A Press Statement from the Falun Dafa Information Center
NEW YORK (FDI) -- This week, in response to escalating reports of death by persecution in China, practitioners and supporters of Falun Gong around the world are holding public activities calling for an end to the killing.
Falun Gong is practiced freely in over 50 countries worldwide. Appeals are anticipated in many of these countries, with activities ranging from peaceful appeals in front of Chinese embassies and consulates, to candlelight vigils and press conferences.
Why now, one might ask?
Since November 2002, the Falun Dafa Information Center has received 43 individual reports of practitioners of Falun Gong being beaten, tortured, and killed by authorities in China. 22 of the victims died since the beginning of November. Because information regarding the death of Falun Gong practitioners is severely blocked, it is sometimes months or years before details can be discovered. Chinese government sources say that for every report of wrongful death, as many as three others go unreported.
If Falun Gong espouses truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, does not pursue political goals, and is entirely peaceful, why all this killing?
In fact, this is the very question we would pose to Jiang Zemin and his regime: Why?
- Why coerce China's political elements, military, police, and even schoolteachers to engage in a harmful persecution of peaceful people?
- Why engage the world's most massive propaganda machine to defame Falun Gong and turn your nation's good people against each other?
- Why waste a budding economy's precious resources to pursue your own personal and fruitless crusade?
These questions have been asked for three and a half years, but remain unanswered.
What has transpired, however, is more one-sided bloodshed: The total number of verified wrongful deaths from persecution now stands above 550, while sources in the Chinese government have indicated the actual number is in the thousands. For every man or woman tortured to death in China for practicing a peaceful faith, there are dozens more tortured, hundreds more wrongfully imprisoned without sentence, and literally millions who have been forced out of their homes, expelled from their schools, fired from their jobs, and forced to live a wandering existence.
Since the 16th Party Congress came to power in November, the rates of detention and murder have risen.
The cost of the persecution grows each week, too -- from the money spent to build new concentration camps, to carry out the midnight arrests, to staff the forced-labor camps, and to monitor the movements of Falun Gong practitioners 24-7.
The moral and spiritual cost -- the cost of loss of life and virtue -- grows too. How much can China afford? How much can we afford to witness before our conscience begins to decay?
We stand together during these days, around the world, to ask the world to pay attention. Jiang Zemin and his regime will pay attention if we pay attention -- if each and every one of us pays attention.
History in the Re-Making?
In the 1930's, the world community stood relatively idle as a brewing "conflict" between the Nazi regime and the Jewish community -- that appeared to many to have "nothing to do with us" -- gained momentum in Germany. Why? Because the world did not care about mass killing? Because genocide against the Jews was not a concern? No. Many feel the world stood idle largely because almost no one believed we were on the brink of one of history's worst human tragedies. That is, we simply did not believe it could happen.
Do we -- the international community -- have the same thoughts about Falun Gong in China today? Do we feel this is a "conflict" between Jiang Zemin's regime and Falun Gong that has little or nothing to do with us? This "conflict" has likely left thousands dead with tens of millions targeted in various forms of persecution -- not as a result of a "conflict" or battle between two opposing groups, but rather, the result of the systematic policy of genocide of Jiang Zemin's regime towards a group of people who simply wish to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of belief by practicing Falun Gong.
Does this scene not look familiar? Are we, again, on the brink of an unthinkable human tragedy? Will we, again, wait for history to unfold before taking a position?
Canadian Member of Parliament, Irwin Cotler once said about the persecution of Falun Gong in China, "what we are witnessing today in China is the criminalization of innocence... it must be our responsibility, to speak on behalf of those who cannot be heard, to bear witness of behalf of those who cannot testify, to protect those who put their lives on the line."
Brian Coleman, a member of the London Assembly explains, "If you turn a blind eye to dictatorships...they can get away with literally murder. Saddam Hussein got away with gassing tens of thousands of his own citizens. In China, they're currently getting away with persecuting thousands of Falun Gong practitioners. Hitler got away in the 1930's with persecuting the Jewish community... that turned into Genocide in the 1940's."
Mr. Coleman concludes: "The next stage [for Falun Gong] is the gas chambers."
After World War II we said, "never again." Let us act now before Jiang Zemin's policy of genocide toward Falun Gong in China takes a place along side history's great human tragedies. Thank you.
PRESS STATEMENT - Jan. 12, 2003 Falun Dafa Information Center, www.faluninfo.net
See related MEDIA ADVISORY: http://faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=6894
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER- Contacts: Gail Rachlin 917-501-4441, Erping Zhang 646-533-6147, Levi Browde 914-720-0963, or Feng Yuan 917-941-1097. Email: faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/