Falun
Gong is freely practiced in more than 50 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 the weekly FGMtv news review
on
August 20th, 2002
I¨m
Susan Mitchell
and
I¨m David Tompkins
In
this week's update from China´
，
The number of Falun Gong practitioners
verified to have died while in detention is 452, with details of 3 deaths
received this week. Reliable sources inside China put the actual death count in
the thousands.
，
In the last 7 days, reports of persecution have come in from 16
provinces and from Shanghai and Beijing cities, and
，
247 people solemnly declared their
statements extracted under torture are null and void. They intend to continue
to practice Falun Gong.
Our top story this
week:
obstruction in what government and media around the
world see as the end of the "one country, two systems" approach to
government.
And some of our other stories:
，
A Falun Dafa practitioner successfully
defends herself in court and walks free
，
The Canadian Broadcasting Standards
Council finds CCTV propaganda unfit for Canadian TV
，
Five Falun Dafa practitioners carry
hope across western Russia
，
In China mudslides claim the lives of
67 people
，
Exposing the persecution in New York's
Chinatown
，
A Chinese Festival in Toronto, and
，
the Bosnian Falun Dafa Web site is up
and running
First,
our top story:
，
On August 15, Hong Kong Magistrate Symon Wong convicted 16
Falun Gong practitioners of public obstruction. Nine were convicted of the more
serious charge of obstructing police, and three were convicted of assaulting
police.
，
They were ordered to pay fines ranging from $1,300 to $3,800
Hong Kong Dollars (or approximately $170 to $500 US dollars). Legal counsel for
the practitioners are appealing the decision. The 16 include 4 Swiss and 1 New
Zealand citizen.
，
This is the first time that Falun Gong practitioners have
been charged outside China and many believe the controversial trial and
convictions signal an end to the "one country, two systems"
arrangement for Hong Kong.
，
What actually happened?
，
In March of this year when Jiang Zemin issued an order to
"shoot on sight" any Falun Gong practitioners caught hanging posters
or handing out flyers in China, four Swiss practitioners decided to fly to
China through Hong Kong to appeal. They were denied entry to China and so
decided to remain briefly in Hong Kong to conduct a quiet hunger strike in
front of the China Liaison Office. They were joined by 12 local practitioners
to occupy less than 10 feet of the 30 foot sidewalk by the building, which is
in a rather out-of-the way part of the city. From the photograph, you can see
that there are few people around, except police.
，
Staff from the China Liaison Office made several phone calls
to police, asking that the appeal be stopped. Police caved in to the pressure
and told the practitioners to move further away from the building.
，
This police order to move a few feet away represents the
heart of the problem for those who practice Falun Gong around the world: Should
those who were doing the sit-in have abided by Hong Kong law, which says that
what they were doing is perfectly legal? Or should they have obeyed the
enforcers of Hong Kong law, who were breaking their own laws by doing what the
China Liaison Office staff were asking? Opinion is split throughout the world.
，
The sixteen decided to uphold Hong Kong law and remained
seated. Police repeated their order and when no one moved, they surrounded and
violently arrested the practitioners, injuring nine of them by using excessive
force on painful acupuncture points at the base of the skull.
，
Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily newspaper reported that Hong Kong
citizens should be very concerned about the outcome of this trial, because
practitioners were charged with a law originally intended to prevent street
hawkers and prostitutes from blocking Hong Kong's sidewalks. That law was not
intended to curtail peoples' right to hold sit ins or express their views.
，
Video and eyewitness evidence contradict the charges of
obstruction and assault. Further, during the trial, the prosecutor did not
produce a single third-party witness to any obstruction.
，
Associated Press reported on August 19th that
Hong Kong police and the magistrate who tried the case said the defendants'
Falun Gong activities were not at issue, but local Hong Kong human rights
activists and opposition politicians called the case a blatantly political
prosecution to appease Beijing.
，
The Falun Gong practitioners filed court papers early on
August 19, asking to avoid paying the fines while they are appealing their
convictions. "We did not break any laws," defendant Wang Yiu-hing
told reporters. "Even if we go to jail, we're not going to pay the
fines."
，
Justice Department spokeswoman Winnie Wong declined comment
on the defendants' request to put off paying their fines.
，
In Sweden, there were activities in
Stockholm, where practitioners gathered in front of the Chinese embassy, and
，
In Gothemburg
，
In London, England as well as
gathering in front ot the embassy, a new SOS walk was started
，
There were news conferences in Paris,
France
，
and Ottawa, Canada
，
Candlelight vigils in Vienna, Austria
，
and in Montreal Canada
，
More gatherings at Chinese embassies
in Tokyo, Japan
，
and Washington DC
，
while in other parts of the USA, there
were more news conferences: in San Francisco
，
and in Sacramento, California
，
and also, A hunger strike in Bern,
Switzerland
，
In China today, any person found putting up banners or
posters with information about Falun Dafa will be arrested. Some have been shot
and murdered by police.
，
Ms. Yunxiang Hao, who had been arrested for hanging Dafa
banners, was brought to trial on August 6th at 2:00 p.m. in the
first courtroom of Liaoning Province Jinzhou City's Linghe District Court.
，
Police would not allow any Dafa practitioners to enter the
courtroom, even though some held visitor's passes.
