Norwegian Practitioner's Letter to German Chancellor

TO: Chancellor Gerhard Schröder

President Jiang Zemin – State Visit to Germany

Referring to the State Visit of Jiang Zemin in Germany this month, we would like to draw your attention to the large scale violation of human rights in China, violations that are caused directly following the orders of Jiang Zemin.

We are grateful for your Foreign Minister condemning China for Human Rights Violations, in particular the persecution of Falun Gong, during the recent UN Human Rights Commission.

The persecution of Falun Gong, including forced labor camps with re-education, brutality and torture is till going on. Several hundred practitioners are reported tortured to death, but government officials claims more than 1500 have died this way. The torture methods are atrocious. More than a thousand are abused in psychiatric hospitals. Millions of people are suffering, having lost jobs, home and family. China is violating its own laws and international conventions that China has signed to be able to take part in the international community, WTO and the Olympics.

A dramatic crisis unfolds just now in Changchun. Hostages are being arrested, nearly 5000 practitioners are detained. Many are killed, possibly over a hundred. The crisis follows two occasions whereby footage revealing the persecution in China, was broadcasted on state owned cable-TV, as reported by major media. Two women are sentenced to death. Jiang Zemin has issued order to “kill without leniency” and “shot on the spot” Falun Gong practitioners, according to sources inside China. A police state is descending on Changchun, with door to door searches and mass arrests. Amnesty has released “Urgent Action” because of “serious risk of torture or ill-treatment”. Practitioners have already been killed, their bodies immediately cremated, leaving no record. Jiang is the main responsible for the inhuman persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

We find it inconceivable that this man can be accepted as a guest of Germany. He has, by ordering the ill-treatment and death of thousands of people, committed crimes against humanity.

Thinking about his former colleague, Milosevic, who now is under trial for the same crimes in the UN Court in Hague, makes it all the more inconceivable, as does the words of Lisa Raphael, a survivor of the Holocaust, now living in the US. “The persecution in Europe could never have happened if the rest of the world had not stayed blind to it. Most countries, including this one (US), ignored the reports and accounts of these persecutions, out of short-sightedness. "What has this to do with us?" we said. “What they are doing in their own countries is not our business." The principle behind …programs that honour Holocaust Victims is "never again".

“But it IS happening again, and has continued to happen. We must not stay blind this time. We must not kid ourselves into thinking that what happens elsewhere in the world is not our business”.

Thank you for your attention. We hope you will carry on your work for human dignity.

Falun Gong practitioners in Norway