An Open Letter to the Fifth Asia Pacific Cities Summit

Editors Note: The 2005 Asia Pacific Cities Summit was held from October 11th to October 14th, 2005 in Chongqing City, China. Falun Gong practitioners in Chongqing City wrote an open letter to the mayors who attended the summit.

Honourable Mayors from all over the world:

Greetings!

Welcome to China! Welcome to Chongqing, an ancient land, to attend the Asia Pacific Cities Summit. The people of the Asia Pacific region held this grand conference to promote mutual understanding and the harmonious development between man and nature. However, behind the flowers and smiles, few people know that the persecution of universal belief and the violation of basic human rights continue. These violations have even increased just before the Asia Pacific Cities Summit.

Let's take a look at what's been happening in Chongqing City, the host of the summit.

Back in June 2005, Chongqing City established an office to especially persecute Falun Gong practitioners during the summit. In the past few months, this new office and the notorious 610 Office¹ directly ordered all levels of the public security organisations in Chongqing to ransack Falun Gong practitioners' homes, arrest and detain practitioners and sentence them to illegal terms in labour camps. They violated basic human rights and violated the Constitution of China.

Among the Falun Gong practitioners who have been illegally arrested, we can verify more than 50 cases identified by name. Because of the government's information blockade, we have not yet been able to get detailed information about the others. However, one thing is certain: every one of these kind and innocent people was arrested and detained without any legal process at all. No evidence indicated that they violated any law. The only reason they were "believed guilty" was because they practise Falun Gong. Among them were workers, peasants, teachers, housewives, and retired senior citizens. They were arrested only because they cultivated Falun Gong and followed the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance" to be better people. Surprisingly, the rationale for depriving them of their freedom was to make Chongqing look good in order to hold the Asia Pacific Cities Summit.

Falun Dafa has spread to over 60 countries and benefited more than 100 million people around the world. Falun Gong practitioners can be seen everywhere from Brisbane, Australia to Los Angeles, U.S.A.; from Tokyo, Japan to Lima, Peru. They have been doing the same things as the Falun Gong practitioners in China, that is, to tell all people and especially the precious Chinese people what Falun Gong really is and why it is persecuted in China. This is precisely what the political scoundrel regime in China has feared the most to have exposed and it has spared no efforts to cover up their crimes in the persecution of Falun Gong.

Therefore, to the mayors from all over the world who have come here to attend the Fifth Asia Pacific Cities Summit, we wholeheartedly hope that you will pay attention to the persecution of these kind and innocent people in China, and uphold the basic human right of freedom of belief. We hope you will appeal righteously in the name of the principles of international law, calling to end the persecution and to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. We hope we will soon be able to freely communicate under the same sunshine.

Falun Dafa practitioners in Chongqing City, China

Note:

1. The 610 office is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.