UPDATED: 3:43 P.M. OCT. 11, 2011.
BANGKOK—A 72-year-old Thai woman was beaten with a steel rod on Friday morning while meditating opposite the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok—the third attack she has suffered at this spot in the last two months. The two men who assaulted her grabbed protest banners she had displayed and fled with them on a motorbike.
Since 2005 Ms. Lin Cai has taken up her station opposite the Chinese Embassy where she peacefully protests the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong. On Friday she arrived, as usual, at around 9:36 a.m. She unfurled banners with protest messages in Thai and Chinese and began to practice the Falun Gong exercises.
According to a police report Ms. Lin filed, while she was practicing the exercises with her eyes closed, she felt someone approaching and heard them shouting at her. She was struck on her arm and then she opened her eyes to find two men in black before her. One man tore down the banners and the other hit her twice more with the steel rod. While she was still in shock, the man hit her abdomen with his fist. She dropped to the lawn by the sidewalk.
The two men, who appeared to be Thai, grabbed the banners and fled from the scene on a motorbike without a license plate. During the attack, Ms. Lin said, the two men shouted in Thai, “I will teach you a lesson about displaying banners.”
When The Epoch Times reporter arrived at the scene, Ms. Lin was unable to move her right arm, which she held in place with a scarf.
According to Ms. Lin, the messages on the banners were “Falun Gong Is Good,” “Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance Are Good,” and “The Chinese Communist Party? China; Patriotism? Loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, which are mentioned in the second banner, are the principles of the moral teachings of Falun Gong. The third banner criticizes the way in which the CCP confuses loyalty to China with loyalty to it.
Displaying such banners is legal in Bangkok and, Ms. Lin, as a Thai citizen, was exercising her protected right of assembly.
This was not the first attack Ms. Lin has suffered. It was the third, she said.
In mid-August, she was practicing the Falun Gong exercises at the exact same spot when a taxi suddenly drove onto the sidewalk and sent her into the air. The taxi stopped after going almost 100 feet. He claimed he was having a drink of water when he accidentally lost control of the steering wheel.
Several weeks later, a man in black took all of her banners while she was practicing the Falun Gong exercises. The man shouted insults and threatened her, saying she had to stop displaying banners, before he fled on a motorbike.
Ms. Lin, an ethnic Chinese living in Thailand, believes that the Chinese Communist regime must have ordered the attacks to stop passersby and Chinese tourists from seeing the messages on the banners.
Another Chinese in Thailand named Yang suspects that the Chinese Embassy might have been sending her a warning because they felt the messages on the banners damaged its public image.
A police officer on duty nearby was outraged at the attack. He assisted Ms. Lin in reporting the case at the nearest police precinct.
The Deputy Chief of the nearest police station promised Ms. Lin that the police will thoroughly investigate the attack and urged her to go to the hospital immediately. He added that the hospital report will be used as evidence.
Ratchawithi Hospital in Bangkok diagnosed Ms. Lin with a broken arm and put it in a cast.
The director of a China Democratic Party branch in Thailand, Cheng Weimin, told The Epoch Times that Ms. Lin’s holding a protest in front of the CCP embassy for many years is righteous and moving.
Mr. Li Zhiyou, the person in charge of the Guangxi Province branch of the China Democratic Party in China but who now lives in Thailand, told The Epoch Times that Thailand is a democratic country.
The peaceful protest by Ms. Lin does not affect any Thais and cannot be banned by the Thai government, Mr. Li said. “It is 100 percent sure that the thugs were paid for by the CCP embassy, which wants to expel Lin from in front of the embassy.”
Cheng said that Lin’s actions did not harm anyone and nobody in Thailand will be unhappy with her except the CCP.
“You can imagine, she is protesting right before the eyes of CCP—that puts great pressure on them. The CCP also cares very much about its image, and so they must take actions against Lin.”
Cheng held that, the raid is “No doubt from the CCP. I do not see anyone else who has a motive to do it.”
In July 1999, the then-head of the CCP, fearing Falun Gong’s popularity and that its teachings had greater appeal than communist doctrine, ordered a campaign to “eradicate” the practice. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC) hundreds of thousands of practitioners are detained in China. FDIC has documented the deaths of over 3,400 practitioners due to torture and abuse, but estimates the true death toll is in the tens of thousands.
An integral part of the CCP’s campaign against Falun Gong has been the harassment of Falun Gong practitioners outside of China. Falun Gong is practiced in over 100 countries worldwide, and incidents in which Chinese consular officials interfere with the activities of practitioners are common
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