Times Colonist (Victoria): Falun Gong tour highlights China atrocities

Judith Lavoie
Times Colonist

Sunday, October 12, 2003

The tentacles of torture and persecution reach out across the world as the Chinese government tries to wipe out the Falun Gong movement, said Marie Beaulieu, looking at the handful of Falun Gong supporters on the legislature lawn.

The genocide may seem far away, but local municipal councils and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca [and] MP Keith Martin are among the recipients of packages of misinformation from the Chinese government, she said.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice of exercises and teaching, based on "truthfulness, compassion and tolerance," which leaders say improves physical health and moral character.

But anyone practising Falun Gong is subject to arrest in China. Canadian practitioners are working to file a lawsuit against former Chinese head of state Jiang Zemin.

However, first, the group wants Canadians to understand what is happening in China and that is why a tour across the country started in Victoria Friday for Montreal resident Ying Zhu and her new husband Francis Madore.

Ying Zhu has first-hand knowledge of what happens to Falun Gong followers in China.

In 2001 she returned to China from Canada to visit her family. She took along her Falun Gong books.

"I was kidnapped and detained. They kept me in a small room and people watched me for 24 hours a day to force me to give up Falun Gong," she said.

Zhu was told she could be sent to a mental hospital or killed, but after 33 days she was released, apparently because of pressure from Canada.

[...]

"My family members are so scared they don't allow me to go back home," she said.

Limin Huang is doing everything she can to secure the release of her brother Jiangang Huang who was arrested, beaten and sent to a labour camp in 1999.

"He suffered a lot. He was locked up with murderers and thieves and they wouldn't let him sleep," she said.

Her brother's prison term ended last year.

"But then they transferred him to a brainwashing centre," she said.

Martin said he has been working with Falun Gong practitioners for several years and brought up the subject with the Chinese ambassador earlier this year.

"People have been brutalized, tortured, raped and murdered in the most heinous ways," he said.

The motivation appears to be that the Chinese government is afraid of any movement which cannot be controlled by the state, Martin said.

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