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According to the legal summons served during former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin’s visit to Chicago in October, last Wednesday was the final day for Jiang to respond to the Genocide Lawsuit brought against him and the Gestapo-like office he established in June of 1999 to carry out the persecution of practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement throughout China.
Members
of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, banned in July 1999 as a ‘heretical
organization’, have used the Internet and e-mail to circulate information
about repression against the group. Some have been arrested as a result. The
Chinese authorities have now shut down the group’s websites and blocked
overseas websites. At least 14 Falun Gong practitioners have been detained
and imprisoned for Internet-related offences, several have died in custody
reportedly as a result of torture.
The law is designed to protect China’s national security. Human rights and pro-democracy groups have said China could use the new laws
to suppress freedoms inherited from British rule, as well as to ban groups –
such as the religious group Falun Gong – it considers a threat.
Shorn of its linguistic niceties, it lays down that any organization of which Beijing disapproves on security grounds will be proscribed in Hong Kong. That could, for instance, mean that the Falun Gong movement, which the central government has been persecuting remorselessly, could be outlawed in the SAR.
On September 24 the Hong Kong government firmly publicized Article No. 23, making Hong Kong residents who have become accustomed to democracy and freedom to be at a sudden loss in the face of “instigating subversion” and “instigating splits”.
The Falun Dafa Australia experience sharing conference 2002 will be held in Sydney on November 9-10, 2002. This is an annual Australia-wide event that welcomes everyone to join.
Violation of all 33 UN Human Rights Declarations Cited
Citizens and residents from Australia, Canada, USA, France, Ireland, Hong Kong and China have jointly submitted a legal case against Communist Party Head Jiang Zemin, and two other top Chinese officials, to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the International Criminal Court, for crimes committed in instigating and carrying out the brutal persecution of Falun Gong.
There was the controversial prosecution of 16 Falun Gong protesters earlier this year for offences arising out of a peaceful demonstration outside the Beijing Liaison Office.
The block on Google was an international scandal because it demonstrated so clearly the threat to international internet commerce of the Chinese government’s attempts to censor the internet for political purposes. At the same time, this method of blocking Google violated international protocols for the use of the internet.
I am not a Falun Gong practitioner, but I know them well. I understand what they are thinking and doing. At the same time, since I am also a police officer and a civil servant. I know clearly what the police and civil servants are thinking and doing. I can say that Jiang’s persecution against Falun Gong practitioners, using the whole Party and state apparatus, is a huge mistake. To put it simply, the persecution can be called an outrageous crime.
