On January the 28th 2004, the French national newspaper Libération reported on Falun Gong practitioners' legal actions against Chinese Culture Minister Sun Jiazheng. The lawsuit filed by practitioners in France accuses him of the crime of Torture in his involvement in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Mr. Sun was accompanying President Hu Jintao on a state visit to France when the case was filed.

The plaintiffs are one French woman who was ill-treated by the police on Tiananmen Square when she joined a peaceful appeal there in 2001 and three Chinese practitioners, one man and two women, who were tortured and brainwashed by the Chinese police in an attempt to have them renounce their practice of Falun Gong.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal cases filed by Falun Gong practitioners around the world against senior Chinese officials responsible for the persecution of Falun Gong.