Female Falun Gong Practitioner Testifies to the UNHRC about Violence Conducted Against Women

Ms. Yoko Kaneko, a Japanese Falun Gong practitioner who was imprisoned in a Chinese forced labour camp for one and half a years, gave an account at a forum of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) of the brutal torture and brainwashing that she has experienced. She called for an immediate end to the persecution of Falun Gong.

In a press release that the United Nations issued on April the 6th, the UNHRC put forward a conclusion from the discussions about the violence conducted on women, and will investigate the issue of children’s rights. In the press release, Ms. Kaneko, a member for the Association of World Citizens, said that she was kidnapped and imprisoned by Jiang’s group in China for 548 days because she is a Falun Gong practitioner. During this period of time, she was transferred between various police stations, detention centres, hospitals and forced labour camps. She suffered different kinds of abuses, including being handcuffed extremely tightly, which resulted in bleeding wrists and forced feeding by inserting a guided tube into her oesophagus.

Later on, she was sentenced to forced labour and "re-education" (brainwashing) for one and half a years. In the forced labour camp, she was not allowed to sleep, and had to endure the mental torture of brainwashing. Under these physical and mental tortures, she almost lost her eyesight and her heart began to malfunction. Despite all of these, the tortures that she suffered were much lighter when compared with those that other Falun Gong practitioners have experienced because everyone knew that she was married to a Japanese man. Every imprisoned Falun Gong practitioner faces the continual danger of being tortured to death.

Ms. Yoko Kaneko told the UNHRC that it has been confirmed that 936 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death. She also said more than one hundred thousand Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned or detained in labour education camps, several thousand practitioners are held in psychiatric hospitals and innumerable practitioners have been sent to brainwashing centres. The persecution has caused such a severe disaster, shouldn’t we stop it immediately?