Hello, and welcome to the weekly FGMtv news review. I'm Susan Mitchell.

§ Here at FGMtv we focus on programs and news that illuminate the truth of Falun Gong, which is also known as Falun Dafa.

§ Falun Dafa is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that includes exercise and meditation. Its principles are based on Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance.

§ The practice began in China in 1992 and quickly spread by word of mouth throughout the country.

§ In 1998, a government survey concluded that the number of practitioners exceeded membership in the communist party.

§ One year later, dictator Jiang Zemin began a brutal persecution that violates not only the Chinese constitution, but also international treaties signed by China.

In this week's update from China…

§ 648 Falun Gong practitioners are confirmed to have died from torture while in custody. Reliable sources inside China put the actual total death count in the thousands.

§ Torture reports in the last seven days have come in from 14 different provinces, and the cities of Beijing and Shenyang.

§ Death reports received by the Falun Dafa Information Center in the past week include:

- 10 deaths of practitioners from mistreatment by Chinese authorities, and

- 14 deaths of Chinese authorities who have persecuted practitioners. They died in traffic accidents and from sudden, unexpected illnesses.

§ 798 people declared as null and void, statements saying they will give up Falun Gong that were made while undergoing torture as they were the result of extreme coercion. They say they will continue practicing Falun Gong.

Our top story this week:

§ China's new cover up: the SARS epidemic. A Beijing hospital physician writes to Time magazine exposing the Jiang regime's orders to conceal the extent of the illness in China.

And some of our other stories:

§ Brutality against Falun Gong practitioners in the Tiananmen Square Police Station;

§ Slander against Falun Gong is included in new secondary school textbooks in China and…

§ A teenager completely recovers from terminal leukemia a couple of months after beginning to practise Falun Gong.

First, our top story: China's cover up of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, known as SARS.

§ On April 8^th the official China Daily newspaper put the number of SARS cases in Beijing at a total of only 19 with 4 dead.

§ In Time Asia magazine on the same day, and in contradiction of Chinese government statistics, a signed statement provided to the magazine by a physician at Beijing's Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital No. 301 says that 60 SARS patients were admitted in that hospital alone and that 7 of those 60 have died. That's more than three times the official number of cases and almost double the number of deaths, in just one hospital!

§ 72-year-old Dr. Yanyong Jiang said he wrote the statement because "a failure to disclose accurate statistics about the illness will only lead to more deaths." He continued, "As a doctor who cares about people's lives and health, I have a responsibility to aid international and local efforts, to prevent the spread of SARS."

§ Dr. Jiang went on to reveal that in early March, Beijing's military hospitals were briefed about the dangers of SARS and told not to publicize the information, in case it interfered with the annual meeting of the National People's Congress. This information was confirmed by another physician at a Beijing-area hospital.

§ The World Health Organization's Director General, Gro Harlem Brundtland, for the first time, has publicly criticized China for not reporting more quickly its first cases of the illness.

§ Falun Gong practitioners around the world are doing their best to alert their friends and relatives in China so that they can advise their communities of the seriousness of the situation and take proper precautions.

Brutality against Falun Gong practitioners in the Tiananmen Square Police Station:

It has taken more than two years for the following report to get out of China. It was written by a practitioner there who said,

§ On December 29, 2000, I was taken to Tiananmen Square police station by the military police after two fellow practitioners and I appealed for justice for Falun Dafa near the Golden Water Bridge in Tiananmen Square.

§ The back of the police station was full of Dafa practitioners. When they saw me, they started applauding for me and shouting: "Falun Dafa is good, Falun Dafa is the righteous Fa, restore our teacher's reputation." We kept shouting, and the police kept kicking and beating us.

§ One police officer was hitting a practitioner on the face and head. He dragged the man into a room in the front. About half an hour later, he came back and said: "They chopped off my fingers." I saw there were only two thumbs left on his hands, which were wrapped in cloth. At that time, the cloth had turned dark gray because of his blood. There were two purple blisters on his face from being beaten up and his mouth was bleeding as well.

§ But, this practitioner was very calm, with no hatred, which demonstrated the cultivation realm of a Dafa practitioner. The police under evil's control might wound our body, but they cannot shake the strong will of Dafa practitioners.

§ Later on, I was transferred to Chaoyang Detention Center. Soon after, I was released. However, I haven't ever seen that practitioner again, and don't know how he is doing now.

Introducing Falun Gong to Guatemala (31")

When Falun Gong was first introduced in China, it spread through the country by word of mouth. Practitioners who had attended Mr. Li Hongzhi's lectures also travelled through the countryside to introduce the practice.

§ From March 1 to 13, 2003, practitioners from North America visited Guatemala to introduce the practice to people there.

§ They demonstrated the exercises in peaceful parks, teaching any who wanted to learn. And they told people about the ongoing illegal persecution in China.

… and half a world away, on the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Australia and Japan,

practitioners provided an exercise demonstration in the Micronesia Mall.

§ Their photographs appeared in the Guam Pacific Sunday news, letting more people on the island learn about the peaceful practice.

§ Ms. Pao Hui Yeh, shown meditating here, said the noise of the mall didn't disturb her at all!

New School Textbooks in China slander Falun Gong

§ In a copy of a new secondary school textbook called Legal Education for Youth, words slandering Falun Dafa have been found in a three-page section from pages 146 to 148.

