(Clearwisdom.net) On the 23rd of April, at a convention centre in Koenigstein, a 30-minute drive from Frankfurt, the International Society for Human Rights held its annual meeting. In the lobby beside the convention centre entrance, members from more than ten countries greeted one another and chatted in different languages with the people they had not seen for a year. Some people suddenly noticed that the lobby was different from usual. About thirty to forty paintings were hanging on the wall. One was of a young girl in meditation. Another was about a Chinese person whose finger nails were pierced with bamboo sticks by the police yet whose expression remains firm. Falun Gong's "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance" exhibition attracted a lot of attention.
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When Xiong Wei saw two gentlemen stop in front of a painting about a practitioner being tortured, she went to tell them about her experience of being persecuted in a Beijing Women's forced labor camp. The two gentlemen listened carefully. The name Xiong Wei is not unfamiliar to the members of the ISHR. When she was still in the labor camp, the ISHR collected petition signatures for her and submitted a petition to Germany's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The NGO also published her article in a human rights journal. When Xiong Wei was released, the ISHR made great efforts in getting her to come back to Germany. With the assistance of the German authorities, the ISHR's representative and Falun Gong practitioners in Germany welcomed Xiong Wei, (who had been away from Germany for five years) in the early morning of the 29th of September, 2004.
At the press conference and meeting on the 23rd of April, Xiong Wei described her experience as a victim and how the Chinese Government deceives foreigners. She said, "In the morning of the 27th of November, 2003, over ten members of the foreign media visited the third group of the Beijing Women's Forced Labor camp. A week or two earlier, we were forced to clean up the environment again and again. Officials at different levels came to inspect. Two large plants were placed in the lobby. The glass windows of each class were covered with white curtains. We were prevented from working on our crochet work and given cards to play. We even had tofu for lunch. At that time, I told the police that this was the first time in years. However, the next day when the foreigners left, we had to start working at 6 o'clock and were not allowed to speak. The window drapes were put away in the morning and the plants in the afternoon.
Xiong Wei also called for support for Jiang Renzheng, who was deported to China by Germany and sentenced to three years of forced labor. Jiang Renzheng was deported by the German Government because they did not think he would be persecuted if he went back to China. On the 24th of April, the assembly passed a decision to demand the Chinese Government to immediately release Jiang Renzheng and urged the German Chancellor and Foreign Minister to guarantee Jiang and his family's safety through all kinds of diplomatic means.