An Appeal Letter from the Swiss Falun Gong Association

Swiss Falun Gong Association

September 16, 2001

"We just want to change your habit of always saying no." This is what three drunken guards said to a China female practitioner as they were beating her up after she refused to sign on the "letter of renouncement" to give up practising Falun Gong. Thereafter they sent her to the brainwashing class. Over there, she suffered cruel, violent torture and sexual abuse. These people extorted a huge sum of money from her family before releasing her. Before she left the place, one of the guards told her, "If you let anyone outside know of your experience here, you will die very pitifully."

In China, to date, almost 300 Falun Dafa practitioners have been beaten to death, 50,000 practitioners have been arrested and often have to endure cruel torture and beatings, 20,000 practitioners have been detained in labour re-education camps, almost 1,000 practitioners forcefully sent to mental hospitals and many millions of practitioners feel as though they are living a nightmare. They have been sacked from their jobs, expelled from school or kicked out of their houses, forced to divorce or undergo abortion, families have been broken up, disowned by family members or had their possessions and money extorted.

Why is there such brutal persecution of the peaceful cultivation practice of the Buddha school, which cultivates body and mind nature for the past two years? This is because its simple and easy principles - Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance - have attracted more than 100 million practitioners. This has aroused the jealousy of certain individuals in China's ruling party. However, Falun Gong is neither interested in politics or money. Falun Gong only wants the hearts of practitioners to truly cultivate and aspire towards goodness.

Swiss Falun Gong practitioners held a hunger strike activity that lasted for three days and held a candlelight vigil from 8pm to midnight on the night of third day in memory of the practitioners in China who were brutally tortured to death. The activity this time was held concurrently for three days in the cities of Geneva, Berne and Zurich. In the face of this unbelievable yet continuously worsening persecution, practitioners all over the whole world can only, through hunger strike, express their wishes that, "The leaders of China, you have made the whole human race suffer humiliation! Stop using violence to suppress [Falun Gong]! Please respect a human's basic right! Please deal with issues like a civilized country!"

Through peaceful action at this time, we mainly want to request three things:

- Respect women: The brutal behaviour mentioned above is very common. Worse still, guards have stripped female practitioners naked and thrown them into male cell or handed them to be trampled upon by criminals. Some female practitioners were even branded by burning, red soldering irons.

- Release immediately the practitioners that are being detained and stop torturing them: The reason for their continued detention is because the labour re-education camps are afraid that they will go outside and let be known the tortures that they were put through. A practitioner who recently escaped from the horrible Masanjia Labour Re-education Camp describes the place as "Hell on earth". 130 Falun Dafa practitioners were detained there. They are currently on hunger strike to protest against the torture and maltreatment. One of them is already on the verge of dying.

- Release the European Falun Gong practitioner Zhao Ming who was arrested. He is a Master’s degree student from Dublin, Ireland. He was arrested in January 2000 and should have been released in May this year from Tuanhe Labour Re-education Camp, which is near Beijing. But we have received no news about him to date.

Please support us by:
- gathering together with the hunger strikers,
- participating in our candlelight vigil,
- letting our neighbours know about this activity
- writing to the relevant authorities (including the officials of state government, federal government or external affairs officials)

Swiss Falun Gong Association
September 15, 2001

Translated from Yuanming.Net