World News
On April 5th and 6th, 2003, the International Human Rights Association held its 31st annual meeting in Frankfurt, Germany. The topic of this annual meeting was “Eliminating Cruel Punishment.”
The following is a record of the debate that took place in Canada’s House of Parliament on February 28, 2003 regarding the motion in support of rescuing Falun Gong practitioners in China.
The Chinese government continues to confine, torture, imprison, and subject individuals to other forms of ill treatment on account of their religion or belief, including Protestant Christians, Roman Catholics, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, and others, such as members of Falun Gong
The resolution contained sharp criticisms of the Hong Kong authority’s treatment of Falun Gong and, in particular, the proscription mechanism in the proposed Article-23 legislation which is widely believed to be targeting Falun Gong.
On Monday, April 14, 2003, the plaintiffs’ attorney will respond to issues posed at the preliminary hearing on January 13, 2003, in order to assure that the statements conform to standards required by the state of Illinois.
Although I am not a practitioner of Falun Gong, as a lawyer engaged in the practice of fighting discrimination and upholding civil rights, I accepted WOIPFG’s invitation to become its attorney.
Dafa practitioners of various nationalities are planning to file lawsuits during the coming days against the German states of Lower Saxonia, Brandenburg and Saxonia Proper. Their goal is to establish the facts of human rights violations against their persons during Jiang’s visit in April 2002 in the hope that these lawsuits will prevent such acts in the future.
Regarding demands made by Jiang during his state visit in Germany last year, on the evening of April 12 2002, German state TV station Channel One (ARD) ran a special report entitled, “Wild Arrogance: Jiang Zemin’s Dictatorship On the Soil of Germany.”
The UK Parliament Foreign Affair Committee published its 2002 annual human rights report on March 18 2003.
On 27 March 2003, the UK government issued a formal statement on the draft bill of the Article-23 legislation in Hong Kong.
