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France Violates Human Rights in Exchange for Political and Economic Benefits from China
By a Dafa practitioner in U.K. Ms. Teng Xueling (Clearwisdom.net) I am a Chinese freelance artist from the U.K. On January
22, 2004, some of my Falun Gong practitioner friends and I went to Paris to take
part in a Falun Gong Chinese New Year parade and to enjoy some of the
festivities in Paris. Since we were not performing in the January 24 parade, we
decided to go to Arc de Triomphe for sightseeing. At around 12:30 P.M., when I
was about to take a picture for my friend, a group of French policemen suddenly
seized him and held him motionless without offering any explanation. They
searched him but did not find anything illegal, but they still bound his hands
with plastic string behind his back. At first I was too shocked by what happened
to say anything. Then I asked them, "What's happening? We haven't done anything
wrong." The police refused to answer. They bound my hands and arrested me as
well.
While they were pushing us and binding our hands, I repeatedly heard the
words "Falun Dafa" in the conversations over their police radios.
At around 12:30 P.M., the police took us to the Parisian 17th precinct police
station. After the police van had parked, a policeman in civilian clothes opened
the rear door and looked us over. He smiled and said, "Ah, Falun Dafa." Judging
from his response, I thought this policeman knew the truth about Falun Dafa and
that he was going to tell the others it was a mistake, but he did nothing of the
sort. We were handcuffed to a long bench for more than three hours. It was not until 4:00 PM that another French policeman in civilian clothes from upstairs brought us to his office.
I must also mention an ironic story during this ordeal. At the time of the
arrest, it was the period of the 2004 Chinese New Year Festival. There were also
many Chinese Cultural Year festivities going on in Paris. As I was pulled from
the van at the police station, two policewomen said to me in Chinese, "Gong Xi
Fa Cai (May you be financially prosperous this year.)" I asked them, "We are
guests of your Chinese Cultural Year. Is this the way to treat your guests?"
At first, the policeman told us that we had been arrested for distributing
flyers and it was illegal to distribute flyers. I asked him, "We did not
distribute any flyers, why were we arrested? Was it only because we wore yellow
scarves embroidered with the words 'Falun Dafa'?" He said that it was because
some Falun Gong practitioners wearing yellow scarves had distributed flyers, so
other practitioners wearing yellow scarves were arrested as well. Then I asked,
"What about me? I am not even wearing a yellow scarf." He said that they were in
a hurry to make the arrests so it was understandable that they made a small
mistake.
Then he became impatient and ordered us not to ask any more questions about
the reason for the arrests. He said that they were merely following an order
from the top. He also claimed that he understood us very well and that he
thought Falun Gong practitioners were peaceful and not at all a danger to the
society. I asked if the Chinese government officials had spread slanderous lies
about Falun Gong practitioners being dangerous to the French police and caused
the unlawful arrests of Falun Gong practitioners. He said that perhaps Chinese
agents might have misled the French police and caused them to arrest us.
Because this policeman had a limited command of English, he asked a
policewoman to help investigate the matter. This policewoman was very
sympathetic toward us. We told her that yesterday we were performing in a parade
in Paris, and today the police arrested us for no reason at all. We told her
that we had thought such human rights violations could only happen in an
authoritarian country such as China, and that we were sad to see a country known
for supporting human rights and democracy like France doing such a thing to
law-abiding tourists. After hearing our words, her eyes were brimming with
tears.
At around 5:00 P.M., this policewoman released me and two other female
practitioners she had investigated. Meanwhile, other practitioners were still
held in police custody. |