Montreal Gazette: A flicker of hope Wife of jailed Falun Gong follower wants PM to press China for release

The Gazette Only a few crucial days remain for Jin Yu Li to accomplish what she has been trying to do for more than a year now: capture the ear of Prime Minister Jean Chretien and convince him to press for the release of her husband from a Chinese labour camp. But as the clock ticks down on a Canadian trade mission to China, Li's pleas have become all the more urgent. Li, a Montrealer, has learned three more of her relatives in Shanghai - her brother and her husband's brother and sister - were arrested in the wee hours of Jan. 24 for being followers of Falun Gong, the exercise and meditation practice China outlawed in 1999. Yesterday, Li and a group of supporters stepped up pressure on Chretien to address the case of ShenLi Lin and the repression and imprisonment of thousands of other Falun Gong followers when he meets Chinese President Jiang Zemin next week. Li sent a letter to the prime minister yesterday urging the trade mission headed by Chretien to pressure China to honour the international human-rights covenants it signed, to release her husband, her relatives and all other Falun Gong practitioners. It was the latest of nearly 400 she has fired off since December 1999, when her husband was jailed in China and she was deported to Canada. Li's legal counsel, Liberal MP and McGill University law professor Irwin Cotler, will hand-deliver a petition bearing 3,000 signatures when he meets with Chretien this week. Cotler has also written to Industry Minister Pierre Pettigrew and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley, who will be present on the trip. Prisoner of Conscience Cotler said four forthcoming events - the Canadian trade mission, a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, China's vying for membership in the World Trade Organization and Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympic Games - are all opportunities to insist China improve human rights. Amnesty International has adopted Li as a prisoner of conscience and will post his case on their Web site this week. An all-party coalition of parliamentarians concerned with rights violations in China plans to turn up the heat on members of the departing trade delegation with a series of a press conferences this week, highlighting issues like China's oppression of Tibet and its crackdown on followers of Falun Gong. Francine Lalonde, a Bloc Quebecois MP from Montreal, said politicians and the public have sent a loud and clear message that they want to see human rights addressed on the trade trip. The push to free Li comes after the liberation and return to Canada last month of KunLun Zhang, a Chinese-Canadian dual citizen who said he was harassed, detained, tortured, brainwashed and sentenced to three years in a Chinese labour camp for practicing Falun Gong. His release came after a high-profile international campaign by human-rights groups and intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying by the Canadian government. For Li, the Zhang case and the spotlight it has shed on her husband's plight have given her a flicker of hope in what has otherwise been a dark year. Li last saw her husband for five minutes in late December 1999, when he was allowed to stop at home on his way from the Shanghai police station to prison. Li was given 48 hours to leave the country. She has not seen or heard from her husband since and has not been allowed to return to China to search for him.