OTTAWA—Visiting Chinese official Bo Xilai was served a lawsuit at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa this afternoon over his persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual group in China, witnesses said.
Lucy Zhou, of the Falun Dafa Association of Canada said that an unnamed individual served Bo in an elevator of the hotel after Bo returned from his visit to Canada's Foreign Affairs department.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who had earlier threatened to arrest anyone who tried to serve a lawsuit on Bo, witnessed the service but did not interfere.
A lawyer representing the Falun Gong practitioners had said the RCMP's threat of arrest was "unacceptable" and interfered with their right to seek legal redress for injustice.
Bo is a leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice. He is accused of responsibility for a brutal campaign of persecution of Falun Gong adherents, including more than 100 torture deaths, in the northeast Chinese province of Liaoning where he was governor from 2001 to 2004.
Bo, who is a close ally of Jiang Zemin, the former communist leader that started the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, now holds the post of Chinese Commerce Minister. The announcement that Bo would visit Canada was met with protests from Falun Gong adherents, as well as rights groups and a prominent former Canadian secretary of state for Asia-Pacific, David Kilgour.
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