Ireland: Letter from Friends of Falun Gong (Ireland) to the Hong Kong Authorities

Friends of Falun Gong (Ireland)
C/O Computer Science Department
Trinity College
Dublin 2
IRELAND

15-8-02

A few weeks ago the Friends of Falun Gong in Ireland decided to hold a public demonstration to highlight the imprisonment and torture of Falun Gong practitioners in China. We contacted An Garda Siochana (the Irish police force) to let them know what we were going to do, and we met for a rally before the march in a public space in front of the Irish Central Bank. After some speeches, our march proceeded right through the heart of central Dublin to the Department of Foreign Affairs, where we handed in a letter outlining our concerns. During this process, a small number of police accompanied us in a perfectly peaceful and friendly manner to ensure that the demonstration went off without incident. At the end of our march we thanked them for their assistance.

This is how people should be able to express their opinions in a democratic country where freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are rights which are valued and upheld by the people and the State.

Contrast this with what happened to Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong recently. They did exactly what we did, except that there were less of them, and they neither marched down a public street nor blocked a public area. They just stood or sat with their banner at one side of a thirty-foot wide pavement outside the Chinese Liaison Office. You can see this from the pictures that accompany this letter.

The police certainly came to this demonstration, as they did to ours, but it was fifty or sixty of them who came, and when they arrived, they choked some of the demonstrators, squeezed pressure points on the bodies of others, and dragged others away by force. The demonstrators remained entirely passive during this process, at the end of which sixteen Falun Gong practitioners (twelve from Hong Kong, the rest from Switzerland) were arrested under public order legislation for creating an obstruction and obstructing and assaulting police. They have since been found guilty of these charges.

It should be remembered that the practice of Falun Gong is perfectly legal in Hong Kong, which is trying to present to the world a picture of a liberal and just society where the rule of law is respected by all. The conviction on criminal charges of peaceful demonstrators who were exercising their democratic right to protest in a manner which was neither a threat nor an inconvenience to the people of Hong Kong gives the lie to that image. What will follow? How many more Falun Gong practitioners or other demonstrators will be convicted on similar charges for exercising their rights? And this is before Hong Kong passes the new “subversion” law that is now being drafted.

The members of Friends of Falun Gong (Ireland) would like to register the strongest possible protest against the treatment meted out to the Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong. We call on the Hong Kong Government to respect the pledges it has made to respect the rights and freedoms of its people, and to allow them to peacefully express their opinions, as is the norm in other democracies. The sixteen demonstrators who were arrested should have their convictions quashed immediately.