Monitoring News of the Persecution of Falun Gong

FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER- Contacts: Gail Rachlin 212-501-8080, Erping Zhang 917-679-6944, Feng Yuan 917-912-3301, or Levi Browde 914-720-0963. Email: faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website: http://www.bestweb.net/redirect?http://www.faluninfo.net/

• U.K. PARLIAMENT WARNS AGAINST BEING 揟RANSFIXED?BY TRADE WITH CHINA

• 64 YEAR OLD MOTHER ESCAPES FROM TORTURE IN CHINA; SAFE IN MICHIGAN

• P.R.C. REFUSES CONSULAR ACCESS TO CANADIAN CITIZEN HELD IN LABOR CAMP

BRITISH PARLIAMENT REMINDS MINISTERS: TRADE DOES NOT MEAN 慣RADE-OFF?

London, Nov 29, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Britain's strategy of dialogue with China on human rights has failed to produce any results, according to a parliamentary report Wednesday which urged ministers to toughen their line. The cross-party committee of Members of Parliament said that over the past two years, while the government had been following a "constructive" approach, it had produced no "meaningful results." In fact, the report said, there had been a "serious deterioration" in the human rights situation in China. In a strongly worded report, the Members of Parliament said the worsening abuses should be a "matter of great common concern" to ministers. They criticized the Foreign Office for not carrying out a proper analysis of the situation. They also warned of the danger of ministers becoming "transfixed" by the lucrative economic opportunities opening up in China and insisted there must be no "trade off" between pursuing human rights and improving trade. The report said Britain, together with other EU nations, should "toughen" its line and make plain that unless China's record on human rights improved, Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games would be "inappropriate." When Britain's Labor Party took power in May 1997, it promised to pursue an "ethical" foreign policy. However, last year, a visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin became mired in controversy when police stifled protests by pro-Tibet groups. His visit coincided with contracts worth around two billion pounds (three billion dollars) for British companies.

RETIRED ENGINEER AND PRACTITIONER FROM CHINA SAFE WITH FAMILY IN MICHIGAN

Troy, Michigan (Detroit News, Nov. 28, 00): After months of torture and surveillance in China, Ahiua Xu arrived from Shanghai on Monday morning, and is safe in the home of her daughter, Jennifer Zhou of Troy. The 64-year-old retired engineer and mother of four sat on Jennifer's burgundy leather sofa and pulled up her pants legs to show the bruises where she said electric shocks had been administered near her ankles. Her daughter sat nearby cringing. Xu's crime: Publicly practicing the controversial slow-motion exercises known as Falun Gong, which were officially banned in China in July 1999?Xu, one of 100 million who practice Falun Gong worldwide, said she was not trying to make a political statement with her use of Falun Gong, but was simply searching for a cure for her many illnesses. "My doctors had told me my body was like a machine, and all the parts had gone bad," she said. "They had given me no hope. But it has been two years since I began practicing, and I no longer suffer from high blood pressure, heart problems, painful joints, and the lump in the back of my neck is gone.攨When Xu first began practicing outside with a group from Eastern China University of Science and Technology near her home, the government had not yet cracked down on it. "Then one day I went to the park to practice, and the police told us the parks would be closed and we could no longer practice," she said. What followed were months of surveillance, where police would enter her home, search it and stay all day. "I even had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, and then I could not close the door all the way," she said. "That was because they thought I might try to escape." When she confronted a policeman who was beating a practitioner in the streets, she too was beaten by the officer, thrown in the back of a truck and taken to a detention center. "The authorities gave me shock treatments after they left us in a detention center without food and water for three days. I couldn't eat anything when they finally did feed us," she said through interpreter Tim Sun, 29, an EDS software engineer who directs Falun Gong workshops in Metro Detroit. "So they strapped me down, force-fed me through a tube in my nose, and then applied the shock treatments as punishment," she added?"I still fear what may happen to the other practitioners if this gets back to China, but I feel I must let the public know what is really going on?

