Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
from Professor Li Shao
I am writing to submit evidence to the FAC in
response to the Committee's call as part of its inquiry into the
FCO Human Rights Annual Report 2007. I am a Falun Gong practitioner
and a university professor in the UK.
OLYMPIC PRISONERS
It is a stark fact that the Olympics have been
used as the biggest excuse for human rights abuses in China in
the past year. Long before the opening of the Games, the Communist
regime in China has created a large victim group of Olympic Prisoners.
While the atrocities in Tibet and the imprisonment
of human rights defenders have featured in the headlines, there
has also been a sharp intensification of persecution of Falun
Gong practitioners in China in the run up to the Olympic Games
in Beijing.
Between 1 January and 12 March 2008, the Falun
Dafa Information Centre received reports of 1,878 specific arrests
of Falun Gong adherents across most of the provinces in China.
Because of the secretive nature of the arrests and the Communist
regime's tight control of information, the number of reported
cases reaching the outside world could be the tip of the iceberg.
Furthermore, the scale of the persecution suffered by the Falun
Gong adherents is probably larger than that of any other victim
group.
While previously the regime would target Falun
Gong adherents who distribute literature exposing its human rights
abuses, the current pattern is that the security agents and the
police carry out door to door arrests. The case of my wife's sister
is a typical example.
MS LIANG
WENJIAN—A
TYPICAL OLYMPIC
PRISONER
Liang Wenjian is my wife's younger sister, and
a Falun Gong practitioner. She was taken away from her home in
Guangzhou, China on Saturday 10 February 2007 by over ten policemen
in plain clothes while her family were spending time together
with two other families, who were also Falun Gong adherents, ahead
of the Chinese New Year. The authority said that the gathering
was illegal.
We learned two months later that Liang Wenjian
and her husband Lin Zhiyong were sentenced to two years in a re-education-through-labour
(RTL) camp. All others taken away from her home have received
the same sentence, except an elderly lady who was given 18 months.
There had been no trials and family members were not informed.
This arrest resembles numerous incidents where
the regime targets Falun Gong adherents as part of its preparation
for the Beijing Olympics. The RTL sentences effectively put them
away till after the Games are over.
ESCALATION OF
PERSECUTION BEFORE
THE OLYMPICS
Within the first three months of 2008, the Falun
Dafa Information Center has documented six cases of practitioner
deaths occurring within days, and in some cases hours, of arrest.
Among the deaths reported in 2008 was that of Mr Yu Zhou, 42,
a musician who was arrested with his wife Ms Xu Na at the end
of January on their way home from a performance by his band. Eleven
days after their arrest, the authorities notified their family
members to come to Qinghe Emergency Centre, where they found Yu
already dead. The family's request for an autopsy was rejected
and Ms Xu remains in custody.
There have been anecdotal but widespread evidence
that authorities ordered intensification of the crackdown on the
Falun Gong ahead of the Olympic Games, issuing arrest quotas and
offering financial awards for information leading to arrests.
Since January 2007, the Falun Dafa Information Center has documented
the cases of 129 Falun Gong practitioners who died of abuse, passing
away either in police custody or upon release as a result of injuries
incurred while in detention.
OTHER CATEGORIES
OF OLYMPIC
PRISONERS
On 24 March 2008, the day when the Olympic torch
was lit in Greece at an official ceremony, the regime in China
sentenced human rights campaigner Mr Yang Chunlin to five years
in prison for gathering 10,000 signatures to a petition "We
want human rights not Olympics". The regime found Yang guilty
of "inciting subversion".
Yang's fellow campaigners have also been incarcerated,
as have others critical of the regime's abuses before the Games.
An example is democracy activist Zhang Wen from Tianjin who has
been held in a psychiatric hospital since last October.
Many more have been targeted in pre-emptive
arrests and imprisonments. These include the human rights activist
Hu Jia who was sentenced to three and half years on 3 April although
he has not expressed opposition to holding the Olympic Games in
Beijing.
CONCLUSION
The long list of Olympic Prisoners is a glaring
feature of the Beijing Olympic Game, and the length of the list
is increasing daily. I hope that the HMG will continue to work
for the release of Hu Jia, Yang Chunlin, Liang Wenjian and thousands
of others who are incarcerated as part of the communist regime's
preparation for the Olympics.
20 April 2008
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