Epoch Times Protests Hong Kong Office Break-In and Destruction

The Epoch Times held a press conference Friday, March 3 in Washington, D.C. in front of the Chinese Embassy to protest the February 28th attack on its Hong Kong office.

With Hong Kong staff still in the office, four Chinese men, 20 to 30 years old, shattered and then stepped through the Epoch Times office's glass front door at 7:10 p.m. on Tuesday. They then stalked through the office looking for something specific. When they found what they were looking for, a CTP developer, they smashed the machine and then quickly left. The CTP developer is an expensive ($129,000) component in the Hong Kong Epoch Times print shop. Their intentions were evidently to prevent the printing of the Epoch Times in Hong Kong. In November 2004, The Epoch Times began a series of articles called the "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party," which has resulted in eight million Chinese resigning their memberships to the Party. Although the newspaper is banned on mainland China, many thousands of tourists from the mainland are exposed to the paper through visits to Hong Kong.

Brian Marple, an editor for the English Epoch Times hosted the press conference. Mr. Marple explained the Chinese communist regime's pattern of lawlessness:

"We have seen time and time again that the Chinese communist regime uses any means possible to silence dissident voices. In their own country when they don't have the correct laws to do that, they make new laws, and if those laws don't work, they simply distort the laws, and if that doesn't work or if they are operating in a foreign country where they don't have the means to make new laws or distort the laws, they simply break the laws."

Mr. Marple asked the public to remain attentive to the Epoch Times and the news it covers: "Why would the Chinese Communist Party be so afraid of us? What is it that we are saying that is so important to them?"

Bjoern Neumann, a German native and supporter of the Epoch Times , spoke at the press conference to announce his 24-hour hunger strike in protest of the attack on the Epoch Times' Hong Kong office. He also expressed his support and commended the courage of the Epoch Times and of the Chinese people who have spoken out and quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). "I am a native German. We know how deadly silence is, making people silent, terrorized to be silent, with all kinds of vicious means. No, I will not be silent."

Epoch Times columnists Jiang Tian Liang and He Bin also spoke at the press conference on the implications these recent attacks have regarding the current state of the Chinese Communist regime.

"Of course we are here today to denounce the CCP's attack in Hong Kong, but at the same time we should remain optimistic: only a regime struggling for its life would commit such completely irrational acts."

The CCP has exhausted all of its tactics, "at this point the CCP can only use mobster tactics: attack people, attack property. This kind of behavior is without any concrete goal and without consideration for the consequences."

He Bin echoed Jiang Tian Liang noting, "It is from this sort of thug tactics that we can see the Chinese Communist Party's growing weakness."