Foreign Affairs Committee of UK Parliament Condemns Chinese Government's Human Rights Record

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament has today (30 November 2000) issued a 359-page report reviewing the UK Government's relations with China. The report made many references to Falun Gong and included evidence from UK Falun Gong practitioners as well as reports from human rights organisations on the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners in China. The report included the following statement:

We received evidence from the Falun Gong Association of Great Britain that Falun Gong is essentially a peaceful method of self development based on ancient Chinese thought. It would attract no attention from the authorities of any State that truly respected human rights. Instead as James Harding of the Financial Times put it, the way the movement has been treated "has been a remarkable illustration both of the anxieties of the Chinese leadership but also its willingness to suppress anything that resembles a gathering of Chinese people that is not organised by the authorities." According to Amnesty International "thousands of members of the movement were arbitrarily detained and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs." We conclude that Chinese practices in relation to religions and belief systems are not in keeping with Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the rights to hold any religion or belief and to manifest it.

U.K. Practitioners

Nov. 30, 2000