(Clearwisdom.net) Zeng Qinghong and Bo Xilai, two of Jiang's followers with major roles in the persecution of Falun Gong, arrived in South Africa in the evening of June 26, 2004, for a four-day visit. On June 27, the Falun Dafa Information Center published a news article announcing Falun Gong practitioners would hold peaceful appeals during the visit. On June 28, nine Falun Gong practitioners from Australia arrived at Johannesburg International Airport in South Africa and they planned to charge Zeng Qinghong with the crime of genocide.
The local practitioners picked up the visiting practitioners in the airport, and they set out in two cars to the Presidential Guest House in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. On their way, at approximately 8:30 p.m., a person in a white car suddenly opened fire from the side slightly behind the second vehicle with five practitioners, targeting the tires and the driver. The car was hit at least five times. Witnesses said the gunman used a military AK47 assault rifle. Bullet holes were clearly visible on the car, the tire(s) were punctured, and the Falun Gong practitioner who was driving, Mr. David Liang, was hit with two bullets. He was the only one shot and also the only one wearing a blue jacket with the logo "Falun Dafa" in Chinese and English. Doctor Sinevici, who operated on Mr. Liang, said the gun's firepower was formidable, as the bullets went right through the bones of Mr. Liang's foot.
Zeng Qinghong is one of Jiang's most trusted followers and is in charge of the secret agent system within the Chinese Party (CCP). It's very likely that he has something to do with the planning of this shooting of Falun Gong practitioners who were proceeding to sue him for his complicity in the persecution of Falun Gong.
Since Jiang Zemin began persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, Chinese secret agents sent abroad and Chinese consulates abroad have played a major role in carrying out Jiang Zemin's directives to harass, threaten and attack Falun Gong practitioners overseas.
These perpetrators have distributed Falun Gong-defamatory materials to foreign government agencies and civil organizations. They dissuaded foreign governments from awarding proclamations to Falun Gong; threatened hotels and conference centers not to rent activity space to Falun Gong; intervened in the elections of board members to Chinese students associations on university campuses in the US; refused to extend Falun Gong practitioners' passports; organized overseas Chinese communities to attack Falun Gong and report it back to Mainland China. They incited Chinese students to use their banners to block Falun Gong practitioners' appealing banners when the Chinese government leaders were visiting foreign countries; they coerced and lied to local police and asked them to take unwarranted actions against Falun Gong practitioners. They also tried to prevent Falun Gong from participating in local parades; they collected names and established blacklists, confiscated the practitioners' passports; coerced foreign governments to forbid Falun Gong practitioners from boarding airplanes to go to a country where a visiting Chinese head of state was touring; they tapped phone calls, broke into Falun Gong practitioners' homes, burnt the practitioners' cars, hired thugs to beat Falun Gong practitioners in public, and conductd other terrorist activities.
This latest shooting incident is pushing the violent, state-sponsored terrorism to new heights.
Since the persecution of Falun Gong began, Jiang's regime at first directed consular officials to harass and interfere with practitioners' activities, but soon they found out they could not freely attack others in western democratic countries using their own country's heavy-handed methods. Harrassing and threatening local people in foreign countries might easily bring local government and public condemnation. So they changed their strategy and put their effort to coerce, bribe and manipulate overseas local Chinese community leaders and have them take the lead in attacking Falun Gong. For example, they would take out full-page advertisements and publish defamatory articles provided by the Chinese embassy or consulates in the local newspapers using the familiar method of "in the name of a local Chinese resident," in which the article attacked Falun Gong. Consular officials also pressure local Chinese communities to exclude Falun Gong in all their activities; they hire people with gang connections to beat Falun Gong practitioners in public as part of their export of state terror against Falun Gong overseas.
In 1993, Tao Siju, the head of Beijing's Police Department, mentioned the Hong Kong organized crime groups and said members of the gangs protected the Chinese premier when he passed through Hong Kong. His speech attracted strong criticism from the Hong Kong media. In 1997, a high-ranking official of the Hong Kong and Macao Office of the State Council said in public, "There are patriotic people among organized crime members." Moreover, the CCP has been known to hire homeless drifters and thugs to do their bidding.
On July 13, 2001, a violent group attack of Falun Dafa practitioners took place in front of the Chicago Chinese Consulate. The group was hired by consular officials: on September 7, 2001, Zhen Jiming and Wong Yujun, both Asian gang members in Chicago's Chinese community, assaulted Falun Gong practitioners in front of the Chinese consulate. They later pleaded guilty and were sentenced to put under "supervision." In June 2003, Liang Guanjun, Hua Junxiong and other pro-Beijing supporters in New York are currently under investigation for attacking and beating Falun Gong practitioners in the presence of Chinese consular officials.
Although these self-proclaimed community leaders repeatedly claimed they have nothing to do with the Chinese consulates, the connection is too obvious to deny.
U.S. senators have proposed related resolutions, condemning the Jiang Zemin group's harassment of Falun Gong practitioners on U.S. soil.
Now Jiang's group is using criminal elements to attack Falun Gong practitioners at places far away from the Chinese consulates and their officials. This way, it is harder to connect them with the attacks. This is a dangerous trend for the Jiang regime to collude with local criminal elements to commit increasingly violent acts against Falun Gong practitioners.
Will the shooting that took place in South Africa today propagate to other parts of the world someday in the future? Jiang Zemin and Zeng Qinghong's group is now targeting Falun Gong practitioners; will they also turn their guns on other groups not to their liking? After this incident, some CCP Internet spies claiming to be Falun Gong practitioners have been actively spreading rumors online. As we have clearly seen Jiang and his follower's desperation, we cannot let down our guard.
We have the responsibility, before their acts of state terrorism are spread even further, to expose their escalating actions after failing to eradicate Falun Gong over the last five years. We must stop Jiang and Zeng from taking another step on the path of spreading state terrorism.
