Falun Gong is freely practised in 40 countries around the world, but relentlessly persecuted in China. The peaceful courage of practitioners there has shocked their oppressors and moved the people of the world. While China continues to block all information, FGMTV brings you the stories you may not hear anywhere else.

Hello, and welcome to FGMTV on November 6^th, 2001.

I’m Susan Mitchell.

Some of our stories this week:

§ Artist, Zhang Cuiying, who survived torture in a Chinese labour camp, has a successful art exhibition in Germany

§ New Falun Dafa Associations and Web sites are established in Europe

§ Practitioners introduce Falun Dafa to West Papua, Indonesia

§ SOS Walks continue to take the urgent rescue message forward

In this week's update from China:

§ The number of Falun Gong practitioners verified to have died while in detention is 306 as of today, although government sources in China say that the actual number exceeds one thousand.

§ Police in China: stories of the bad... and the good

§ Kidnapping cases in Guanzhou City of Guangdong Province

§ Torture escalates in labour camps throughout China – Wanjia Labour Camp in the news again

§ Toronto practitioners hold a candle light vigil to bring attention to the escalating death count

§ No one wants to work in the 610 Offices because they will be listed as vicious people with their names posted on the Internet

and…

§ Peace and Compassion Day in Toronto – thousands enjoy an afternoon festival of music and peace in front of Toronto's City Hall

Ms. Zhang Cuiying is an artist and a Falun Dafa practitioner from Australia who was rescued from a Labour Camp in China with the help of the Australian government, after being tortured for refusing to give up her beliefs. She has been travelling the world to give people first hand accounts of the persecution in China, and to show her beautiful paintings.

Recently, she had a successful exhibit in Hamburg, Germany. One of the visitors was an elderly Chinese gentleman who came by taxi to attend the opening ceremony after he saw the roadside advertisement for the painting exhibition. He wrote a poem to specialpraise Ms. Zhang's artistic accomplishments and righteous personality of insisting on truth by not bending to political power.

New Falun Dafa Associations were formed recently.

The Falun Dafa Associations of Denmark and Belgium were estabished in October and a new Hebrew Web site is now up and running.

Photos from SOS Walks in Europe:

Photographs from Poland,

and from The Hague in The Netherlands:

On October 20, 2001, about 120 Falun Dafa practitioners from Britain, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands gathered on the square in front of the World Court in the Hague, where many war criminals have been tried and sentenced.

The statement read at the press conference strongly demanded that Jiang Zemin's government immediately release practitioner Zhao Ming, a Ph.D. candidate at Trinity College in Dublin. And they appealed to the international community to make more effort to rescue Zhao Ming. The speech also demanded that Jiang Zemin's government dismantle and abolish the "610 Office" that was established to carry out the crackdown on Falun Gong and immediately stop the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

From October 21-23, Global Rescue Walk activities were held in Madrid, Spain including a parade, a press conference and a large-scale exercise demonstration with about 100 Falun Gong practitioners from Taiwan, and some other practitioners from Argentina, Canada, Britain, Germany, and Sweden.

Moving now to news from China:

Mr. Liu Lianyi from Hebei province was arrested on October 31^st, 1999 simply because he practiced Falun Gong. He was held in the Jing County detention center and constantly beaten and kicked by inmates in his cell under orders from the prison guards. One of the criminal inmates was a man in his 20's called Zhu Yongshan. At lunchtime the day after being brutally kicked repeatedly in the stomach by Zhu, Mr. Liu suddenly collapsed, holding his chest. He writhed in agony, lost control of his bowel and bladder functions and within half an hour, had stopped breathing. After his death, police blocked all information and told his family that he had died of a heart attack, even though Mr. Liu had no history of heart disease.

Ms. Lu Qinghua was an accomplished woman in her mid-thirties who was the People's Representative of Dehui City in the northern province of Changchun. She was also the Women's Director of her local area and had been awarded the titles of "March 8th Flag Bearer (a model female Chinese citizen)" and "Outstanding Communist Party Member." Ms. Lu was a devoted wife and the mother of a young son. She was also a Falun Gong practitioner, and for that, she was killed in March, 2000. It has taken 1½ years to smuggle out of China, the details of her death by force feeding.

The escalation in the number of deaths from torture prompted Toronto Falun Dafa practitioners to hold a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate last night. A brief statement was read, and the solemn scene was witnessed by many people returning home from work.

Numerous Falun Gong practitioners are missing from the South China University of Technology and other schools in Guangzhou City of Guangdong Province. They are believed to have been kidnapped mainly by authorities from the 610 Office – the all-powerful agency with a mandate to persecute Falun Gong.

Names of some of the missing are: 37 year-old Ms. Jiang Wenyi, who is a lecturer in the Artchitecture Department; 36 year-old Ms. Chen Feng, a lecturer at the College of Transportation; 30 year-old Ms. Yang Wei, a staff member of the Architecture Department; Ms. Tan Luping, about 40 years old, who is a staff member at the College of Architecture; Long Zhihua, 37 years old, a teacher of the College of Architecture; Ms. Xu Ming, over 40 years old, a teacher at the Guangzhou Normal School of Music who is known to be imprisoned in the brainwashing class in Guangzhou Law School; Ms. Xu Juhua, 40 years old who is an English teacher at Guangzhou Light Industry Technical School;

Ms. Mei Qianfang, 61 years old, who is an associate professor at the South China University of Technology; Ms. Feng Jiansheng, a 67 year-old retired teacher; and Ms. Pan Xiaoping, 37 years old, from Guangzhou Jinan University;

Li Kangqing from the Tumor Research Institute in Henan Province was kidnapped on October 16^th

and in Shijiazhuang City of Hebei Province, Sun Jinhu was Kidnapped and taken to Hebei Province Brainwashing Center

We want to remind our viewers that the laws passed by the government of China violate the constitution of the Peoples Republic of China as well as international treaties to which China is signatory.

