The Global Human Rights Torch Relay initiated by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) will be launched today in Athens, Greece. Before that, the CIPFG will hold a seminar ‘Olympic Spirit and the CCP crimes against Humanity’. At the lighting ceremony, a senior former Canadian politician and members of the German International Human Rights Committee, the chair of the Asia Institute of the US, the president of the Chinese Liberal Democratic Party from New Zealand and a prominent Greek human rights lawyer will be present and will deliver a speech.
It is expected that within a year’s time of the launch of the relay, the route of the human rights torch will cover more than a hundred cities in dozens of countries on five continents. The CIPFG hopes to raise the international community’s concern over the CCP’s human rights violations in China with the help of the human rights torch relay, to stop the CCP’s crimes against humanity of harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners and to stop shame being brought to the Olympic Games.
Events in Athens:
1. Press Conference for the Global Human Rights Torch Relay at King George II Hotel at 12 pm on the 9th of August.
2. The lighting ceremony of the Global Human Rights Torch and the beginning of the Global Human Rights Torch Relay in Syntagma Square, Athens at 8.30 pm on the 9th of August.
Since its establishment in 2006, the CIPFG has been concerned bout the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Its revelation of large scale organ harvesting against living Falun Gong practitioners has drawn concern and responses from the international community. CIPFG consists of over three hundred delegates around the world, from politicians to doctors, from lawyers to religious groups. On May the 30th 2007 the CIPFG announced in Canada that “Olympics and Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Coexist In China” and requested the CCP to stop its persecution of Falun Gong, human rights lawyers such as Gao Zhisheng and other righteous persons, and to allow the international community and CIPFG to enter China to investigate without interference from the Chinese authorities. On June the 8th the CIPFG wrote to the Chinese leaders Mr. Hu Jintao and Mr. Wen Jiabao, to ask them to stop the persecution by August the 8th 2007, otherwise CIPFG would call for a worldwide boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
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