Aug 17, 2005

Grant Lu has had his four tires slashed more than ten times, his windscreen and passenger windows repeatedly smashed, and the messages on his van covered with black spray paint.

His vehicle, adorned with photos of human rights atrocities in China against the Falun Dafa meditation practice, has been repeatedly vandalized across five locations in three Sydney suburbs, in a string of incidents which he believes are part of an intentional campaign by the Chinese government to harass and intimidate him.

But last Sunday (August 6), he caught a culprit on film. Suspecting the vandalism would follow its usual pattern of slashing all four tires one night, and then smashing the front windscreen the following night, Grant asked a friend to hide in the van with a video camera, and got exactly what he was hoping for.

Footage taken shows a mustached Asian man walking up to the van carrying a plastic bag. He then takes a large rock from the bag, and hurls it into the windscreen, before fleeing. According to the friend in the van, the man dropped the rock in a nearby garbage bin before driving off in a taxi. His face was captured clearly on film.

The next part was easy. Grant, a taxi driver himself, gave a still-shot of the man to ten of his taxi-driver friends, who soon identified him, got his ID number, and reported him to the Surry Hills police.

Investigations are continuing.

Grant has no doubts that the Chinese Communist Party is behind the vandalism. "We know the Chinese government is persecuting Falun Gong. Many Falun Gong practitioners have been followed, lots of Falun Gong practitioners' cars have been broken, and their homes have been broken into," he said.

"I think every person should have a right to know the real story of the communist party. And you know that's what I'm doing, and they just want to try to stop me or threaten me, something like that."

Grant knows the Chinese Communist Party better than most. His name used to be Cheezong Lee before he changed it to evade a blacklist and enter Shanghai in November 2003, where his fiancée had just been released after two years in a labor camp. The last time he had tried to reach her, the police found out and were already waiting for him when he arrived at his parents' house, where they promptly arrested him and expelled him from the country.

But this time things went better, and he was able to get the photo with her that he needed in order to secure her visa to Australia, where she now lives with him.

Earlier this year, defecting first secretary of the Sydney Chinese Consulate, Mr Chen Yonglin, made headlines with his claim that the Chinese government employed over 1000 spies to monitor the activities of overseas dissidents and groups banned on the mainland.

Source:

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-8-17/31290.html