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Beijing Steps Up Falun Gong
Persecution Ahead of Olympics
Caylan Ford
Epoch
Times
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
As the Chinese regime's violent repression continues
in Tibet, another group claims that they too are experiencing
heightened persecution.
Since January of this year, representatives of the Falun Gong
spiritual practice say that the Chinese regime has tortured over
100 Falun Gong adherents to death, mostly in reeducation-through-labour
camps.
The New York-based Falun Dafa Information Center claims to have
received reports from inside China of over 1,878 arrests of Falun
Gong adherents since January. The Centre says that authorities
in at least 29 Chinese provinces have been conducting door-to-door
searches in search of Falun Gong practitioners or anyone in possession
of Falun Gong-related books or materials.
According to reports relayed by Falun Gong inside China, the
Public Security Bureau has been offering cash rewards to citizens
who turn in Falun Gong adherents. In one city in Shandong province,
authorities have announced a reward of up to 3,000 Yuan for information
leading to the arrest of a Falun Gong practitioner.
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Once detained, the Falun Gong adherents are sent without trial
to reeducation-through-labour camps, where reports indicate they
face torture and other forms of abuse.
The Falun Gong website Minghui.org, which receives and compiled
accounts of persecution from inside China, has reported that 129
Falun Gong adherents were tortured to death by authorities between
January 1st and March 20th, 2008. The website provided a list
and case details for each individual reported to have been killed.
Pretext for Repression
When bidding for the 2008 Games, the Vice-President of the Beijing
Olympics committee, Liu Jingmin, promised the international community
that awarding China the Games would "help develop human rights."
Yet internally, Chinese authorities expressed a very different
understanding. According to a 2001 report by the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation, China's former Vice Premier declared that winning
the Olympics was "justification for the country's crackdown
on the Falun Gong."
Similarly, articles appearing in China's state-run People's Daily
newspaper noted that the Olympics signaled the international community's
endorsement of the handling of Tibet.
China's former Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang has also
been quoted as saying that the country must "strike hard
at hostile forces at home and abroad, such as ethnic separatists,
religious extremists, violent terrorists and … the Falun
Gong" in order to ensure the success of the Olympics.
In a new report on human rights in China, Amnesty International
noted the continued plight of activists and journalists who have
faced persecution for attempting to draw attention to human rights
abuses.
"It is increasingly clear that much of the current wave
of repression is occurring not in spite of the Olympics, but actually
because of the Olympics," read the report.
"Peaceful human rights activists, and others who have publicly
criticized official government policy, have been targeted in the
official pre-Olympics 'clean up', in an apparent attempt to portray
a 'stable' or 'harmonious' image to the world by August 2008."
The Amnesty Report also implied that recent allegations by Chinese
authorities of planned terrorist attacks on the Olympic Games
may have been fabrications.
"… a failure to back up such assertions with concrete
evidence increases suspicions that the authorities are overstating
such threats in an attempt to justify the current crackdown."
Chinese authorities in March claimed that members of the ethnic
Uighur minority – who, like the Tibetans, have been advocating
for greater autonomy and religious freedoms – were plotting
a terrorist attack on an airplane.
This week, authorities claimed that Tibetans were plotting suicide
attacks. It offered no evidence to support the claim.
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