected with HIV/AIDS and members of religious groups 2%)².

Falun Gong represents half the people in detention in re-education through labour camps. The United States Department of State Country Reports for 2008 state:

Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners sentenced to death are the sole victims of organ harvesting, the killing of innocents for their organs for transplant surgery. Former Canadian Minister of State David Kilgour and I wrote a report on organ sourcing in China released first June 2006 and, in a second version, January 2007 under the title "Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China". In that report we concluded that between 2001 and 2006 China killed Falun Gong practitioners in the tens of thousands so that their organs could be sold to foreign transplant tourists.

The extremes of language the Chinese regime uses against the Falun Gong are unparalleled, unmatched by the comparatively mild criticisms China has of the victims the West is used to defending. The documented yearly arbitrary killings and disappearances of Falun Gong exceed by far the totals for any other victim group.

The question which arises from all this is not so much why the Falun Gong is being persecuted. To believe in anything the Party does not control, if you live in China, means you run the risk of persecution. The question is rather, why is the Communist Party persecuting Falun Gong practitioners so much worse, so much more than adherents of other beliefs? Why is Falun Gong alone of all the beliefs which the Communist Party represses the victim of organ harvesting?

There are two obvious answers for organ harvesting, the large numbers and the grotesque incitement. Only the Falun Gong are a large enough number in the Chinese detention system to constitute, on their own, a captive organ donor bank throughout China. Only the Falun Gong are dehumanized so viciously that their jailers and the hospitals who pay them off do not even think of them as human.

But that does not get us very far. Why are the Falun Gong jailed in such large numbers? Why are they so dehumanized? I have a dozen suggested explanations.

1 One is simply the numbers. Falun Gong before it was banned had, according to a 1999 Government estimate, 70 million adherents. That year, the Communist Party of China membership was an estimated 60 million. In Beijing alone, before the banning, there were more than 2000 Falun Gong practice stations. Practitioners were found everywhere, at all levels of society and government, within the inner reaches of the Communist Party.

A group of that size no matter what its belief attracts the attention of a repressive government. The Falun Gong, before their banning, were not anti-Communist. But they weren't Communist either. And that was, for the Communists, a matter of concern. These were people who no particular fealty to the Communist Party of China.

2 When it comes to victimization of the innocent at home, the Chinese Communist government is much like other tyrannies. The chosen enemies vary from country to country, but, whatever the country, the story is much the same - innocents suffer so that despots can stay in power.

At one level, the Chinese Communist repression of Falun Gong is sheer totalitarian nuttiness, the manufacturing of an enemy out of thin air, a form of paranoia to which the followers of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung are prone. The Communist Party needs enemies in order to justify their continuing hold on power and the Falun Gong had the bad luck to be around in sufficient numbers and available to fill the enemy slot.

For a communist regime, far worse than having bitter enemies is having no enemies at all. Without anyone to demonize, communists are left speechless when justifying their hold on power.

3 Another facet of the Falun Gong which led to their singling out is their principles. In short, the Falun Gong stand for three basic beliefs - compassion, tolerance and truth. Anyone who believes in any one of these principles spells trouble for the Communist Party government - a cruel, repressive, dishonest regime. Tens of millions of Chinese believing in all three principles had to give the Party chills.

The worst nightmare of a gangster is an honest person. The nemesis of the corrupt are those who will not take a bribe. The venal speak a common language with the unscrupulous. With the principled, dialogue is impossible. All that is left is force.

4 The collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism through Central and Eastern Europe haunts the Chinese Communist Party. The practice of Falun Gong went from a standing start in 1992 to numbers greater than the membership of the Chinese Communist Party within the space of seven years, spreading rapidly throughout China immediately after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Communist Party control in Central Asia and Eastern and Central Europe. The Communist Party of China feared a similar collapse, a similar loss of control.

