Hong Kong/Berne/Frankfurt (August 15, 2002)
A Hong Kong court today found all sixteen members of the Falun Gong guilty of all charges. Among the accused are four Swiss nationals and a New Zealander. They had been accused of disturbing the public order and resisting arrest while holding a peaceable demonstration on March 14, 2002. These individuals had demonstrated against the persecution of their movement by the Chinese authorities. In the process of the demonstration they had erected a banner reading "Jiang Zemin, stop the killings."
The IGFM --Internationale Gesellschaft fuer Menschenrechte (International Association for Human Rights) and the Gesellschaft fuer Bedrohte Voelker (Association for Threatened Peoples) demand that the Chinese leadership end the suppression against Falun Gong and other belief systems.
Under normal circumstances, the transgressions the group has been accused of carries a sentence of 1-2 years imprisonment. The foreign Falun Gong members were sentenced to monetary fines of up to HK$ 3,000 (approximately Euros 410 or US$ 400).
The judge's sentence was mild, presumably to avoid international notoriety. Nevertheless, the judgment has far-reaching consequences, because this trial sets a precedence. Falun Gong has been outlawed and massively persecuted in China since 1999, but until now had been legal in Hong Kong. This guilty verdict does not merely recognize and affirm the persecution in Mainland China, but has extended it to Hong Kong, thereby effectively and dramatically worsening the human rights situation in China proper.
Mr. Erich Bachmann, one of the accused Swiss nationals, reported by telephone from Hong Kong today that the trial was conducted unfairly. The defense attorney argued in vain that the judge might be involved in a conspiracy. According to Mr. Bachmann's eyewitness account, the judge paid exclusive attention to testimony from involved police officers and summarily dismissed any testimony from Falun Gong followers as lies.
The human rights organizations IGFM and GFBV demand that the Chinese leadership cease to misuse the "Fight Against Terrorism" as an arbitrary excuse to ignore freedom of belief and cease to suppress any religious belief system, whether it be Falun Gong members, Catholics and members of Protestant Free Churches, Muslim Uigurs or Tibetans. Exercising the right to practice one's faith must not be curtailed.
This persecution has lead to capricious arrests, unfair trial proceedings, forcible detention in mental institutions and tortures, all the way to aggravated killings during incarceration. It further includes excessive use the death penalty. Public protests against this repression are punished for "Disturbing the Public Order."
(Original text in German)
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Category: Persecution Outside China
