(Clearwisdom.net) A Chinese woman who has been denied a passport and entry back into her home country because of her religious beliefs has told Northside People her sad and disturbing story.

Dongxue Dai, who lives in Seabury View in Malahide, is a Falun Gong practitioner, but because the practice has been banned by the communist regime in China, she has been ostracized from her country of birth.

Falun Gong is a distinct form of meditation practice, and its practitioners are banned by the Chinese government for what it claims are illegal activities.

The ban means that Dongxue can no longer travel home to China as she has been denied a new Chinese passport and even missed her mother’s funeral because of it.

Now living in Ireland since 1996, Dongxue, a computer technician, said she enjoys living in the north county Dublin town, but harbors hopes of being able to return home at some point in her life. "Malahide is a beautiful place and I really enjoy living by the seaside," Dongxue stated. "But all of my family are in China and I would really like to be able to travel back there one day."

Dongxue is one of about 50 Falun Gong practitioners living in Dublin and they regularly meet in the city center to petition against the ban. Dongxue says the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has carried out many human rights abuses on Falun Gong practitioners, a claim supported by Amnesty International and other human rights groups.

Dongxue said she became interested in the practice of Falun Gong after reading a book on it during a train journey in China. She quickly developed a love for the practice, which was beginning to flourish in her native country throughout the 1990s. Such was its growing recognition, however, that the practice of Falun Gong came to the attention of the Chinese Government, which, suspicious of its popularity, banned it in 1999. Dongxue had been living in Ireland for just over two years when the ban came into place and said she initially had a friendly relationship with Chinese Government officials in this country.

"When I first came to Dublin there were only a few Chinese people living here," she said. "Because of this we were often invited by Chinese embassy officials in Dublin to certain functions, so I got to know most of them and they were nice people. "But when the ban on the practice of Falun Gong came, my relationship with the embassy staff was much more difficult."

The first signs of strain came for Dongxue in August 2000 when she applied to the embassy for a renewal of her Chinese passport. Her request was turned down by the embassy and when Dongxue enquired of the staff there, she was told that she would get a new passport if she renounced the practice of Falun Gong. "They told me that by practicing Falun Gong I was breaking Chinese law," she stated.

Without the new passport, Dongxue was in limbo, unable to travel out of Ireland and effectively without a recognized nationality. She eventually overcame this by successfully applying for an Irish passport, after living and working here for five years.

But the loss of her Chinese passport and her consequent inability to visit home has caused untold grief for Dongxue over the past seven years. Back in China, Dongxue’s sisters, Dai Xialing and Dai Quixia, were both sentenced to three years in a labor camp because they refused to give up practicing Falun Gong. Her mother fell ill in 2002 and when she died in October of that year, Dongxue was unable to travel home for the funeral because the Chinese Embassy still refused her a passport. She is bitter of such treatment from her own Government but is aware that Falun Gong practitioners back in China are receiving worse punishment than that meted out to her. "We are petitioning in Dublin and in other cities across Europe to get the governments of these countries to support our campaign and put pressure on the Chinese Government to end this persecution," Dongxue said. "Support from the Irish people has been very good so far and we regularly get hundreds of names each time we petition in Dublin."

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs told Northside People that Ireland and the EU remain concerned about the situation of Falun Gong practitioners in China and have raised such concerns with the Chinese Government on many occasions. "On a bilateral level, Minister Ahern met with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in May 2006 during a visit to Beijing," the spokesman stated. "During the meeting, he had the opportunity to raise human rights issues and concerns, including the importance we attach to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
"Most recently, the Tanaiste held official talks in September 2006 with visiting Chinese Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan, in the course of which he also raised human rights issues and concerns," the spokesman said.

Northside People contacted the Chinese Embassy in Ballsbridge, but they were unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

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