NEW YORK—Two pro-communist Chinese were arrested in Flushing, NY, on June 4 in separate incidents. Both had been actively involved in attacks against Falun Gong practitioners in Flushing since May last year.
Ms. Li Huahong was arrested June 3 on a charge of grand larceny of the 4th degree after grabbing a cell phone from Ms. Wenyi Wang and fleeing, said the New York police communications department. The Queens Criminal Court also issued Ms. Wang a protection order, stating Li Huahong cannot come within 100 yards of her.
Ms. Li’s colleague, a man in an electric wheelchair, was arrested later in the day in a separate incident and will appear in court on Oct. 9.
Ms. Wang said she was attacked on Tuesday while investigating reports of the Chinese Epoch Times newspaper being stolen and torn up by the two pro-communists.
“Tuesday morning was intense,” said Ms. Wang, executive director of a foundation that supports Chinese people to quit their communist party membership. “The Chinese Epoch Times had run a story about a different pro-communist attacker who had just pleaded guilty in court. They didn’t want anyone to read the article so they grabbed papers from distributors and tore them up in front of them.” Ms. Wang also frequently reports for The Epoch Times.
Ms. Li, and a small group of associated Chinese, set up a table most days displaying hate material against the practice of Falun Gong and encouraging its persecution. The table is set up on Main Street Flushing.
Last year, a group of close to 200 Chinese gathered to attack Falun Gong practitioners. An investigation revealed that the New York Chinese Consulate General had backed the incidents.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that gained popularity so quickly in the 1990’s that the Chinese Communist Party leader at the time, Jiang Zemin, ordered a crackdown that was launched in July, 1999, and continues unabated today.
Ms. Wang, also a Falun Gong practitioner, said she was passing Ms. Li’s table late in the day on June 2, when Ms. Li and the man in the wheelchair started berating her.
“Since they were attacking my belief, I wanted to use my video camera to record it,” Ms. Wang said.
A witness, Ms. Wu, who did not give her first name, said she saw the man in the wheelchair rush toward Ms. Wang and grab her video camera, breaking it.
“So (Ms.) Wang took out her cell phone and called the police,” Ms. Wu said. “Someone yelled, ‘Grab her cell phone!’ and Ms. Li rushed toward Ms. Wang, who starting taking photos with her phone. Then one thug raided Wang from her back and hit her hand so that the cell phone fell to the ground. When Wang bent down to pick up the cell phone, a man kicked the cell phone toward Li Huahong and another man.”
“This is so wrong. I was aggressively attacked and robbed,” said Ms. Wang, who also said that her phone was then grabbed and taken into a nearby store.
The police subsequently arrived, but Ms. Li and the man in the wheelchair were not arrested until the following day.
Ms. Li is required to appear in court at an as-yet undisclosed date.
Additional reporting by Xu Zhusi and Joshua Philipp
