Two Falun Gong practitioners sat
crossed-legged, peacefully meditating in front of the Brooklyn Supreme
Courthouse opposite Court Street one August morning.
Doing the same
thing in China could lead to their detention, and even having their organs
removed for transplant for western patients, protestors say.
Chao Feng
Chiu, 57, who lives on East 14th Street and Kings Highway, protests five days a
week outside the Chinese Consulate on 42nd Street in Manhattan, according to
Quan Sha, who translated for her since Chiu does not speak English..
�Whether it�s raining, snowing or hot, she is there every day,� said
Sha.
Chiu, who arrived in the United States from China in 1982, learned
about Falun Gong from doctors as she was looking for treatment for diabetes, Sha
said. After her condition improved in 1998, Chui started to follow Falun Gong
teachings, Sha said.
Chiu�s husband, Yu Sheung
Chiu, 69, who was seated next to her, also joins her outside the consulate, Sha
said.
Protestors say that Falun Gong practitioners are harassed, jailed
and sent to concentration and labor camps. Allegations that the government is
now executing people and harvesting hearts, livers, kidneys, skin and other
organs emerged earlier this year.
�We are trying to bring awareness of
the atrocities that are going on in China,� said Clearine Hunter of Crown
Heights who practices Falun Gong in Prospect Park. �We want the public to be
aware that even though it is going on on the other side of the world, it
shouldn�t be allowed to happen.�
A spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy
declined to comment.
Protestors say that the Communist government
welcomed Falun Gong when it emerged in 1992 from the teachings of Li Hongzhi.
But as its popularity increased, the government became threatened. Practitioners
have been persecuted since 1999 when the Chinese government declared the
practice illegal, they say.
Frank Yu, a Brooklyn resident, said his 83-
year-old grandmother, who practiced Falun Gong in the Jiangsu Province in China,
had to quit after being routinely harassed and intimidated.
Hunter says
that Falun Gong is not a religion or political practice, but practitioners are
trying to raise awareness of the persecution of those who practice it.
Falun Gong, aims to teach moral values including truth, compassion and
tolerance through spiritual enlightenment and five exercises -- four standing
and one meditating in the sitting position, she said.
According to
reports, a person caught practicing Falun Gong in China may be arrested, taken
to concentration camps and assigned a new name and number, according to Hunter.
At these camps, their organs may be removed while they are still alive,
before their bodies are incinerated, Hunter alleges.
�They have Web
sites advertising how to get heart and liver transplants,� Hunter said. �How can
you do that unless you have a stockpile?�
In 2000 Amnesty International
called on the Chinese government to stop a crackdown on the Falun Gong, which
resulted in �mass arbitrary detentions, unfair trials and other human rights
violations.�
A report in May from the U.S. Congressional Research
Service states that the U.S. State Department has acknowledged that there were
credible reports that Falun Gong practitioners who refuse to recant their
beliefs have been detained, sent to labor camps, and tortured � sometimes to
death.
But the report said they found no evidence of organ harvesting.
Following reports in March 2006 that a hospital in Sujitan, near Shenyang, had
been used as a detention center where thousands of Falun Gong prisoners have had
their organs removed for transplants, American diplomats visited the site twice.
Once they went unannounced. They �found no evidence� that the site was being
used for anything other than a �normal public hospital�.
Hunter was not
impressed, saying that there are of reports of at least 36 such sites and that
the West has failed to take seriously reports of genocide before.
�China
is going to take you wherever they want you to go,� Hunter said. �It�s the same
thing that was going on in WWII. They came back saying everything was fine to
learn later that people were being exterminated.�
In April this year
Wenyi Wang, heckled Communist Chinese President Hu Jintao on the White House
South Lawn in a protest at a meeting with President Bush.
For
information about the Falun Gong human rights campaign, visit
www.clearwisdom.net.