Germany: Falun Gong Practitioners Received at the Foreign Office

(Clearwisdom.net) On January 9^th, 2002, three Falun Gong practitioners were received for a dialogue with representatives from the Human Rights Department in the [German] Foreign Office.

The three practitioners were German citizens who had been arrested by Chinese authorities on November 20^th, 2001 in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. This was already the third such meeting with representatives of the Foreign Office. This time they took the opportunity to relate their experiences while in Chinese custody and to point out the unjustified and physically rough treatment toward them at the hands of the Chinese security forces.

The representatives listened attentively to the practitioners' reports and asked questions about the exact sequence of events; they paid particular attention to the eye-witness accounts of the treatment of the German practitioners at the hands of the Chinese police authorities and their breach of international agreements regarding consular representation.

At the end of the 1-1/2 hour dialogue, the practitioners handed over letters of complaint from those arrested on November 20^th, which described the lawless treatment and which urged the German government to undertake suitable steps of protest towards the Government of the People's Republic of China.

(Original text in German)