---A Speech Given By the Association of World Citizens in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Commission, March 2000

Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates and guests,

I come before you to speak on behalf of the Association of World Citizens in expression of our dismay over the treatment of women Falun Gong practitioners in the People's Republic of China in recent months. While Ms. Feng Yuan has already given this topic an introductory address in her Article 12, "Violence against Women in China's Crackdown on Falun Gong Practitioners," we would like to expand the discussion.

You should by now already be aware of some of the atrocities committed by the Chinese Government towards female practitioners of Falun Gong. There is, of course, the numerous cases of denial of food, water, or shelter from severe elements, dousing with ice water, horrendous beatings (including 6 deaths by torture), not to mention monetary and material punishments, including loss of work and housing.

Many practitioners have been sent to reform-through-labor camps, some have received harsh punishments for publicizing the facts of what is now happening in China, some have undergone show-trials sentencing them to long jail terms, and others have been sent to mental hospitals for specialized torture or simply disappeared. These offenses have been more or less gender neutral, pertaining to both male and female practitioners.

The punishments endured by women have taken on added dimensions through gender-specific brutality and humiliation, as suggested in Article 12. Even a cursory survey of these crimes is shocking. There are the many forms of sexual harassment (including beatings and tauntings of victims in the nude), the handcuffing of practitioners to prevent them from changing their sanitary pads or clothing during menstruation, forced abortions, and even the encouragement of male criminals to rape these women. In other cases, such as that of Li Juhua, it has been the state-employed guards who have raped practitioners. Many women have attempted to recite Falun Gong's writings while in prison, only to have pages of the books, dirty underwear, rags and other items stuffed into their mouths before they are taped shut.

While it is heinous acts such as these that have thrust Falun Gong onto the political stage and brought the practice here before the United Nations, it is not so much these crimes as practitioners' responses to them that prove most remarkable. Today I will highlight these. Were Falun Gong simply a politically-motivated Chinese exercise system, as its detractors have cast it, there would be little more to the persecution story.

Falun Gong, however, is a deeply-spiritual self-cultivation practice that deeply transforms its practitioners in terms of both mind and body. For its adherents to conduct themselves by anything but the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, would be unthinkable--and this even includes under the circumstances of torture. It is these principles that have many times shined forth in even the darkest and most inhumane of Chinese prisons and detention centers. Perhaps more than anything else, these cases of forbearance against all odds tell us the true story of Falun Gong--a story nothing like that engineered by the Chinese Government. We offer the following cases.

Zhu Hang, a female professor at Dalian Polytech University, was arrested on August 30, 1999, while practicing the Falun Gong exercises in the park. She was forced into a torture device reserved for China's most vicious criminals, known as di lao, or "prison in hell," a device which immobilizes a person in excruciating positions and prevents such basic actions as walking, eating, falling asleep, or going to the bathroom. Because Ms. Zhu didn't want to make difficulties for other detained practitioners and there wasn't enough food for everyone, she decided to start fasting. After 7days and nights, prison authorities force-fed her, causing severe injury to her mouth and causing her to lose consciousness. When the photos showing her tortured body were reported overseas, she was charged with the crime of "leaking state secrets," and sent to a mental hospital. Now not even her family members know where she is. Ms. Zhu was well aware of the risks she faced with fasting and could have avoided all of this had she simply renounced the practice. Instead, however, she put her own well-being on the line to defend the practice she knew to be true and good.

The story of Ding Yan, a 31-year-old woman was arrested for her attempt to appeal peacefully to Beijing authorities, is telling. Once detained, she and a dozen other practitioners were handcuffed with one hand reaching over the shoulder and the other up from the back. The Beijing police stepped on her back and pulled her handcuffs, swinging her back and forth, right and left. She almost stopped breathing because of the severe pain. The police also told her that the skin necrosis she was suffering could cause permanent crippling of the hands. Ms. Ding endured all of this without anger or even retort. When the police finally removed her handcuffs after three hours of torture, she couldn't help but notice tears sparkling in their eyes. Her endurance had touched them, opening their hearts. She told them: "Thank you. I don't believe what I've done is not enough to touch your hearts. How can you treat so many good people like this? I will tell you with my life that Falun Dafa is great! By all means you should remember this. You must keep your benevolent hearts and never lose them."

