May 1, 2007
| |
| French presidential candidate Segolene Royal delivers a speech during a campaign meeting. (Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images) |
French presidential candidate Segolene Royal has responded to the concerns that the French Falun Gong Association expressed to her after the disappearance of Ma Jian, a Chinese manager in the French business, PCM.
In her 1-page letter, which was shown to The Epoch Times, Ms. Royal said: "Your movement, like other minorities in Chinese territory, sees its rights and freedom overridden."
Mr. Ma Jian, who his colleagues describe as an "honest, fair, and very competent" manager, practiced Falun Gong. He was arrested on February 28, 2007 in Beijing at his workplace. Since then, his wife, who lives in Canada, has had no news of him. She fears that he will be tortured or undergo brainwashing, as have thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners, at the hands of the Chinese communist regime.
Segolene Royal expressed in her letter "her sympathy and her compassion for those who suffer from these attempts at their democratic freedoms." She said that she will not hesitate, "in a frank and balanced relationship" with China, "to recall the importance that France places on respect for democracy and human rights."
Ms. Royal ended her letter by defining the difference between herself and the incumbent president Jacques Chirac, assuring that her future actions would be stronger than past actions have been.
Falun Gong defines itself as a form of qigong in the Buddha School. It was outlawed in China in 1999 by dictator Jiang Zemin. According to the French Falun Gong Association, 3,000 cases have been documented of practitioners being tortured to death for refusing to renounce their beliefs, but the actual number is believed to be much larger.
