Protesters Highlight PRC Rights Abuses During World Summits

Falun Gong practitioners in Seoul, South Korea hold a protest rally Nov. 11, 2010 to end the 11-year persecution in China. (Clearwisdom.net)

While G-20 and APEC summit leaders in Korea and Japan grappled with issues of free trade, adjustments of exchange rates, and economic growth across the Asia-Pacific region, groups of protesters reminded leaders of their obligation to address the grave human rights abuses being carried out by one of their member states.

In South Korea and Japan, practitioners of Falun Gong were holding peaceful protests, asking that the People’s Republic of China be required to immediately stop the persecution of Falun Gong, including unlawful detention, forced labor, torture, and illicit trade in Falun Gong prisoner organs.

Leaders of 21 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and China, attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. APEC countries make up about 40 percent of the world’s population and account for some 44 percent of world trade.

Falun Gong practitioners held continuous petitions in front of the Japanese Congress during the summit in Tokyo. They set up 30-meter display boards detailing the persecution in China, evidence of forced organ harvesting, and court cases filed in various countries against the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jiang Zemin, who initiated the persecution in 1999.

“The Chinese government’s continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners who believe in Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance must end,” said Mr. Tsuruzono Masaaki, representative of the Falun Dafa Association of Japan, at a press conference on Nov. 13.

Masaaki called on Japan’s APEC host, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, to bring up the persecution of Falun Gong with PRC leader Hu Jintao. He praised the U.S. Congress for passing House Resolution 605 last March, which calls upon the Chinese regime “to immediately cease and desist from its campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners, to immediately abolish the 6-10 office, an extra judicial security apparatus given the mandate to ‘eradicate’ Falun Gong, and to immediately release Falun Gong practitioners, detained solely for their beliefs, from prisons and reeducation through labor (RTL) camps ...”

Masaaki appealed to the Japanese government to follow the U.S. example and not be fearful of economic threats by the CCP, but to support the Chinese people in their efforts to realize universal values.

Bringing Jiang Zemin to Justice

During the G-20 Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Falun Gong practitioners displayed placards and large banners that asked to stop the persecution and to bring Jiang Zemin and other top Chinese officials to justice, according to Clearwisdom.net, a Falun Gong website.

At a rally in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul on Nov. 11, a spokesperson for the Falun Dafa Association of South Korea said that a National Court in Spain has already indicted five high-ranking Chinese officials, including Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan, former head of the 610 Office, for their active participation in the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

In addition, an Argentinean Federal Court judge has issued arrest warrants for Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan for their role in the persecution of Falun Gong. These lawsuits mean that the global legal system has initiated bringing Jiang and his followers to justice, the protesters said.

On July 20 of this year, the 11th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong, practitioners in South Korea initiated the collection of one million signatures calling for an end to the persecution. So far, 123,670 people have signed.

Copies of the signatures will be mailed to embassies in South Korea. The signature collection will continue until the persecution ends, participants said.