On the afternoon of February 14, 2002, 4 UK practitioners held a press conference in Heathrow Airport, London and recounted their experience. The four UK citizens went to China as tourists but were illegally arrested and beaten in a hotel in Beijing in the afternoon of February 13, 2002. Chinese police confiscated part of their personal belongings and deported them forcefully.

Radio stations, TV stations and news agencies from the UK and the US covered the press conference. BBC radio broadcasting station and TV stations reported the news immediately. The 4 UK citizens who are Falun Gong practitioners had hoped that there would be chances to clarify the truth to Chinese people during their tour in Beijing. During recent days, quite a few UK TV stations and newspapers made appointments with the four practitioners for interviews and special topic programs to recount their experience.

Caption: British Citizens Rosemary and Lee Hall arrive at Heathrow Airport, London and hold a press conference. Reporters from BBC, Reuters, Epoch Times and other international media interviewed them.

The four practitioners were identified as Lee Hall, an English student at Loughborough University; Earl Rhodes, a BBC cameraman; Rosemary Katzen, an English tutor, and Robert Gibson, a retired osteopath.

The following information was given at an interview conducted with Falun Gong practitioners Lee Hall 21, an English Literature student at Loughborough University and Rosemary Katzen, 42, a Senior tutor with LET Training Services, Leicester.

Interview conducted on Thursday 14/02/02 at Heathrow Terminal 4, 17.15pm.

We had been to the Summer Palace, a famous tourist attraction on the afternoon of Wednesday 2/13/02 and returned to the youth hostel in the early afternoon to find 20-30 police officers milling around outside. They spoke to Robert Gibson, a member of our party, and told him that we should all go to our rooms and wait. We complied and Robert followed.

The police entered our room and began searching through our belongings. They did not speak to us and did not produce a search warrant or explain why they were doing this. Then they made it clear that they wanted our flight tickets and passports. After some attempts to reason with the police, we felt that we should cooperate and handed over the required items. We asked to speak to the British Embassy and were told that we did not need to do as we were not under arrest. We asked to leave but were told that we could not do so, effectively prisoners. We sat down on our beds and refused to go with them. The police tried to force us to go but we held tight, resisting passively. They grabbed Rosemary, who was the smallest and lightest, also the only woman in our UK group, dragging her towards the door by her arms and hair, then proceeded to throw her down several flights of stairs where she was moved along on the ground. She was calling out "Falun Dafa Hao" [Falun Dafa is Good]. Other tourists entering the hostel were shocked to be confronted by a Westerner being dragged along by so many police. We could not let Rosemary go like that so we hurried after, which is what they were expecting.

Outside the Hostel, they herded us into a waiting police van. Earl Rhodes went to get on to the bus through the rear doors, shouting out "Falun Dafa Hao". The van driver attempted to hit Earl with the open doors by going into reverse suddenly: the harmful action rebounded on the police standing near the open doors and they were pushed out of the way and Earl was able to continue shouting. Robert Gibson was pushed roughly by the head into the van, which was very poor conduct towards a 70-year-old elderly person.

A practitioner called Steven from America was also put on the bus, as there were so many police in the van, 18 to our 5, we were able to clarify the truth to them. We were driven to a concealed entrance at the back of the airport, off-loaded and given a comprehensive search. The police concerned in the search wore surgical gloves and made us take our things out of our bags. They took things that were related to Falun Gong and also personal items such as our walkmans which were "confiscated" because Falun Gong tapes had been played on them! These were not returned, making this theft. We were separated and each one was surrounded by 8-10 police and interrogated for over 2.5 hours very intensively. Earl, Robert and I were held in separate airport hotel rooms. there was continual videoing of all of us throughout our captivity.

We were then sent for dinner all together. We refused to eat because we knew that the videotapes would be edited to provide material for the evil propaganda run by the government to slander Falun Gong and we were not prepared to be used in this way, seemingly having good treatment, which was not the case. They continued to interrogate us and tried to make us sign documents written in Chinese which we all refused to do. They became very angry and threatened us with great fines if we did not agree, we still refused.

