Radio France Internationale Programme "Parisian Chinese": Three Falun Gong practitioners sue Zhou Yongkang.

According to a report on the RFI programme “Parisian Chinese” broadcast to Asia Pacific and Metropolitan Paris on the night of July 21st:

Reporter: Good evening my friends.

Zhou Yongkang, the head of Chinese Public Security is visiting France this week and has been the guest of Sarkozy, the French Home Secretary. Nevertheless, apart from coinciding with unusually hot weather during his visit to France, he also ran into Reporters without Borders Organisation protesting against the Chinese authorities’ persecution of reporters and dissidents on the internet.

On Friday July 21st, news was heard that three Falun Gong practitioners were planning to sue Zhou Yongkang in the French courts. On this occasion we interviewed the French Falun Dafa organisation’s spokesman Mr. Zhang Jianping about this incident, who told us some relevant information.

Zhang Jianping: In 2002, around the end of November and the start of December, Zhou Yongkang has been the Chinese Communist Party’s Chairman for the Sichuan Provincial Committee. After that he became the Head of Public Security i.e. the Police Department) and also one of the persons-in-charge of the Armed Forces. Both these positions undeniably hold direct responsibilities for the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, locally and nationally. In Europe we found three Falun Gong practitioners, two of whom were from Sichuan Province in China, one is Ms. Mo Zhengfang and the other is Mr. Li Heping. The third one is Ms Dai Ying who is temporarily living in Norway, and she suffered persecution when Zhou Yongkang was the Head of Public Security.

These three Falun Gong practitioners asked the French Falun Dafa Association to hand the lawsuit on their behalves into the Court of Paris to sue Zhou Yongkang.

Reporter: Did the Court of Paris accept the lawsuit?

Zhang Jianping: Yes. At about lunchtime today we handed the lawsuit into the Court of Paris and the lawsuit has already been accepted.

Reporter: So what would happen next?

Zhang Jianping: The next step, generally speaking, would be the public prosecutor putting the case on file and beginning the investigation. They would be looking to see if this case should continue or not and they would be summoning witnesses.

Reporter: Would Zhou Yongkang be summoned?

Zhang Jianping: If we are strictly speaking by the law, it should be so. For example, at the end of 2002 we sued China’s first Deputy Premier Li Lanqing back then. At that time he was also the first ranking central officer in the 610 Office, an organisation set up especially to persecute Falun Gong. The French judge did send China’s Foreign Ministry and Law Department an international summons for investigation, which in French is called Commission Rogatoire Internationale (CRI). Of course, the CCP never follows the rules so they arbitrarily and arrogantly refused the summons. At that time the law workers including the judge were all very angry.

Reporter: Now can you please tell us about what kind of persecution these three Falun Gong practitioners have undergone?

Zhang Jianping: Take Ms Dai Ying as an example. Just for practicing Falun Gong she was sentenced to three years forced labour re-education, in addition to another two years in a labour camp, which makes a whole five years. In prison she suffered all kinds of persecution, for example brutal electric shocks, beatings and repeated electric shocks around the temple to the point that her left eye is now blind. Her teeth are now all out of place. In prison, being a woman, she was stripped naked with other female Falun Gong practitioners by male and female police, and some were put in front of male inmates to be humiliated. They used such wicked ways to force her to give up cultivating Falun Gong.

There was also force-feeding. Because when practitioners are enduring such unreasonable oppression, some go on hunger strike in protest. However even this basic right has been violated. The police force feed not to keep the victim alive, but to torture the victim and force him or her to give up practicing Falun Gong. Force feeding is very brutal. Usually blood and food spray out everywhere.

Ms Dai Ying and her husband Li Jianhui are both cultivators of Falun Gong and they hired a lawyer. As the CCP was implementing its so-called legal procedures, people from the Shenzhen Court found out that there would be a lawyer, so through the Shenzhen city government and an appearance by the police department, they stopped the lawyer and prohibited him from defending the practitioners. This could be counted as part of the persecution she suffered.

Reporter: So, the other two, Mo Zhengfang and Li Heping are both from Sichuan, right?

Zhang Jianping: Right. When Mo Zhengfang was arrested she was eight months pregnant. Even so, she suffered violent beatings. Later she went to the United Kingdom and because she was cultivating Falun Gong as a mother, the CCP Embassy and the 610 system inside China did not even let her baby have a passport. So back then, as I recall, they spent a very long time exposing the CCP’s crimes to the UK government and media. In the end the CCP had to give the baby a passport.

Reporter: These three cases all seem quite special and unique, or are they wide spread typical cases?

Zhang Jiangping: I think that these are typical. Think about it, because we knew that Zhou Yongkang was coming to France, because the French constitution states that the sued person must be inside France. When we got to know this piece of information it was already very late. In such a short period of time we have already found within Europe three cases of persecution like such. Actually, in China there are much more of these cases. On our Falun Dafa’s Minghui (clearwisdom) website, everyday there are at least tens of cases of practitioners suffering persecution, and these cases are detailed with careful descriptions and full names. In the last few years there have been at least 3000 verified deaths of Falun Gong practitioners that we know of.

Not long ago we heard of the malicious practice where at least thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have their body organs harvested while still alive and who were then killed to be silenced. Moreover, according to our investigations, this crime involves several provinces, cities and regions all over China, even many military and civil hospitals.

Reporter: Thank you my friends. What you have just heard was the programme “Parisian Chinese”, edited and broadcast by Xiaoman. Thank you for listening, see you next week.