，
According to a college student who was in the courtroom
during the trial, Ms. Hao was very assertive, telling the court that the
purpose of hanging Dafa banners was to let people know the truth, and not to be
fooled by the lies. Falun Dafa is good.
，
The judge accepted that her defense
was logical and rational and she was released unconditionally.
On August 16 the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council decided in favor of
Falun Gong regarding a complaint against TalentVision. The station
had broadcast a CCTV (Chinese
state television) news report defaming the spiritual practice.
，
The report, aired on December 16,
2001, featured a news story on Fu Yibin, who was accused of having killed his
wife and his father with a butcher knife.
，
When viewing the report the Council
said, "It is nothing more or less than a biased attack on Falun Gong by
the producer of that news item."
They went on to say that, "There are no fewer than four separate
video clips of the blood-soaked apartment.￣
，
The additional airings were excessive
and constituted inappropriate repetition of violent footage in a news report.
，
This was a typical news report that
Chinese media has aired constantly to defame Falun Gong. Practitioners in China accuse the state
controlled CCTV of systematically fabricating news to attack the practice, and
its founder, Teacher Li Hongzhi.
They say it is designed to turn public opinion against the practice.
，
Canadian practitioners congratulated
the Council for its foresight in preventing the CCTV from extending its
persecution of Falun Gong to Canadians.
，
Five Falun Dafa practitioners spread
the practice over thousands of miles from the Western to the central region of
Russia, through small towns and the capital city of one Russian Republic.
，
They were warmly supported by TV
stations, city governments, police and local Chinese. After visiting local governments and media, they went to
markets where they handed out information materials and demonstrated the
exercises.
，
Many people were deeply touched, and
some said, "This is exactly what I have searched for my entire
life." The practitioners said
they would return to teach the exercises.
，
CNN reported that on August 14 a large
landslide crashed through 10 villages about 120 miles south of the capital of
Yunnan Province in China.
，
The mudslide happened in the middle of
the night killing 67 people.
，
A county official told reporters by
telephone, "We have never seen such a mudslide. One like this is very
rare, it is record-making," and "There is little hope of finding any
survivors," he said.
，
The killer landslides are the latest
blow to China, which has been battling floods that have killed more than 900
people so far this year.
Moving now to Holland:
，
A Dutch-based psychiatry watchdog
issued a report recently comparing China's abuse of mental health facilities to
that of the former Soviet Union.
Evidence of the abuse of psychiatry first emerged in China with the
persecution of Falun Gong.
，
In an interview GIP general secretary
Robert van Voren describes the situation as a gross violation of human rights and
medical ethics, he said, "It's fairly similar to what happened in the
Soviet Union, people are being injected with a neuroleptics, with psychotropic
drugs, they're beaten up, they're raped, they are wrapped up in wet linen and
when it dries they are squeezed like an orange. That creates excruciating pain.
It's punishment, it's maltreatment, it's torture."
，
He went on to say, "The issue of
political abuse of psychiatry came to the forefront because of the situation
with the Falun Gong. When the Chinese cracked down on Falun Gong in the late
1990s, large groups of them were incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals, and
that's how we found out there was actually something going on. It turns out
there are much larger groups of people who wind up in psychiatric hospitals.
They are labour activists, they are dissidents. There is a large group of
people who have been complaining to authorities for example, for local
authorities being corrupt, or roofs leaking, all kinds of minor things. And
they've been sending complaint letters to the authorities, and they are
perceived as being bothersome, so they just lock them up in a psychiatric
hospital. It's a very commonly used way of getting rid of bothersome
people."
，
Finally he said, "The
psychiatrists in the other two systems either believe that these people are
mentally ill - like many of the Soviet scientists believed that the dissidents
were ill -or know very well what they're doing and know they are using
psychiatry for non-medical purposes.
，
Either way, what they are doing with
people in psychiatric hospitals is a form of torture and therefore it is a
breach of their medical ethics and of their whole professional competence, and
they should be punished for this, they should be prosecuted."
，
From the tenth of August to the
twelfth, Falun Dafa practitioners in New York City gathered in Confucius Plaza
in the heart of Chinatown to play videos of the staged immolation incident and
Falun Dafa spreading around the world on a large screen projector, and hundreds
of passers-by stopped to watch.
，
Local practitioners report that many
people took material about Falun Dafa as they watched the videos, and many also
stopped to discuss Jiang Zemin's crimes in greater depth.
，
A Chinese Celebration was held on August 11th in
Toronto's central Chinatown.
，
Many people participated in the events, including Falun Gong
practitioners, who were there to offer free calligraphy and hand-made lotus
flowers.
New
Bosnian Falun Dafa Web site is now online at the address on your screen.
，
FGMtv is happy to announce that a Bosnian Falun Dafa Web
site is now up and running.
，
The language of the Web site can be understood by almost all
20 million people in the countries of the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croat,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia and Macedonia).
，
Practitioners in Europe advise that more and more people in
these countries are interested in Falun Dafa, so the web page should offer them
an easier way to find information about the practice itself, as well as news
about the persecution, world wide peaceful appeals and other Dafa activities.
Thanks for watching FGMtv, dedicated to breaking through China's information blockade, revealing propaganda, and bringing you the truth of Falun Gong.