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Falun Gong practitioners rally on Parliament Hill. They want the persecution of their fellow practitioners in China on the agenda when Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with Chinese leader Hu Jintao next week. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)
PARLIAMENT HILL, Ottawa—Battered by wind and rain, Falun Gong practitioners held firm to banners Wednesday afternoon on Parliament Hill as they called on the government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper to raise his voice for human rights in China.
With details emerging of a planned visit to Canada by Chinese communist leader Hu Jintao in the days prior to the G20 in Toronto later this month, groups concerned about human rights in China have begun planning events to push the government to speak out.
On Wednesday, about 100 Falun Gong practitioners and their supporters gathered outside while the Parliamentary Friends of Falun Gong, a group comprised of MPs and senators that includes members from all four parties, held a press conference inside.
The coordinated events are part of an ongoing request to Harper to make human rights, and the persecution of Falun Gong, a central part of the agenda when meeting with Chinese leaders.
“People must not be jailed or killed for their religious beliefs or spiritual practices,” said NDP MP Bill Siksay, chair of the parliamentary group. He said they were calling on the prime minister to raise the issue of persecuted Falun Gong practitioners—specifically the 12 who have family in Canada.
Liberal Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin responded to a similar call when they held office.
In his meeting with Hu back in 2005, Martin aired Canadians’ concerns thoroughly, raising several issues the Chinese regime frequently attempts to quash discussion on. Besides Falun Gong, Martin raised human rights in general, Tibet, and industrial espionage.
“We believe that both economic development and better governance requires not only openness and transparency but an understanding of the importance of human rights,” he said.
It was the kind of message the speakers at Wednesday’s press conference are hoping to hear again, this time from a Conservative government.
Falun Dafa, a Chinese meditation practice that gained rapid popularity in the 1990s, was outlawed by the Chinese regime in 1999 and became subject to a campaign of eradication that has seen hundreds of thousands imprisoned and thousands killed.
“For over 10 years, the Chinese regime has gotten away with systematically persecuting Falun Gong in China through imprisonment, torture, hate propaganda, brainwashing, information blockades, murder, and even organ harvesting,” said Grace Wollensak, with the Falun Dafa Association of Canada.
“The regime not only continues to deny these crimes which are still going on, but also continues to pressure and manipulate other countries through trade to turn a blind eye to these widely documented atrocities,” she added.
“In turn they target the conscience of democratically elected leaders who are put into a position to choose between money and silence regarding the ongoing torture and death of innocent Chinese citizens at the hands of this brutal regime.”
In China today, Falun Gong is the largest human rights issue with widespread imprisonment and torture still common practice. Wollensak said it was critical that Canada address the Falun Gong human rights issue if it is to engage in a healthy relationship with China.
Tianxiao (Michelle) Zhang told reporters how she lost much of her family in China to the persecution. First her brother-in-law, a marine biologist, was killed at Wangcun labour camp, where he was detained after being asked to come to the police station for a “casual” discussion with police.
“Songtao never came back again. He was sentenced without a trial to three years of forced-labour,” Zhang said.
He was denied any family visits and moved from a local labour camp to one far away, she explained. “Three months later, my family was notified that Songtao had died in detention.”
Two years later, tragedy struck again when Zhang’s sister was abducted by Chinese police and detained for six months before disappearing. Zhang has since had no news of her sister’s whereabouts and fears she has been killed for her organs.
That fate is believed to have claimed the lives of some 40,000 Falun Gong practitioners, according to an investigative report published by human rights lawyer and member of the Order of Canada David Matas and former MP and Secretary of State David Kilgour.
Zhang herself called a Chinese hospital posing as a potential organ recipient.
“A staff member at the Urological Surgery department of Western China Hospital in Chengdu City openly admitted that most of the organs that they had used were from Falun Gong practitioners.
“I was so angry. I said to him that they had committed crimes against humanity. The man then started to yell and call me names. ‘Crawl away and die,’ he yelled.”
Her mother also died, not from torture but from the stress and devastation of seeing her daughter’s family torn apart. Zhang said that the deaths of her mother, brother-in-law, and sister, who she described as “beautiful,” have left her heartbroken.
Her sister also had a daughter, orphaned by the death of her parents and left in the care of Songtao’s parents who have been afraid to tell the girl, now 10 years old, that her parents were murdered by the Chinese regime because they persisted in practising Falun Gong. Zhang says they tell friends and others that their son and daughter-in-law are away for work.
The possible influence that direct words from Harper was illustrated by the last speaker at the press conference, Lizhi He, who was imprisoned in China without trial until Amnesty International and the Canadian government called for his release. He was on a list of Falun Gong adherents with family members in Canada that Conservative MP Scott Reid put on a parliamentary motion in 2002.
The motion, which passed unanimously, urged then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to raise the issue of 13 practitioners with Canadian family ties at his meeting with then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.
As a result of those efforts, He was released from detention and able to join his family in Canada.
Next Tuesday, a similar press conference will be held by the China Human Rights Coalition, an umbrella organization made up of several groups including Amnesty International, the Uyghur Canadian Society, the Falun Dafa Association of Canada, Students for a Free Tibet, Chinese democracy groups, and more.
A rally to call on Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders to end the persecution of Falun Gong and crimes against humanity in China will take place in Vancouver on Saturday, June 19, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
VENUE: 3300 block Granville St. in front of the Chinese Consulate
