China Crisis News Bulletin # 44
US FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER - Contacts: Gail Rachlin 212-501-8080,
Erping Zhang 917-679-6944, Feng Yuan 917-734-6913, or Levi Browde 914-720-0963.
Email: usinfo@falundafa.orgá
AS JUNE 4TH TIANANMEN ANNIVERSARY NEARS, THE
COMMUNIST PARTY WARNS FALUN GONG "MAY CAUSE TROUBLE" EVEN THOUGH THE SPIRITUAL
PRACTICE WAS NOT INVOLVEDá
(YAHOO) Communist Party authorities have asked colleges and other units
to raise their guard in the run-up to the 11th anniversary of the June
4, 1989, Tiananmen crackdown. The authorities have warned there are signs
elements including pro-democracy activists, the banned China Democracy
Party and the Falun Gong may cause trouble on the sensitive day. A Beijing
source said yesterday the Ministry of Education had relayed a message to
universities requesting them to prevent activities such as large gatherings
of professors and students. The authorities indicated unnamed "black hands"
in colleges were attacking the leadership and spreading bourgeois-liberal
values under the pretext of fighting for more welfare for staff and students.
" Not noted by authorities is that Falun Gong began its practice three
years after the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square, and remains non-political
and a non-participant in all political commemorations.á
ANOTHER PRACTITIONER DEATH UNDER INVESTIGATION
(FALUN DAFA WEB SITES)á
LAN-ZHOU: At around 2:50 AM of May 24, the police secretly took the
corpse of Ms. Yao Bao-rong to the Hua-lin-shan Crematorium of Lan-zhou
City and had it cremated in a rush, without informing her family members.á
#19: HUNGER-STRIKING FALUNGONG PRACTITIONER
KILLED BY FORCE-FEEDINGá
BEIJING, May 26, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) A hunger-striking member
of the banned Falungong spiritual group died in Chinese police detention
after she was fatally injured during force-feeding. The death of 44-year-old
Mei Yulan at a Beijing hospital was confirmed by police and hospital staff
who admitted she had died after a hunger strike, but declined to elaborate
on the exact circumstances of her death. Mei's death brings to 19 the number
of Falungong members who have died in police detention since the movement
was banned in July last year, according to a toll by the Hong Kong-based
Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. A Falungong member,
asking to remain anonymous, said Mei was arrested on May 13th in the Chaoyang
district of Beijing while she was doing breathing exercises popular with
the movement. He said Mei began a hunger strike the next day, and that
when police tried to force-feed her on May 17th the feeding tube was wrongly
inserted causing serious injuries. The source said Mei immediately lapsed
into a coma and was taken on May 18th to Minghang hospital where she never
regained consciousness and died on Tuesday, May 23rd.á
FALUN GONG ADHERENT FROM MISSOURI DETAINED
IN CHINAá
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) -(May 25) A University of Missouri graduate who returned
to her native China earlier this month is being detained there because
of her involvement with the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, her husband
says. Sue Jiang left for China on May 10 and within days was detained,
said her husband Cuirong Ren, a graduate student and research assistant
at Missouri. Jiang had planned to meet with Chinese practitioners of Falun
Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, to get a deeper understanding of the meditation
she and her family learned in Missouri. She was then supposed to visit
her parents. But her husband believes she was arrested after practicing
the exercise in public, possibly in Tiananmen Square on May 13 as part
of a celebration of the first Falun Dafa Day.á
NANJING PRACTITIONERS TELL OF MALTREATMENT
BY GOVERNMENTá
NANJING - by Jon Sawyer (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 25, 2000) Police
officials in Nanjing deny allegations that practitioners of the exercise
and meditation group known as Falun Gong have been detained, beaten and
involuntarily committed to mental institutions. The city's journalists
say there's no story. Even sophisticated, Western-oriented professors here
dismiss the controversy over Falun Gong. They say Western critics are making
far too much about a bunch of laughably misdirected people at the far margins
of Chinese society.á
But if all that's true, what about the eight individuals who risked
jail to meet with a Post-Dispatch reporter and give detailed accounts of
how they had been arrested and detained, sometimes for weeks, just for
protesting the government's decision last summer to ban an exercise practice
that up until then millions of Chinese had been peacefully pursuing in
public parks?á
And what about Li An Nin, the retired manager for an investment company,
locked in a closed ward at the Nanjing Mental Hospital? The individuals
who met with a reporter in a working-class apartment gave harrowing accounts
of what the government's crackdown against Falun Gong had meant for them:á
A 55-year-old driver said he had been dismissed from his job
and made a common laborer instead, at a 60 percent reduction in pay. A
24-year-old factory worker said police stood passively by while common
criminals beat another woman practitioner who was sharing her cell.á
A 34-year-old worker at a Nanjing refinery said she had been
arrested after joining a Beijing protest in December and was held at the
Nanjing police station for two months. She was then committed involuntarily
to the Nanjing Mental Hospital and held for three weeks more.á
The woman's husband protested the incarceration and was presented
with a classic Catch-22. Police officials told him that his wife would
be permitted to leave the mental hospital early - but only if he signed
papers affirming that in his opinion she was insane. He refused.á
AS US SENATE PREPARES TO CONSIDER US CHINA
BILL, DEBATE STILL RAGES ON POTENTIAL IMPACT; PRESIDENT OF FREEDOM HOUSE
RAISES HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNSá
WASHINGTON: (Washington Post) Adrian Karatnycky, President of Freedom
House: Tuesday, May 30: "The House has voted, and trade relations with
China will soon be normalized. But the great debate between advocates of
open economic relations and proponents of punitive sanctions avoided the
fundamental question: How can we bring about democratic change in the People's
Republic of China? In the end, both sides exaggerated the effect of their
positions on China's internal conduct. It is clear that the threat of sanctions
has little bearing on how the Chinese Communists deal with dissent. Equally,
it is clear that increased trade flows and China's economic expansion have
not improved human rights practices. Indeed, this year human rights deteriorated
significantly as thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, Tibetan
Buddhists and dissenters met with brutal repression, even torture and death.
Proponents of normalized trade with China may be right in arguing that
rising economic fortunes promote personal choice and build a middle class
that is the bedrock of stable democracy. But economic growth also solidifies
entrenched political tyrannies. And while the middle class is a key factor
in democratic stability, it is workers and the young who are the bearers
of change in dictatorship. This is the lesson of democratic transition
ranging from Poland to South Africa, Chile to the Philippines..."á
US FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER Contacts: Gail Rachlin 212-501-8080,
Erping Zhang 917-679-6944, Feng Yuan 917-734-6913, or Levi Browde 914-720-0963.
Yearly Archive
Printer Version
feedback@clearwisdom.net
|
Related Articles |