On Sept. 6, Seoul immigration authorities and local police arrested 26-year-old Mr. Jin after the couple’s asylum application was rejected. Mr. Jin’s wife, Ms. Ma, is also in danger of deportation but is currently out of custody. Jin is being held in an immigration detention center, and faces imminent deportation.
Since 2009, after a visit from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda chief Li Changchun, South Korea has sent at least 10 Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) refugees back to China, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC). Currently, 56 others have been denied asylum.
The deportations violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the U.N. Refugee Convention; South Korea is a signatory of both.
“If he (President Lee) really sends the practitioners back to China to suffer,” said Yahui Jia, a 38-year-old Falun Gong practitioner who escaped from China in 2010, “and the award is going to him today for human rights and democracy, isn’t that ridiculous?”
Jia shared a chilling story of persecution and torture, including not being allowed to eat or go to the bathroom for days at a time.
“An example of brutal torture, especially for females, is they use electric batons to shock the sensitive regions, like the waist area and other areas,” she said through a translator, appearing to barely hold back tears at the haunting memories.
Jia’s daughter was 8 when Jia was first arrested, and “since then, she lost happiness,” becoming sullen, and unlike other children her age.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that involves doing meditative exercises and living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Standing, slow-moving exercises were alternated with sitting meditation before and after the press conference on Tuesday, part of a weeklong protest.
According to the FDIC, Falun Gong practitioners are the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the world, numbering in the hundreds of thousands at any time. They have confirmed over 3,300 deaths resulting from persecution.
A Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official with the sports administration indicated early in 1999 that there were 100 million people practicing Falun Gong in China. In July 1999 the Chinese Communist Party began a campaign to “eradicate” the practice.
Practitioners fear President Lee may be under political pressure from the CCP that has been behind similar situations in the past.
“We’re not sure,” said 27-year-old Seog One Ha, a Korean native and current Columbia student. “[But] he should understand that cooperating with such a malicious persecution is [a] bad record that cannot be canceled in the future.”
Asked if he thinks the situation could be changed due to increasing public awareness, such as a Sept. 20 Wall Street Journal article about the deportations, Ha said, “Yes.”
Practitioners have delivered letters of appeal to the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, the South Korean consulates in New York and San Francisco, and all levels of the South Korean government.
Calls made to the main South Korean Consulate in New York were not answered; the Appeal of Conscience Foundation also could not be reached as of press time.
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