After meeting with Falun Gong practitioners during a three-day investigatory trip to Beijing, McMillan-Scott was convinced that, despite a huge increase of foreign trade relations, the human rights situation in China - and particularly the repression of religious and spiritual groups including Falun Gong, haven't changed in the least, and expressed his admiration for them. "Today in China religious movements demonstrate [...] courage, they are giving the lead [in the quest for freedom], they inspire those hundreds of millions enslaved by the CCP".

Berlin: An Olympic medallist participated recently in a hunger strike, because of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Martin Rubenis, who was awarded the bronze metal in Turin Italy for his figure skating performance, joined a protest event outside the Chinese Consulate in Riga Latvia three weeks ago. This was a short-term hunger strike by the spiritual group Falun Gong because their members are suffering cruel repression in China.

A vice-president of the European Parliament returned last week from a three day investigation into human rights abuses in mainland China. He is the first high-level western official to personally meet with persecuted Falun Gong practitioners inside China. The facilitator of the gathering, a Boston businessman and Falun Gong practitioner himself, was arrested and deported for "hosting an illegal meeting."

Brussels (EFGIC) - Following a three-day visit to Beijing, the Vice President of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott, called the Chinese Communist leadership a “brutal, arbitrary and paranoid system” at a press conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday, and said that the EU would keep putting pressure on China to improve human rights and religious freedom. After having met with various diplomats, nongovernmental organizations, and individuals including Falun Gong practitioners, who are ruthlessly persecuted by the CCP regime, McMillan-Scott concluded that, despite economic advancements, there hasn’t been any improvement for human rights and freedom in China.

"My name is Wenyi Wang.. I was released from the Washington, DC District Court on Friday, April 21st; I will be back in court on May 3rd facing a potential penalty of $5000 and six months in prison. I think it is necessary for me to give to the public an explanation for my protest during Hu Jintao's remarks onThursday morning on the South Lawn of the White House during his visit with President Bush."

According to a report by the Belgian newspaper, De Standaard, on the 20th of April, the British Organ Transplantation Society accused the Chinese Communist Party of violating human rights in a press release yesterday. Britain's top-notch surgeons emphasised the recent condemnation of the CCP organs trade. Not only the organs of those who on the death roll were taken away without the permission of the prisoners; what was worse, the prisoners were executed when organs were needed.

“Reliable sources report of secret Chinese death camps, where thousands of so-called “enemies” of the Chinese Communist regime, such as Falun Gong practitioners, are being held for one reason only: to steal their organs for international organ trade supply. The most dramatic happening in this is that the organs are taken from live and healthy people,” alleged the health official of the Grünen [Greens], Kurt Grünewald.

Practitioners talked about the beauty and the grand spreading of Falun Dafa throughout the world. They also talked about the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and revealed how the CCP harvests organs from live Falun Gong practitioners in forced labour camps. The TV station broadcast this interview to the whole of Turkey.

According to a report by the Belgian newspaper, De Standaard, on the 20th of April, the British Organ Transplantation Society accused the Chinese Communist Party of violating human rights in a press release yesterday. Britain's top-notch surgeons emphasised the recent condemnation of the CCP organs trade. Not only the organs of those who on the death roll were taken away without the permission of the prisoners; what was worse, the prisoners were executed when organs were needed.

Some residents of this community have practised Falun Gong exercises since 2004. In the beginning, there were about fifteen people practising Falun Gong, and the number of practitioners in that community has increased to over sixty this year. Among them, one third have studied Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Gong. Some of them have also attended the nine-day lecture series.

"In the last episode of "People and Society" we introduced the issue of overseas media's reports about China selling the organs of prisoners on the death roll ... We contacted the World Health Organisation many times and hoped to understand its view about China’s organ transplant situation. However, Mr. Noel, who is in charge of the work of organ transplants, could not accept the interview with us because he was on a business trip. In today's episode, we will broadcast an interview with WHO Clinical Procedure Coordinator Mr. Noel."

On April 24th, Radio France Internationale broadcast a report to China and neighbouring countries about the incident during Hu Jintao’s visit to the USA when Wang Wenyi shouted out at the two leaders, Bush and Hu, on the south lawn of the White House, demanding that the Chinese Communist regime stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Wang Wenyi pointed out that her actions on that day were completely spontaneous, unplanned and on-the-spot.

Last month, the Chinese Communist Party promised to stop the practice of harvesting organs and the law to ban the organs trade will come into effect at the beginning of July. Nevertheless the organs trade is such a profitable business, that the British Transplant Association is worried that it will be very hard to end the illegal selling of organs. A spokesman for the CCP Foreign Ministry made a speech and admitted that organs have come from executed prisoners.

