Reuters: China Protests Over Falun Gong-UN Press Meeting

GENEVA, Apr 10, 2001 -- (Reuters) China's mission in Geneva on Monday demanded that the United Nations Correspondents' Association cancel a meeting it organized for its members with representatives of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

But the meeting went ahead as scheduled in the Association's library -- which is treated by officials of the world body as having extra-territorial status -- rather than at the UN's Palais des Nations European headquarters.

Falun Gong has been denounced by Chinese authorities as an "[Chinese government's slanderous term omitted]". It first shocked Beijing with a 10,000 person protest in April 1999 and was banned in China later that year.

A letter to the Association's acting president Tomasz Surdel, also sent to the UN Information Division, said the meeting "will deeply hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and relations between China and the UN"

The letter, handed to Surdel by a Chinese diplomat, added: "We strongly demand that such a meeting be cancelled."

Surdel, a Polish citizen who works for the Warsaw Gazeta Wyborcza, said representatives from the mission or from anti-Falun Gong groups at the current session of the UN Human Rights Commission, would be welcome if they asked for a similar meeting.

The UN has always supported the Association's right to hold such meetings with non-governmental organizations from many countries and representing a wide range of views, Surdel said.

Earlier in the day, members of the Falun Gong from around Europe demonstrated against what they say is official oppression of the movement in China on a square outside the Palais des Nations.

Since the six-week Human Rights Commission began last month, Chinese officials have distributed to reporters hundreds of publications and videos attacking the Falun Gong, which has legal recognition in Switzerland.