The Cincinnati Enquirer (Ohio, US): Couple's Trip Raises Awareness

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Tuesday, July 1, 2003

When Guoqiang Li, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, met Xueyuan Wu and Bei Gou, an Albany, N.Y., couple, as they passed through Cincinnati on Monday, they discovered they have something in common -- family members who are imprisoned in China because of their beliefs.

Wu, a physicist, and Gou, an electrical engineering professor, are practitioners [...] of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong.

[...]

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese have been imprisoned for believing in Falun Dafa -- including Wu's mother, 68-year-old Lingwen Zeng, a retired physics professor, and Li's brother-in-law, Weiyu Wang, a Chinese student who has been missing since Chinese authorities spirited him away last August. "We have no idea where he is or if he is even alive," Li said.

Li met Wu and Gou because the couple passed through Cincinnati on a 2,000-mile automobile trip to their new home in Dallas, Texas. Wu and Gou plan on stops in at least eight cities along the way, where they will try to call attention to the plight of Wu's mother -- whom they say is imprisoned in a forced labor camp -- and other Falun Dafa believers.

"Just the fact that an imprisoned person's name has been mentioned in the American media has often saved their lives,' said Sunny Lu, a professor of psychiatry at UC and a Falun Dafa practitioner. "The more we get the word out, the more lives can be saved."

The Falun Dafa practitioners said they hope the automobile tour will help raise awareness in the United States of the plight of their fellow practitioners in China.

"People are being imprisoned, tortured and even murdered every day," Wu said. "We are counting on people in the United States, and all around the world, to put a stop to it."