My Reasons for Bringing a Lawsuit Against the China Press And Sing Tao Daily Newspapers

By a New York Dafa Practitioner

In May of this year, some New York Falun Gong practitioners decided to bring a lawsuit against the publishers of the China Press and Sing Tao Daily Chinese newspapers. I am one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. So why did I want to go to court? I want to share my reasons and understanding with you.

The China Press and Sing Tao Daily newspapers have become tools for Jiang Zemin's persecution of Falun Gong outside of China.

As we all know, the Jiang Zemin regime has used the most vicious and most scoundrel methods in history, both in China and abroad, to brutally persecute Falun Gong practitioners. First, they undermined the good reputation of Falun Gong [in China] by employing all the state controlled media tools, fabricating rumours and false stories, and attacking and defaming Falun Dafa until their lies covered both heaven and earth. In order to ‘brainwash’ the Chinese people living overseas, they spread their vicious propaganda into other countries. Thus, the China Press and Sing Tao Daily newspapers became pawns of Jiang's regime.

Over the past three years, these two Chinese-language newspapers, especially the China Press, constantly published articles attacking and defaming Falun Dafa, and used those articles to instigate hatred of Falun Gong among Chinese nationals living abroad. According to our incomplete statistics, in July 1999, Jiang's regime started to persecute Falun Gong by encouraging libellous articles in these two newspapers and continued to do so until we brought a lawsuit against China Press in May 2002. In less than three years, China Press and Sing Tao Daily had published over 300 vicious articles defaming Falun Gong. Not only did they directly reprint articles published in the official Chinese newspapers, such as the Xinhua Press and China Daily (both newspapers are internationally recognized as mouthpieces of the Jiang Regime), which defamed Falun Gong at length, but also cooperated with persecutory initiatives in China. Each time Jiang's regime started a new cycle of persecuting Falun Gong, they also intensified their efforts here in America. For example, in the Spring of 2001, Jiang Zemin staged the self-immolation incident in China. In the US, the China Press published articles defaming Falun Gong almost every day, sometimes publishing as many as five or six articles in one day--completely becoming the mouthpiece of Jiang's regime to Chinese people in America.

Last year, shortly after the 9/11 incident, they went so far as to call Falun Gong practitioners "terrorists," and thereby attempted to incite the American Chinese to hate Falun Gong. Their publications caused many Chinese people to misunderstand or even feel hostile towards Falun Gong, and caused Falun Gong practitioners to be discriminated against in the Chinese community, socially rejected, and even insulted or beaten. When Falun Gong practitioners held legitimate activities in the Chinese community, instances of humiliation, being cursed at, and even being surrounded by a mob were commonplace. On several occasions, we attempted to talk to the publishers of both the China Press and Sing Tao Daily and clarify the facts of our situation. We hoped to dissuade them from misrepresenting Falun Dafa due to a misunderstanding of what Falun Dafa represents. However, they ignored us and continued to publish articles attacking Dafa, which had become completely biased and false news reporting.

Using Legal Methods to Protect Dafa.

We believed that using the courts to suppress those behind the slanderous articles would be most effective. In the beginning, many lawyers believed ours was a complicated and unusual lawsuit because there was no precedent in American history. They felt uncertain about it. However, rather than feeling pessimistic, after reading the Fa, we felt very encouraged.

The Judiciary system of the United States has become the most complete legal system in the world. Couldn’t it be used to prevent anymore of these poisonous articles? As Dafa practitioners, we should protect Dafa when it is attacked unfairly, and clarify the facts.