Persecution Against Falun Gong Increased in Year of Olympics, Group Says

ESCALATED PERSECUTION: A Falun Gong practitioner participates with others in a torture reenactment during a 2008 protest of China's human rights abuses, Melbourne, Australia. (Jarrod Hall/The Epoch Times)

During the 2008 Olympics, human rights in China continued its downward slide, with 8,000 Falun Gong practitioners being subject to arbitrary detention and arrests, and over 100 deaths.

This, and other appalling human rights abuses, were documented in detail and presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council before it concluded an annual human rights review of China.

The facts were documented in an annual report released by the Falun Dafa Information Center on February 10, 2009. It documented the persecution of Falun Gong that had taken place in mainland China in the year 2008. The document details abuses that have occurred against practitioners of the meditation practice in the wake of the Olympics.

The report, titled “Escalated Campaign against Falun Gong in China Before and After the Olympics,” documents reports of over 8,000 adherents having been detained in 2008. Large-scale arbitrary arrests were made, the report charges, especially around the time of the Olympics.

Lawyers who defended Falun Gong were harassed, the report says, with some being subject to monitoring, disbarment, and even detention and torture.

104 deaths in 2008 were documented by the non-profit group, which describes itself as “both the official press office for Falun Gong as well as a primary resource for information about the human rights abuses Falun Gong practitioners face.” Among the deaths were that of Yu Zhou, a popular folk musician who was arrested on his way home after a concert in Beijing, and was killed after eleven days in detention at the Tongzhou District Detention Center.

His case was prominently covered by The Epoch Times, as well as the Times of London and Agence France-Presse.

The document also listed how the Chinese communist regime restricted freedom of speech and press, as well as the Internet. Also documented were the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to suppress Falun Gong overseas, such as in Flushing, New York City.

Falun Dafa Information Center spokesman Erping Zhang said, “The Chinese regime essentially used the heightened security surrounding the games to further its own decade-long agenda of ’eradicating Falun Gong.’”