Speech by John Godfrey, Member of Parliament, Canada

July 16, 2002

I am the Member of Parliament for Don Valley West here in Toronto, but I'm only one of a number of members of parliament from all parties who have been supporting the cause of Falun Gong and criticizing the Chinese government for the repression of the movement which began three years ago.

Indeed it was here I think a year ago to mark the second anniversary and there will be similar activities across the country involving other members of parliament, some from the Liberal Party and some from other parties.

The reason that we do so is not that we are practitioners but that we support the idea of religious tolerance and human rights in whatever situation and whatever country people find themselves.

We have attempted through the good offices of the Prime Minister for example when there have been trade missions to China including the last Team Canada effort to take advantage of those occasions to ask the Prime Minister to ask the Chinese authorities to intervene and free particularly the families of members of those who have connections here in Canada and we have just heard of one story of such a family and there are other family members here today that we wish to support.

So on behalf of myself and other Federal members of parliament, we wanted to show solidarity on this day, we wanted to show our support for the families in particular who live in Canada who have family members who are being held in China and we would again ask our own government to put pressure on the Chinese government to free those members of Falun Gong who are being held in such large numbers in various labour camps and prisons in China.

Thank you.

(Transcript)