(Clearwisdom.net)
El Dia de Cordoba, a daily newspaper in Cordoba, Spain, recently published an article about the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese communist regime. A translation follows:
A Journey for Freedom
August 7, 2005
The Finnish model Pia Maria Sandas, who recently visited Cordoba, relates how in China, for spiritual and religious reasons, there are many broken families, tortures and exiles.
More than 2,600 people have been killed in China over the past six years for practicing the meditation system Falun Gong, but it is estimated that over 10,000 people have been tortured to death, 200,000 jailed and over 1,000 forced into mental institutions. The abuse of human rights in this Asian country has reached the extreme limits with people being persecuted, tortured, and thousands killed and forced into exile, making it border on the limits of genocide.
Falun Gong is a peaceful discipline based on the three principles of: "Truth, Compassion and Tolerance." For this, and due to the situation being unsustainable, Pia Maria Sandas, a Finnish ex-model and practitioner of this discipline for the past five years, takes advantage of her position as the international representative of a cosmetic label to travel through over 45 countries to denounce this persecution. Pia, who recently visited Cordoba, explains that one of her motivations to fight for this cause was the death of one of her friend's husband.
"Dai was living exiled in Australia with her daughter Fadu, when her husband was detained by the Chinese government for practicing Falun Gong, and was then tortured and found dead," Pia explains. Dai learned about her husbands death via the internet. Pia also states that, "Knowing what I do about the situation, it would be crime if I was to do nothing to stop it".
This meditation and exercise relaxation technique that was born in 1992 and is now practiced in over 78 countries, spread very quickly through China until it grew to more than 70 million practitioners.
The persecution began in July of 1999 and in the first three days more than 30,000 people were detained and sent to labor reeducation camps in which through forced labor and propaganda sessions they tried to eliminate the semi-religious group.
Despite promises of change, there are many organizations denouncing the double face that China displays, and they have initiated legal actions from democratic countries so that the responsible agencies will take actions. In Spain, the followers of this technique have not remained silent in the face of theses injustices, and a lawyer from Valladolid, Carlos Iglesias, has filed three lawsuits in the National Court of Spain for tortures and genocide against the practitioners of this discipline in China.
Pia believes that, "One always have to keep hope, and that with the end of communism will come an end to this situation." Meanwhile, she and many Falun Gong followers are working on bringing awareness to societies around the world about the situation in China where neither life nor liberty is respected and about the Chinese government that tortures and kills in an indiscriminate manner.
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