Press Conference Speech by Director of Czech NGO Human Rights without Borders

On November 17th, 2006, Falun Gong practitioners joined a march to Prague Castle in protest against organ harvesting in China, particularly the 2006 revelation that thousands of living Falun Gong practitioners have had their organs harvested and their bodies cremated on the orders of the Chinese Communist Party. A press conference was held to accompany the march. The following speech was given at the press conference by Miss Jana Novotna, Director of the Czech NGO Human Rights without Borders.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’m glad to see you all here.

It has been just seventeen years since the keys were ringing in this place. Those keys weren’t the keys of just one person, nor keys of two people. Thousands of people were ringing their keys for just one sole reason:

They believed that they and communism did not have anything in common. Only they had to live in it. So people who didn’t know each other but who were connected with just this one beautiful thought decided they would all ring their keys together, and that way, together, they would ring communism out from our country, out of our country for ever.

Today we are standing here to ring out in a symbolic way another totalitarian regime, namely the communist regime in China, which in its desperate struggle to maintain its power doesn’t hesitate to commit the worst crimes against humanity.

What you will hear from our guest of honour, Mr. David Kilgour, who is an independent Canadian investigator, rings similar to that which could be heard in human history once before, in the forties of the last century. Then it was information about planned liquidation of people who today are called “prisoners of conscience.” Such people for some “specific” reason always present a “perceived” threat for that totalitarian regime. The nature of that information remains woefully the same; just the actors have today changed. Now, the victims are no longer Jews, but people from the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong and the persecutor is not the Nazi regime in Germany, but the communist regime today’s China.

Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Human Rights without Borders, I invite you to symbolically ring the keys once again, this time to support all the Chinese people who were not as lucky as we were seventeen years ago and who couldn’t successfully finish their own “Tiananmen Velvet Revolution”. Together, let us help all the people in concentration camps in China whom I believe we can still rescue. We can learn from history that in these issues time plays the most important role and to hesitate even a little bit might mean an irretrievable loss of human life.

I would also like to invite you to our protest rally against the large scale and forcible organ harvesting from the Chinese prisoners of conscience. Our rally will start at 12 a.m. and we shall march to the Prague Castle where our event will conclude.

Thank you for your attention.

Jana Novotna
Director of the Czech NGO Human Rights without Borders