Switzerland: Letter to the Ambassador for China from the Swiss Falun Gong Association

Bern, 20 July 2002

Your Excellency,

We, the Swiss Falun Gong practitioners, are writing to draw your attention to the outrage we feel at the persecution that has lasted too long and has been responsible for so much violence and death at the heart of Chinese society. For three years now this unjust and cruel repression has ravaged China and today we turn to you, as the representative of your country, to express our grief. This repression has thrown your country into trouble and violence, while Falun Gong practitioners aspire only to harmony and goodness. This repression has brought shame on a country and a people with a long and noble history. How will history reflect these events?

Your Government proclaims loudly that it is going to eliminate Falun Gong. Yet, after three years, we find Falun Gong ever present and growing ever stronger, for innumerable people in society have swelled the numbers of sympathizers and people everywhere know and support Falun Gong. Parliamentarians and politicians, businessmen and journalists worldwide now know the truth behind the persecution of Falun Gong and condemn the unjust and cruel repression.

Your Government cannot continue indefinitely to justify such acts and today the whole world knows that you have compiled a “black list”, for surveillance and harassment of practitioners outside China. We fear none of your threats, for in our countries there is respect for the most basic human rights. You think that you can treat us as you treat the practitioners in China but you are making a fatal mistake for Switzerland and the Western World are not fooled by your actions. This will lead to the rapid conclusion of your credibility in the world. Can you still continue to hide all these acts of violence? The press and international media denounce each of your shameful acts and soon your own people will no longer believe in you. Yet you are the guardians of law and justice in your country and your responsibility is to protect your citizens, not to exterminate them. Which country would still have confidence in you? You can try to buy them and promise them the sky, but there will always be just and incorruptible men in this world who want to see justice done. Do you not believe that in the end, one always pays for one’s actions?

Your Excellency, we also wish to share with you our indignation with regard to the iniquitous trial now taking place in Hong Kong. Thanks to the media, the eyes of the whole world are fixed on Hong Kong while awaiting the outcome of this travesty of justice. No one is fooled by such a masquerade. With a verdict of guilty, the world will finally have the incontestable proof of manipulation on the part of the Chinese Government to arrive at its goals. The world will see how you flout the most fundamental human rights and international treaties and how you mock the opinion of the international community.

Your Excellency, for the past three years, in order to settle this matter as quickly as possible and to minimize the killing and suffering, we have been sending you letters which you refuse to accept and making peaceful appeals to which you refuse to listen. In reply we have received only silence and scorn from you and your predecessor. We cannot tolerate such injustice any longer. We, the Swiss practitioners, wholeheartedly condemn the treatment inflicted on Falun Gong practitioners in China and demand an immediate halt to the persecution of these practitioners as well as the release of all who are detained in prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. We also demand that the trial against Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong end without delay and that the charges brought against them be lifted immediately. We are determined to denounce to the end this repression; we will not stop until we have obtained freedom for all practitioners and the reinstatement of Falun Gong in China. We, practitioners of Falun Gong, believe in divine justice and look forward to a positive conclusion without delay. In your country, do you not believe that good is rewarded by good and evil by evil?

Please accept, Your Excellency, the assurance of our highest sincerity.

The Swiss practitioners