Several Scandinavian Newspapers Reprint and Cite News Issued by the Swedish Falun Gong Information Centre

In September and October, forty-four Falun Gong practitioners died from torture and abuse in China. A press release regarding this news was sent to the largest news agency in Sweden and Norway, via the Swedish Falun Gong Information Centre, which was reprinted by the agency. Several Scandinavian media oulets also reprinted or quoted the news that exposed the facts of the brutal persecution launched by Jiang and Luo. This aroused more condemnation for the persecution throughout Scandinavia.

846 deaths have been verified since the persecution began in July 1999. However at present much of the specific details are unavailable. Deaths from torture and abuse have been reported from all areas of China, from the remote provincial areas to large cities, from autonomous regions to Beijing.

Government officials inside China, however, report that the actual death toll was well over 1,600 by the end of October 2001.

Expert sources estimate that more than 6,000 have been sentenced to prison by illegal trials, while hundreds of thousands have been detained and more than 100,000 have been detained in forced labour camps, usually without any trial.

Hundreds of practitioners have been forced into mental hospitals, where they have been injected with unknown drugs [usually psychotropic drugs to confuse practitioners or drugs that damage the internal nervous system]. Millions have been kidnapped to “brainwashing or re-education classes” in an attempt to have them renouncing their faith. Those who do not renounce Falun Gong continue to be tortured and abused, or die in the process. Although those who renounce Falun Gong are often released, some are only released after a high ransom is paid, thereafter they are monitored and frequently forced to assist the authorities in coercing others to renounce their faith.

Hundreds of thousands of family lives have been turned upside down from the brutal persecution and harassment by Jiang’s reign of terror over the past four years.