Media Release
Eleven years ago this week, the Chinese Communist Party launched a campaign to eradicate Falun Gong—a peaceful and popular spiritual practice embraced by tens of millions of Chinese citizens. But the practitioners of Falun Gong are not the only victims, and the lives destroyed and lost are not the only costs.
It is my belief that the Chinese Communist Party has never had a legal basis for its eleven-year persecution of Falun Gong, because the Chinese government never officially banned Falun Gong. I won’t delve into the subject of the current Chinese government’s legitimacy itself since its inception in 1949 for now, but even according to the Chinese government’s own laws, the persecution by the CCP and Jiang Zemin’s gang is illegal.
In practice, the government organs that have tried to charge Falun Gong practitioners at the behest of the “610 Office” have never been able to legitimately accuse them of an actual crime. Even according to the Chinese Communist Party’s own laws, the persecution of Falun Gong is illegal.
In summary, the persecution initiated against Falun Gong on July 1999 was initiated by CCP leader Jiang Zemin’s letters, speeches, directives, followed by a series of CCP-issued documents. These were the driving force behind this political, persecutory movement, accompanied by the overwhelming slander and smear campaign by the CCP propaganda machine. This persecution is not a case of a legitimate government enforcing its laws. Of course, a government has no right to persecute its people this way, or it would be, in the process of doing so, removing its own legitimacy. The responsibility for the continuation of this persecution after Jiang stepped down, however, falls squarely on the shoulders of the current CCP leadership.
I estimate that Falun Gong comprises between 15 to 20% of the Laogai system. That’s about half a million to a million Falun Gong in detention on average, representing the largest Chinese Security action since the Maoist period.
On 17 December 2009, in a landmark decision, an Argentine judge indicted and ordered the local Interpol department to seek the arrest of two high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials for their role in crimes against humanity committed against Falun Gong practitioners. The ruling follows a similar decision in Spain last month, when the Spanish National Court indicted five top CCP leaders for their involvement in genocide and torture against Falun Gong.
During International Human Rights Day on 10 December, Falun Gong practitioners in Sydney will hold a press conference outside the Supreme Court of NSW to highlight several lawsuits brought by victims of torture against high-ranking Chinese officials for the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
A human rights lawyer from northeast China was sentenced on November 27 to seven years in prison for taking Falun Gong practitioners as clients and presenting legal arguments that the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against the spiritual practice is illegal under Chinese law.
On May 19, 2006, six to seven police broke into my home and searched for the book ‘Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party’. They didn’t find the book they wanted but found several Falun Gong books. They put me in the detention centre in Haidian District, Beijing.
Falun Gong practitioners are marking ten years since China banned the spiritual and exercise movement as a national security threat, in the wake of a mass demonstration by adherents in Beijing in April of 1999. Thousands have since been detained, tortured and killed. Advocates say the bodies of dead Falun Gong practitioners remain the key source of organs for the booming domestic trade in illegal transplants.
