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Beijing Resident Killed During Olympics for Practicing Falun Gong
Oct 5, 2008
https://faluninfo.net/article/822/?cid=84
NEW YORK (FDI) – An elderly Falun Gong practitioner from Chaoyang district in Beijing, home to the Bird’s Nest Stadium, died from injuries incurred in custody two days before the close of the 2008 Olympic Games, the Falun Dafa Information Center reported on Wednesday.
Mr. Wang Chongjun, age 65, died at home on August 23, 2008 after being injected with an unknown drug in a Beijing labor camp, according to sources in China. His wife, Ms. Wang Zhiqin, remains illegally detained and is unaware of her husband’s death.
In a telephone call made to the Longzhuashu village community police working site near their home on September 9, a member of the neighborhood watch group confirmed Wang’s death.
“He died. Isn’t Wang Chongjun dead?” said a Mr. Li who picked up the phone. When the investigator asked if Wang’s family had received compensation, Li said: “I don't know. He died at home...I listen to my boss. I'm from out of town.” (see transcript excerpt and link to a recording of the phone conversation below)
The Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC) had first reported the arrest of Wang and his wife in July 2008 (news). The couple were among over 8,000 adherents detained in a nationwide round-up that occurred in the months preceding the Olympics and has continued since the closing ceremonies as well.
“The tragic case of Wang and his wife are typical of the horrific abuses Falun Gong practitioners continue to face in China, abuses that worsened with the Olympics” says Falun Dafa Information Center Spokesperson Erping Zhang. “While Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is speaking at UN headquarters this week in New York City, countless innocent Chinese citizens are languishing in labor camps and in grave danger. It is up the international community—including governments, media, and human rights groups—to ensure that the thousands of adherents still in detention don’t meet the same fate as Wang.”
Case Details
On the evening of April 14, 2008, local security agents raided Wang’s home without a warrant and arrested the elderly couple. The detention followed more than a week of intensified harassment and surveillance of the family, reportedly on the orders of Yang Fengling, head of the village 610 Office. Yang ordered the surveillance after Ms. Wang refused to renounce her practice of Falun Gong during a previous meeting. After their arrest, the couple was taken to Chaoyang District Detention Center. Their family was denied access to visit them.
On June 20, 2008, the couple’s family members received notices from the dispatch center at Beijing’s Tuanhe “Re-education through Labor” (RTL) Camp (more about Tuanhe Labor Camp). The documents stated that Wang Chongjun had been sentenced to two years of RTL on May 22, 2008, and was being detained in the First Ward of the dispatch center. His wife, Wang Zhiqin, had been sentenced to two and half years of forced labor on May 20, 2008, and was being held in the Tenth Ward.
According to sources inside China, while at the camp, guards injected Mr. Wang with an unknown drug, an increasingly common torture technique used on Falun Gong, that led to 11 deaths in 2007. The drug reportedly caused his skin to turn a yellowish color for him to become emaciated. Seeing that Wang was on the verge of death, the camp authorities released him so as not to be held responsible for his dying in their custody.
Upon receiving notice from the camp, Wang’s family picked him up and took him to the hospital for medical treatment. Nevertheless, Wang died at home on the afternoon of August 23, 2008. His wife had meanwhile been transferred to Shanxi Province RTL Camp not long before the start of the Olympics. According to sources close to the couple, she has yet to be informed of her husband’s de
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Legacy of the 2008 Beijing Olympics
Sep 15, 2008
Event speakers painted a picture of worsening human rights conditions in Asia post-Olympics. Abuses cited included ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, infanticide, territorial disputes, and genocide. China, in particular, was singled out by several of the attendees for the gap between its promise of a more open China sensitive to human rights and its record during the Olympics of increased religious persecution. (more)
By Donna Ware and Gary Feuerberg
Epoch Times Washington, D.C. Staff
September 14, 2008
https://en.epochtimes.com/n2/china/beijing-olympics-falun-gong-4218.html
WASHINGTON, D.C.–The largest gathering of leaders of Asian human rights organizations in the nation’s capital gathered in the Gold Room of the Rayburn House Office building on Sept. 12, to discuss the post-Olympics human rights situation in China and throughout Asia.