CHINA REFUSES TO LET DIPLOMATS VISIT CANADIAN PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE

The Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 3: KunLun Zhang has been jailed in China for practicing Falun Gong. A University of Ottawa student's quest to help free her father -- a Canadian citizen -- from a detention camp in northern China for practising the meditation exercises of Falun Gong has been dealt a serious blow after Chinese officials refused a Canadian request for a visit. KunLun Zhang, a 60-year-old professor of sculpture at the Shangdong Art University, who lived in Montreal from 1989 to 1996, was arrested in July after he and several other Falun Gong practitioners were performing exercises in a public park. He was later sent to a detention site and then sentenced, without a trial, to three years at a forced labour camp. Foreign Affairs officials in Beijing say their attempts to visit with Mr. Zhang have so far been rejected. "We attempted to gain consular access but they consider him a Chinese citizen and have the right to do so," said Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron. "It doesn't stop us from continuing to try to gain access."?Mr. Doiron said Canada's position is that Mr. Zhang's "human rights have been infringed upon by Chinese authorities." He added that China's 16-month crackdown against Falun Gong practitioners has been condemned by Canada and other nations and that Canadian diplomats in Beijing are doing what they can with China's leaders "to engage them in a process of reform."

P.R.C. CONSULATES TRYING TO DISRUPT FALUN GONG IN AUSTRALIA

November 26, 2000, NineMSN (揂n Exercise in Fear,?Australian TV channel): 搮When Australian citizen Cuy Ying Zhiang visited China last year she made no secret of her Falun Gong beliefs. After being expelled she tried to re-enter the country to deliver a letter of protest to the government. She was immediately thrown into prison and, according to her, regularly beaten for the next eight months. "In the jail, as soon as I started to practice Falun Gong they start to hit me on the head. Sometimes they use a rod to hit me on the body and sometimes they splash water onto me and sometimes they throw their rubbish onto me as well." Released just three weeks ago, Cuy is grateful to the Australian Government for its help, but is now even more committed to the Falun Gong movement and its fight against the Chinese regime?[PRC] embassy officials here in Australia say the [Falun Gong] movement must be stopped at any cost. Consulates have taken it upon themselves to inform Australian councils about the evils of letting practitioners loose in parks and halls across the country. In Bankstown the embassy tried to have a motion which was before the council, condemning China over its abuse of the prisoner Cuy Ying Zhiang, withdrawn. Councillor Clive Taylor was outraged. "Two reps from the consulate had a meeting with the general manager and tried to pressure him to withdraw my motion. If they were trying to educate council they educated us only in one aspect, that was that they wanted to interfere in our democratic process."

NEWS FROM CHINA

[Beijing] On Nov. 27, 2000, at 6 pm, 7 to 8 policemen of Haidian District Branch held a summons and a search warrant for the home of Yu Jia, a teacher of Economic Management in Tsinghua University, and took her away for criminal detention. She is now detained in the Qinghe Detention Center in Haidian District. Before she was arrested, policemen from Tsinghua University and Beijing's 14th Police Branch searched Yu Jia's home. Four policemen beat Yu Jia's younger brother in front of Yu Jia's two-year-old daughter. Later, the police came again and asked her younger brother "Were you beaten?" He answered: "Yes, I was beaten. You want me to say 'No'. So, next time, you would have no fear to beat me." As a result, he was sent to labor camp for "re-education".

[Beijing] Police in Tiananmen Square tortured a retired senior engineer. Ms. Zhang, 64 years old, is a retired high-level engineer in the Research Institute of Nuclear Technology. To verify the truth of Dafa to people and the government, she rode her bicycle for 5 days to Tiananmen Square to join group practice. However, she was arrested by the police and was sent to Police Station of Tiananmen station. Because she did not tell them her name and her working unit, police tortured her for half an hour. After that she was handcuffed behind the back. She fell on the floor and could not get up. The police then pushed on her handcuff to make her scream. They kept doing this for about 15 minutes with her mouth stuffed with cloth.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER- Contacts: Gail Rachlin 212-501-8080, Erping Zhang 917-679-6944, Feng Yuan 917-912-3301, or Levi Browde 914-720-0963. Email: faluninfoctr@nycmail.com, Website: http://www.bestweb.net/redirect?http://www.faluninfo.net/