Video: FGM TV News - 02/26/2002

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Falun Gong is freely practiced in more than 50 countries around the world, but relentlessly persecuted in China. The peaceful courage of practitioners there has shocked their oppressors and moved the people of the world. While China continues to block all information, FGMtv brings you the stories you may not hear anywhere else.

Hello, and welcome to FGMtv on February 26th, 2002.

I'm Susan Mitchell.

Our top story this week:

• How Falun Gong practitioners' response to one negative newspaper article in Korea mobilized the country and its media to begin to truly appreciate and study the practice

Some of our other stories:

• Tsinghua alumni scientists outside China appeal to President Bush to urge China to release students and faculty detained for practicing Falun Gong.
• The founder of Falun Dafa, Mr. Li Hongzhi, publishes six poems and seven articles in two weeks.
• Video and photo coverage from around the world of practitioners returning from Tiananmen Square and detention in China, where most were beaten and roughly interrogated.
• A Boston woman distributed Falun Gong flyers in many cities in China before being arrested in Tiananmen Square

In this week's update from China:

• Chinese State TV deletes US President Bush's comments on faith and religious freedom during a speech at Tsinghua University
• Despite intense persecution, large bright Falun Gong banners fly in Anhui Province during the Spring Festival
• How Chinese hospitals currently operate the opposite way to the rest of the world
• Police in Da'an City of Jilin Province are refusing to follow Jiang Zemin's orders because they don't want their crimes published on posters by Falun Gong practitioners.

and finally

After two years in illegal detention at a forced labour camp, Shenli Lin is reunited with his wife in Montreal, Canada.

Our top story this week: How one negative article mobilized a country

• On December 12, 2001 a very influential newspaper in Korea published an article written by the newspaper's correspondent in Beijing. It openly assaulted Falun Dafa and repeated the false propaganda from Jiang Zemin's State media.
• Because of good efforts by Falun Dafa practitioners to explain the truth of the persecution to newspaper personnel, the Beijing correspondent was brought back to Korea the next day.
• On the 14th of December, the Korean Falun Dafa Association released an eight-point statement. As in Montreal and Toronto in Canada, legal action was also initiated, accusing the newspaper of damaging the reputation of Falun Dafa practitioners.
• One day later, 5000 posters containing the eight-point statement were posted in densely populated areas in Seoul, including subway stations and bus stations and pedestrians were offered flyers explaining the truth.
• Large information posters were displayed outside the newspaper's offices and there were always several people there to answer questions. Very quickly, management and journalists came to respect the kind attitude of the Falun Dafa practitioners. Two small corrections were published, and then on January 4th the paper published the eight-point statement as well as a major article by Professor Wen, a Falun Gong practitioner.
• So much positive media coverage was generated that one newspaper called "The Agreement of Speakers" published a full page report of information and interviews and mailed 5,000 copies to organizations around the country.
• Hundreds of people have since come to learn the Falun Gong exercises and it was reported to the Korean Falun Dafa Association that the journalists who work for the paper that published the original negative article are now respectfully studying the main Falun Dafa book, Zhuan Falun.

In other news,

Tsinghua University alumni scientists appeal to President Bush.

• A letter to U.S. President George W. Bush from 15 distinguished alumni scientists of Tsinghua University in Beijing has been shared with the Falun Dafa Information Center in New York.
• They urged President Bush to demand that China's leadership release all Tsinghua students and faculty who have been imprisoned for practicing Falun Gong. The scientists, who live in the U.S., described the situation as "urgent" and "desperate."
• Tsinghua University, called the MIT of China, where President Bush spoke on February 22nd, has seen more than 300 students and faculty unlawfully detained, thrown into forced labor camps, and imprisoned in the government campaign against Falun Gong. Those numbers were released by the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
• One Tsinghua alumnus, Yuan Jiang, of Gansu Province, was tortured to death in custody last November.

New poems and articles are published by Falun Dafa founder Mr. Li Hongzhi.

• In the last two weeks, Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, has released 6 poems and 7 articles not previously published.
• Like many sages and seers, Mr. Li occasionally says a few words about the future. In one poem titled The Cleansing dated January 31, 2002 he writes:

Heaven and earth turned upside down, raining sand and dust

The minds of hundreds of millions in the moral world poisoned,

Mercy saves who knows how many,

New graves cover the landscape of China Proper.

• Perhaps this is a warning to authorities who are spreading lies about Falun Gong, which is a beneficial holistic practice of exercises, and teachings that are based on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.

FGMtv has reported on the many sudden deaths of those who have tortured Falun Gong practitioners. Many of those who died have been in their early thirties C healthy and strong people whose lives were snuffed out in violent accidents, or who collapsed and died for no apparent reason.

Video coverage from around the world of practitioners returning from Tiananmen Square and detention in China.

After brutally arresting 60 practitioners of Falun Gong who went to China to stage a peaceful appeal in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government issued a statement saying that the tourists were humanely treated. Peaceful appeals are an activity that is allowed the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, but outlawed by the current President Jiang Zemin

Here is some video and photo coverage of the bruises, black eyes and torn clothing of those travelers as they arrived in airports around the world.

