Report from German Newspaper Pirmasens: “Petition for Xiong Wei”

8th May 2003

Christine Gaeckler and Karin Wells, residents of Pirmasens, have made it their goal to have Xiong Wei, a former student at Berlin Technical University, released from prison. According to them, Xiong Wei has been unjustly imprisoned. They have addressed a letter about Xiong Wei’s situation to the German Federal Government and, by presenting a copy of this letter to the former Mayor Joseph Krekeler, have drawn attention to this problem.

Xiong Wei studied economics from 1993 to 1999 at Berlin Technical University. She went on to work with a company, first in Germany and later in China. On 5 January 2002, while she was in Beijing distributing materials about the persecution of Falun Gong, the police arrested her. In March she was, without due process, sentenced to one and a half years of "Re-education through labour" in the Xinan Female forced labour camp in Beijing, which is well known for its cruel methods of torture. She was refused the right to contact an attorney.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is an effective cultivation way to harmonise both body and mind. Falun Gong promotes the well-being and cleansing of body and mind by doing slow, flowing exercise movements and meditation. The five exercises of Falun Gong and the teachings, which are based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, were brought to the public in 1992 by Master Li Hongzhi. Falun Gong is not political, and has no religious forms or hierarchies. It is free of charge and within a few years won extraordinary popularity in China.

On 22 July 1999 Falun Gong was illegally prohibited in China, after hundreds of practitioners had been arrested in the dead of night 48 hours before. "We are asking the German Chancellor", emphasises Christine Gaeckler, "to commit to and support the release of Xiong Wei and to prevent further murder of Falun Gong practitioners. We are asking the German Government, to request the Chinese Government to release all imprisoned Falun Gong Practitioners and to stop the persecution of Falun Gong".

If you are interested, for more information go to www.friends-of-xiongwei.de.