"Followers of the ancient Chinese practice of Falun Gong have gathered in Bath to stage a protest. Campaigners collected signatures in Bath city centre on Saturday to raise awareness about the illegal trade of organ harvesting in China. The campaigners claim that followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China are being persecuted and used to meet an international demand for donor organs.
Protesters handed out leaflets outside Bath Abbey and collected signatures for a petition which will be sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair urging the British Government to raise the issue with the United Nations."

The Washington Times recently published a Chinese reporter’s testimony. The reporter had gone to the US, using a pseudonym Jin Zhong. He revealed that a few years ago when he was investigating the situation of SARS, he discovered that several thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were imprisoned at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where their organs were harvested for sale.The reporter accepted an interview with RFI.

BRUSSELS (European Falun Gong Information Centre) – A newly-formed international coalition of organizations announced today that investigators from North America, Europe, and Australia will begin applying for visas today as part of a plan to enter China and conduct a “broad and rigorous” investigation of China’s concentration and labour camps. The coalition also plans to investigate medical facilities throughout China that conduct organ transplants in light of mounting evidence that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are being killed for their organs there.

The Christianity Daily, a major newspaper in Denmark, published an article by Pastor Leif Bork Hansen on the 4th of April, 2006 entitled "It is everyone's responsibility to always fight a savage act." The article says that no matter where the secret savage acts were found, in China, Iraq or Cuba, as long as the savage acts takes place on the this earth where we live, we have a responsibility to expose it ... (a) recent report revealed that those organs were all removed from live bodies when people were still alive.

On April 12th 2006, the Chairman of the Slovak Falun Gong Association was invited to appear on the “World Today” programme on Slovak TV station TA3. For about five minutes of the interview he exposed the truth behind the removal of internal organs from the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners which is currently taking place in labour camps in China. He also talked about the history of the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

On April 3rd, Tribune de Geneva, Switzerland, reported on Falun Gong practitioners’ rally in front of the UN Human Rights Commission building, condemning the Sujiatun concentration camp for removing the organs from living Falun Gong practitioner’s bodies and asking for an investigation of the case. On the same day, Le Figaro (France) reported that last Friday the U.S. Government urged the Chinese Communist Regime to investigate Falun Gong’s claim: Several thousands Falun Gong practitioners in northeast China have been treated as living supplies for human organ sales since 1999.

After learning about the recently uncovered facts of the Sutiantun concentration camp, about five practitioners from the Slovak Republic mounted a protest about these atrocities and news of this protest was sent to all major media in Slovakia. The protest was filmed by TA3 TV, which covers the whole of Slovakia and can be received also abroad via satellite.

"The United Nations torture investigator said on Thursday he was looking into allegations by the Falun Gong group that thousands of its followers were being held at a Chinese "concentration camp" and some had been killed. The banned spiritual movement alleged this month that up to 6,000 people at a time were kept at a state-run camp in the Sujiatun district of the northern city of Shenyang, where it said some had been killed and their organs sold."

The timing of the CCP’s denial is also suspicious. Why did the regime wait for over two weeks to deny Sujiatun? And why did the CCP, after years of known illicit organ trafficking but just weeks after Sujiatun was revealed, also today suddenly announce a new law against organ trafficking? We call for a thorough and real investigation, not a show tour, by independent international organisations, allowing a WOIPFG researcher immediate and unrestricted access to the entire area. Anything short of complete access is a cover up.

Human rights organisations across the world pay special attention to the news that the Chinese Communist Regime secretly imprisons Falun Gong practitioners in Sujiatun Concentration Camp located in Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine. The news reported that in the secret concentration camp 6000 Falun Gong practitioners were imprisoned since 2001 and no one has come out alive.

Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng said, "We have no basic human rights, we have no option but to engage in a hunger strike for a long time. This is a tragedy." Gao Zhisheng was the initiator of the hunger strike. He served as the legal representative for dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners in the past and was almost assassinated.

Two German newspapers, Chamer News and Chamland Aktuell reported about the call for support by a Chinese lady from Cham. Before the Secretary of State’s official visit to China, Mrs. Teng-Schwägerl sent him a letter, requesting that he bring up the issue of human rights whilst there. At the same time, she told him about the Chinese hunger strike movement in support of human rights and in protest against the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Gong.

