HONG KONG -- China's campaign against the Falun Dafa spiritual group spilled over into the international arena Tuesday when it led the government of the Netherlands to postpone indefinitely a high-level trip to China.
The postponement came as Beijing found yet further ways to vilify the group at home [...] Dutch Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen was to visit Beijing next week and meet Premier Zhu Rongji and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, among others, in a trip focused on politics and trade. But the visit had come under strong attack from Beijing when it was disclosed over the weekend that the Dutch human rights ambassador, Renee Jones-Bos, a member of the delegation, planned to meet with practitioners of Falun Dafa, which also is known as Falun Gong, and with human rights groups in Hong Kong on the way to Beijing next week.
The Chinese government "put pressure on us to cancel that part" of the trip, said Bart Jochems, a spokesman for the Dutch foreign minister, on Tuesday night from The Hague. "We think that in order to have a good visit we need a good atmosphere," he said, so, he added, the Dutch decided Tuesday morning to shelve the entire trip.
[...] Banned and persecuted in the rest of China, Falun Dafa remains legal in Hong Kong -- but Beijing has been calling on the city authorities to restrict the group's activities in what is seen as a test of the city's autonomy.
[...] Two members of the United Nations' Human Rights Committee are in Hong Kong and have been briefed on the group's position in the city.
[...] The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Hu Qingyun, a judge in Jiangxi province, had been given seven years in prison for selling Falun Dafa books.
[...]