Event speakers painted a picture of worsening human rights conditions in Asia post-Olympics. Abuses cited included ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, infanticide, territorial disputes, and genocide. China, in particular, was singled out by several of the attendees for the gap between its promise of a more open China sensitive to human rights and its record during the Olympics of increased religious persecution.
The event was hosted by Representatives Ed Royce (R, CA), Loretta Sanchez (D, CA), Chris Smith (R, NJ), and Frank Wolf (R, VA, and Co-Chair of the Human Rights Caucus), and co-sponsored by several organizations representing human rights abuses in China, Vietnam, Burma, Tibet, East Turkistan, Cambodia, and Laos.
Among the speakers addressing the groups were Congressmen Ed Royce and Chris Smith, Harry Wu of the Laogai Foundation, T. Kumar of Amnesty International, and Falun Gong spokesperson Erping Zhang.
The overall view of China just prior to, and during the Olympics, was recently summarized by Yang Jianli, founder and president of Initiatives for China, who writes:
“…although Beijing’s Olympic Organizing Committee had designated three public parks for protestors, no permits were actually issued, and many of those who were naive enough to apply for permits were instead detained by the Chinese government. A 79-year-old petitioner was interrogated for 10 hours and then sentenced to a year of 're-education through labor.'”
He continued, “The Foreign Correspondents Club of China, based in Beijing, announced 10 cases of journalists being beaten or roughed up by police who sometimes smashed their cameras. The Beijing games also took place under virtual martial law, with the revival of Mao Zedong’s ‘peoples warfare’ vigilante and the spying functions of the neighborhood committees in full effect.”
Erping Zhang said at the caucus that to put up a benign image in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games, the regime wanted the international community to believe that Falun Gong has disappeared in China. “…the evidence suggests otherwise. Every day, reports of torture, abuse, abductions, disappearances, and deaths continue to leak out of China,” said Mr. Zhang.
Zhang cited mass arrests of 12,000 practitioners in China, and interference with foreign reporters covering taboo topics in China.
Zhang also told of China’s attempts to export its brand of repression to American shores as evidenced in (1) the disruption of U.S.-based New Tang Dynasty Television’s signal to China and parts of Asia since seven weeks prior to the Olympic games and (2) the assaults of Falun Gong practitioners on the streets of Brooklyn, Flushing, and Manhattan, NY Chinatowns prior to the games.
Mr. Zhang cited one graphic example of China’s policies during the Olympics.
Yu Zhou, a popular music star, had won a following among young Chinese for his “mellow folk ballads” and that his group had released two popular CDs.
“Yu was arrested on January 26 while returning ...(more)
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U.S. Justice Department Launches Investigation of Flushing Officials
Sep 12, 2008
Behind the Flushing, NY incident lies a huge "Red Terrorism" network that the Chinese communist regime has been running in the U.S, which poses a threat to United States’ national security and founding principles. Ms. Wang said that the United States should escalate its security mechanism.
By Shi Yu
Epoch Times Staff
https://en.epochtimes.com/n2/united-states/justice-department-flushing-john-liu-ellen-young-4062.html
September 10, 2008
Chinese Consul General also being investigated for role
The U.S. Department of Justice has informed Falun Gong practitioner, Ms. Wang Wenyi, also an Epoch Times staff member, that an investigation has been started in response to complaints about New York Chinese Consul General Peng Keyu, New York council member John Liu, and New York Assemblywoman Ellen Young for their roles in the Flushing incident.
On July 16, Ms. Wang and several other Falun Gong practitioners who are Flushing residents filed complaints with the Justice Department’s Civil Right Division and submitted related video and audio tapes as evidence. They requested the Justice Department to conduct an investigation on Peng, Liu, and Young, and to punish those who have participated in the violent assault of Falun Gong practitioners, and to expel them back to China.
Ms. Wang said that after filing the complaint, she received a phone call from the Justice Department inquiring for information regarding the Flushing incident, and was also informed that an investigation had begun into Peng, Young, Liu, and others who had taken part in the Flushing incident.
An Epoch Times reporter called the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Special Investigation Division, and Public Relation Division, to inquire about the case, but was given the same reply, “We cannot comment on a case that is currently under investigation.”
The complaints against New York Chinese Consul General is based on his allegedly instigating and supporting pro-communist Chinese to assault Falun Gong practitioners in Flushing, which constitutes a hate crime.
