(Clearwisdom.net) Clearwisdom correspondent Shen Jing reports: July 20, 2004 marked Jiang's group's five years of persecution of Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners in New York area held a press conference in front of the City Hall to condemn Jiang's group's exporting state terrorism, regarding the shooting incident in South Africa.

Signing their names to support Falun Gong

Passersby looking at Dafa truth clarification display boards

Press conference site

Falun Gong practitioners Ms. Zhou Jianfen said in her speech that the shooting incident in South Africa was a new extreme of Jiang's group's exporting state terrorism outside of China. Five years ago, when Jiang's group began suppressing Falun Gong inside China, they also extended the persecution outside of China. It is reported that in July 1999, when the large-scale arrest of Falun Gong practitioners in China began, many unidentified Chinese people also appeared around practice sites in different parks in New York area. They monitored practitioners' entire process of exercise and cross-questioned practitioners. Some even openly took camcorders to videotape practitioners in close proximity one by one, obviously to threathen practitioners. Afterwards, practitioners who coordinated the practice sites were harassed, including trailing and monitoring them, tapping their telephones and illegally breaking into their houses and so on.

While receiving more and more information about the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, New York Falun Gong practitioners have appealed outside the Chinese Consulate numerous times to deliver appeals and hold press conferences and other forms to express their strong concern, but the Chinese Consulate has never given them any positive response. On the contrary, spokesperson for Falun Gong practitioners Mr. Zhang Erping received threatening phone calls several times. Not long after the staged "Tiananmen Self-immolation Incident," Mr. Zhang Erping received a telephone death threat from a Chinese man for exposing the truth to the media.

According to the materials from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), in recent years, cases of Falun Gong practitioners overseas being harassed, followed and threatened has escalated. Some cases stem from the Chinese Consulate secretly colluding with overseas Chinese gangs. Taking another case occurring in New York as an example, on June 23, 2003, when Liang Guanjun, chairman of the Unified Organization of Overseas Chinese Associations in New York, and Hua Junxiong and others were hosting a dinner for a Chinese diplomat in Chinatown, they ordered their followers to gang up on and assault Falun Gong practitioners who were peacefully appealing outside the restaurant. After the incident, the Chinese Consulate published a statement and openly supported Liang Guanjun gang's illegal actions. At present, New York practitioners have filed a civil lawsuit regarding this assault incident.

During the five-year persecution of Falun Gong, Jiang's group's persecution of Falun Gong overseas has been escalated to a new stage from harassing, interfering with their basic human rights, death threats, beating, damaging, to hiring gunmen to kill. Their harassment and threats against peaceful and kind Falun Gong practitioners enabled the international community to clearly see their true nature, and and have a better understanding about the persecution of Falun Gong inside China.

New York area practitioners strongly called upon the South African government to thoroughly investigate into the shooting case, and locate the the behind-the-scenes plotters. The practitioners also hoped that governments of all countries to condemn Jiang's group's persecution of Falun Gong inside and outside of China.