By Steven Addison
Staff Reporter, White Rock Peace Arch News
Aug 25 2006

Falun Gong practitioners will stage a demonstration outside White Rock City Hall Wednesday in an attempt to raise awareness about their faith and expose alleged atrocities committed against followers in China.

The demonstration is part of a province-wide road trip to educate people about the meditative and spiritual practice, which has been banned in China since 1999.

“We want people to know what Falun Gong is,” explained Shirley Chen, who has been practicing for seven years.

“We should all embrace these traditional values.”

White Rock Mayor Judy Forster admitted she doesn’t know much about Falun Gong, but takes no issue with a demonstration in White Rock. The mayor said she’s willing to meet with demonstrators.

“It’s a democratic society. That’s one thing we value about Canada,” Forster said Thursday via cell phone from southern Alberta.

“If it’s peaceful, if it’s providing information... I would be willing to sit down and talk with them.”

Forbidden from practicing their faith in China, Falun Gong followers claim that country’s communist regime is responsible for mass torture and killings of followers. Alleged atrocities include harvesting of body organs for transplant operations, imprisonment and killings.

“People should have their own thinking,” Chen said.

“They should have their own freedom, their own thoughts.

“We would like people in White Rock to be aware of the atrocities happening to people in China. We want people to know about Falun Gong.”

A 2006 investigation by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former MP David Kilgour suggested allegations of organ harvesting are true.

“We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and ‘people’s courts’ since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience,” the report stated.

Further, the investigation concluded: “Based on what we now know, we have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true. We believe that there have been and continue today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.

—Langley Times files