Media Release
After two long years of imprisonment and Amnesty International campaigning, Chinese
prisoner of conscience Bu Dongwei was finally released on 18 July 2008. Bu Dongwei was serving time in a ‘re-education through labour’ facility for allegedly possessing Falun Gong materials. For fear of again be detained or harrassed in Olympic crackdowns, Amnesty International was unable to make public the news of his release until now.
Falun Gong practitioners were invited to participate in the Fisher’s Ghost
Parade at the Campbelltown City Festival on the afternoon of November 1, 2008.
More than one hundred different groups participated in this annual parade.
The Immigration Department is endangering failed Falun Gong asylum seekers
by forcing them to apply for travel documents from the Chinese consulate in
Sydney, exposing their status to authorities and putting them in danger of persecution,
refugee advocates say.
Human rights groups’ statements submitted to the United Nations Committee against
Torture prior to the body’s review of China on Friday highlight the continued
torture and death in custody of Falun Gong adherents.
There has been an attempt to bring criminal charges against a high ranking Chinese
official (Zhou Yongkang), who is due to meet Prime Minister Kevin Rudd while visiting
Australia.
One of the four senior Chinese officials responsible for the
persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, Zhou Yongkang, is arriving in
Sydney today upon invitation by the Australian Government.
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor under the US Department of State recently issued its 2008 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. The report expresses concern about the lack of freedom of belief in China, as it has done in previous years. The report points out that the Chinese government continues to harshly repress religious groups, Falun Gong in particular. Falun Gong practitioners are being arrested, with some dying as a result of torture and maltreatment. The report has listed China as a “country of particular concern” since 1999.
In the afternoon of October 8, New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) and their supporters held a press conference outside the Eutelsat Shareholders’ Meeting venue in Caen, France. They demanded that Eutelsat resume NTDTV broadcasts in Asia.
This essay will be published by the Magazine Huso Crítico of the University of Guadalajara in its Summer 2008 edition. It has already elicited reactions.
Around 10:00 a.m. on August 21, 2008, several officers from the Jiadong Police Station, Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province arrested fifty-eight-year-old practitioner Ms. Chen Xiuling. Then they ransacked Ms. Chen’s home.
