By FINN BULLERS
The Kansas City Star, August 18, 2008
http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/751051.html
As the gold-medal tally for China soars in Beijing, Linda Wang’s heart fills with pain.
"This is not the Olympics of humanity," the somber Kansas City woman said. "This is the Olympics of hypocrisy."
Wang and other Falun Gong practitioners in the region held a news conference Friday at the Johnson County Library to urge the Chinese government to live up to the humanitarian ideal of the Olympics and release the parents of a Missouri college student they said were arrested last month.
Jin Pang, 25, a first-year master’s student at Missouri State University in Springfield, said she has not heard from her parents since they were arrested July 29 in a "Peaceful Olympics" sweep by Communist Party officials.
Earlier in the month, Pang said her parent’s apartment in Weifang City in Shandong province was ransacked by police and their valuables and lifesavings were taken as a way to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners and do it under the guise of a pre-Olympic law-and-order sweep.
Her mother, Junping Cao, 51, a retired sales clerk, and her father, Xiaoqiang Pang, 53, a detention center engineer, are being held at the Weifang City Detention Center, she said.
"It’s very ridiculous," Pang said in an interview after the press conference. "They have taken advantage of the Olympics to persecute their foes."
Falun Gong practitioners say they read and exercise to create an inner peace that fosters competence, truthfulness, tolerance and good health.
Wang, who runs a nonprofit organization and is a freelance reporter for a Chinese newspaper, said Friday’s press conference was designed to expose what Falun Gong practitioners say is the Chinese government’s inhumane and bloody persecution of those who only seek truth and inner peace.
As of Jan. 1, the Falun Dafa Information Center reports that at least 8,037 Falun Gong practitioners from 29 provinces have been arrested.
Scores of human rights organizations, Congress and even the City Council of Kansas City have recognized the movement and condemned the Chinese government’s crackdown on Falun Gong.