When the Party saw their own Chinese nationals, in the tens of millions, engaging publicly in a form of exercise which had an underlying belief system completely divorced from Communism, Communists fantasized the Falun Gong as the engine of their destruction. They turned a group of innocents into an enemy and launched a persecution to combat this imaginary enemy.

5 Fifth, there is the lack of structure. Falun Gong is neither a movement nor an organization; it is rather a set of exercises with a spiritual foundation. Literally, the word "Gong" means "practice" or "exercise" and Falun means "the wheel of law". The phrase "wheel of the law" is a short hand description of Falun Gong beliefs. So Falun Gong is a form or type of practice or exercise.

The exercises can be done by anyone, anywhere, at any time, though commonly they are done once daily in groups. Those who are interested can begin the exercises whenever they want and stop whenever they want. A person need not register with anyone or join anything to practice the exercises. All information about how to do the exercises is publicly available.

Those who practise Falun Gong have no leadership. Li Hong Zhi has written books and given public lectures widely available in print and on the internet which have inspired individual Falun Gong practitioners. But that is all he has done.

There are some Falun Gong practitioners who have formed and joined support organizations, Falun Dafa associations. Falun Dafa associations are local or national. There is no one international Falun Dafa Association.

These associations encompass only a portion of Falun Gong practitioners. They may facilitate some Falun Gong activities. But they do not represent or lead or organize all Falun Gong practitioners.

The amorphous nature of Falun Gong meant that it was impossible for the Communist Party to control. Because other beliefs are organized, the Government of China has responded in part by attempting to take over the organizations.

There is a Chinese government appointed Buddhist Panchen Lama, Chinese government selected Roman Catholic bishops, Chinese government chosen Muslim imams. These designations mitigate the attacks the Government of China launches against these beliefs, since it does not want to undermine its own appointees.

If Falun Gong had a leadership, the Party, as it had done with the major religions, just would have appointed some of its cronies and said that they were the leadership of the Falun Gong. But Falun Gong does not lend itself to this sort of usurpation.

For Falun Gong, since there is no organization and no leadership, there is no one China can appoint to head the Falun Gong. Not being inhibited from undermining its own appointees, the Government of China attacks on the Falun Gong know no bounds.

6 Mirror imaging worked against the Falun Gong community. Though the Falun Gong is not an organization with a leadership, the Communist Party of China surely is. When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The Communist Party of China saw the Falun Gong community as a mirror of itself, organizationally similar, but ideologically different.

The absence of organization and leadership of Falun Gong has not stopped the Government of China from believing there is one. Chinese officials just think it is hidden underground. The very lack of visibility of leadership and organization has led the Government of China to greater suspicion, greater fears.

This belief in a hidden organization has generated exaggerated spying efforts on Falun Gong practitioners. Defectors from Chinese embassies and consulates around the world tell us that the primary effort, expense and person power of the Government of China around the world is dedicated not to trade, not to international relations with foreign governments, but to spying on the Falun Gong.

Calling an uncoordinated mass of individuals engaged in parallel activities an organization with a leadership may, on its own, just be an innocent mistake. But once one starts attributing anti-state activity to this imagined organization, the mistake ceases to be innocent. The error becomes paranoic, a conspiracy fantasy.

7 The mobilization capacity of Falun Gong practitioners alarmed and frightened the Communist Party. The Party, in April 1999, published an article in the magazine Science and Technology for Youth, which singled out Falun Gong as a superstition and a health risk because practitioners might refuse conventional medical treatments for serious illnesses. A large number of Falun Gong adherents demonstrated against the contents of the piece outside the Tianjin editor's office. Arrests and police beatings resulted.

To petition the Government Petition Office in Beijing about these arrests, on April 25th, 1999, 10,000-15,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered from dawn until late at night outside the Communist Party headquarters at Zhongnanhai next to Beijing's Forbidden City. The gathering was silent, without posters⁴.

This was the largest gathering of protesters in Beijing since the Tiananmen square massacre. The Party had no advance warning of this gathering and was startled.

