Dagens Nyheter: (Sweden) “China’s regime killed her husband”

Review of an article in Dagens Nyheter (a Swedish newspaper)

In Dagens Nyheter on July 18, 2002, there was an article called “China’s regime killed her husband”. The article is authored by Anna-Maria Hagerfors and is about Jane Dai, who describes how she and her two-year old daughter are persecuted and how her husband was murdered by the Chinese regime – because they practise Falun Gong. Her husband disappeared a year before he was killed and had been through years of harassment. By that time she had managed to escape to Australia with her daughter.

Jane Dai describes in the article how she and her husband were so happy to have found Falun Gong through which they could be good human beings. “How can one torture and kill innocent people?” she asks.

She also describes how the regime in her home country has established a so called “610 Office” in every province to crush Falun Gong. She says in the article that “families are torn apart. Thousands of people are put in re-education camps and prisons or killed because they belong to a movement, which only aspires to the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance…”

Dai also says, “When my husband was in prison the criminal convicts received rewards if they beat and tortured him”. Further on in the article one can read that Amnesty is protesting against the persecution and that western countries have criticized China for their lack of respect concerning human rights.

Anna-Maria Hagerfors asks Dai why Falun Gong is considered dangerous. She replies that many high-level officials and party members started to practise Falun Gong, which had over 100 million practitioners in China, therefore outnumbering the membership of the Communist Party. The authorities thus thought that Falun Gong had political ambitions. Dai also says another reason is that corruption is widespread in China, and many hotshots felt “scared to loose their extra incomes due to the pressure from too many people adhering to honesty, goodness and inner refinement.”

In the article one can read that Jane Dai now works as a hotel manager and believes that she can never return to China. Furthermore one can read that it was three years ago since the persecution began and to commemorate this, Jane is travelling round the Nordic countries to talk about the suppression.