However... not all authorities are bad! The Police Chief friend of a non-practitioner recently affirmed that he is familiar with the principle that good will be rewarded with good and evil with evil and said, "I have never done anything to mistreat Falun Gong. If this situation is reversed in the future, I will not be afraid. I don't feel guilty when i examine my own heart."

Here is a story from the First Detention Center of Anlu:

Falun Dafa practitioner, Ms. Pan Juying, in her 30's, and a resident of Huguo Village was forcefully dragged away from home by four police officers, and locked up in a room in the police department for five days and six nights. During this period, the police beat her fiercely, and handcuffed her with her hands over her head – which is a particularly painful position. Finally a policeman called Chen Xinrun put two snakes into a braided bag, and forcefully put Pan Juying's hands into the bag. While that was happening, another policeman named Shen Chao, Li Lin shouted: "We intend to make you a lunatic, and make you run down the street naked. That way we can tell people that you became a lunatic after you practiced Falun Gong."

Tonghua Labour Camp in Jilin Province has illegally imprisoned a large number of Falun Dafa practitioners and committed many crimes against them. For instance:

Mr. Xu Hongjun was a physics teacher in a middle school. One day when he heard one of his students cursing people in his class, he tried to persuade the student to stop by explaining to him the importance of acting civilized and by talking about the universal principles of "Truthfulness,Compassion and Forbearance." He also loaned the student a copy of the book, Zhuan Falun, the teachings of Falun Dafa.

Someone reported this to the local public security bureau, and on September 28, 2001, local police officers came to arrest Mr. Xu. When he tried to escape, the police chased after him in 2 cars. As they approached a market, they suddenly headed their cars straight at Mr. Xu and knocked him down in front of a crowd. Although he was in severe pain while lying there on the ground, Mr. Xu spoke to the crowd, explaining the truth of Falun Gong. The police jumped out and threw him into one of their cars, drove off and took him straight to Tonghua Labour Camp. Mr. Xu has only recently been allowed to leave the labour camp, under guard, to obtain medical treatment for his injured legs.

A practitioner recently received a most encouraging letter from a childhood friend who is now a policeman in China. He wrote, in part:

"I know all of the truth you tried to clarify to me. Actually most of the people here know clearly that the propaganda on TV and radio is false. Anyone who lived through the Cultural Revolution will not be easily fooled. ... at the present time, right and wrong are turned up-side down. The 'upper level' authorities are forcing us to arrest people, even during the holidays. Who among us is not complaining?

Although I do not believe in Falun Gong, I know that you are all really good people. ...Many who are eager to be involved in the persecution of Falun Dafa are people who actually have all kinds of problems but they are protected by higher-ups. However, there are quite a few who still have a conscience, ... We have used the convenience of our jobs to very carefully record details about the persecution towards Falun Dafa, especially those cases where Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured to death or disabled. All of this is evidence, and can be useful in the future. Those who committed wrong deeds can never imagine in their dreams that some of us, working beside them, are collecting the evidence of their criminal acts. You probably never thought of this because you are currently overseas.

As a matter of fact, people all know this is the second Cultural Revolution, and there must be a day of redress!"

Practitioners being held in the Wanjia Labor Camp in Harbin City have begun a hunger strike to protest their detention. Ever since several Falun Gong practitioners there were tortured to death, the guilty ones from the Political and Security Section of Mishan City Police Department, Heilongjiang Province have been repeatedly obstructing the media to prevent them from disclosing this case. They have also threatened the victims' family members saying that if any were found to be in contact with foreign journalists and granting interviews, "the entire family would disappear."

Moving out of China now and to the interior of West Papua, Indonesia where a Falun Gong practitioner trekked for a week in the Baliem Valley. She spent 4 nights in Syokosimo, where she showed the exercises to Dani tribe villagers. The photos are digital images from extensive video footage. Like children in other countries, the Dani children were really enthusiastic about learning the Falun Gong exercises.

The Baliem Valley has been characterized as one of the few remaining "paradises" on earth. Until 25 years ago, the Valley inhabitants were living a stone age existence, and even today there is no electricity, running water or other modern utilities.

And on the other side of the world....

Falun Gong practitioners in Russia hold a weekly poster exhibition and exercise demonstration in downtown St. Petersburg where they also distribute SOS flyers advising of the persecution.

And finally... Peace and Compassion day in Toronto.

Thousands enjoyed an afternoon of music, dance, culture, and a sharing of hopes for peace and kindness in our world at a festival in Nathan Phillips Square, in front of Toronto's City Hall.

Local politicians and VIPs add their voices of support for human rights in the world.

Doves take flight as a symbol of peace and in memory of 306 practitioners known to have been murdered by Chinese authorities when they refused to renounce their beliefs

Balloons..... speeches..... children...... singing...... dancing

all in an atmosphere of serenity and community – a get together of some of the many cultures that make up the mosaic of Toronto's citizens to celebrate Peace and Compassion.

Thanks for watching FGMTV, dedicated to breaking through China's information blockade, revealing propaganda, and bringing you the truth of Falun Gong.