United States: Practitioners Expose the Chinese Communist Party's Dishonorable Acts at the United Nations

The tenth regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council was held from March 2nd through March 27th, 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland. The Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group invited Falun Gong practitioners who have been victims of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) persecution to appear in an effort to expose the brutal persecution to government officials and human rights organisations.

UN human rights official Ulrich Garms (first left) met with a representative of the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group and practitioners

When meeting with Ms. Manuela Carmena Castrillo, chairperson of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, practitioner Mr. Liu Hongchang told of being illegally detained seven times and sentenced to a five-year prison term. Ms. Wang Yu, a practitioner from New Zealand, provided information about the persecution of her mother, Ms. Zhu Lijing, a practitioner from Tianjin who was illegally arrested and sentenced to fifteen months of forced labour. Practitioner Ms. Wang Haiyan talked about being illegally detained six times and incarcerated for a total of two years in a forced labour camp.

Ms. Castrillo showed deep sympathy for the three practitioners. She said that over the past 5 years, as the chairperson of UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, she has become quite familiar with a significant number of persecutory acts committed against practitioners in China through the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group. She noticed that the Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong is especially severe. She asked, "Why does the Chinese government persecute practitioners so severely?"

Mr. Chen Shizhong, a representative of the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, gave a brief introduction on the Chinese cultivation culture and a history of Falun Dafa. He then went on to explain, "The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) rule is to destroy people's morality and conscience, and forces people to act against their conscience. The collapse of morality in today's China was caused by the CCP. Falun Gong is not political, but cultivating in Falun Gong will result in the elevation of one's moral standard and the awakening people's conscience. The CCP attempts to force practitioners to go against their conscience. If they do, they are released, otherwise they are tortured brutally. The persecution of Falun Gong has been extremely brutal. But, since Falun Gong can make it possible for people to really understand the true meaning of life, the persecution is doomed to fail. Currently more than 50 million Chinese have withdrawn from the CCP and its affiliated organisations. No one can keep people's conscience from awakening." Ms. Castrillo accepted the explanations and had three suggestions about further cooperation between the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

During the conversation with Mr. Ulrich Garms, assistant to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group urged the rapporteur to give greater attention to the CCP's torture and killing of Falun Gong practitioners. Mr. Garms explained that the group has to follow certain procedures. Among others, it needs evidence from other groups and family members' statements. Mr. Liu Hongchang, who was in tears, recounted how he witnessed in the prison two practitioners being pushed from a 30-metre tall building and killed, as well as three other practitioners being tortured to death. One of them was kicked so brutally that both of his testicles were crushed. Ms. Wang Haiyan recounted how she herself was almost tortured to death several times, and she witnessed two practitioners being killed. Mr. Garms was shocked and touched by the practitioners' accounts, and said that he would relay this information to the rapporteur .