The article stated that information about the camp was relayed via audio recording from a former intelligence agent of the CCP regime. It is the first time news of the secret camp's existence was disclosed to outsiders. The camp is said to hold over 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners at any given time, and 'nobody has yet to come out' from it alive. According to the source, it contains a crematorium, and an unusually large number of doctors work there, reflecting the camp's practice of killing prisoners for their organs, which are then sold for profit.

On February 23rd 2006, Italian newspaper “Cronache” reported that some Italian Falun Gong practitioners and other non-governmental organisations participated in a Relay Hunger Strike against the persecution in China to support Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng. Lawyer Gao is under pressure because he supports Falun Gong practitioners.

BRUSSELS (EFGIC) — Since the Nuremberg Trials came to a close in 1946, condemning the Nazi officials responsible for the holocaust, it has been the common hope of the people in the world that concentration camps like Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau, would never again emerge in the history of mankind. The horrifying fact is that a similar facility is at this very moment in operation in China. The European Falun Gong Information Centre received shocking, detailed information on Wednesday from a Chinese Communist Party insider documenting a concentration camp set up in Shenyang city, Liaoning province, expressly for Falun Gong practitioners.

"As a lawyer, Gao has defended in court hundreds of Falun Gong-members, democracy activists and farmers who have had their land confiscated by the state. As a private person he has sent letters to the leaders of the country and criticised their policies. He is even open about calling the Chinese Communist Party ‘evil’. Gao Zhisheng is playing with fire – and doing it even though he lives in Beijing, within the range of China’s regime, which so dreads criticism...From his apartment in the capital Gao has now started a hunger strike and he says that at least 70 other people from across the country have joined in."

On February 24th, two reporters from the Nordland Daily, the largest newspaper in northern Norway, interviewed eleven Chinese practitioners who have been recently accepted by the Norwegian government as refugees. Eleven practitioners from four families recounted the benefits to mind and body that Falun Gong has brought to them, and the brutal persecution that they have experienced in China at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

German newspaper “Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten” published an article on February 1st 2006 entitled “Unfounded Inspection is Illegal”. The article reports that Falun Gong practitioners’ lawsuit against German policemen’s violation of their human rights under the Chinese Communist Party’s pressure, which was handed in and dealt with by the Dresden City Administrative Court, was successful. The report says that the Dresden Administrative Court decided in their judgement that the police have no right at all to order an individual of any nationality belonging to any religious group to depart from a certain place.

France’s largest newspaper Le monde published reports on 12th and 13th February 2006 entitled “Human Rights Activist in China Initiates Relay Hunger Strike”. The articles point out that China’s declining human rights situation and the Chinese Communist authorities’ escalating violence and persecution triggered off a relay hunger strike for human rights, with lawyers, journalists, law scholars and people of all levels of society taking part.

On February 15th, practitioners from Ankara were invited by KANAL-D, one of the largest of Turkey’s private TV stations. The host told his audience: “I hope every Turkish will practise Falun Gong and have a healthy body.” Immediately after the news, the TV station received many phone inquiries about Falun Gong.

"Jing Wang is a follower of the Falun Gong movement that has been persecuted since 1999 in China and she is well informed about human rights violations including abductions, torture, forced labour camps and the death penalty. The penal code allows for arbitrary arrest and sentencing of unwanted individuals under the pretext that they are endangering public security or that they are counterrevolutionary or subversive. Ms. Wang said that the communists feel especially threatened by groups like Falun Gong that have a spiritual orientation and have been extremely popular during the last few years."

”We call upon the French and US law enforcement to investigate this matter. It is an assault on Western citizens by agents of the Chinese regime. We also call upon the French and U.S. government to communicate to Chinese consular officials in clear and public terms that there will be zero tolerance for such illicit behavior here in the West."

"Falun Gong practitioners Anja and Veijo Pekkarinen have found a new lifestyle in this practice, which balances the energies of mind and body. Practising is not easy as one tries to live as a good unselfish person who treats other people with compassion ... "

"The Würzburg Administrative Court rejected Jiang’s asylum request in March 2005. The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees reversed its decision in November — only after he was persecuted and sentenced in China — and approved Jiang’s asylum request retroactively. However, this delayed recognition of the family’s plight does not do that family any good. Jiang’s passport was confiscated and he cannot leave China."

Four Falun Gong refugees incarcerated by Thai authorities for the past month for protesting the persecution of their peers in China took an early morning flight to Norway on Tuesday, January 24. Wang Yajun, Liu Ying, Li Jianhui, and Miao Miao, accompanied by four family members including two children, flew to freedom and permanent asylum in the Scandinavian country.

