|
By John Sudworth
BBC News, Seoul |
  China pressures Asian countries to support its ban on Falun Gong. |
South Korea has sent two members of the Falun Gong spiritual group back to China after they had their applications for political asylum turned down. A further 31 Chinese nationals also face the risk of deportation following a court ruling that they cannot prove that they face persecution back home. Falun Gong, which combines meditation with Buddhist-inspired philosophy, is banned in China. The movement's members say they face arrest and abuse in China. South Korea deported the two Chinese members of the Falun Gong spiritual group in July after they lost their battle for refugee status. In March this year South Korea's Supreme Court upheld a ruling denying asylum to a group of more than 30 Falun Gong members. It said that they could not prove that they had been persecuted in China and nor could they show that they had played leading roles in spreading Falun Gong teachings. Their supporters claim that South Korea is acting under pressure from the Chinese government and that the actions make a mockery of Seoul's condemnation of China's forced repatriation of North Korean refugees. But a ministry of justice spokesman denied any political interference, saying that the government cannot grant asylum without clear evidence of the risk of persecution. Campaigners for the two Falun Gong members sent home so far say that they have been unable to make contact with them. They say two other members of the group are being held in an immigration detention centre in South Korea and are in imminent danger of being repatriated. |
10-Year Anniversary of the Persecution of Falun Gong
By Maureen Zebian
Epoch Times Staff Aug 9, 2009
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/20756/
Peter Zheng spoke of slave labor and brain washing sessions, and watching CCP guard officials torturing and eventually killing a 23-year-old Falun Gong practitioner during a rally at Milwaukee's City Hall. (Maureen Zebian/Epoch Times)
MILWAUKEE—“They hung me on the window frame while twisting my neck. When they couldn’t turn my neck any further, they would fiercely snap it toward the opposite direction. During those four days and nights I never got any food or sleep. I was continually tortured and assaulted,” said Peter Zheng, a guest speaker at the rally to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the persecution of the Falun Gong held in Milwaukee’s City Hall.
Ten years ago, on July 20, 1999, former Chinese Communist Party-head Jiang Zemin launched a violent campaign to “eradicate” the Falun Gong spiritual discipline, practiced at the time by tens of millions of ordinary Chinese citizens. Since then, the Party has used coercion, imprisonment, torture, and systematic villification in an effort to force anyone known to practice Falun Gong to recant the basic tenets of his or her peaceful faith.
Mr. Zheng, who now resides in Chicago, told his horrific experiences in China when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began the crackdown of the Falun Gong in 1999 due to its popularity. Prior to the crackdown, the Chinese government gave Falun Gong numerous awards and accolades for being the “star qigong”.
With resounding confidence, Mr. Zheng talked about having untreated scabies that itched terribly while locked in small prison cell for over a year. He spoke of slave labor and brain washing sessions, and watching CCP guard officials torturing and eventually killing a 23-year-old practitioner.
“I reminded myself everyday that I needed to continue living so that I could expose the (CCP) evilness,” said Mr. Zheng.
Falun Dafa also know as Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese self-improvement practice consisting of gentle exercises, meditation, and moral teachings. The practice is based on the principles of Truthfulness Compassion and Forbearance.
Another speaker, Peter Feng, who currently lives in the Wisconsin Dells, said he was arrested in November 1999 after speaking out against the CCP in a press conference to tell the world of the lies and propaganda the CCP was spreading about the Falun Gong.
“They used torture methods like boiling egg on me. That is when they don’t allow you to sleep and if you show signs of sleepiness, they punch you with their fists. I was tortured like this for a week. I was also forced to squat for long periods of time and if I couldn’t’ hold the position I was shocked with an electric baton,” said Mr. Feng.
Jenny Hu, who now lives in the Wisconsin Dells, also spoke about the ensuing persecution in China. “I didn’t understand why such a good practice was banned, so my mother, sister and I went to appeal.”
