5/6/2006

Daily Journal

TUPELO - Dr. Wenyi Wang was so incensed at Chinese leader Hu Jintao last month that she yelled at him and President Bush during a White House news conference.

Her outburst called attention to a human rights cause: allegations of organ removal from live patients in China. Friday, a group of Wang's supporters brought the message to Tupelo.

"The Chinese Communist Party has long been known to harvest live organs without consent from criminals condemned to death," said Mike Chen of Alabama, who practices the quasi-religious healing art Falun Gong. "However, since the persecution of the spiritual movement Falun Gong began in 1999, the Chinese Communist Party has arbitrarily labeled all Falun Gong practitioners as criminals and has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of them without trial or charges."

News reports say three witnesses who recently escaped from China claimed that organs were "harvested" from detained, live Falun Gong practitioners, prompting Wang's plea. The "Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China" recently was formed to investigate the claims in labor camps, jails and hospitals.

Xiaomei Jia, who also was in Tupelo on Friday, said she was imprisoned for a year and a half for handing out a flyer.

"It was like a dark hell," she said through an interpreter. "If you did not give up your belief, they would torture you."

She was force-fed salt water and not allowed to sleep for 32 days straight, she said. Edward Wei, who interpreted, said that Jia was released "because Western society pressured the labor camp to release her."

The group is traveling around the Southeast, stopping in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.

"Big things are happening in China," Wei said. "They are cutting living people's organs out and selling them for big profits. ... People need to be aware; your voice can be heard. If you send a message to President Bush, he will hear you."