LONDON (EFGIC) A female Chinese Falun Gong practitioner was punched in the head by a Chinese man while she sat in meditation at the 24 hour ongoing Falun Gong protest opposite the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place W1 around 9 pm of 24th January. Speaking to reporters, Ms Gao Yudong said: “the bruise on the side of my head caused by the blow felt very hot. By the next morning I started to feel pain, and I could feel a swelling on my head. During the day at work, my head felt painful and numb. I had difficulties concentrating.”

LONDON—The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) condemned on Wednesday the human rights violations committed by totalitarian communist regimes and expressed sympathy, understanding and recognition for the victims of these crimes. The Assembly passed a resolution, which censured violations such as executions, deaths in concentration camps, torture, slave labour, and starvation committed by communist regimes..."Totalitarian communist regimes are still active in some countries of the world and crimes continue to be committed," the resolution said. "The Assembly strongly condemns all those violations of human rights."

Last week Spain’s National Court announced to the media that Spain will begin the investigation of the crime of genocide against the Tibetan people by the Chinese Communist Party from the 1980s to 1990s. Reuters released the news saying that Comite de Apoyo Del Tibet (CAT) made an appeal to the secondary court against the crime of genocide committed by seven high-ranking officials of the CCP, including its former president Jiang Zemin.

"This is a sort of sick victory song for the CCP. Captive Falun Gong practitioners are made to sing it under threat of violence. To not 'sing along' is to invite beatings with two-by-fours, shocks from electric batons, or force-feeding using faeces and sludge. Once a victim is completely broken, prison authorities 'celebrate' with a round of this 'Same Song.' For thousands it is a song of pain and despair, and it has no place in our communities," says FDI spokesperson Mr. Erping Zhang.

Finnish newspaper ‘Kaleva’ wrote on September 17th that the Chinese Embassy had interfered with a photo exhibition arranged by Falun Gong practitioners in the city of Rovaniemi. According to the newspaper, the Chinese Embassy had contacted the library where the exhibition “Peaceful Journey of Falun Gong” was held. The photo exhibition introduces Falun Gong and its history. It also exposes the crimes committed by the Chinese Communist Party against the practitioners of Falun Gong in China.

Heping Li from Zejiang Province of China recalled how he was locked up in a forced labour camp because he refused to renounce his belief in Falun Gong. He saw with his own eyes and experienced the cruel persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the CCP authorities. Heping Li said, “I was released in 2003 and put under detention for two years. As I practice Falun Gong, I used to write letters to the government (the CCP regime) and told friends of mine the truth about Falun Gong and the lies told on TV. For that reason, I was taken to a forced labour camp.

Representatives of the Falun Gong movement welcomed the decision, and requested that the government pay compensation to those banned from entering Iceland, as well as handing over the list of undesirable people so it could be destroyed. They said that the government had attempted to stifle the voice of justice and bow to the wishes of a foreign dictator. They had gone against the wishes of the Icelandic people and had set a dangerous precedent to other democratic countries in their actions against Falun Gong.

"Many people from this area think that China is far away. Yet, they seek economic and political contacts with China. But, most of the time they have no idea what they are getting into. No one dares to bring up the subject of human rights during contacts with high-level political policy makers ... People practise Falun Gong throughout the world. No other country has banned Falun Gong, just the opposite, everywhere where Falun Gong comes to the public it is recognised favourably and receives support."

Fields of Shame" is an exhibition touring across Europe. The founder of this project, the Pole Wojciech Modelski said “Above all we hope that many people will learn about the existing reality in our world where murder, rape and torture on a daily basis is the norm.” ... The organiser was the International Organisation for Human Rights.

“Truthfulness – Compassion – Tolerance:” These three words were written on the t-shirt worn by Falkensteiner’s Utz-Reiner Römer during his three-week travels through China. This may sound perfectly harmless to a European, while it gives a political message in China. In China, the words Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance are considered the pillars of the Falun Gong movement.

The theme of the most recent edition of the “Donau Strudl”, a street magazine from Regensburg, was “Homelessness”. The chief editor adopted Falun Gong practitioner’s painting “Homeless” from the International Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance Fine Art Exhibition and expressed sympathy and concern towards the innocent Falun Gong practitioners and their relatives who have been made homeless by the persecution.

LONDON (EFGIC) — Thai police manhandled Falun Gong protesters outside the Bangkok Chinese Embassy on December 10, International Human Rights Day. After being seen going in and out of the Chinese Embassy, dozens of Thai policemen crossed the street and roughly searched Falun Gong practitioners quietly protesting the six-year persecution of their practice in China. The police dragged some of them and took away their banners. One officer stated that he did not want to break up their protest but was told to do so by the Chinese Embassy.