After Ms. Hu was driven away from at Beijing’s appeal office, the police forced themselves into her home and ransacked her home, confiscating all Falun Gong books and tapes. She was jailed without the right to a trial and forced to work over 16 hours a day doing repetitive slave labor. After being arrested a second time, Ms. Hu, who currently lives in the Wisconsin Dells, protested the illegal detention by going on a hunger strike. In response, the police forced fed her, a form of extreme torture.
“They jammed a tube through my nose into my stomach and used a large syringe to inject food. To increase pain, they left the tube inside my body after the force feeding. The feeling was brutal,” said Ms. Hu.
Ms. Hu said that during detainment authorities checked and tested blood types of Falun Gong practitioners and many were taken to an unknown place. “Later, I learned that practitioners with good health were put into concentration camps and the CCP harvested their organs while they were still alive for profit,” said Ms. Hu.
For the next three weeks, there will also be a photo exhibition on display at Milwaukee’s City Hall that chronicles the spiritual practice from its public introduction in 1992 through its persecution in China for the last 10 years.
Last Updated
Aug 10, 2009
South Korea Deports Falun Gong Refugees
Urgent Refugee Debate in Seoul
By Changsik Lee and Emma Hall Jul 26, 2009
Falun Gong practitioners meditate in Seoul, South Korea. (Jarrod Hall)
Imagine escaping from persecution in your country of birth, then being forced to go back. This is what some Chinese Falun Gong practitioners fleeing persecution in China face in South Korea.
Mr. Wu applied for refugee status in South Korea. Why? Because he practices Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that has been severely persecuted in China for 10 years. Practitioners have been killed and tortured at the hands of the Chinese communist regime. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, over 3,000 practitioners have been killed.
After Mr. Wu's refugee application was rejected, he was sent to a detention center. On July 1 the Korean government deported him to China.
Nam Jun Kim is a lawyer. He has represented many other Chinese Falun Gong practitioners in Korea. He is very frustrated with the South Korean government's ruling. He said, “I think the Korean government made the wrong decision. It had the opportunity to do the right thing.”
Mr. Wu and 31 other Falun Gong practitioners have been denied refugee status by the Supreme Court. Article 3 of the United Nation’s Convention against Torture says, “No State Party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Korea signed this UN convention in 1995.
“The Korean government is obviously violating the UN’s “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” said Se Yeol Oh. He is the spokesperson for the Korea Falun Dafa Association.
The Korean constitution says the Minister of Justice can give an applicant humanitarian status, after they arerefused refugee status, if there’s a risk of persecution in their home country. A representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Korea says the this would be a good option for the Korean government. She said, “This would be one avenue I think for the cases to explore whether or not they could have kind of humanitarian leave to remain in the country despite not being recognized as a refugee.”
In a landmark ruling in January 2008, the Korean courts granted refugee status to a married Chinese couple who practiced Falun Gong. Afterwards, a spokesperson of the CCP foreign ministry, Jiang Yu, said “the CCP is against all the countries that give Falun Gong practitioners refugee status. And all Falun Gong practitioners and the organizations that help them are illegal.”
Human rights groups suspect this statement caused the two Falun Gong practitioners to lose their 2nd hearing later that year. Since then, all 32 Falun Gong refugee applicants have lost their cases in the Supreme Court.
“We suspect that the CCP is involved in Mr. Wu’s deportation,” said Oh.
The Korean government recently detained 4 more Chinese Falun Gong practitioners. Their refugee applications were denied by the South Korean government. They are in detention centers and are at risk of being deported to China.
Bok Hee Chang speculates, “To make a long story short, it’s not whether or not the government has a law to protect the refugees, but whether or not the policy makers have the will to execute the law.” Bok is a Professor of International Refugee Law.
This story was written with files from NTDTV, a media partner of The Epoch Times.