8 The Falun Gong community was the first to take advantage of modern technology to protest. The growth of the practice of Falun Gong and mobilization of its practitioners is directly attributable to the advent of the internet and cell phones. Through cell phones and the internet it is possible for large numbers of people to do the same thing at the same time, be at the same place at the same time, without organization or leadership. For Falun Gong practitioners, one can say - make publicly available the exercises and beliefs, spread the technology of cell phones and the internet and they will come, without organization or leadership.

This phenomenon was unknown in China before it was manifested through the Falun Gong. When the Communist Party saw a group of people doing the same thing at the same time, they were intellectually incapable of attributing this activity to cell phones and the internet. They simply had no idea of its mobilization capacity. What they saw instead is what they knew - an organization, an hierarchy, a leadership, a plan, rather than what was in fact staring them in the face. The Party projected on to others, a disparate group of Falun Gong practitioners, its own manner of operation. The persecution of the Falun Gong began and continues with a simple mischaracterization.

9 A large measure of the persecution against Falun Gong can be attributed to petty personal jealousy of then President Jiang Zemin. Initially, it was Jiang alone of the central leadership of the Party who wanted Falun Gong banned. Others eventually fell into line because he was insistent and because he was the guy in charge.

One can see this jealously in the language he used. He wrote in April 1999:

• "Can't the Marxism our communists have, the materialism, atheism we believe in really win over that suit of stuff aired by Falun Gong? If that were the case, would it be a thumping joke?"⁵

He was concerned that he personally would be seen as a thumping joke.

Jiang attempted in 2002 to provide a cover for the continuation in power of the Communist Part of China after the end of Communism with an ideology labelled "the three represents". Wikipedia, which makes every effort to be neutral, labels this ideology as "incomprehensible". Jiang was envious of Li Hong Zhi, that something an outsider proposed could become so popular while his own "Three Represents" writings languished in confusion and obscurity.

10 Falun Gong detainees are more vulnerable than other detainees. Falun Gong detentions present an unusual feature.

Falun Gong practitioners who came from all over the country to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to appeal or protest the banning were systematically arrested. Those who revealed their identities to their captors would be shipped back to their home localities.

Their families would be implicated in their Falun Gong activities and pressured to join in the effort to get the practitioners to renounce Falun Gong. Their workplace leaders, their co-workers, their local government leaders would be held responsible and penalized for the fact that these individuals had gone to Beijing to appeal or protest.

To protect their families and avoid the hostility of the people in their locality, many detained Falun Gong declined to identify themselves. The result was a large Falun Gong prison population whose identities the authorities did not know. As well, no one who knew them knew where they were.

Though this refusal to identify themselves was done for protection purposes, it had the opposite effect. It is easier to victimize a person whose whereabouts is unknown to family members than a person whose location the family knows. This population is a remarkably undefended group of people, even by Chinese standards.

Those who refused to self identify were treated especially badly. As well, they were moved around within the Chinese prison system for reasons not explained to the prisoners. Members of this population could just disappear without anyone outside of the prison system being the wiser.

11 Repressed democracy activists, journalists, human rights defenders, Tibetan and Christian activists generate more sympathy than the Falun Gong because they are more familiar to the West, more in tune with Western sensibilities. The Falun Gong are recent, started in 1992, foreign, without an obvious link to globally entrenched traditions.

To outsiders, there is the immediate albeit superficial strangeness of the name Falun Gong. The words "Falun" and "Gong" in Western languages mean nothing.

For the Communists, victimizing the Falun Gong is a crime which is easier to get away with than victimizing other, better known groups. Falun Gong victims are often people without Western connections or Western languages. It is a lot easier for outsiders to relate to victims who have universal labels - journalists, human rights defenders, democracy activists, than a group with a name which means nothing to most ears.

