Speech from the International Conference on "Genocide in the New Era" by the Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners

The International Conference on “Genocide in the New Era”, organised by “Friends of Falun Gong Europe” and “International Advocates for Justice”, took place in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm from January 26th to January 28th 2004. This is one of the conference speeches by Lei Yin, Communication Director of the Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners, which was delivered on January the 26th.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It’s my great honour to have this opportunity to present at this conference on behalf of the Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners (GMR). For those who are not quite familiar with GMR, this is an international non-profit human rights organization that was established in November 2002 by several constituent groups from 16 countries. This includes family members and friends of persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, as well as people who are concerned about the human right violations towards Falun Gong practitioners in China.

The core mission of GMR is to “Call for conscience, moral courage and actions for justice”. In particular, we are committed to raising the awareness of the genocide, genocide of conscience and brutal persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China; and we strive to rescue all the Falun Gong practitioners that are persecuted and tortured in jails, labour camps, mental hospitals, and detention centres. Last but not least, we will initiate, coordinate, and support any efforts of the international community that help to end the persecution and bring the persecutors to justice internationally and in China.

GMR has been broadly recognized and supported by many governments and human rights organizations since it was formed. So far, GMR has established connections with the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and many other non-governmental organizations around the world.

Up to date, GMR has initiated and coordinated several dozen large scale rescue campaigns globally, such as the North America Coast-to-Coast Drive to Rescue Americans and Families Tortured in China, the US National Rescue Drive for Dr. Charles Lee, the Rescue Yoko Kaneko Campaign in Japan, the Signature Collection of 100,000 people in Canada, and the Rescue Our Family Members Bicycle Tour in Canada, to name a few. Because of these global efforts, over 30 Falun Gong practitioners who have family members overseas have been released so far, including Ms. Cuiying Zhang in Australia, Mr. Shenli Lin in Canada, Ms. Yuzhi Wang in Canada, Ms. Yoko Kaneko in Japan, Mr. Rongyuan Chen in Hong Kong and many others.

The persecution of Falun Gong and its practitioners in the past four and a half years is the largest genocide committed by a single government since World War II. As there were 70 to 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China prior to the persecution, this means that 1 out of every 12 Chinese citizens is suffering in the policy of “defaming their reputation, exhausting their resources and eliminating their physical bodies”. However, if we also take all the family members, relatives, and friends into consideration, the number of victims in this persecution becomes even more shocking

According to the incomplete statistics compiled by GMR, just in the past one year alone, over 12,947 cases (including those detained in camps/jails/mental institutions, arrested at home, forced to be homeless and tortured to death) from all occupations have been revealed on Falun Gong’s Minghui website (www.minghui.org). This is precious information that was revealed by practitioners, their families and friends in China who are risking their lives. Nevertheless, this is only a very small fraction of a huge iceberg of information that could be passed through the iron wall of the Chinese Government’s information blockade!

The current persecution in China matches all the definitions of Genocide in the present Convention. According to the "law in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Article II", “Genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group: Over 881 Falun Gong practitioners confirmed to be persecuted to death

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: Massive brainwashing and brutal torture which leads to handicap and mental breakdown

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part: Torture which leads to handicap and even to death

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forced abortion

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: Young practitioners are discharged from elementary and middle schools or rejected from higher education because they do not renounce their belief in Falun Gong

However, the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China goes far beyond “Genocide” in the normal sense. We describe the nature of this kind of crime as a “Genocide of conscience” or “Ethocide”.

Instead of destroying the physical body directly, the persecutors in China created “Transformation” — a vicious way to smother and murder humanity. As you will hear the testimonies from Mr. Zhao Ming and many others in this conference, the Falun Gong practitioners have been forced by brainwashing, torturing and the injection of damaging medicine to the central nervous system… to renounce, then slander their belief in the principles of Falun Gong —“Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance”, and eventually some could even “transformed” to be a “living corpse” (a living physical body with conscience and dignity dead) to help violently convert former fellow practitioners. During this process, practitioners’ conscience and dignity of humanity would be completely ruined by the persecutors and by themselves. The suffering and unforgettable pain in a person’s soul would hurt to death from an intact yet conscious normal human being’s perspective. This is undoubtedly the evilest way of persecution (genocide) in human history.

More severely, the whole population of China has been forced by lies, violence and threats, and lured by any interests to give up and betray their conscience and principles of justice. As a result, they keep silent or support this brutal persecution against their own will, or even commit crimes in the persecution. Every single person in the country, from the Prime Minister of the Government to the elementary school pupils, has been forced to lie and support the persecution against Falun Gong. The damage to the conscience, moral values and spirit of the nation and the people is incalculable.

The same thing has also been happening in the free world. Western governments, companies and organizations have been forced to keep silent in front of the persecution of Falun Gong or even betray their conscience and moral values by mistreating practitioners. To give you some examples, the Iceland “blacklist” incident, the mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners by German police, Yahoo’s agreement with the information blockade in China, and the Mary Kay incident revealed recently; these all demonstrated the severe negative effects of the lies and luring from this communist regime.

Taken together, we believe the national crime happening in China is a new type of genocide — “Genocide of Conscience” or “Ethocide”.

Again, I’d like to call your attention to the severity of this ongoing persecution to Falun Gong and its practitioners. We, GMR, are looking forward to collaborating with all the NGOs and human right lawyers present here today. We believe every effort counts. Let’s work together to stop the evilest genocide in human history and bring the persecutors to justice internationally and in China.

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Dr. Lei Yin is the Communication Director of Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners (GMR), an international non-profit human rights organization, which is consists of family members and friends of persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, as well as people and organizations that are concerned about the human rights violations towards Falun Gong Practitioners in China. The main aim of GMR is to raise awareness of the genocide, genocide of conscience and brutal persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China and to rescue those persecuted and tortured in jails, labour camps, mental hospitals and detention centres.

Dr. Lei Yin received his B.S. in Biological Science from Beijing University. After obtaining his Ph. D. in Microbiology and Molecular Immunology from SUNY at Buffalo, he also earned his MBA from the University of Chicago. He is currently a marketing professional for a large pharmaceutical company.