At 4pm local time in Paris yesterday, Minister Delegate for Local Freedoms Mr. Patrick Devedjian met with French Falun Dafa Association President Mr. Tang Hanlong at the French Ministry of the Interior. Mr. Devedjian expressed that the unreasonable acts conducted by the police against Falun Gong practitioners will not happen again.

Soon after Jiang Zemin first initiated the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China in 1999, incidents of Chinese officials threatening, harassing, and assaulting Falun Gong practitioners in Europe began to occur. In addition to directly harassing Falun Gong practitioners, Chinese officials in consulates and embassies around Europe have interfered with the peaceful, legitimate, and legal activities of Falun Gong practitioners in Europe by pressuring officials, businesses, and community organizations to withdraw support or deny services to those who practice or support Falun Gong. These repeated incidents have become a deeply felt matter of personal security for many Europeans.

In Paris, a sharp contrast was seen between the Chinese President speech at the National Assembly in Paris, which was boycotted by half of the deputies in protest, and the peaceful appeal of Falun Gong in front of the same building. With a touch of humour, the Le Monde journalist hinted at how absurd it is to treat such peaceful people as if they were a threat to security in order to please a regime that does not hesitate to exert economic pressure to hide its crimes.

On February 2 2004, the Finnish Falun Dafa Association held a press conference at Finlandia House in Helsinki in order to raise awareness about the international lawsuits that have been launched against the persecutors of Falun Gong. The Association also announced that it will take legal action immediately if any responsible person of the persecution of Falun Gong visits Finland.

'Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Cisco are among major IT vendors slammed by Amnesty International for contributing to human-rights abuses by selling technology to the Chinese government that is used to censor the internet...The report cites cases of students, political dissidents, Falun Gong followers, writers, lawyers and teachers who have been jailed or tortured after being accused of offences ranging from signing online petitions to publishing 'rumors' about the SARS virus.'

"All over Europe, and also in Brussels, police officers and city officials know that wherever Falun Dafa practitioners come to demonstrate, it is sure that no problems, violence or any other disturbance will arise. However, it is also known that wherever Falun Dafa practitioners come to expose the persecution, Chinese ‘officials’ will come to cause trouble, trying to influence local police and city officials by spreading hate propaganda against Falun Dafa."

In September 2002, Ms. Fan Wenfang was unlawfully sent to Funan Detention Centre, and while she was there, the guards tortured her with force-feedings, leaving her in an emaciated and pitiful condition. She suffered low blood glucose level and electrolyte disorder at the same time. She was not sent home until she was on the verge of death. Yet she was subjected to more relentless brutal treatment only one day after being sent home.

Li Yumei and I had been deprived of sleep for nine days straight. Later we were only allowed to sleep for two or three hours a day. One time I asked the prisoner assigned to watch me: "Do you have parents, brothers and sisters? How do you feel when you see that they brutally torture practitioners?" She said: "Everyone is selfish. Although we know that practitioners are good people, we still have to do what they order us to do. Otherwise they will extend our term."

Whoever is sent to Langfang City Detention Centre learns that the forced labour there is extremely intensive and unendurable. There are always countless beans waiting to be picked and chopsticks waiting to be wrapped up. The person in charge assigns daily jobs to every detainee. Detainees who are unable to finish their assignments, are punished by either not being allowed to sleep or by being given evening duty. They are forced to work more than 10 hours every day.

Zhang and his accomplices continuously extort substantial amounts of money from practitioners. Zhang pries out the financial status of arrested practitioners, and threatens to send them to labour camps. In his original words: "I can send a person to hell (meaning 'sending to a labour camp') or to heaven (meaning 'not sending to a labour camp.')" By doing this, Zhang and his accomplices have illegally extorted over 350,000 Yuan from practitioners and families via bonds, fines, confiscations, etc. In a county like Tongnan that is known for its poverty, Zhang uses persecuting Falun Gong to help obtain promotions and make a fortune out of it.

The Minghui Falun Gong School takes the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance as guidelines to teach its students. During the parade the school created a big arch composed of red, white and blue balloons that flew over the platform for the event.

In order to let more people learn about Falun Gong, the practitioners made a light-bedecked float, including light lotus flowers and light banners. Three Western practitioners demonstrated the exercises on the float and the rest of the practitioners handed out Falun Gong truth-clarifying materials.

Upon learning that they were Falun Gong practitioners, a plainclothes police officer said right away, "Your activities are always peaceful. We are in favour of you and we trust you. Just do what you want to do." Some of the consular staff and dozens of onlookers witnessed this exchange.

A January 12, 2004 report in Science Daily Telegraph, entitled “Mystery Particle May Hold Clues To Universe,” discusses how fourteen physicists at the University of Melbourne “have recently discovered a sub-atomic particle that they are having difficulty explaining and difficulty fitting with any current theory that attempts to describe matter. Their research will be published in Physical Review Letters (in press).”