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Author Topic: Shocking: Renowned Chinese lawyer's open letter to President and Premier
henryl
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posted 31 October 2005 05:00 PM      Profile for henryl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Stop Persecuting Believers of Freedom and Mend Your Ties with the Chinese People
---Renowned Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng's open letter to President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao

Dear President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao:

Greetings! Before further extending my greetings to you, I have visited outside of Beijing to uncover the facts about a group of our fellow citizens, Falun Gong practitioners, who have been the victims of a systematic, large-scale and organized persecution. I hid myself from public during that time as it was said that I had “disappeared.”

The current wave of continuous, systematic, large-scale and organized persecution against Chinese people practicing Falun Gong is a barbarian atrocity. I have not only received many letters detailing this, I also personally witnessed it during my recent trip. As a citizen and attorney, I take responsibility for any legal consequences of exposing what I witnessed.

On October 15, I met with Xu Chengben, living in Shandong Province’s Wendeng City. Upon meeting with him, he told me, “My wife He Xiuling's corpse has been in the police’s refrigerator chamber for nearly two years, waiting to be buried. They tortured her for a long time until she eventually died. It is ridiculous that they have been unable to close this case after two years. I just caught a short glimpse of her before she was tortured to death. When I saw her, she was out of her mind. She was tied to a bed and handcuffed, wearing nothing on the lower part of her body. My heart almost broke seeing my loved one having been tortured so cruelly. They were so inhumane as to push me out of the room after just a few minutes. She was only in her 40s at that time. This is what I saw when the police told me to look at her.”

“My wife was arrested five times before her death. She was once imprisoned in Liaoning Province’s Jinzhou City for three months. After being arrested for appealing in Beijing, she was confined in the restroom of a hotel in Zhifou District. It was rented with a long-term lease exclusively for holding arrested Falun Gong practitioners. The restroom was less than three square meters, yet sixteen people were detained there. Many of them could hardly breathe. After my strong demands, my wife’s corpse underwent an autopsy after she died, but they refused to give me the report. Ever time I asked they simply told me, ‘She died of practicing Falun Gong.’”

Falun Gong practitioner Lin Jixiao, a woman in her 40s, used to live at Dachuang Village of Songcun Township in Wendeng City. After being apprehended on September 28, she was sent to a detention center. She went on hunger strike there. When her family wanted to see her, they said that she was transferred to the Wangcun Forced Labor Camp. But according to those who had just been released from the camp, she was still inside the camp and on the verge of death.

When we rushed to the Wangcun Brainwashing Center, my family members were told that she was not there. We then came to the “6-10 Office,” but they said my wife had been transferred to Qingdao City. Even now we do not know whether she is dead or alive, and even anything about her whereabouts.

Xiao Yong, who lives in Fusan District, Yantai City, Shandong Province, is a decent person with good reputation, but he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison last July, simply because he practiced Falun Gong for a few days. “Yang Kemeng is a sophomore at the Automobile Engineering Department of the Harbin Institute’s of Technology Weihai Branch. He was such a good student and was liked by everyone at the Institute, all the way from students to the president. His public withdrawal from the Communist Youth League (CYP) on a Web site became of particular concerned by an official on the Central Standing Committee of the CCP.

Since he didn’t specify the name of the Institute in his statement, the “6-10 Office” launched a nationwide campaign to filter all the web sites of colleges and universities. He was identified by the personnel at the “6-10 Office” in Weihai in May. When asked if he practices Falun Gong and if he had in fact quit the CYP, he replied, “I’m willing to quit whatever I want.”

When school started on August 20, personnel from the "6-10 Office" came to the Institute to interrogate him again. He was arrested on August 29, but his parents didn’t know about it until they made a phone call to his dormitory.

On September 7, his parents, Yang Pinggang and Chang Lijun, the couple Wang Shengli and Ms. Wang in Jining City were arrested at the same time. Nobody knows their whereabouts to date.” The above is what a teacher surnamed Wang told me.

