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Los Angeles Practitioner Xiuhua Zhang's Hunger Strike Statement Dear Friends,
Thank you for coming to our press conference.
My name is Xiuhua Zhang, and I am a local Falun Gong practitioner. Today, I
am going to start a hunger strike (water fasting), to support my 130 fellow
practitioners detained in Masanjia Labor Camp in the northeastern province of
Liaoning. They have been on hunger strike for over three weeks. I am extremely
concerned for their lives.
These 130 practitioners were illegally thrown into Masanjia Labor Camp
because of their belief in the principle of "Truthfulness, Compassion, and
Forbearance", the central principle of Falun Gong. In order to force them
to betray their faith, the guards in the labor camp keep torturing them using
all brutal means such as electric shocks, beatings, hanging by handcuffs,
confinement in small cells, deprivation of sleep, slave labor, etc. After
practitioners finished serving their so-called "jail terms" (which
were arbitrarily imposed on them by police, and which are mostly more than a
year), the labor camp authorities refused to release them and declared that they
would rather violate the law instead of releasing them. To protest the
persecution, these 130 practitioners went on a hunger strike more than three
weeks ago. Their suffering is very typical of the labor camps in China. The
hunger striking practitioners are often brutally force-fed. The guards often
force feed them with high density salt water, and sometimes, they insert the
nose tube into the trachea or lung. This brutal force-feeding has caused many
deaths.
I appeal to the Chinese government to stop the persecution of Falun Gong
practitioners. I also appeal to the public to continue to pay attention to the
suffering of my fellow practitioners in China. So far, at least 268
practitioners have been persecuted to death. They are all kindhearted Chinese
citizens. Let's make every effort to stop the killing of these innocent
Chinese people.
Thank you.
Xiuhua Zhang, Auguest 24, 2001
Posting date: 8/26/2001 |