Last Updated
Jul 26, 2009
Streatham daughter demands action on Falun Gong torture anniversary
2:40pm Monday 20th July 2009
http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/search/4502343.Falun_Gong_torture_victim_demands_action_on_persecution_anniversary/
A Streatham Common woman whose parents fled China after they were tortured for their religious beliefs is fighting to raise the profile of their struggle and that of millions of others.
Youyan Li, of Hepworth Road, and her parents practice Falun Gong – a Buddhist practice acclaimed for its healing powers - followed by an estimated 70 million people in China and millions others across the globe.
Today (July 20) marks the official 10-year anniversary of what Ms Li says is a brutal persecution by the Chinese authorities of Falun Gong practioners because they feared the religion posed a threat to their control of the country.
It is alleged that millions have been tortured and the Government has been accused of killing 40,000 people in an “organ harvesting” campaign where organs were allegedly taken from thousands of illegally imprisoned, healthy practioners.
Ms Li’s parents, both award-winning scientists, were victims of the persecution before eventually escaping to Australia in 2003 after being granted asylum there.
Her mother, Jing Hang Liu, was arrested six times and jailed for three years after being falsely accused of organising an anti-Government protest.
She is now visiting her daughter in Britain and is calling on people to pressurise the British Government to take action to end a situation “verging on genocide”.
Jing Hang Liu, 67, said: “I was tortured with force-feeding through lethal nostril insertion, injection of unknown drugs, long-term sleep deprivation, physical punishment, and slave labour.”
She was told it would all end if she gave up practicing Falun Gong. She believes the only reason she was not killed to harvest her organs was she was too old.
She said: “I am lucky to be alive, lucky to have escaped China.”
Ms Li said: “We can never return to China while this goes on. This torture and persecuton is still going on today yet not enough people know it is happening and more must be done to get world leaders to end it.”
She said the international community feared raising the issue with China because of their economic and military might.
Streatham MP Keith Hill has already raised the issue of persecution of the Falun Gong in Parliament at her request, and Youyan Li and her mother were due to visit Downing Street today to hand over a letter demanding more action be taken.
The Washington Times
DUIN: China's Falun Gong still suppressed
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/16/falun-gong-still-suppressed/
At noon Thursday on the lower west terrace lawn of the U.S. Capitol, members of Congress, human rights and religious freedom activists will meet to commemorate a sad anniversary: 10 years of imprisonment and torture of the Chinese meditation group Falun Gong.
You may remember how Wenyi Wang, a reporter for the Epoch Times, sneaked into the press section during an April 20, 2006, speech on the South Lawn of the White House just before Chinese President Hu Jintao was to give a speech. Suddenly, "Stop persecuting Falun Gong," she screamed while unfurling a yellow banner with the group's name on it. It took several minutes for the Secret Service to arrest her.
Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual discipline that is Buddhist in nature. It consists of moral teachings, meditation and four exercises that resemble tai-chi.
The group says 3,200 of its members, at a minimum, have been tortured to death by the Chinese government. It cites Wang Lixuan, who had to watch her 7-month-old son die in front of her after he was hung upside down. Then police broke her neck and crushed her skull.
Then there are the forced organ transplants, one of the things Miss Wenyi was protesting. Just before her White House visit, this newspaper interviewed a Chinese journalist who uncovered a secret detention center in northern China that was used to harvest human organs for sale to domestic and international buyers. (The Chinese, of course, denied such a place exists.) The journalist estimated 6,000 Falun Gong prisoners were being mined for body parts. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, which chronicled the practice in March 2007, said the harvesting began in 2001.
What got the communist government going on April 25,1999, was the Falun Gong's ability to summon 10,000 of its practitioners, standing in silent protest, in a mass demonstration in Zhongnanhai, the government's compound in Beijing. The government struck back July 20, arresting the ringleaders of the April demonstration. Thousands of practitioners, the Falun Gong says, were dragged from their beds at dawn that day by police.
