Agence France Presse (AFP): Falun Gong is going to File a Complaint after the Arrest of its Followers in Paris

Paris, February 5th (AFP) – [Practitioners of] Falun Gong, arrested by the police during and after Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Paris, will be filing a complaint at the Court on Monday, their lawyer Me Lef Forster announced on Thursday. This complaint is filed against X for "arbitrary arrests and illegal violence" the lawyer explained. According to Alain Tong, spokesperson for the Falun Gong Association in Paris, more than sixty practitioners were arrested and have expressed their intention to file this complaint.

On January the 24th, Falun Gong followers were refused the right to take part in the Chinese New Year Parade on the Champs Elysées. Some, who were among the public, say that they were arrested "in a way that's totally arbitrary."

"Who took the decision at the Police Prefect Office? Did the Prefect Office receive orders from the government? Were the orders ill interpreted? We don’t know," declared lawyer Forster. "They were only people who wore yellow scarves, who were peaceful and meditating," he added.

"We were arrested and detained with handcuffs for five hours at the police station, simply because we had yellow scarves on. The police were rough when they arrested us," stated British Falun Gong practitioner Yan Fullerton. "We did not think that this could happen outside of Mainland China. Especially not in France, the country where human rights originated," she added.

"Falun Gong is notoriously and systematically presented as [xx] but nothing can justify this," explained Lef Forster. Four members of the movement, forbidden in China, had filed another complaint for the "crime of torture" against the Chinese minister of Culture Sun Jiazheng when he was in Paris on January 28th.