Epoch Times: NY Lawmakers Push for Resolution to Condemn Chinese Communist Regime

By Benjamin Youngquest

Epoch Times New York Staff
June 22, 2006

Charles Lee speaks at New York City Hall on June 22 (Serene Luo/Epoch Times)

NEW YORK--As the New York State Assembly's legislative session comes to its yearly end, a group of 60 assembly members--led by Assemblyman Michael Benjamin of the Bronx--is pushing for the passage of a resolution that some say could save lives in China. The resolution condemns the Chinese communist regime for its religious intolerance and suppression, and specifically for its merciless persecution of tens of thousands of Falun Gong adherents.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has the power to bring the resolution out of committee and put it to a vote before the assembly session ends this week, but Silver has stated that he feels the resolution transcends the jurisdiction of the assembly.

Supporters of the resolution, many of them Falun Gong practitioners, held a rally on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan on Wednesday calling on Silver to recognize the important impact that the resolution would have on the lives of those Falun Gong practitioners being held and tortured in China. They reminded him that similar resolutions have already been passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress, the EU Parliament, and various local governing bodies.

"It is very important to pass this resolution to let the [Chinese Communist Party] know that the governments of the world will not sit by and do nothing about this persecution," said Dr. Charles Lee, a Falun Gong practitioner and U.S. Citizen who has recently come home after being released from three years of detention in Chinese torture camps.
"During my three years imprisonment in China I felt the support from the people of the United States and from the U.S. government--so believe me--your support is very important to the Falun Gong practitioners that are still suffering under this intense persecution in Mainland China," said Lee.

Mr. Zhao Ming, a refugee from the prison camp system told of some of the torture that he suffered.

"The most often used tortures that I suffered in the labor camps were deprivation of sleep, electric shock, forced squatting and beating," he said.

Ming said that he had it easy compared to the Falun Gong practitioners who are having their organs cut from their bodies and sold for as much as $140,000.

"I was kept in an open camp, so I was known by the outside world," Ming explained in a soft and serious tone, obviously pained to talk about the subject. "They were concerned for me and helped me. Organs are harvested from people in the secret camps, the people there--nobody knows that they are there--so the things happening there are just too horrible. They are just killed and their organs are taken away to be sold for profit." Ming said he was disappointed that Speaker Silver has not introduced the legislation.

"The Chinese Communist Party is afraid of having its evil deeds known to the outside world, of being condemned by the outside world. As good people, we must speak out and condemn them," he said.

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