German Falun Gong Association: “Singapore should not be an accomplice of the Chinese dictatorship.”

On the 4th of May, German Falun Gong Association representatives visited officials at the Singapore Embassy in Berlin and submitted a petition. The subject of their appeal was the unjust sentence handed down by Singapore’s court against two practitioners who exercised and distributed Video-CDs about the Chinese Government’s persecution against Falun Gong practitioners at a seaside park in Singapore.

The letter challenged, “If history were to repeat itself, would Sophie Scholl be arrested in Singapore by the police for distributing leaflets to expose the Nazi’s atrocities? Would she also be given a court sentence for possession of unsanctioned material?”

(Note: During Nazi reign, a famous professor at the University of Munich and some students under the codename “White Rose” distributed large quantities of home-made fliers to directly expose Hitler’s war crimes and inevitable defeat. Brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl were both members of the “White Rose”. On 18th February 1943, they were arrested while distributing leaflets in the University of Munich. Four days later they were sentenced to death by the Nazi Court in the so-called “name of the people” and executed on the same day. Two years later the fliers they made were air-dropped in their millions to Germany by the allied forces. The Third Reich under Hitler’s reign crumbled in a matter of a few months. The “White Rose” and the Scholl siblings became synonymous for righteousness and conscience in face of abusive power in German history. The movie, “Sophie Scholl - The Last Days” won the Best Movie award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.)

The letter continued, “Today, Falun Gong practitioners are brutally persecuted in China. To end the bloodshed, the two Singapore Falun Gong practitioners Huang Cai Hua and Cheng Lu Jing along with countless other modern-day “Scholls” are walking the streets of Europe and America, Australia, Asia and Africa, distributing materials to expose the truth about this persecution…Their only wish is to end the crimes of the Communist Party’s wicked regime as soon as possible.

“While every country in the world is calling for the public’s courage and conscience to take on social responsibilities, the Singapore regime has made an unfair judgement against Falun Gong practitioners who are courageously devoting themselves to human rights and world peace. What we hope to understand is how much social justice Singapore legislation can still represent? In Singapore, do the laws still serve the purposes of protecting human rights? Or have they been reduced to tools of dictatorship? Who benefits from the Singapore court’s unfair judgement against the Falun Gong practitioners?”

The letter emphasised, “A society lacking courage to stand up for righteousness is a society without a future. The way the Singapore government handled people who spread material about the persecution against Falun Gong and punished truth-tellers will not only hinder normal exchange of information in the society but has also sent a wrong political signal to the international society. Singapore should not become an accomplice of the Chinese dictatorship!”

On the same day, Falun Gong practitioners in Berlin held a protest in front of the Singapore Embassy. They demanded the Singapore regime to revise the judgement against the two Falun Gong practitioners. Officials from the Singapore Embassy listened to the statement of the German Falun Gong Association representatives. The officials promised to relay the German Falun Gong practitioners’ requests to the Singapore Government.