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France: Press Conference to Discuss French Judge's Request for an Investigation into the Persecution Against Falun Gong (Photos) (Clearwisdom.net) During a press conference on December the 16th 2004,
members of the French Association of Falun Gong announced that Mrs. Faucherie,
an examining magistrate at the Court of Justice in Paris, decided to send an
International Letters Rogatory to China. This follows two complaints filed in
December 2002 and January 2004 respectively against the former Chinese Vice
Premier Li Lanqing and the current Chinese Minister of Culture Sun Jiazheng. Chinese authorities were asked to investigate and provide explanations on the
610 Office, formerly headed by Li Lanqing, who is accused of ordering not only
massive arrests but also the systematic torture of Falun Gong practitioners. The
investigations should also reveal the role of Sun Jiazheng, the Chinese Minister
of Culture, in the repression. Sun is responsible for the propaganda contrived
to demonize Falun Gong and incite hatred against those who practice it. Lawyer William Bourdon, who fights against impunity and was part of the legal
action to bring Chilean dictator Pinochet to justice, says this is very
significant. He recognizes that in the short term the Chinese authorities may
not cooperate, but he warns, "In the absence of an answer from the Chinese
authorities, we will ask the French Minister of Justice, Dominique Perben, to
take the responsibility to demand that the agreements on judiciary collaboration
between France and Chine be respected." H¨¦l¨¨ne Petit, a French plaintiff who was herself ill-treated by the Chinese
Police because she practices Falun Gong, commented on the significance of the
judge's decision: "In China, if you practice Falun Gong and you are
persecuted, you don't have the right to ask for a lawyer. Indeed, the Party
forbids anyone to defend practitioners. If you have been tortured or a member of
your family has been killed you cannot even file a complaint. This means total
impunity for those who torture and those who give orders against Falun Gong. But
here in France justice works. This is why as a French citizen I wished to file a
complaint for what I endured in China, together with Chinese plaintiffs who have
been severely tortured - French resident Chen Zhumei, Irish resident Zhao Ming
and Canadian resident Wang Yuzhi. And this International Letters Rogatory sent
by the judge to China is the consequence of the complaints filed. It sends a
strong message to China." A question was raised about the nature of Falun Gong, which the Chinese
regime wrongly branded a cult so that they could have an excuse to persecute the
practice. Georges-Henri Beauthier, another famous human rights lawyer who also
contributed to Pinochet's loss of immunity, answered that he belongs to
anti-cult working groups in Belgium and often defends victims of sects.
Therefore he would never consider defending a sect or cult. He insisted on the
fact that no organ in any country has qualified Falun Gong as a cult. The
practice presents no criterion of indoctrination or manipulation that would
qualify it as such. H¨¦l¨¨ne Petit added, "The term "cult" can
kill. It results from the strategic will of the Chinese regime to ostracize and
demonize Falun Gong in China and abroad. This strategy is commonly used by the
Chinese regime against all the groups that it considers as dissident, from the
Tibetans to the democrats." Falun Gong is a Chinese qigong practice and a philosophy of life. It became
popular in China in the 1990s; in 1998 there were already around 100 millions
practitioners. Forbidden in 1999 for "threatening the social order",
it has been violently persecuted ever since, as Amnesty International reminds
the world regularly through its well documented reports. To this day, several
thousand practitioners have been tortured to death in China, and up to 100 000
are arbitrarily imprisoned in labor camps. Source: http://clearharmony.net/articles/200412/23807.html
Posting date: 12/21/2004
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