Connecticut Practitioners' Press Statement: Two Day Hunger Strike Urges China to Release 130 Practitioners Illegally Held in Masanjia Labor Camp

Here in the free land of America, we sometimes take for granted how lucky we are. But when we see atrocities occurring overseas in places where people don't have the freedoms of belief, conscience, and expression, we understand how precious and valuable these principles are upon which our country was founded.

Connecticut, the Constitution state, where the Declaration of Independence was formed, is where our precious freedoms were established. So, for two days we would like to get your attention for our call for justice, and to ask you to help us defend and uphold the basic rights and freedoms of human beings. Our strike is in honor of Li Pin of Connecticut, who has truly put others before herself in a plea for justice that calls on the Chinese government to release the 130 Falun Gong practitioners who have been on hunger strike for 3 weeks in protest of their illegal detainment in the Masanjia Labor Camp. This notorious camp is noted for its cruel torture methods, and has done such terrible things as stripping 18 female practitioners and throwing them into male prison cells, to suffer frightening abuses.

Under these circumstances, Pin decided to travel to Washington D.C. out of her own free will to join forces with 10 others on a hunger strike in front of the Chinese Embassy. They are using their own voices to carry the cry for help of those 130 detained people whose voices cannot be heard and whose lives are now in danger.

The president of China, Jiang Zemin, has secretly ordered a vicious policy to "defame Falun Gong practitioners' reputations, break them financially, and destroy them physically." In the past two years, Jiang's regime has systematically carried out a nation-wide terrorist campaign against Falun Gong practitioners. Millions of Falun Gong practitioners in China have suffered the loss of their jobs, families and financial support. They have been tortured in mental hospitals, labor camps and prisons, and forced to attend brainwashing classes. Some have even lost their lives. As of today, at least 265 Falun Gong practitioners have died from police brutality. So we cannot stand by and do nothing when 130 lives are now at risk.

We call on the government, institutions and people of goodwill in the state of Connecticut to lend their support to rescue the Falun Gong practitioners who are being viciously persecuted in China.