Speech Given by Friends of Falun Gong During a London Press Conference Marking Seven Years Since the Persecution of Falun Gong Began

April 22nd, 2006

This week marks the seventh year of persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China by the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.

Let’s just pause for a moment to consider what the Chinese government has done in that time. Under the previous President Jiang Zemin, it has ordered the mass execution and imprisonment of a group of people who adhere to the principles of Truth, Compassion and Forbearance, and who prior to the 25th April 1999 had been praised by the very same government for services to the health and spiritual wellbeing of the nation, and who subsequently have been subjected to probably the worst period of human rights abuses ever seen by mankind.

These abuses have resulted in the deaths in custody of nearly 3000 people and the imprisonment of thousands more in labour camps and mental hospitals across China. Not satisfied with persecuting practitioners at home in China, they then turned their attention to other countries around the world, including attempts to influence foreign governments into suppressing legitimate protest against the former President Jiang.

When President Hu Jintao took over as leader in 2003, we hoped for a more tolerant response from one of the world’s most powerful nations – what did we get? All out attacks on those involved in the defence of Falun Gong practitioners, including the incidents in America, Argentina and the USA this year, when Falun Gong practitioners abroad were singled out for violent retribution by henchmen acting on behalf of a desperate government, desperate that is to hold on to what power they think they have left in China.

Now we have the recent reports of the harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners’ organs for sale, even to abroad, a practice which we believe may have been going on for several years in nearly 40 concentration camps in China. Body organs have even been taken from living practitioners, and their bodies cremated to hide the terrible truth of what has happened.

The power the government has enjoyed since 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party grasped the remains of a Chinese nation rent apart by the strife of the 2nd World War and other regional disputes, has been slowly eroded over a period of 60 years. The people of China have finally lost faith in their own country’s ruling party, the CCP, resulting in the number of people quitting the party in the last year and a half reaching a staggering 10 million, that is approximately one sixth of its membership.

This huge wave of anti-CCP feeling within China mirrors precisely the views of the rest of the civilised world, who have for the most part been sympathetic towards the plight of Falun Gong practitioners. However at the same time concerns about the loss of important trade links with the most populous and hence the most financially lucrative country in the world have kept the opposition to its government’s actions against its own people to a quiet, almost apologetic minimum. This slow burning opposition should by now be a deluge of international condemnation against a regime which sees no kind of violence and intimidation as too severe.

We would therefore urge the world’s governments to unite in their condemnation of the CCP’s continuing persecution of Falun Gong, and not to allow economic considerations to taint their judgment on how they react to the CCP’s despicable lack of concern for human rights in China.

We also urge, above all, the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party to say enough is enough, to bring to an end this horrific period of persecution which they know deep down goes against all principles of justice and fairness, and which in the end, if the CCP’s members continue to leave the party in the same numbers as they have in recent months, will result in the total eradication of their party. We sincerely hope they will see sense very soon.

European Friends of Falun Gong
22nd April 2006