The Falun Gong is one of many groups I have listed in the fat religious persecution folder in my office. Buddhists, Muslims (especially out west) and Christians likewise get brutalized in China. But the Falun Gong, whose numbers were 70 million to 100 million at its height, seem to outrage the Chinese leaders the most. Maybe it's because the Falun Gong outnumbered the membership of the Communist Party and their practices are so quintessentially Chinese.
New Jersey Reps. Christopher H. Smith, a Republican, and Robert E. Andrews, a Democrat, plus 59 other members of Congress wrote a July 8 letter to President Obama asking that, "In view of the extreme brutality of the persecution faced by Falun Gong practitioners, our government should speak very clearly and specifically on their behalf to the Chinese government."
Mr. Obama hasn't said much about religious persecution during his brief time in office and the U.S. government isn't exactly known for standing up to China on human rights issues. Our massive indebtedness to China gives us little heft when it comes to pressuring them. But where there's a will, there's a way and the Falun Gong deserves a break.
Julia Duin's Stairway to Heaven column runs Thursdays and Sundays. Contact her at jduin@washingtontimes.com.
China's Porn Filter Blocks Falun Gong Sites
Owen Fletcher, IDG News Service
http://www.pcworld.com/article/166562/china_porn_filter_blocks_falun_gong_sites.html?tk=rss_news
Internet filtering software that China plans to distribute nationwide blocks content related to a spiritual movement banned in China, despite government claims that the software targets only porn. The program automatically closes a browser window when it detects Chinese words related to Falun Gong, according to a keyword blacklist decrypted and posted online Thursday in a report by researchers at the University of Michigan.
Falun Gong, a meditation practice, was banned in China as a cult ten years ago after mass gatherings by followers in Beijing stoked government fear.
China this month ordered PC makers to include the porn filtering software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, either pre-installed or on a CD-ROM with all new computers sold in the country from July 1.
The move has raised concern among PC makers and rights groups that the program could be used to block other Web sites as well, but China has insisted the software targets only "harmful" information like porn and violent content. A Chinese Internet official called filtering porn the "only purpose" of the program, according to the state-run China Daily.
Visiting Chinese sites dedicated to Falung Gong with the filter active confirmed the program's response. A pop-up message notifies the user that the information is "harmful" and closes the window. It does the same thing when it detects a small number of political keywords revealed in the University of Michigan report, including "evil Jiang Zemin," a negative reference to China's former president.
Bryan Zhang, manager of Jinhui Computer System Engineering, the program's main developer, said he did not know its keyword blacklist included non-pornographic terms. Jinhui developed the program's image filtering tool, which blocks Web sites when it detects pornographic pictures. Dazheng Human Language Technology, which contributed the program's language filter, declined to comment.
The security of the program could also be an issue. A specially crafted Web address could overrun the buffer the program uses to process URLs, redirect users to malicious sites and take over their computers, according to the U.S. researchers. That control could be used to drag computers into a botnet, steal personal information or send spam, the report said.
The researchers took less than 12 hours to uncover the flaw and other "serious security vulnerabilities due to programming errors," the report said. While those flaws could be easily patched, extensive rewriting would be needed to remove all of the program's problems, it said.
The software can be turned on or off by users with the parental control password, but uninstalling it does not remove all log files of user activity, according to the report.
Jinhui's Web site became inaccessible this week after foreign industry executives and Chinese Internet users protested the move to distribute the software.
China is also working to place the software on all computers in Chinese schools.
U.S. Sees Potential Trade Impact in China Porn Filter (Update1)
By Bloomberg News
June 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government said it’s concerned over China’s move to make it mandatory for new personal computers in the country to have state-backed software installed to filter out unacceptable Internet content.
“The U.S. Government is concerned about Green Dam both in terms of its potential impact on trade and the serious technical issues raised by use of the software,” the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said in a statement today, referring to the “Green Dam- Youth Escort” program. It must be included with all new personal computers sold in China from next month, the Chinese government said.
The U.S. government statement follows criticism from industry groups, academics and opponents of censorship about the use of the Green Dam program, which China said is designed to block access to pornographic Web sites. A group of 19 business associations in North America and Japan last week sent a letter to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology seeking a review of the order to use the software.
