BEYOND THE RED WALL: THE PERSECUTION OF FALUN GONG

Falun Gong was a new and very popular exercise and spiritual movement in China until 1999, when it was outlawed by Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Since then, over 200,000 believers in the movement have been sent to Chinese jails, many brutally tortured, and according to the movement, at least 2500 killed.

"Beyond the Red Wall" looks at the treatment of the movement by the Chinese authorities. It focuses on the story of Kunlun Zhang, a Canadian citizen, an artist and professor of art at McGill University, who on a return trip to China was arrested and jailed for nearly three years.

Irwin Cotler, Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada from 1997 to 2004, was instrumental in spearheading the movement to get Kunlun Jiang out of the Chinese prison. Cotler speaks passionately in the film about the imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners.

Other political figures in the film include US Congressmen Chris Smith and Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, and Zhang Weidong, Minister Counsellor of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Canada.  Also featured are University of Montreal History Professor David Ownby,  who has extensively studied the Falun Gong movement, and Canadian reporter Ian Johnson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his uncovering of the Falun Gong story in the Wall Street Journal.

British Columbia human rights lawyer Clive Ansley  describes his perceptions about what he describes as the "misinformation campaign" of the Chinese government and media, especially regarding the notorious broadcast of the purported self-immolation of five Falun Gong practitioners, which he believes was a hoax. Ansley, and many others in the film, speak of their belief that the world should not be sending athletes to the Beijing Olympics when there are so many extreme violations of human rights in China.

Kathy Gillis, who describes herself in the film as a "typical middle class, more-than-middle age sort of person", speaks of her passion for the practice and her work on behalf of the movement from her Ottawa home.

The film includes startling new footage, secretly filmed
and smuggled out of China, that re-creates the kind of torture that the Falun Gong movement claims is routine in Chinese prisons.

The most shocking allegations made about the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese jails is that the Chinese authorities have removed the corneas, kidneys and other body parts from living prisoners for sale to Chinese and foreign buyers.

David Kilgore, Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific, 2002-2003, co-author (with Human Rights lawyer David Matas) of a report studying these allegations, speaks in the film to his belief that these allegations are true and that many thousands of imprisoned practitioners have died following removal and sale of their organs.