German Newspaper Reports on Practitioner’s Two Year Ordeal in a Chinese Forced Labour Camp

This article was originally published in German newspaper Weser-Kurier on December the 9th 2004.

China is one of the countries that tops the list of nations that human rights organisation Amnesty International denounces year after year. Amnesty International is fully aware that not a single day passes without China violating human rights.

Xiong Wei is an adherent of the spiritual movement Falun Gong. Between 1992 and 2000, she studied at and was employed by the Technical University of Berlin and Guderus AG in Beijing.

She told the Weser-Kurier that she was arrested in January of 2002 when distributing flyers about Falun Gong. She fell into the clutches of China’s security forces. Undercover police arrested her without charging her with any crime or disturbance. The thirty-four year old was sent to a re-education camp.

Xiong remembers vividly that she and fifteen other women were packed into a fifteen square metre room. Therefore, she was unable to do any physical exercises.

Encounters with the “Re-education staff” were the worst. They beat, abused and cursed her. She was forced to listen to the indoctrination while squatting for long periods. She told us that she had to endure this without being charged with anything and without due legal process. She was ordered to sign a document, promising to renounce this spiritual practice. She did not relent and wrote, “Falun Gong is good.”

We asked her why this movement was persecuted. She responded, “We believe in truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, but the communist party wants to control everything.”

She gained her release in January of 2004. She was allowed to emigrate from China to Germany in September of 2004. The German Government and international organisations were instrumental in gaining her release. She was on the list of people the German Government was concerned about and that Chancellor Schroeder handed to the Chinese regime during his 2002 state visit.

So far, no improvements in human rights are apparent in China according to recent Amnesty International comments on the German-China Human Rights Dialogue.