“The U.S. is concerned about actions that seek to restrict access to the Internet as well as restrictions on the internationally recognized right to freedom of expression,” today’s statement said.
Liu Lihua, a spokesman for the information-technology ministry, declined to comment. Another official, who didn’t give his name, said the ministry will study the embassy statement and determine whether to respond.
Tiananmen References Blocked
Computers loaded with the software are prevented from accessing Web sites about the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown and the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, Isaac Mao, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said June 12.
The software is a “substandard product” developed by companies with little experience in such software, according to a June 12 report by OpenNet Initiative. It will increase government control of Internet use in China, said the group, which includes researchers at the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and University of Toronto.
For Related News and Information: Top government news: GTOP <GO> Most read stories related to China: MNI CHINA <GO> Stories on the Internet in China: TNI CHINA INTERNET BN <GO> Top technology news: TTOP <GO>
Last Updated: June 21, 2009 22:27 EDT
Falun Gong adherent brings protest to South Bay cities
By Sandy Mazza Staff Writer
Posted: 06/20/2009 07:07:07 AM PDT
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_12654994?source=rss
Falun Gong practioners perform meditative exercises at Torrance's Wilson Park. American followers of the spiritual discipline try to get U.S. lawmakers to chastise the communist nation over the treatment of Falun Gong members still residing in China (Brad Graverson Staff Photographer)
Jie Li was just 23 years old when she and a group of friends were rounded up by police in Beijing and taken to a detention center, where she would serve five years as an enemy of the Chinese government.
They were arrested because they are practitioners of Falun Gong, a belief system set down by Li Hongzhi in 1992 that stresses meditative exercises and careful cultivation of virtuous character.
The Chinese government declared Falun Gong an "evil cult" after a large-scale peaceful protest by the group in 1999. Since then, the government has aggressively prosecuted those who express their beliefs. In turn, Falun Gong practitioners call the atheist communist regime an "evil cult."
But, unlike the Chinese government, Falun Gong practitioners can't do much to strike back at their adversaries. One outlet where they have found some success is in pleading for help from law-making bodies in other countries.
That's what recently brought Li, now a 33-year-old Torrance shopping assistant, to ask city council members in Torrance, Gardena and Carson to draft a resolution opposing China's alleged practice of torturing and killing Falun Gong practitioners and harvesting their organs to sell for profit.
"Just because I refused to renounce my belief in Falun Gong, I was sentenced to a five-year jail term," Li told the Gardena City Council earlier this month. "I'm asking the City Council to pass a resolution that condemns organ harvesting from Falun
Gong practitioners and inform our residents not to go to China for organ transplants. A resolution granted by the city will directly affect people who live in China. People will remember you."
Gardena Councilman Steve Bradford said he supports a resolution, but Li hasn't gotten much interest otherwise. After all, what effect does a local city resolution have on a country 6,000 miles away?
"It is truly a sad thing that's going on," Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto said. "But it's not the city of Torrance government's battle. It's not our position to take on the government of China."
Chief among Li's concerns is what she contends is the practice of organ harvesting. Americans often have to wait years for an organ transplant but, in China, they can get an organ in days because the government will kill prisoners for it, Li said. This practice has not been confirmed by U.S. government officials.
Chinese officials have said that organs are only harvested from prisoners who consent to their removal before their deaths. But human rights groups such as Amnesty International contend that prisoners' organs are removed against their will after they are executed.
Cities that have drafted resolutions condemning the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners quickly learned that their stance was not taken lightly by the People's Republic of China.
Officials in hundreds of U.S. cities have been contacted by Chinese officials in the past 10 years, and urged to ignore Falun Gong practitioners, according to the U.S. State Department.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Baltimore rescinded their resolutions of Falun Gong support in 1999, in the face of Chinese pressure.
