THE OTTAWA CITIZEN: NEW HEIGHTS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
On Monday, April 16, 2007, the Ottawa Citizen published an article profiling David Kilgour, a former Canadian MP and Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific), and his work investigating atrocities against Falun Gong in China. Kilgour's partner in the investigation is human rights attorney David Matas. The following is an excerpt: "After months of investigation, [Kilgour] says unequivocally that the Communist Chinese government has instituted 'a new crime against humanity that has never even been thought of before.' The government persecutes, imprisons and brainwashes in slave-labour camps thousands of practitioners of Falun Gong. Ultimately, he says, it medically murders them to harvest their organs...
The two lawyers concluded that of 41,500 organ transplants in China during a five-year period, most came from [imprisoned and unwilling] Falun Gong practitioners. They published their findings last July and updated them in January in an objective investigative report, which is available on Mr. Kilgour's website: www.david-kilgour.com or at www.organharvestinvestigation.net. The report cites the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Centre website (http://en.zoukiishoku.com/). It has very upbeat, if ungrammatical, advertisements of plentiful 'donors' promising transplants in a matter of weeks, when it takes months and years in other countries. (Kidney transplants alone supply China with $325 million U.S. yearly.)...
The Matas-Kilgour report includes transcriptions of telephone calls to prospective customers guaranteeing premium-quality Falun Gong organs, the profits from which finance hospitals and the military...
The two lawyers are by no means alone in their campaign. Manfred Nowak, the UN rapporteur on torture, said two-thirds of people tortured in China are Falun Gong practitioners. In March, an article in the respected Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found the Matas-Kilgour report 'credible"' given China's 'remarkable' organ transplant rate."
Full story: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=f637521b-bbf9-4e43-a61f-5ce897561559&p=1
64-YEAR-OLD FALUN GONG ADHERENT DIES FROM TORTURE
Mr. Yang Pingsheng was from Wuning County, Jiangxi Province. He was, reports conclude, tortured to death at Nanchang City Prison in March 2007. His family was instructed to pick up his ashes, and was not allowed to see his body. Mr. Yang Pingsheng was arrested by police from the Wuning County Police Department in April 2005 while passing out leaflets that exposed the persecution of Falun Gong in China. He was sentenced to four years in prison and detained in the Nanchang City Prison. After 68 days in prison, he was dead. Authorities offered no viable explanation as to the circumstances of his death. The Nanchang City Prison's "transforming" office -- the office in charge of employing psychological and physical torture to coerce Falun Gong adherents to renounce their beliefs -- is widely known to use electric batons to torture practitioners, often tying them down and shocking sensitive parts of the body, such as the mouth, neck, anus and genitalia. To date, the Falun Dafa Information Center has documented over 63,000 cases of torture against Falun Gong, thousands of which resulted in death.
RALLY MARKS 20 MILLION QUITTING CCP, OFFERS HOPE FOR END OF PERSECUTION
Falun Dafa Information Center representatives were among a dozen speakers featured in a New York City rally on April 8 meant to show solidarity with the 20-million-plus persons in China who have now publicly quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations.
"There are many in the world who believe the CCP has changed, and it's not the same Party that killed tens of millions of its own citizens during political purges between the 1950's and 1970's," said Information Center spokesperson Levi Browde. "However, the persecution of Falun Gong in China that has raged on for the past seven years tells a very different story... that the CCP is still very, very much the same."
European Parliament Vice-President Mr. Edward McMillan-Scott was called in from his home in the UK to address the attendees. McMillan-Scott is the longest-serving member of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and founder of the $160 million EU Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights -- which funds the International Criminal Court (ICC). McMillan-Scott visited Beijing in April 2006 to investigate human rights abuses there and has strenuously raised the cases of Falun Gong victims of the Beijing regime with the EU, UN, and other bodies. McMillan-Scott told Sound of Hope radio last week that the names of those responsible for crimes against humanity in China are being collected for an eventual ICC trial.
Full story: http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=9484
HIGH-RANKING CHINESE OFFICIAL SUED IN SPAIN FOR TORTURE, GENOCIDE
On the morning of April 17, 2007, individual plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Mr. Wu Guanzheng, a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CCP. In the lawsuit, Wu is charged with crimes of torture and genocide. Wu was visiting Spain when the suit was filed.From 1997 to late 2002, Wu was Secretary of Shandong Provincial Committee of the CCP. During that time, he carried out former CCP paramount leader Jiang Zemin's orders to "eradicate" Falun Gong. At least one hundred Falun Gong practitioners were tortured to death in Shandong Province, and thousands more suffered severe forms of torture and abuse.