It is also a lot harder to misrepresent the known than the unknown. When the Communists slur Tibetan Buddhists or the Christian underground churches, we know that they are talking nonsense. When the Communists slur the Falun Gong, many people are not sure whether there is any basis in the charges or not. Some people hearing slurs against the unknown may think that, where there is smoke, there must be fire, that the repression may, in fact, be justified. Outsiders do not have either the acquired knowledge or the time and energy to do the research to contradict Chinese Communist propaganda.

12 The Communist Party fright from the rise of the Falun Gong came from content as well as form. Falun Gong is authentically Chinese, rooted in ancient Chinese traditions. It is a blend of ancient Chinese spiritual and exercise traditions.

As exercise, it is a form of qi gong, a set of Chinese exercise practices. The form most familiar to Westerners is Tai Chi. But there are many such Chinese exercise practices.

Nor does Falun Gong have just any spiritual foundation. Its spiritual formulation has direct links with Taoist and Buddhist disciplines, ancient Chinese beliefs. Though his writings, Li Hongzhi managed to articulate a set of beliefs which reverberates with the Chinese people, the Chinese soul.

The global TV network run, in the main, by Falun Gong practitioners is called NTD TV. NTD stands for New Tang Dynasty. The old Tang Dynasty, which ran from 618 to 907 A.D., was a particularly glorious period of Chinese history, a period to which the Chinese look back with pride.

The Falun Gong, then, are an outgrowth from ancient Chinese traditions; they are its modern form. Put in Hegelian/Marxist terms, they are the present stage of the Chinese historical dialectic. They are the face of the real China, the grass roots China, the China of the people, in Marxist terms the China of the proletariat.

It is no coincidence that the Falun Gong emerged in 1992 at the time of the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the ending of any rational belief world wide in Communism. What was to fill the ideological gap left by the global collapse of Communism? For China, it seemed, the answer was Falun Gong.

If China were free from the chains which the Chinese Communist Party has clamped on them, there would flower the variety of beliefs and practices we see in any tolerant society. But the predominance would be Falun Gong.

The threat the Communist Party of China saw from the Falun Gong in 1999, when repression was decreed, was not political; but it was and is ideological. To the Chinese Communist Party, the Falun Gong were a regression, a huge leap backward, back to where China was before the Communist Party took over. For Falun Gong to prevail would mean a China that would continue as if the Chinese Communist Party never existed, aside from the scars the Party left behind.

The problem for the Communists was not just that Falun Gong is so authentically Chinese; it is also that Communism is so patently foreign. Communism is a Western ideological import into China. Communists saw a widespread, popular Chinese based ideology as cutting out from under them the very ground on which they stood.

Tolerating the Falun Gong would not have meant, at least in the short run, the collapse of the current regime. But it would have meant the disappearance of whatever ideological presence the Communist Party still had in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. Once there was no one left to believe in Communism, even within the Communist Party, the loosening of the grip of the Communist Party on power could not be far behind.

So what we have with the Falun Gong is a vicious Chinese Communist Party repression, a repression without bounds, a repression far worse than suffered by any other victim group. The crimes against the Falun Gong are crimes against humanity. It should not matter that we are not Falun Gong, that the words "Falun" and "Gong" mean nothing to us. We share their humanity. Crimes against them are crimes against us. That should be enough to engage our efforts.

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

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

1. U.N. Commission on Human Rights: Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, on his Mission to China from November 20 to December 2, 2005 (E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6), March 10, 2006. http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/ecn4 2006 6 Add6.doc
2. Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak MISSION TO CHINA, UN Document E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6, 10 March 2006, paragraph 42.
3. 2008 Report on International Religious Freedom: China http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/eap/119037.htm
4. Danny Schechter, Falun Gong's Challenge to China, Akashic Books, 2000, pages 44 to 46.
5. Jiang, Zemin, Comrade, to standing members of the Political Bureau of the CCCCP, 25 Apr. 1999. <http://beijingspring.com/bj2/2001/60/2003727210907.htm>

http://www.david-kilgour.com/2009/Apr_14_2009_01.php