Local and international media have reported widely on the brutal treatment and practitioners around the world have emailed these pictures to hundreds of thousands of addresses in China so that citizens there can read the news that their government forbids them to see.

The welcome group in Japan included practitioners of all ages!

Boston woman distributes Falun Gong flyers in many cities in China before being arrested in Tiananmen Square

• Before going to Beijing, Maria Salzman visited Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing.
• Everywhere she went, she distributed Falun Gong pamphlets and was welcomed by the local people. They were moved by the courage she showed in coming to China alone from the US to disclose Jiang Zemin's lies about the peaceful and beneficial practice.
• Many of the people Ms. Salzman met had never heard of the relationship between Falun Gong and its core teachings of Truth, Compassion and Forbearance. They expressed a desire to read Mr. Li's book, Zhuan Falun if they could get the opportunity.
• Her last stop was Beijing, and she was arrested on February 14 on the way to Tiananmen Square. During the time she was detained, she refused all orders from police and pointed out sternly, "Zhen-Shan-Ren will not compromise with evil."

In this week's update from China:

The number of Falun Gong practitioners verified to have died as a result of police brutality is 370 as of today. However, government sources inside China put the actual number at well over sixteen hundred.

Chinese State TV deletes US President Bush's comments

It was reported by the Los Angeles Times that when President Bush delivered a speech at Tsinghua University, his remarks on faith and his call for an end to the persecution of religious freedom were immediately deleted before being broadcast on state television.

Moving now to Anhui Province in China

• People in China are now being thrown into jail and sentenced to labour camps, just for distributing flyers revealing the human rights atrocities being committed against practitioners of Falun Gong.
• Nevertheless, practitioners in one city in Anhui province celebrated New Year's Day and the Spring Festival by hanging an enormous banner saying "Falun Dafa is Good". The 6 meter-wide, 10 meter-long banner suddenly appeared in the center of the city and was enjoyed by thousands!
• Smaller 1-meter-long banners appeared in parks, colleges and by the side of many streets and roads.

Chinese hospitals, under orders of President Jiang Zemin, currently do many things backwards:

• Hospitals around the world are known to be places for restoring people's health.
• According to news reports filtering out of mainland China, the opposite is true there.
• For instance, the Second Hospital of Fushun City in Liaoning Province is currently being used by President Jiang Zemin's followers to torture Falun Gong practitioners to the point of death, when they are then sent off-site so that responsibility can be avoided.
• Ms. Guirong Zou has been tortured to a state where she can no longer take in any food, even with assistance. Another woman practitioner, Ms. Zhou is currently suffering from at least one broken rib after being beaten , and her life is in danger.
• Yet another, Ms. Naizhi Jia was sent to the same hospital for rescue transfusions after being beaten severely by police when she went to legally appeal in Beijing. Instead of treating the many wounds that covered her body, hospital staff instead beat her further and threw her into an isolation cell.

Moving now to Da'an City of Jilin Provinceí

• It is well known that criminals don't want their actions to be exposed to the public. In Da'an city of Jilin Province, practitioners of Falun Gong thoroughly investigated the criminal actions of one police officer after he was particularly brutal in his treatment of them.
• They then wrote up a report detailing his crimes, printed it on red paper and stuck up the posters all over the city
• When Jiang Zemin recently issued orders to increase the persecution of practitioners, quite a number of police refused to obey, saying they didn't want their names to be listed on the red posters
• It is in small, ingenious and courageous ways like this all over China, that the unjust persecution against kind Falun Gong cultivators is being restrained, despite President Jiang Zemin's efforts.

and finallyí

• After 2 years of illegal detention, physical and psychological torture, Shenli Lin has been reunited with his wife Jinyu in Montreal, Canada. Some of the people who worked hard for his release, including Amnesty International, major Canadian news media, and local Falun Gong practitioners were there to meet him at the airport.
• Shenli was arrested simply because he delivered a letter to the appeals office in Beijing requesting a peaceful dialogue between the government and Falun Dafa.
• Officials did not allow any visitors during his whole incarceration and he received none of the hundreds of letters that his wife wrote to him. The day before his release, officials told him they were moving him to another labour camp to serve more years.
• Shenli was prepared to spend the rest of his life in jail to be able to practice Falun Dafa. He refused to denounce his faith even under unimaginable physical and psychological torture.
• Airport security guards were so moved by the imminent reunion that they allowed Shenli's wife to go through the barrier and wait at the gate. Cameras flashed and videos rolled as Shenli rushed through the doors to greet Jinyu with an enormous hug and ear-to-ear smile after their long separation.
• When reporters asked him a few questions, Shenli thanked the Canadian government officials both in Canada and Beijing, as well as Jinyu's lawyer, MP Irwin Cotler, Amnesty International and all the many thousands of kind-hearted Canadians who signed petitions and worked for his release.

Thanks for watching FGMtv, dedicated to breaking through China's information blockade, revealing propaganda, and bringing you the truth of Falun Gong.