Ms. Wang said that they submitted a recording of a phone conversation Peng made on May 21, in which Peng admitted that he was present in Flushing to encourage the pro-communist Chinese, including Chinese special agents and prominent leaders of Chinese organizations, to attack Falun Gong practitioners.
“New York councilman John Liu and assemblywoman Ellen Young are elected officials. They have failed to uphold freedom of religion, the most fundamental rights bestowed by the Constitution, and have instead become accomplices to the Chinese communist regime’s illegal actions of persecuting innocent Falun Gong practitioners and trampling the basic, universal human rights,” said Ms. Wang.
The complaints against the two New York politicians include their rejecting Falun Gong practitioners’ requests to meet with them and their meeting with pro-communist Chinese thugs numerous times officially and unofficially.
The complaints request the Department of Justice to thoroughly investigate the two officials’ relationship with the Chinese communist regime.
Also included in the filed complaints are specific information of several assaults on Falun Gong practitioners Ms. Wang, Mr. Erh Boon Tiong, Ms. Judy Chen, and Mr. Pan Hongyi, and so on. Some of the assailants have pleaded guilty and some are still being handled by the court.
However, all complaints are handled as individual assaults, which Ms. Wang considered to not be enough. She pointed out that the Flushing incident is the extension of the Chinese communist regime’s genocide against Falun Gong practitioners and anti-human crimes being exported from mainland China to overseas countries, and is in essence a hate crime committed by Chinese special agents and pro-communist Chinese thugs against a religious group. "It is definitely not a single,
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Olympic Clean-up Costs Another Life
Aug 29, 2008
Death of Falun Gong practitioner from abuse day before opening ceremonies revealed
Falun Dafa Information Center
https://faluninfo.net/article/805/?cid=84
August 29, 2008
NEW YORK (FDI)--A painter from Hunan province, arrested in a nationwide pre-Olympic roundup of Falun Gong adherents, died the day before the opening ceremonies from injuries incurred in custody. Detained in March, an emaciated Mr. Hu Heping from Yueyang city died August 7, 2008 according to recent reports received by The Falun Dafa Information Center. He was 55 years old.
According to sources in Hunan, Hu was arrested from his home without a warrant on the morning of March 18, 2008. He was detained by a local police officer by the name of Lu Ran, accompanied by two members of state-sponsored community watch groups, Li Yongfei and Zhang Yifei.
Over 8,000 other Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested in similar roundups during the months leading up to the Olympics. (news)
"Hu's case is typical of the pattern of arrests and abuse in custody we've seen in the run-up to the Olympics," says Erping Zhang, Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson. "While the world was preparing to watch the opening ceremonies, this man who was healthy in March was dying in his bed because of vicious treatment meted out by Chinese police."
On the day of his arrest, Hu was reportedly taken to Dongtingguan Hotel, where he was interrogated for 24 hours, and then transferred to Yueyang City's No.1 Detention Center.
According to sources inside China, Hu was tortured while in police custody, causing serious injuries to his internal organs and swelling to his feet and legs. He was seen coughing constantly, while his weight dropped from 120 pounds to 90 pounds. During his detention,
Hu's family was denied access to visit him by agents of the State Security Bureau and the 6-10 Office, an extralegal taskforce with the mandate to oversee the handling of Falun Gong cases.
Nearly three months after his arrest, on June 16, 2008, Hu was taken to Yueyang No. 1 People's Hospital for treatment, where doctors found his internal organs severely injured and diagnosed him as suffering from liver damage. Fearing Hu would die in custody, the detention center authorities contacted his family on June 17 and released him into their custody the following day, though only after they made a payment to the police. By this time, however, Hu was already extremely weak. His abdomen and lower body were severely swollen, a symptom known to occur in those suffering from severe liver damage, and he had difficulty walking. Unable to recover from his injuries, he died on the morning August 7, 2008.
Prior Accounts of Persecution
According to sources close to Hu, he became a practitioner in 1997. In 1999 and 2000, Hu went to Beijing twice to appeal against the persecution of Falun Gong. On both occasions, he was detained for a total of 75 days at Hubin Detention Center.
On March 12, 2003, Hu was illegally arrested and sentenced without a trial to two years of forced labor. During his internment at Xinkaipu "re-education through labor" camp, he was reportedly deprive of sleep and injected with unknown substances for refusing to give up his spiritual beliefs. He was released at the end of 2004.
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