Eventually at about 2 or 3 am, we started reading Zhuan Falun [the main book of Falun Gong] which we still kept with us. It seemed that everything that was said by the police guarding us was set up for us to tell them the truth. Some of the young police officers were quite amazed to find that it was legal to practice Falun Gong in the rest of the world. They had been told that it was "illegal" in the whole world! They were astounded that my fleece embroidered with Falun Dafa characters had been made in a factory. They kept repeating, "You are not allowed to make them." They were also shocked to find that I come from a university where others with high-level qualifications also practiced Falun Gong freely. They could not accept that there were police officers who beat up, tortured and killed Falun Gong practitioners, i.e. those from the 610 office. I was shocked to find that they had been so completely deceived by their own government.

At about 3.30 am, we started to practice the Falun Gong exercises. All the police surrounding us were watching. When we finished, they were asleep. Later we found that two police were reading "Peaceful Journey" all the way through. A female police officer who had witnessed the self -immolation incident the previous year was shocked to find out the truth. Rosemary had a truth clarifying VCD with her which she gave to the officer who was very interested and who said that she would pass it round to her colleagues and friends when she had finished with it.

The next morning the filming continued and at 9.30am, we packed our things. We were separated; Rosemary and I stayed together as we said we were going to the same place, even though they had taken our bus tickets from Heathrow Airport to Leicester [where we live] away from us although they were of no use to them. This was just spiteful. Robert and Earl were kept together. They took us back to the airport security area, our bags were searched again even though we had not been out of sight of the police at any time. We had to go through X-ray machines twice. They had also subjected us to this when we were first arrested and searched the previous day.

We were eventually put into a police van, together with 14 police guards, flanked front and rear by two police cars, each containing 5 policemen. We were still being filmed and this continued right up until we walked onto the aeroplane. The police had made the plane wait for Rosemary and I and the pilot made an announcement "welcoming" us. The air stewardesses knew little about us so we were able to clarify the truth to them during the flight which will help eliminate the evil as they will be able to pass on the truth to all the Chinese they have as passengers from now on.

We arrived at Heathrow airport and were the last to disembark as we had been placed at the very back of the aircraft. We were met by practitioners with flowers and the press in the form of Steve Mellor, Heathrow reporting (Reuters), Jane Warr and Caroline Alton for the BBC (covering all news agencies local and international), David Parker for The Daily Mail and The Epoch Times. There were three film crew and a UK Falun Gong practitioner filming the live interview which lasted about 45 minutes. Further TV and live radio interviews were set up at the same time.

I [Lee Hall] would like to make some particular comments about our trip to China;
We were tourists and had behaved according to Chinese law throughout our stay, although we had the intention of demonstrating peacefully in Tiananmen Square, that had not occurred and was in fact scheduled for the next day when many other practitioners were to join us.

We were interrogated without access to legal representation and had been denied help from the British Embassy which by law is our right.

We were roughed up by the police and treated as though we were dangerous criminals, deprived of sleep and some of our personal possessions were stolen. The majority of the police were young men, younger than myself [I am 21], who have been brainwashed by the evilness of the government propaganda: they are aware of nothing else.

Rosemary's particular comments are:

I asked the police guarding us about Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, did they think that was a good thing or a bad thing? They replied that it was good. I asked what they thought about Falun Gong and they said that it was bad. I asked If they would say the same thing if they were not wearing their uniforms, they said that Falun Gong was good for health. They were not able to make the distinction that Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance and Falun Gong were one and the same thing.

Although we did not get to make our protest as we had planned, we intend to use this opportunity to raise awareness of the persecution of the Chinese Falun Gong practitioners by their own government and the appalling treatment of Western people who go peacefully to appeal so that their fellow practitioners once again be allowed to practice freely, without fear of persecution and death.

Although we were treated very badly, we know that this is little in comparison to what the Chinese people experience when they go to Tiananmen Square to peacefully say that Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance are good.

Reported by UK practitioners

14 February 2002

(The interview context is from http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/3094.html  and http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/3115.html)

Posting date: 2/19/2002
Original article date: 2/18/2002
Category: News & Media Reports
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/2/16/25062.html

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