MEP Urges Belgian Prime Minister to Raise Falun Gong Issue During Visit to China

The following is a letter a Belgian member of the European Parliament, to the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt who is in China at this moment.
She has sent this letter to the Belgian consulate in Beijing and asked the people there to make sure that the Belgian Prim Minister receives this letter before he comes back to Belgium:

Brussels, 27 march 2002.

To Prime Minister Verhofstadt
On visit in China

CONCERNING: The Human Rights Situation in China.

Respected Prime Minister,

While you are conducting a visit to China there are at this very moment people being killed every day because of their beliefs. I plan a visit to China next month myself and I am wondering out loud if you will have the courage to take a standpoint about these most cruel violations of human rights. Or are some thousands of human lives no match for economic advantages and magical profit- and growth prognoses?

A few weeks ago major police campaigns against Falun Gong have started, resulting in already over 5,000 arrests. Hundreds of them are said to have been sentenced already, although this is hard to check because of a total media blockade. A few weeks ago some Falun Gong practitioners succeeded in tuning into a number of news channels and they managed to broadcast images and comments about the harsh repression of Falun Gong by the Chinese authorities.

Since then people are being violently arrested and are being deported to labour camps; people are being thrown off high buildings. The authorities later talk about suicide; orders are being given to immediately cremate the dead bodies; police officers are given a quota to arrest five people each day; thousands of people are being imprisoned in labour camps or re-education camps; …
The Chinese government is doing anything in its power to make Falun Gong look like something violent. Self-immolation and self-killing are being staged to prove that Falun Gong people are dangerous and that they are people that can only be stopped with radical violence.

In February, after the publication of a report by Amnesty International, all members of the European Free Alliance (of which I am the president) have signed a petition to call for the immediate end of all ‘excessive violence’ against Falun Gong and to call for respect of the fundamental, cultural and religious freedom of all people.

To put an end to these brutal violations of human rights I, as a member of the European Parliament, ask you, as a Prime Minister, to discuss this issue with your Chinese colleague government officials.

Yours sincerely,