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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.
In a groundbreaking case, following a two-year investigation, a Spanish judge has accepted charges of genocide and torture in a case filed against five high-ranking CCP officials for their role in the persecution of Falun Gong.
This historic decision by a Spanish judge means that Chinese Communist Party leaders responsible for brutal crimes are now one step closer to being brought to justice,” said Carlos Iglesias, a local lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
The man in charge of forced labor camps in China’s Guangdong province was served yesterday with a lawsuit while visiting Manhattan. The complaint, filed on behalf of two female refugees now residing in Queens and other victims still in China, urges that the camp system superintendent be held liable for torture, illegal deprivation of liberty, and other severe human rights violations carried out in Guangdong labor camps that he has overseen since 2000.
At 6 a.m. on October 1, 2009, after being long term harassed, threatened, and cruelly persecuted, Ms. Yang Xiaojing died while her husband Mr. Cao Dong who has met with European Parliament Vice President Mr. Edward McMillan-Scott in Beijing on 21 May 2006, remains in Gansu Province Prison located in Tianshui City.
2009 marked the 10th anniversary of the government’s formal ban on Falun Gong, a spiritual movement based on the teachings of its founder, Li Hongzhi,and Chinese meditative exercises called qigong. Viewing the 10th anniversary as sensitive, the central government held fast in 2009
with its 2008 pre-Olympics efforts to ferret out and punish Falun Gong practitioners. Authorities conducted propaganda campaigns that deride Falun Gong, carried out strict surveillance of practitioners, detained and imprisoned large numbers of practitioners, and subjected some who refuse to disavow Falun Gong to torture and other abuses in reeducation through labor facilities.
In the past year, allegations of organ harvesting from nonconsenting Falun Gong prisoners have emerged again, further raising concerns about possible abuses in China’s organ transplant industry. In December 2008, the UN Committee against Torture (UNCAT) indicated in its report on China that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, had noted ‘‘an increase in
organ transplant operations coincides with the ‘beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners],’ ’’ and had urged the Chinese government to provide ‘‘a full explanation of the source of organ transplants.’’
On July 20, 1999, the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jiang Zemin, banned the Falun Gong spiritual practice. At the beginning of the suppression, Jiang intended to eradicate Falun Gong in “three months.” Intelligence agents locked onto Falun Gong practitioners whom they thought to be “leaders,” and its propaganda machinery prepared potent fabrications to vilify Falun Gong and turn the public against it. In so many previous persecutions, these two steps alone were enough to break the backbone and spirit of any victim group.
After failing to eradicate Falun Gong in a quick way, CCP has largely remained quiet about Falun Gong in its state-run media over the last several years, making the impression that Falun Gong is no longer in existence in China. So, did Jiang and the CCP achieve their goal? Where are the practitioners in China? What do they do these days? With these questions in mind, Chinascope interviewed the editor of the Chinese website, minghui.org. Minghui, whose English counterpart is clearwisdom.net, is the primary website for Falun Gong practitioners to obtain Falun Gong related information, report their activities, and share their experiences with each other.
