Irish Examiner: China persecutes Falun Gong woman

17/07/02

A CHINESE woman claims she was prevented by the Chinese Embassy from leaving Ireland to attend her mother's funeral because she is a practitioner of Falun Gong.

Dai Dongxue, 35, said embassy officials in Dublin had refused to renew her Chinese passport on three occasions in the past 18 months unless she was prepared to renounce her membership of the spiritual movement, also known as Falun Dafa. The Irish Falun Dafa Association said yesterday the treatment of Ms Dongxue is further evidence of the increasing involvement of Chinese embassies abroad in the persecution of Falun Gong [practitioners].

Ms Dongxue, who has worked as a teacher at Dublin City University since arriving in Ireland in 1998, was not permitted to return to China after her mother died last October. She claimed embassy officials were not even prepared to grant her temporary travel documents on compassionate grounds. "I am currently stateless and unable to travel outside Ireland because I do not have a valid passport," said Ms Dongxue. Her two older sisters, Xialing, 41, and Qiuxiu, 39, were also unable to attend their mother's funeral, as they are being held in a labor camp by the Chinese authorities. Both women were sentenced to three years' detention because of their [being] Falun Gong [practitioners].

Zhao Ming, a student of Trinity College Dublin, who was released from a Chinese prison and deported earlier this year following pressure from the Irish Government, said he was still being subjected to persecution. He claimed the Chinese Ambassador, Zhang Xiaokang, had sent letters to TDs maintaining there was no evidence to show that China had tortured any Falun Gong [practitioners].

"In that letter, the ambassador also enclosed a copy of the document that I was forced by torture to sign unwillingly to harass me," he added.

Mr Ming said he had only signed the document after being subjected to torture over a prolonged period. "I officially declare that those documents were signed when I was not in a clear mind after being deprived of sleep for 48 hours and tortured with electric shocking using several electric batons," said Mr Ming.

The IFDA also highlighted the cases of two other Dublin-based Chinese nationals who have been prevented from returning to Ireland after a visit home for Christmas in 1999.

Feng Liu, 22, a student of Dun Laoghaire College for Further Education, was arrested last month by the Chinese authorities, despite having a valid visa to return to Ireland. His colleague, Fang Yang, 31, a student at Dun Laoghaire Senior College, was prevented from boarding a plane at Beijing airport last month and escorted back to her hometown by police. Her passport was subsequently confiscated.

Other members of IFDA have also complained of suspicious burglaries of their homes, although there is no direct evidence linking the crimes to their practice of Falun Gong.

"The persecution in China is unprecedented in history by its ferocity and the evil from which it has sprung," said IFDA spokesperson Leo Harris. "It does not end in China, as the Chinese consular service has declared war on Falun Gong all over the world." The IFDA will mark the third anniversary of the [suppression] on the practice of Falun Gong by the Chinese government with a march in Dublin on Saturday. The organization claims that more than 100,000 Falun Gong [practitioners] have been arrested and detained in China. Falun Gong have documented 430 cases of deaths of its members in China as a result of torture.

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