FDI: Falun Gong News Bulletin

215 DEATHS UNCOVERED AND DOCUMENTED IN THREE WEEKS

215 torture and abuse-related deaths of people who practise Falun Gong in China were verified and reported over the past three weeks, marking the single largest number of reported deaths over a three week timeframe since the violent suppression of Falun Gong began in 1999. While some of the deaths reported occurred recently, many are from months or even years ago, but are only now being uncovered and reported due to Chinese authorities' tight control over information about Falun Gong practitioners in custody.

WALL STREET JOURNAL TELLS OF CCP ATTEMPT TO SILENCE FOREIGN MEDIA

CCP attempting to stop the only independent channel broadcasting Falun Gong News into China.
WSJ - "Beijing's contempt for New Tang Dynasty [Television] is no secret. A small nonprofit founded in 2001, NTDTV claims to be the only non-governmental Chinese-language channel broadcast on the mainland. Its uncensored news, entertainment and cultural fare theoretically can reach 200 million Chinese speakers, including 50 million in Communist China, Joe Zhao, an NTDTV board member, told us yesterday. The station broke the news of the spreading SARS virus in China three weeks before Beijing owned up to the problem… In an authoritarian country, as China's rulers know, public access to outside information is a threat to the ruling powers and their efforts to control thought. For Europe, the case will show whether an outside power writes the broadcasting rules for the Continent. To Aiden White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, this is ‘a shocking act of censorship.' All the more so, since it involves Eutelsat, which in other circumstances claims to be holier than thou when it comes to free access."
Full story: http://www.fofg.org/news/news_story.php?doc_id=951

93 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, 125 ORGANIZATIONS CALL ON BUSH TO INTERVENE FOR NTDTV

In a letter to the U.S. President, 93 members of Congress expressed concern over the decision of Paris-based Eutelsat to stop carrying broadcasts from New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV), a New York-based independent Chinese language station whose broadcasts "promote democracy and freedom." In the letter, Congressional members wrote: "If NTDTV is silenced, it will enable one of the world's worst violators of a free press and other human rights [China] to re-establish full censorship over the broadcast information available to its citizens. In light of our nation's pre-eminent role in promoting transparency, openness and freedom overseas, the silencing of NTDTV's broadcast to China is an unacceptable outcome." In a separate letter to Bush, 125 non-governmental organisations across North America, Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia called on the President to take action to keep NTDTV on the air.
Full letter: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2005/4/13/59602.html

HORRORS CONTINUE AT TIANJIN WOMEN'S LABOR CAMP

Victims and eyewitnesses detained in Tianjin City's Women's Labor Camp over Falun Gong report that gross violations of human rights continue after five years. Documenting infractions taking place in the month of November 2004, they report a startling range of abuses that include forcing victims to eat excrement, gradual starvation, dousing with ice water while exposed to freezing temperatures, sexual abuse--including inserting cucumbers and sticks into the victim's vagina--binding in contorted positions, as well as routine beatings. Inmates helping to enact the abuses reportedly are offered reductions of their sentences, while guards overseeing the violations have been rewarded with money, material incentives, and promotions.

TAIWAN'S VICE-PRESIDENT TAKES FALUN GONG CLASS AS PRACTISE FLOURISHES IN TAIWAN

While attending a seminar on public health, the Vice President of Taiwan, Ms. Lu Hsiu-lien, took part in a large-group demonstration of the Falun Gong exercises. Both Vice President Lu and Taiwan's President, Chen Shui-pian, have issued public statements several times in recent years, praising Falun Gong's health benefits and condemning the on-going suppression of Falun Gong in Mainland China. Falun Gong remains widely popular in Taiwan, with over half a million practising the traditional Chinese discipline.

QUOTE TO NOTE: INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS ATTORNEY CLIVE ANSLEY

Attorney Clive Ansley, speaking in New York on China's Communist Party: "It's a government, as we've heard here tonight that, first of all, to make it very current, is involved in genocide--what it's doing to the Falun Gong adherents at the moment--which is totally and utterly extra legal. Why do I say they're totally evil? That's just one example of it. This is a government that lies, commits the most outrageous atrocities, and then lies about it. The last historic incident of that which I would point to is in 1989... they have rewritten history, they've altered photographs, they stop at nothing to just completely fictionalise history and disguise the outrages they have perpetrated." -- Ansley is an international human rights attorney, China expert, and professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.

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