Washington, DC –China’s Minister of the Information Industry Mr. Wang Xudong, while accompanying Chinese Vice Premier Ms. Wu Yi on an official trip to Washington, was sued Friday morning by Falun Gong for major violations of human rights.
According to an anonymous witness, a group of Chinese delegates appeared at around 8 a.m. in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, near the Pentagon. The delegates were preparing to board a bus and a limousine outside the hotel. Among the delegates, there was a small group of men—an overweight Chinese man surrounded by his bodyguards and people who appeared to be U.S. Secret Service agents.
Suddenly a man approached the group and called out to Wang Xudong. The overweight man acknowledged and turned his head. Next the man placed an envelope at the foot of an American agent and told him that it was a legal document.
After the man served the document, the agent picked up the legal document and handed it to Wang Xudong. Wang refused to accept it and tried to shove it back to the agent. The agent did not want it, so he pushed it back to Wang.
According to the witness, Wang looked frightened and worried.
Wang had previously been sued under the provisions of the Alien Tort Claim Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act while attending the third China-U.S Telecommunications Summit in Chicago in 2004.
Wang Xudong’s name had not been announced in advance as one of the Chinese delegates accompanying Wu Yi, apparently in an attempt to avoid his being sued again.
The Falun Gong practitioners’ attorney Terri Marsh said that they filed a lawsuit against Wang for his major violations against human rights as the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s Hebei Province Committee between June 2000 and November 2002.
Marsh says that her clients believe it is very important to take a legal action against Wang Xudong because it is evident that the U.S. government, when interacting with foreign officials, pays scant attention to the human rights record of foreign delegates.
According to China’s official record, Wang Xudong has has been working since June 2000 as the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Hebei Provincial Committee (the provincial Secretary has authority over a provincial CCP organization). On March 17, 2003 he became Minister of the Information Industry.
Falun Gong practitioners have identified Wang Xudong as one of the primary suspects involved in the persecution of Falun Gong. With Wang as the Secretary of Hebei Provincial Committee, Hebei Province became one of the provinces with the worst records of human rights violations against Falun Gong adherents.
After Wang became the Minister of the Information Industry, he continued to push for the CCP’s policy of the persecution of Falun Gong via telecommunications technology, such as phone tapping, audio recording, mobility tracking, monitoring the Internet, etc.
The ministry’s actions have resulted in a large number of Falun Gong adherents being imprisoned and even tortured to death. Meanwhile, the ministry actively seeks to block any information concerning the persecution of Falun Gong from reaching the Chinese people or the outside world.
The Epoch Times is closely following the progress of this story and will publish follow-up reports as new information comes to light.
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