European Falun Gong Information Centre: Falun Gong TV Programmes Broadcast for 70 Minutes Around Baoding City and Beijing

On August 23 and 27, video programmes at least 70 minutes long were broadcasted on prime time television over a wide area in and around Baoding City, Hebei Province. Witnesses in the Fangshan area in Beijing say they saw similar videos on local TV stations earlier in the month.

The videos – entitled “Witness and Testimonies” and “Falun Dafa Around the World” – expose the human rights abuses suffered by practitioners of Falun Gong under Jiang Zemin’s regime as well as report on the support of the practice worldwide.

These broadcasts mark the ninth incident to be verified by the European Falun Gong Information Centre since January, 2002, when practitioners of Falun Gong in China first attempted to have their voice heard over television airwaves.

“With mass media under the tight control of China’s leader,” explains European Falun Gong Information Centre spokesperson Peter Jauhal, “Falun Gong practitioners in China have used more creative methods to break through the propaganda campaign against them, such as overriding television broadcasts, broadcasting radio programmes from speakers placed in hard-to-reach areas, distributing flyers and leaflets, etc.”

Peter continued, “The regime uses its money and power to mislead the public into thinking that Falun Gong is bad, and the persecution campaign doesn’t exist. Practitioners of Falun Gong, on the other hand, are using their hearts to let the people know Falun Gong is good, and that people are being persecuted horribly for their beliefs.”

Round-up of Falun Gong Practitioners

Sources in China report that authorities quickly mobilised a strike force and declared martial law from August 27-30 in Xushi County and neighbouring areas in an attempt to round-up those responsible for the broadcast. One source reports that a mini-van containing three Falun Gong practitioners was fired upon and rammed three times by local police. One practitioner in the van was arrested while two others managed to escape, this source says.

After the second broadcast on August 27, officials from Baoding City and surrounding counties set up a 24-hour patrol of their broadcasting facilities, sources in China say. Meanwhile, as in Changchun and other areas where Falun Gong videos were successfully broadcast, police began indiscriminately rounding up practitioners and harassing their family members.

Debunking Jiang’s Propaganda Machine

The content of the videos debunk many of the propaganda news stories that are broadcast regularly by the state-run media in China. The state-run broadcasts typically slander and distort the teachings of Falun Gong and falsely depict Falun Gong practitioners being treated “humanely” while in police custody. The propaganda also depicts Falun Gong as a small group within China that is either non-existent or repressed in countries outside China.

The video “Falun Dafa Around the World,” however, presents quite a different picture – that Falun Gong is practiced in over 50 countries around the world, and that Falun Gong and its founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, have received over 600 awards and proclamations in North America alone for contributions the practice has made to local communities and public health.

Mr. Li is a three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee.

Before Falun Gong practitioners began overriding television signals in January, 2002, to broadcast these types of programmes, none of these facts had ever been broadcast publicly in China.

The European Falun Gong Information Centre has verified details of 467 deaths since the persecution of Falun Gong in China began in 1999. Government officials inside China, however, report that the actual death toll is well over 1,600. Over 100,000 have been detained, with more than 20,000 being sentenced to forced labour camps without trial.