Speech by civil rights lawyer Mr. Michael Bergman at the Montreal press conference

Thank you very much. My name is Michael Bergman. I am a Montreal lawyer and I've been a lawyer for the last 24 years, and I am pleased to represent over 100 Falun Gong practitioners who initiated the legal procedures that I am going to discuss with you this morning.

Let me first give you a little bit of background as to why this court case has been initiated. In the month of November, one of the local Chinese-language newspapers, which is located just a few blocks away in Chinatown, began publishing a series of articles which were titled advertising. This "advertising" consisted of the opinions of an unnamed individual about Falun Gong. The "advertising" Appeared on Nov.3, 10, and 24^th in full-page articles written in the Chinese language; to describe these 3 pieces as "advertising" is to turn the definition of the word advertising on its head, and certainly I do not believe a fair reading of this material would find its way into the dictionary as the word "advertising". The material itself, in summary, claims that Falun Gong, its practitioners, its founder, his family, and all of those were involved in the practice of homicide, suicide, bestiality, sexual perversion, the breakup of families, neglect of health, incite delinquency, promote crime, are subversive, and, essentially, in my opinion as a lawyer and also representing my clients, I think it is a fair statement to say that the conclusion of reasonable common sense would consider that this material constitutes a form of hate literature.

The people who have initiated this lawsuit were greatly grieved and traumatized by reading this material, particularly seeing that it is printed in Canada, printed in an important Chinese-language newspaper and more so because it is local here in Montreal. They are also greatly aggrieved because many of the allegations in this so called "advertising" have been taken word-for-word, literally word-for-word, from material that has been printed on the website of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China, which strongly suggests that there may be a certain link between the material of the PRC website and the material found in the so-called "advertising". The people, the over 100 practitioners who initiated this suit, were also greatly concerned that this material could be used by the communist government's campaign in China against Falun Gong. And in fact the material has found its way, as I understand it, on to the PRC website in Canada.

The material is also being distributed on the Internet through the Chinese newspapers' Internet website, and my clients have received telephone calls from as far away as Taiwan, asking them 'what is going on?' It appeared from the information that my clients have received that the newspaper has a wide circulation internationally, and is susceptible to be used in the campaign against Falun Gong.

The question became for these practitioners 'what can be done?', and, Falun Gong - being a practice that supports the rule of law and democracy, and its slogan "Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance" - took the legal route and we initiated a lawsuit against the newspaper, its publisher, and the author of this material. This is significant in itself, because to my knowledge, it is quite rare in this country that the persons who are victimized by this kind of politicizing and defamatory material take action to defend their beliefs and their practice. The lawsuit alleges, in summary what I just said, it also says that each of the practitioners has suffered traumatization and injury. And each practitioner claims from the newspaper, the author, and the publisher the sum of $100,000, given that there are about 126 parties, practitioners, plaintiffs in this case, if you do the arithmetic we are talking about over $10 million, this sum, I believe, is not an exaggeration, and of course this will be litigated further by the court. And our most urgent concern was not to pursue a monetary claim, the first and the foremost concern was to stop the publication of this material.

As each so-called piece of "advertising" was printed, my office sent a demand letter by bailiff to the newspaper, asking them to cease publishing this material and to retract and apologize for its publication. Having exhausted every way of mediating this problem or seeking redress just through letters and non-court means, we were left with initiating a lawsuit that we began last Thursday. And we presented to the court this Monday of this week an application seeking a court order to stop the publication of this material, and I am pleased to report that we were successful in obtaining that order, a copy of which I think some of you have in front of you. The order was rendered by the Honorable Justice Danielle Grenier. As you read the text, you will see that in part it was following an agreement that was at the last second negotiated with a lawyer from the newspaper who showed up literally with 60 seconds left to go. And also the court order requires that the author, who chose not to come to court and not to be represented, refrain from publishing this material.

The order itself is, I think a significant initial step in the effort of the practitioners of Falun Gong to resist and prevent the publication of this type of literature against their beliefs. It is also an important initial step in making justice to see that a civil court was prepared to enter this type of order is also an important step to state to the public that in this country and in this time of human history, these people will not tolerate, nor be victimized by, a form of state-sponsored persecution, which is taking in the PRC and seems to have unfortunately and practically contaminated some portion of the community in Canada. My clients believe that ultimately the "advertising" that they find so offensive is an attempt to divide the Chinese community in this city and throughout the country. It is an effort to provoke the Canadian authorities to take a less active stance in supporting Falun Gong, despite the fact that her Excellency the Governor General, and many ministers, MNAs, MPs, MLAs have all expressed their support for this movement and the events going on in China. It is an important statement, this judgment, that we live in a country that is civil, where there is civil debate, but there is no tolerance for hate literature.

It seems to me, that given the events of the last few months internationally where certainly in one part of the world we see a state, as I heard one reporter say that was sponsored by terrorists. In another part of the world we have a state that sponsors a different form of terrorism: terrorizing its own population of people of good conscience and good standing, and even if the two are not directly the same form of event, there is a relationship, and the belief of the practitioners of Falun Gong is that Truth, (friendship), Tolerance, and Compassion will ultimately win out.

December 12 2001