Gu Junxi, 58, living in Henan Province’s Fugou County, was illegally arrested by local policemen on August 18, 2005. He died after being tortured for over ten days. When his family members demanded an autopsy to ascertain the cause of death, the corpse was cremated without permission by the local police. The police said, “Appealing to Beijing authorities is useless at all.”

At midnight, September 12, 2005, several policemen barged into the residence of Shilei (pseudonym) in Dongshan District, Guangzhou City. Without any explanation, they kidnapped Shilei and left. Shilei’s wife whimpered over the phone, “My husband didn’t even have time to put on his shoes. After going down the stairs and getting into the van, they started beating him. The sound of the beating broke my heart. Mr. Gao, I feel so helpless! We haven’t heard anything from the officials since then.”

On September 6, 2005, Duan Sheng (male) and He Li (female), both Falun Gong practitioners of Shijiazhuang City, were arrested and their whereabouts are unknown so far.

On the eve of October 1, China’s National Day, a large-scale arrest against Falun Gong practitioners took place in Beijing City and Heilongjiang Province. There has been a spike in arrests while Mr. Hu Jingtao was visiting foreign countries in September. All these arrests were carried out in broad daylight. These incidents are hard facts and cannot be covered up.

Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen, please note that the persecution inflicted by certain local authorities upon our Falun Gong compatriots was completely at will. We cannot accept the fact that such kind of barbarian and inhuman violence is still occurring in China in the 21st century.

Through this catastrophe endured by Falun Gong practitioners, we have once again painfully recognized that the victims of this calamity are no longer confined to only these believers of freedom and their family members. The continuous atrocity against Falun Gong compatriots has thoroughly ridded those who take part in this persecution of humanity. The government officials and staff who performed the brainwashing have completely left behind their sense of decency and morality.

The inhuman torture experienced by Falun Gong practitioner He Xiuling, before her ultimate death, will be forever imprinted in the memory of the human beings in future. When her family members, after they were finally allowed to see her in the mortuary after she was considered dead, noticed that tears were dripping down from the corners of her eyes, they cried and asked the doctor for an emergency rescue. The doctor’s unusual indifference drove the family members into despair.

With the help of one of their fellow villagers who happened to know the doctor, the doctor finally brought over an apparatus for a medical inspection. The result indicated that He Xiuling still had a heartbeat. Instead of rescuing his patient as most doctors would do in normal cases, the immediate reaction of the doctor was to tear the electrocardiogram printout into pieces, and he escaped from the scene murmuring, “I didn’t see anything. I know nothing.” He Xiuling then died, her hopeless family members surrounding her. intears.

I don’t know how you would feel about the facts depicted above. The values long held by our nation, and the moral image of those governments around the world that have kept disgracefully silent or ignorant to this disaster, have all become the actual victims of this havoc.

China is one of the countries that signed the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” which stipulates, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person,” “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile,” and “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.” The Article 33 of China’s constitution also proclaims, “The State respects and preserves human rights.”

Whichever the international law or China’s fundamental law is concerned, nobody shall be allowed to violate the human rights of his fellow countrymen or to mercilessly persecute them at any excuse. Based on the belief in universal values and the respect upon ruling by law, I solemnly urge you to immediately stop persecuting the believers of freedom, to improve the relationship with Chinese citizens and to implement the policies of “rule by law” and “the rule of constitutional law.” China should be rebuilt on the groundwork of democracy, ruling by law and governing by constitution.

If you put this into practice, you will receive boundless support from Chinese citizens and people around the world.

At last, I would like to ask your guarantee that the Chinese individuals mentioned in this open letter will not suffer from another run of uncivilized persecution. Hao Qiuyan, a female Falun Gong practitioner from Shijiazhuang, suffered nearly eight months illegal imprisonment because of one of my previous open letters. In the coming future when I still enjoy safety, I will continue to pay attention to their security. As a Chinese citizen and lawyer, I am entitled to do so even though this is threatened by great danger in China now.

Very truly yours,
Gao Zhisheng
October 18, 2005 in Beijing

***Mr. Gao Zhisheng is one of the ten lawyers whom China's Ministry of Justice honored in 2001.

(Original: http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-10-24/33667.html)


From: Vancouver | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged

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