For these courageous women to act otherwise would be to sink to the level of their oppressors. It has been with full awareness of the torture and punishment awaiting them that female practitioners of Falun Gong have continued their practice and gone to Beijing or their local governments to peacefully appeal. Practitioners have felt simply that it is the right thing to do, as the truth about Falun Gong has been obscured in China. "If the government were only to understand the kind, upstanding nature of our practice," these appealing practitioners have reasoned, "they couldn't possibly continue this persecution."

Another telling case is that of Prof. Zhang Chunqing, a women of 58 years from Dalian who was arrested September 2^nd, 1999, for practicing Falun Gong's exercises in the park with her granddaughter. While detained, she decided to practice the exercises again, and was immediately beaten severely. She was hit hard on both sides of the face with large, hard binders, and slapped repeatedly. She was verbally insulted throughout her beatings, being told, "You filthy, shameless #@!*... I'll see who is harder, you or the Communist Party!" Ms. Zhang was also placed in the terrible "prison in hell," di lao, torture device for an extended period of time.

So how did Ms. Zhang perceive the situation? With a lust for vengeance and justice, with deep bitterness? Hardly. She tells us: "No matter how they beat me and shouted, I remained very calm and peaceful, with not a single complaint in my heart. I knew she was an ordinary person while I am a cultivator [of Falun Dafa]. She didn't practice cultivation nor know how precious Falun Dafa is, but I knew that Falun Dafa had given me a second life. I was actually thankful to her because she provided opportunities for my cultivation."

Female practitioners have even dared to utilize their harsh prison environments as opportunities to share the goodness of Falun Gong with other, long-term inmates. The case of Prof. Lili Feng's detention is representative. Ms. Feng, a Chinese-born American citizen, was arrested in Shenzhen, China, when travelling to visit her family. While detained in jail, she was forced to assemble hair brushes and sneakers 14 hours a day before their export to the United States.

Despite this and having to sleep on freezing cement floors with minimal clothing, Ms. Feng utilized her time as an opportunity to share what she knew to be true and good with her cell inmates. She was happy to answer the many questions about Falun Gong asked by her companions, most of whom were prostitutes and drug addicts. They found Ms. Feng's stories and example to be deeply touching and inspiring, things more powerful than the Chinese Government's accusatory anti-Falun Gong propaganda. By day 13, the end of Ms. Feng's detention, most--if not all--inmates had become Falun Gong practitioners. Fighting, beatings and abuses were dramatically reduced, and the three most powerful and vicious inmates announced that they were going to adopt Falun Gong's principle of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance to run the cell.

One of Ms. Feng's inmates, a 19-year-old prostitute, made a statement that silenced the entire cell and moved people to tears. She promised Ms. Feng: "Professor, I will never sell my body once I get out. The next time I'm in jail it will be for Falun Gong." The inmate even made known her plans of going to Beijing after her release to tell the government how Falun Gong had saved her. Another inmate, at the time of her release, begged the police: "Can I stay for a few more days? I want to learn more about Falun Gong." When Ms. Feng first met this woman, she was talking about revenge against her neighbors using sulfuric acid. Now, however, she was telling Ms. Feng that she would never do a bad thing after learning Falun Gong.

One can imagine these few cases to be reflections of Falun Gong's benevolent nature, and reflections that are to be found throughout China's prisons and detention centers no less. In every known case, female Falun Gong practitioners have not retaliated in any form--no matter what the persecution. They have not responded with fists or insults, but instead insisted that being truthful, kind, and forbearing are immutable virtues. Their only recourse has been peaceful appeals to both the Chinese government and to the international community. In a sense, these stories are, we feel, their strongest statement.

Mr. Chairman, the tragedy befalling Falun Gong practitioners in China appears without end. We join others in requesting that this Commission investigate the issue of violence against women in China's crackdown and ensure that China complies with its own Constitution as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thank you.