§ This is a book compiled and written by several Chinese departments: the Propaganda and Education Bureau of the National Propaganda Department, the Propaganda Division of the National Judiciary Department, the Basic Education Division of the Department of National Education, and the Central League Party Rights and Interests Bureau.

Hubble Pictures Too Crisp, Challenging Theories of Time and Space

§ Robert Roy Britt, a Senior Science Writer for the Web site space.com wrote that "According to two new studies, the Hubble telescope should not be able to snap pictures as sharp as this 1996 image, part of the Deep Field project that discovered hundreds of galaxies billions of light-years away.

§ Conventional thinking is that space and time can be thought of together as a sort of "foam". As light travels through the foam, it ought to be disrupted, ever so slightly, such that by the time it crosses much of the universe, it would render only blurry pictures when gathered by a precision telescope. It does not. Hubble pictures are crisp and clear, no matter the distance to the object.

§ And that, say two separate teams of researchers, might mean there are flaws in quantum theory.

§ The Jiang regime in China has charged that the teachings of Falun Dafa are anti-science. The founder of Falun Gong, Master Li Hongzhi, states that qigong is a higher science, and that what scientists around the world have already discovered is enough to re-write our present day textbooks.

§ During his lecture in Guangzhou, Master Li said that once a theory has come to be accepted and scientists have laid down definitions, it is very difficult for those that come after to go beyond those theories.

§ Many scientists in China and in Western countries are now studying Falun Dafa and they are pushing the frontiers of the present science to new heights. FGMTV will bring you reports of new findings as they become available in the coming months and years.

A German lawsuit to document constitutional transgressions against Falun Gong practitioners

§ During Jiang's visit to Germany in 2002, plaintiffs of a new lawsuit contend that German federal agents and Berlin police infringed on the constitutional rights of Falun Gong practitioners

§ Falun Gong practitioners from different countries are planning to file lawsuits against the German federal police in Berlin and other areas. The goal is to establish facts of human rights transgressions against Falun Gong practitioners during Jiang's state visit to Germany in April 2002, so as to prevent such acts in the future.

§ Other courts of law have also spoken. The Bavarian Administrative Court in Germany said: "No political or economic interests shall be above the constitution."

§ Falun Gong practitioners held a news conference describing inappropriate actions of German police during the visit of China’s Jiang Zemin.

§ The Plaintiffs' attorney showed the yellow shirt and banner that were banned without cause. Jiang had demanded that a banner with the characters for “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” not be shown during his visit.

Recovery from Leukemia after practicing Falun Dafa

§ A 16-year-old student in China was diagnosed with leukemia by three hospitals in Jilin Province at the end of 2001. She wrote the following:

§ "My family and I were shocked and deeply saddened by the news. Then I was hospitalized. At that time my thrombocyte (blood platelet) count was only at 2,000, while a healthy person's thrombocyte count is between 100,000 and 300,000. The hospital diagnosed it as terminal, and my family started to make funeral arrangements for me.

§ When my condition worsened on the third day after the Chinese New Year, one of my relatives told me, "Listen to the tapes of Master Li Hongzhi's lecture! Maybe only Falun Dafa can save you."

§ I started to listen on the next evening, at which time I was too sick to even to sit up. Something miraculous happened. I could sit up the next evening.

§ I immediately learned the sitting exercise, and sat in meditation for twenty minutes. That night I vomited three times, and threw up a lot of dirty yellow stuff. My relative told me to not be afraid, and said that my body was being purified. Afterwards my body started to feel relaxed.

§ I had a blood test on the eighth day after the Chinese New Year. My thrombocyte count was almost 70,000. The doctors couldn't believe this.

§ After a few days, my thrombocyte count continued to grow rapidly. The doctors were amazed. I told them that I had learned Falun Dafa, and that it was Falun Dafa that was the cause of my returning health.

§ From that day on, I stopped taking injections and medicine. A week later my thrombocyte count reached 220,000. I had completely recovered.

§ I have started the journey of practicing cultivation in Falun Dafa. I want those people who are fabricating lies and slandering Falun Dafa, and those people who have been deceived, to know about the miracle I experienced: "Falun Dafa is great! Falun Dafa is a righteous way!"

FGMTV's Christine Loftus recently spoke with Donna Hope, a Falun Gong practitioner from Toronto, who travelled to Geneva, Switzerland during the time that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was holding its annual meeting there.

Interview:

Christine: Hi Donna.

Donna: Hi.

C: Thank you for meeting with us today. I understand that you have just returned from Geneva Switzerland. As a Canadian, why did you feel it was important to go there?

D: As a Canadian, I feel that it was very important to have a voice for Falun Dafa practitioners at the United Nations Human Rights Commission meeting in Switzerland.

C: What did you experience while you were there?

D: While I was there I was in a parade that was held on March the 18^th. There were approximately 1000 practitioners from over 20 countries around the world that had gathered together for a conference and so we marched through the streets of Geneva. It was a very solemn experience. As we walked through the streets of Geneva we met many passersby who took our pamphlets and waved to us. We then ended our march in front of the United Nations and spent the rest of the afternoon doing our exercises and peacefully sitting in front of the United Nations.

C: So what do you hope Canada will do in this situation?

D: As a Canadian, I would really like Canada to be able to do a resolution and bring that to the United Nation and this resolution would end the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioner in China.

C: Thank you Donna.

D: You welcome.

Thanks Christine and Donna, and…

Thanks for watching the FGMtv weekly news review.

I'm Susan Mitchell. See you next week!