On April 15, 2004, the 60th session of
the United Nations Human Rights Commission entered its voting period. Sixteen democratic countries including the U.S., Australia, Japan and some
European countries voted against China’s “No-Action” measure, but
twenty-eight other countries voted for the measure.
Celebrated UK Human Rights lawyer, author and playwright, Mr Geoffrey
Robertson QC, has joined forces with high profile Australian lawyer, author and
filmmaker, Mr Chris Nyst, and a group of Australian university students, to
compile a 500 page complaint to the Human Rights Commission detailing instances
of shocking abuse by Chinese prison guards and government officials perpetrated
on an Australian citizen.
This report further exposes the widespread phenomena of
China’s “re-education-through-labor” camp and prison system, in which
unlawfully detained Falun Gong practitioners have been forced into manufacturing
products.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT)
ordered the Melbourne City Council (MCC) to publish an open apology within 14
days in three Chinese newspapers – the Chinese Melbourne Daily, SingTao Daily
and The Australian Chinese Daily – and to pay the Falun Dafa Association’s legal
costs. This ruling marked the end of a year long legal case.
During the 60th Human Rights Conference at the UN, Falun Gong and the NGO “International Education Development” held a forum together, the theme of which was “Chinese State Terrorism: The Persecution of Falun Gong.”
When speaking of terrorism, people often think of radical people who operate in other countries
using terrorist means such as assassination, explosions and so on to cause
hundreds of thousands civilian casualties and deaths, in order to force the
other side to surrender. People often ignore another type of terrorism, which is
state terrorism operated by a country’s government. In fact, research by
commissioners in charge of studying terrorism at the UN pointed out that the
horrors caused to human beings by state terrorism is many times greater than
that caused by non-state terrorism.
Renowned Chinese Australian
artist and Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Zhang Cuiying filed a Petition
to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights via human rights attorney
Mr. Christ Nyst. Australian Nyst Attorney Firm accepted
and processed the petition.
Falun Gong practitioners held an experience sharing conference in New York from April 10 to April 11, 2004. On the afternoon of April 10, more than three thousand Falun Gong practitioners from all over the world staged a “Journey of Falun Dafa” grand parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
In a quiet corner at the United Nations building in Geneva where the annual Human Rights Commission meeting is taking place, sunlight brightened the marble floor through the large window. Little Fadu, who turned four years old on April 3rd, was excitedly watching a pretty peacock just outside of the window.
The Melbourne City Council (MCC) has been ordered to publish an apology for
discriminating against the meditation group Falun Dafa by barring it from
the city’s 2003 Moomba Parade.
Mr Nyst believes it is the first complaint on behalf of an individual – a female Australian citizen – to the United Nations about the treatment of people practising the Falun Gong religion.
