Chicago
21 Oct 2002, 23:27 UTC
China's President Jiang Zemin is stopping in Chicago Tuesday on his way to
meet with President Bush in Texas. Human rights [practitioners] are making sure
China's poor human rights record is on the summit's agenda.
Hundreds of practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement from several
countries assembled on a plaza in downtown Chicago Monday.
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Falun Gong practitioners march toward Chinese Consulate in Chicago 21
October 2002
VOA photo - M. Leland
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Most sat silently surrounded by banners calling on the Chinese government to
stop persecuting practitioners like Shenli Lin, who now lives in Canada.
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Jin Yu Li (left) and Shenli Lin
VOA photo - M. Leland |
With his wife Jin Yu Li translating, he talked about being put in a Chinese
labor camp for two years after police caught him performing Falun Gong's
yoga-like exercises in public.
"The police, they wanted to force me to denounce Falun Gong, so they
beat me," he said. "They [the government] used policemen to beat me.
They forced me to do heavy labor work every day for more than 13 hours."
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Zhi Zhen Dai shows photo of her husband
VOA photo - M. Leland |
A few meters away, Zhi Zhen Dai of Australia showed reporters a photograph of
her husband, a Falun Gong practitioner who died in prison last year, six months
after his arrest in Beijing. "He handed a letter to the Chinese government
appeal office, saying 'Our family benefits so much from practicing Falun Gong.
Falun Dafa is good.' He was arrested by the police and put into jail, tortured
and died last year," the [practitioner] said.
China's government has outlawed Falun Gong as an evil cult, and has detained
thousands of its practitioners. Last week, China's state-controlled Legal Daily
newspaper reported the government sentenced a Falun Gong practitioner to death,
allegedly for strangling a daughter she believed was possessed by a demon.
Chicago Falun Gong representative Steven Gregory says practitioners are
filing human rights charges with the International Criminal Court against
China's President Jiang, as well as two other top government officials.
"He is someone who deserves to be taken to the International Criminal
Court," Mr. Gregory said. "He is somebody we would speak of in the
same words as [former Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic or others."
Falun Gong practitioners also marched through downtown Chicago to the Chinese
consulate Monday afternoon. They plan to protest silently outside the hotel
where President Jiang will stay during his visit to Chicago. He will meet with
President Bush in Texas on Friday.