We appeal to the Chinese government to immediately release Mrs. Xiong Wei as well as all other incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners. We have learned to know and appreciate Mrs. Xiong during her time as a student at the Technical University in Berlin. Mrs. Xiong was arrested on May 1, 2001, as she peacefully intervened for Falun Gong on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. We are concerned for her life. After her arrest, even her family has been refused any contact with her.

We challenge the Chinese government to permit freedom of conscience and to observe human rights regulations.

For the past 2-1/2 years, millions of Falun Gong practitioners in China have been subjected to defamation, social separation, depravation and forfeiture, gruesome tortures and even murder. Under these untenable circumstances, hardly bearable for anyone, practitioners in China have consistently appealed through legal channels and in a non-confrontational manner to end this unjust persecution campaign, based on trumped-up stories and circumstances. So far not one source has been able to reveal even a single incident where a Falun Gong practitioner has raised a hand against a police officer or had in any way caused any damage to the Chinese state. On the contrary, Chinese practitioners had prior to the persecution and also after the persecution, showed nothing but loyalty to the Chinese nation.

A small group of government insiders uses the media apparatus, administrative powers and the police forces to delude and lie to China's population of more than a billion people and to foster hatred against Falun Gong. The Chinese government's overt goal, to eradicate Falun Gong and its principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance," is an attack on basic human ways of life. If basic human rights are trampled, even in a land as far away as China, there is danger that this abuse of human rights will spread and escalate. We cannot let this happen to the world.

We, as German nationals, are travelling to Tiananmen Square to tell Chinese citizens and the rest of the world who have been deluded by the Chinese government that Falun Gong is a treasured, precious part of Chinese culture and that it contains teachings that are treasured and appreciated even in Germany. Our action must not be viewed as a provocation, nor do we seek conflict with the Chinese government or her police forces. And yet, oftentimes police personnel themselves are in the dark about real circumstances, as the government power brokers portray them.

History demonstrates that those individuals, who during times of terror and injustice had the courage to intervene without force for justice and peace, will in the future be looked upon as respected models. To name only a few of these grand people, in Germany it was the siblings named Scholl; in America, Martin Luther King; in India, Mahatma Gandhi.

The virtues of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance," that sustain practitioners in China are values for all humanity to follow that seek for peaceful co-existence on this earth, and without which this existence would not be possible. Falun Gong practitioners in China have shown in a remarkable way during the past few years that they are not only paying lip service to these values, but live according to them from the bottom of their hearts. Subjected to utmost physical and psychological duress, they are not denouncing those values in which they believe with all their being, values that are so important for all of us. They have become an example and bearers of hope for all of those who believe in the good in man, but who lack the wisdom to adhere to those [values] during difficult moments.

(Original text in German)