Placing Importance on the Number of Practitioners Persecuted to Death

Recently, there have been a lot of reports about the lawsuits in the USA and Great Britain against Bo Xilai, who is known for persecuting Falun Gong. These reports have resulted in an effect of frightening the evil. However, there is one problem. The number of Falun Gong practitioners persecuted to death as quoted in these news reports all refers to the same source, reports issued by the “World Organisation to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong” in December 2003. That report read, “During his (Bo Xilai’s) governorship of Liaoning province it was one of the four severest provinces persecuting Falun Gong. By December 1st 2003, the confirmed death toll of Falun Gong practitioners in Liaoning Province had reached ninety. This number is ranked fourth among all of the provinces in China.”

The same paragraph appeared in almost every report. I hope everyone who writes similar reports in the future can check Clearwisdom Net for the most up-to-date number. For example, the death toll of Liaoning Province is 104 on May 9th 2003. We have to be responsible for the accuracy of this number. Owing to the fact that the death toll used in everyday people’s news reports mostly refers to ours, we ought to take responsibility for the articles that we write.

In fact, we should add the following words when we are reporting the death toll. “By MM/DD/YY, there have been so and so numbers of Falun Gong practitioners confirmed dead. (This includes only the cases where the facts of the persecution and the names of the victim as well as the murderer have been verified. It does not include the large number of cases that are not fully verified.) It is a very solemn matter when fellow practitioners are persecuted to death. The statistics should be accurate and regularly updated.