Please intervene with China for an end of the repression against Falun Gong, dear Mr. Muentefering!
Dear Mr. Muentefering, Berlin/Goettingen, October 30, 2000
Our human rights organization follows with great sorrow the rash of brutalities, with which Chinese security personnel haunt Falun Gong practitioners. Last week alone, three more members of this movement were arrested; more than 150 members of the group were incarcerated in the past four days alone.
Please, Mr. Muentefering, intervene for us during your upcoming trip to China, which begins on November 1st, and speak against the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. With this bloody persecution China not only blatantly disregards Article 36 of the Chinese Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of belief, but also ignores the minimum standards for human rights. Falun Gong practitioners are being tortured – in police stations across the country and in prisons and jails; they are being abused by being sent to mental institutions and psychiatric hospitals; they are being drugged; they are judged and sentenced in hastily convened trials, against all rules of law. Unlawfully, they are being sentenced to and have to endure years of prison terms, either in jails or Re-Education-through-Labor-Camps.
The repression against Falun Gong is becoming increasingly more brutal. At the beginning of the year, in a comprehensive report, we deplored the fact that the followers of Falun Gong were losing their employment positions and their jobs and work-related benefits, a situation bad enough in itself, all because they refuse to give up their system of belief. Now we have to learn that, every week, at least one of the members is losing their life through torture at the hands of security personnel. At least 57 members of the group have died in custody since the movement was outlawed in 1999. More than six hundred members have been sent to psychiatric hospitals under duress; 450 have been handed sentences of up to 18 years imprisonment; 10,000 have been sent to forced labor camps.
Our heartfelt thanks go to you for your efforts to bring about religious freedom in China.
Sincerely,
Tilman Zuelch
Secretary General
Society for Threatened Peoples
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