San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed (from the San Jose
government website) (Clearwisdom.net) The recent Chinese Communist-backed violence against
Falun Gong practitioners in Flushing has received wide attention from the
public. According to the Epoch Times, when commenting on the violence,
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said that such mobs would have been put in jail if
they were in San Jose and that the city will continue to protect Falun Gong
practitioners just as the city protects its other citizens. Over the years, Falun Gong practitioners have built up a very good
relationship with the people of San Jose. Mayor Reed said: "Here in San
Jose, we welcome Falun Gong. They have been in our community for a very long
time. We will protect the practitioners and protect their constitutional rights.
Falun Gong practitioners have participated in many parades in San Jose. Usually
a large group of them do a nice job in our parade, so I hope that they will
continue to do that." Recognizing human rights abuses in China, Mayor Reed reassured the citizens
that San Jose would protect everyone's constitutional rights. He said: "We
are going to protect our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom
of assembly. These are not the rights recognized by the government of China, we
know that, but here in the United States, we do recognize them. "We will protect our Falun Gong practitioners in San Jose just as we
protect the rest of our citizens. We have a very good police department. They
work very hard to make sure that everyone has the right to free speech and the
right of free expression, and we don't allow outsiders to come in and attack our
people. If they do, they will go to jail. I don't have a foreign policy and I
don't deal with foreign governments. "Everybody in the United States needs to adhere to our values and to our
Constitution. We allow freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of
religion. Everyone has to respect that. Whether or not they agree with that
doesn't matter. People have individual, constitutional rights. We respect them
in San Jose. We respect all the people, no matter what country they come from,
what background they are from. [we need] to adhere to these ideals and follow
our Constitution."
Posting date: 6/13/2008
Original article date: 6/13/2008
Category: Worldwide Support
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/6/8/179938.html