Spanish Newspaper "Europa Press" Reports on an Anti-torture Exhibition in Madrid

The following is a report published in the Europa Press on January the 8th 2005:

On the morning of January the 8th, Spanish Falun Gong practitioners at Puerto del Sol in the centre of Madrid acted out the torture methods which have been commonly employed by the Chinese Jiang group to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in prisons and forced labour camps since it started to implement its policy of genocide against Falun Gong in 1999.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese cultivation and meditation practice that helps people to improve their health and upgrade their moral standard and is similar to Taiji and yoga. After it was made public in China in 1992, it quickly became very popular among the Chinese people. By 1999, there were about one hundred million people practising Falun Gong.

Before 1999, due to the tremendous contribution Falun Gong had made to improving people’s mental and physical well-being, Falun Gong was supported and awarded accolades by the Chinese Government. In July 1999, insisting on his own prejudiced view regardless of others’ opinions, the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin illegally banned Falun Gong. This act itself was against the Chinese constitution which protects its citizens’ freedom of belief. Since then, an unprecedented bloody and brutal crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners has been on-going.

The Spanish Falun Gong Association pointed out, “After five years of continuous persecution, over one million people have been illegally detained or jailed in prisons and forced labour camps. Elderly women and children are among those who have been persecuted. During the incarceration, they have suffered cruel persecution and many of them were even tortured to death.”

A Falun Gong spokesperson told reporters, “This is one of the most serious genocides in history. It is believed that over ten thousand people have been killed in this inhumane persecution.”

The most lamentable thing is that the western world has little knowledge of this persecution. The reason is that the Chinese Government has stringently censored and blocked the news reported by its state-controlled mass media.

Currently, human rights lawyers in twenty-five countries, including Spain, have initiated a lawsuit against this persecution through legal means. It is confirmed that international human rights organisations, such as the European Parliament, the U.N. Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International, have endeavoured to bring an end to this persecution.

The anti-torture exhibition at Puerto del Sol in Madrid commenced at 11:30 a.m. Falun Gong practitioners practise the exercises together in Diro Park every Sunday and teach the exercises free of charge.