March 23, 2006

For Flushing's Wanqing Huang, all hope of ever finding his brother alive again is likely lost.

There is a genocide going on in China, he said, and he believes his brother has fallen victim to the Communists because of his meditative practices.

Huang, 33, last spoke to his younger brother Xiong, 27, from Shanghai by telephone on April 19, 2003 and their conversation was much different than most families have from overseas.

"They found me, they are going to arrest me," were some of the last words Xiong told Huang - and now he fears his brother might be one of an alleged 6,000 concentration camp prisoners who have been brutally murdered by the communist Chinese government. Reports have indicated that prisoners' organs are being sold to medical facilities.

According to the Epoch Times, the Chinese Communist Party has established a secret concentration camp in Shenyang City, where Falun Gong prisoners are detained and are being cremated after doctors remove internal organs.

Xiong had been on the run from police for years. He's a Falun Gong practitioner, who refused to give up his beliefs, which have been outlawed in China since 1999. Xiong spent 1- 1/2 years in a labor camp for refusing to give up the meditative practice, and when he was released, Xiong could not return to his family, so he fled the Jiang Xi province and has been chased ever since, according to his brother.

His family, which includes Huang's mother, grandmother and sister, were regularly harassed by police while Xiong was on the run and Xiong's only U.S. contact had been his brother in Flushing. Huang said his brother had found a short-lived stay in Shanghai before being spotted and possibly captured.

"He said he was moving again because the police knew where he was, then he said would contact me again, but he never did," Huang said this week. "He didn't want to give up."

Also a follower of the Falun Gong practice since 1996, Huang said the belief's benefits include staying healthy and finding "an inner happiness."

According to records, Falun Gong followers, or believers in the "Great Law of the Wheel of Law," regularly partake in five sets of meditation exercises. The actual number of practitioners is unknown, possibly because it is not an organized belief, though estimates in 1999 pegged the number at about 70 million in China.

Huang came to the U.S. in 1997 to study medicine, first lived in Atlanta, but for the past year has called Flushing home. He had been in contact with a number of federal agencies, but he hasn't gotten much help.

U.S. Rep. John Linder (R-Georgia) wrote to Huang in August 2004 and forwarded his request for information to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. A member of Linder's staff wrote back to Huang indicating the Embassy's "deep concern about the Chinese government's treatment of Falun Gong practitioners."

The letter later states that the U.S. Ambassador "will continue to use every available and appropriate opportunity to urge the Chinese government to allow greater religious freedom and expression."

Unfortunately for Huang, he feels it could be too late.