Locally, most cities that have been lobbied by Falun Gong practitioners have turned them down. But in 2007, Pomona issued a resolution declaring that "the brutal crackdown by the Chinese government on Falun Gong is in direct violation of the fundamental human right to freedom of personal believe and practice, expression and assembly."
In China, where there are estimated to be millions of Falun Gong practitioners, believers are described in the state-run media as delusional people who threaten peaceful social order.
Falun Gong's most unusual beliefs - including the ideas that they can cultivate supernatural powers, see invisible dimensions beyond the material world, and heal serious illnesses with religious belief - are highlighted and mocked by mainstream Chinese outlets.
But Li said her faith rests in the belief system's exercise regimen and moral code that rests on three tenets - truth, compassion and tolerance.
Li said the group believes in "exercise, reading books, don't do bad things."
The Falun Gong is a threat to China's leadership because it organizes open protests against communism, she said.
"The Communist Party is really evil," Li said. "They want to control people's minds. Falun Gong has independent thinking and, if people have their own thinking, the government can't control them."
Li was arrested in February 2000 with a group of other Falun Gong practitioners who participated in a protest in Tiananmen Square. Though Li said she didn't attend the protest, she was involved in planning and preparing for the event, in which they unfurled pro-Falun Gong banners and preached about Falun Gong.
The group was prosecuted for "being suspected of organizing and making use of heresy organization to break law enforcement," according to a written judgement from the district court where she was prosecuted.
The protesters gathered illegally in the square, "overtly resisting the enforcement of national laws and administrative regulations and seriously encumbering the order of social management," court documents say.
Li was instrumental in making banners and organizing people for the protest, the documents state.
For her crime, Li says she spent many days in cramped detention rooms, wrapping chopsticks in paper and other tasks. She reported she was given only three minutes each morning to brush her teeth, use the bathroom and wash and that her meals consisted of pig slop.
"Some people are tortured, beaten until their whole body is purple," she said. "They use electric batons, needles. I saw many people tortured.
"We want people to know what's happening in China. We want to stop it," Li said. "If all the people know and say `no,' I think it will stop."
sandy.mazza@dailybreeze.com
Arrests at demo against Chinese leader in Slovakia: report 
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090618/world/slovakia_china_diplomacy_rights_demo_1
AFP Photo: Slovakian police restrain a demonstrator arrested after protesting against a visit by Chinese President Hu...
Thu Jun 18, 3:44 PM
BRATISLAVA (AFP) - Slovak police detained nine people on Thursday after a scuffle broke out during a human rights protest against visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao, a local news agency and witnesses said.
SITA news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying authorities had detained "nine people, including six Slovaks and three citizens of the People's Republic of China."
According to the news agency, a woman holding a poster with text promoting the Falun Gong movement -- which is outlawed in China -- had to be treated by medics after being pushed to the ground.
Slovak Falun Gong Association chairman Peter Tatarko told the agency that a group of supporters welcoming the president pushed the woman.
Police were not immediately available for comment.
A witness claimed "attackers" tried to tear down the human rights activists' posters.
"The Slovak police detained the protesters instead of the attackers," Juraj Kusnierik told AFP.
Eduard Chmelar from Amnesty International Slovakia, who said he witnessed the incident, told AFP one of the protesters "hurt his head and had to be taken to hospital, and a woman from the Falun Gong Association with a head injury was treated on the spot."
Bratislava's City Hall had banned the rally planned by six non-governmental groups including Amnesty International, the Falun Gong Association and Friends of Tibet Society, officially because the square in front of the presidential palace was reserved for the president's office, said Chmelar.
The six NGOs called on top Slovak officials to discuss human rights with the Chinese president.
Hu arrived on Thursday from Moscow for a two-day visit to Slovakia, his first ever. The former communist country is his only stop within the European Union.
Falun Gong, loosely based on Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian philosophies, was founded in 1992. The sect grew in China to include tens of millions of followers in 1999, prompting the government there to ban it as an "evil cult."