Press Release: A Mockery of Justice

The broadcasts also included programmes showing the practice and support of Falun Gong in over 50 countries around the world.

For over three years, the Chinese state-run media has been saturated with programmes and campaigns that distort the teachings of Falun Gong. This propaganda also accuses Falun Gong practitioners of horrendous crimes (without any third-party verification) and outright lies regarding how Jiang’s regime is persecuting practitioners – all in an effort to align public opinion with Jiang’s campaign against Falun Gong.

In the Chinese state-run media, the freedoms protected under China’s own constitution, including freedom of speech, are stripped from practitioners of Falun Gong. In the state- run media, Falun Gong, like other suppressed groups, has had no voice… until now.

By broadcasting programmes that expose what is really happening in China, practitioners of Falun Gong are exercising their right to freedom of speech, using peaceful means that harm no one.

Throughout history, those who peacefully defy injustice and the persecution of the human spirit have been called heroes. Today, in this show-trial in Changchun, such people are being labeled as “criminals.”

In recent weeks, Jiang’s regime has put a chokehold on media inside China and greatly restricted access to information on the Internet. With the show-trial of these 15 practitioners of Falun Gong, Jiang is lashing out, yet again, at those who seek to bring transparency to the issue of human rights in China.

This is the act of someone who is scared what that transparency might reveal. This is the act of a criminal who fears his crimes will be exposed.

The broadcasting of programmes by Falun Gong practitioners over cable TV networks is standing up for the right to freedom of conscience, expression, and association. It exposes the true picture of human rights in China and gives a voice to the millions of Chinese citizens who have none. It is truly serving the people.

Background on Jiang's Media Campaign Against Falun Gong

Moving against the judgment of many senior Chinese officials because he feared there were too many people practicing Falun Gong (70-100 million according to a 1998 Chinese government survey), Chinese Communist Party head Jiang Zemin initiated a persecution campaign against the practice on July 20, 1999. Days later, a representative of Jiang’s regime appeared on ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel to discuss the crisis.

Mr. Koppel asked the official, why the campaign? The answer: Falun Gong was “blocking traffic” and “disturbing social order.”

When Mr. Koppel pressed him for more specifics, the Chinese representative began to sway in his chair and repeated, “blocking traffic” – hardly an impetus for the wide-scale persecution in China that has left well over 1,600 dead, tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) detained in forced labor camps, and millions arrested, often beaten or tortured in custody.

Hardly an impetus, indeed, and Jiang knows this, as well.

Thus, a large part of the campaign against Falun Gong over the past few years has been to saturate all media, both inside and outside China, with two slanderous messages: 1) Falun Gong is a dangerous group with weird ideas that poses a threat to society and 2) the Communist Party is taking steps to be caring and nurturing toward the majority practicing Falun Gong, while striking out “hard” against what they call Falun Gong “organisers.”

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, Ian Johnson, Amnesty International, the U.S. Congress, and just about anyone else who is not directly subjected to pressure from Jiang’s regime, nothing could be further from the truth.

In July, 2002, the U.S. Congress passed resolution no. 188 by a unanimous 420-0 vote, which states “Falun Gong is a peaceful and nonviolent form of personal belief and practice with millions of adherents in the People's Republic of China and elsewhere.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Mr. Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles he wrote in 2000-2001 reporting on the systematic persecution of practitioners of Falun Gong throughout China, providing detailed accounts of those who were tortured to death for their beliefs.

For the majority of the populous in China, however, none of this exists.

The government in China controls virtually every media outlet in the country. Furthermore, access to information on the Internet remains closely guarded. Among the websites blocked to users in China, are www.cnn.com and www.amnesty.org. Consequently, what Chinese citizens have heard about Falun Gong over the past three years has been only what Jiang’s regime wants them to hear… until practitioners of Falun Gong began tapping into cable TV networks to broadcast programmes for the people.