Jiang Regime's Persecution Against European Citizens (part 16) - British Citizen's Maltreated in Beijing

Case 4-6: UK Citizen's Maltreated and Deported from Beijing

Country: Beijing, China
Names:
Rosemary Katzen (female, Senior Tutor)
Earl Rhodes (male, BBC Cameraman)
Lee Hall (male, a student of Loughborough University)
Robert Gibson (male, retired)
Location of incident: Beijing, China
Description:

On Wednesday 13th February 2002 four British and a few Swedish Falun Gong practitioners went sightseeing and returned to their Beijing Hostel to find it swarming with police. 10 uniformed police burst into their room. One police officer was shouting in Chinese and demanded to see their passports – he refused to return them and sent the passports out of the room with another officer. They told the officer that they had been to the Summer Palace and asked what was going on. He asked if they practised Falun Gong. The police immediately started to search the room and found a banner with “Falun Dafa is good” written on it. A man was filming the whole scene.

The police said Falun Dafa is illegal in China and searched their bags, confiscating flight tickets, Falun Dafa books and Rosemary’s mobile phone. She said “Falun Dafa Hao” (Falun Dafa is good) and a policeman angrily shouted at her in Chinese jabbing his finger at her. They asked to contact the British Embassy. However, this was refused as they were told they were not under arrest.

After violently attempting to remove Lee Hall and Earl Rhodes from the room, the police officers found difficulty in removing them. Instead they started to pull Rosemary out of the room after she sat on the bed saying that she was not going anywhere as she had done nothing wrong. Two policemen dragged her out of the room and pushed her down the stairs of the hostel. The other practitioners followed her down and all were lead to an awaiting police van. Outside there were at least 30 police officers. Rosemary started shouting “Falun Dafa Hao” (Falun Dafa is good) to them. At the bus Earl and Robert were roughly pushed into the police minivan, Rosemary was dragged into the van by her hair.

They were then taken to a detention centre near the airport. Their bags were searched; they went through an x-ray machine and some Falun Dafa articles were confiscated, Rosemary’s walkman and Falun Gong tapes. Each practitioner was taken to a hotel room alone with 4 police officers for questioning for about 3 hours. Rosemary Katzen again asked to see a representative from the British Embassy; her request was refused and she was told that she wasn’t under arrest.

The 4 Britons along with 1 American and two Finnish practitioners were all put together in a large room where they were kept for the whole night. They were given no beds to sleep on, and were accompanied to the toilets. At every opportunity they clarified the facts about the persecution to the police.

The police did not return Rosemary’s walkman and tapes, Lee Hall’s minidisc player with discs, Earl Rhodes’ video camera (valued at £1300), many books and articles or even Rosemary and Lee’s bus ticket from London to Leicester [their home]. After 22 hours in detention, all four were deported back to the UK.