UK: Letter to Secretary of State for the Home Office from the Falun Gong Association UK

Rt. Honourable David Blunkett MP
Secretary of State for the Home Office

Re: Ms Lili Lin

Home Office Reference No L1053356

Dear Secretary Blunkett:

I'm a Director of the Falun Dafa Association (UK). I also know Lili Lin very well personally. We practiced Falun Gong and attended various activities together while she lived in Manchester. She has been a very determined practitioner, and has participated in many activities to raise awareness about the situation in China and to call for an end to the persecution our practice suffers.

We know that the UK Government has taken a leading role in advocating human rights internationally and also in generously providing shelter to people suffering persecution in their home countries. We understand that the current situation with Lili's case has been caused by a clerical anomaly, and we trust in the Home Office's ability to will the situation immediately.

We understand that Lili moved from Manchester to Liverpool after getting married to Jinfei Zhang, another Falun Gong practitioner whom I am very well acquainted with. She informed the Home Office of the change of address, and has been diligently reporting to the Home Office in Liverpool regularly. However, the Home Office sent her refusal letter to her old address in Manchester. Lili was not, therefore, aware of the decision, which caused her to miss her deadline for appeal. As a result, she was listed for deportation. Last Wednesday, when she reported to the Home Office, she was arrested without any prior notice. And she was physically restrained by 4 policemen, in spite of the fact that she was in the early stage of pregnancy. During her detention in the Home Office, which lasted from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., she was not provided any food or water. After she was sent to the detention center in Manchester Airport, she was still not given any food and water until the next day. We feel that this is not the kind of treatment the British public would like the Home Office or any other government departments to impose upon a frail woman in pregnancy.

We believe that, if she is deported back to China, her life will be endangered. There have been many cases of practitioners going back to China from abroad and getting persecuted severely just because of their spiritual belief. Zhao Ming, a postgraduate student at Trinity College Dublin, was first arrested in 1999 while making an appeal for Falun Gong after he went back to China during his Christmas holidays. He was then arrested a second time when visiting a friends home with other Falun Gong practitioners. He was confined to a labor camp, tortured severely and was eventually released through the efforts of the Irish government. Wang Yongcheng, a practitioner from northeastern China, escaped to Thailand but was unable to settle due to language and other difficulties. He returned to China in 2002 and was arrested and tortured to death within a month. Arrest and persecution has even been experienced by foreign citizens. Charles Li, a citizen of the United States, was arrested at Guangzhou Airport immediately after he landed, and is still in detention now despite diplomatic pressure.

Another fact that we call your attention to is that female Falun Gong practitioners in China are often subjected to inhumane treatment that is beyond imagination for us who have been brought up in the West. In prisons and labor camps, male criminals are often forced to torture and rape female practitioners. There are cases of policemen raping female practitioners, too. Also, forced abortion is a common practice by the Chinese authorities, which means pregnant female practitioners are in a particularly vulnerable situation.

We do not want to see these horrible things happen to Lili and her unborn child. We believe the British public and the UK Government will definitely be abhorred should such things happen to someone they could have helped out of such disaster.

We wish to see the Home Office protecting genuine Falun Gong practitioners like Lili, who hold Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance as the highest principles to follow, and who are good and law abiding citizens in society.

Your attention is greatly appreciated.

Yours most Sincerely,

[name omitted]

Director, Falun Gong Association (UK)

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