Video: FGM TV News - 08/06/2002

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Falun Gong is freely practiced in at least 57 countries around the world, but relentlessly persecuted in China. The peaceful courage of practitioners there has shocked their oppressors and moved the people of the world. While China continues to block all information, FGMtv brings you the stories you may not hear anywhere else.

Hello, and welcome to the FGMtv Weekly News Review on August 6th, 2002

I'm Susan Mitchell.

The number of Falun Gong practitioners in China verified to have died as a result of mistreatment by Jiang Zemin's regime is 447. However, sources in China put the actual number in the thousands.

• Also in those seven days, accounts of inhuman torture and illegal persecution came in from 14 different provinces across China, from Inner Mongolia in the north to Guangdong in the south.
• And in that same period of time, 313 people have declared that the documents they signed while enduring torture were null and void, and that they will continue to practice Falun Gong.

Our top story this week:

The Hong Kong trial of sixteen Falun Gong practitioners charged with obstruction is drawing to a close.

And some of our other stories:

• Video footage of the arrests of the sixteen practitioners in Hong Kong
• Yoko Kaneko, Chinese wife of a Japanese businessman, has been brutally tortured in detention in China
• European practitioners visit Iceland on July 20th
• Fake drugs manufactured in China are killing thousands
• Putting a name to two of the persecuted
• Annual meeting of astronomers discusses evidence that our Milky Way galaxy is undergoing major changes

First, our top story... On March 14th, 2002, Canadian practitioners held a hunger strike on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to let people know of Jiang Zemin's new secret order to "shoot to kill" Falun Gong practitioners.

• One Ottawa practitioner recently said, "Our action touched so many people and got strong support from MPs and government. On the same day and for the same reason, 16 Falun Gong practitioners held a similar peaceful appeal in Hong Kong. But they were forcefully arrested and they are on trial now."
• The international media are calling this trial a test of the 'one country, two systems' law. The sixteen Falun Gong practitioners, including 4 from Switzerland, were charged with obstruction for a small peaceful appeal outside the China Liaison Office which is in an area of Hong Kong that is hard to reach, high in the mountains.
• From this photograph, it is easy to see that there was plenty of room on the sidewalk for people to either pass by, or to enter and exit the China Liaison Office, and also, that there were very few people, other than police, in the area.
• There was no obstruction to anyone until the police put up barricades everywhere, left them there for five days closing the whole sidewalk.

News Conference in San Francisco Like practitioners in other large cities around the world, those in the Bay area of San Francisco held a news conference outside the Chinese Embassy last week to raise awareness of the Hong Kong 'show' trial.

• A former resident of Hong Kong, who had lived there for thirty years spoke with an FGMtv journalist.
• The violent actions of police stand out in stark contrast to the peaceful hunger strike of the sixteen who were appealing for Jiang's regime to stop killing practitioners.
• The former Hong Kong resident said that he saw that the police were using force to remove the practitioners, but police say the police were assaulted.
• "Hong Kong prosperity," he said, "is based on freedom and right law that the government used to use. If these two basic things are removed, it will have a big influence on the future of Hong Kong. I hope the people of Hong Kong do not maintain silence in front of this thing."

In strikingly similar scenes, news conferences and peaceful appeals were held in front of Chinese embassies and consulates around the world to raise awareness of the Hong Kong trial. We have photographs from

• Washington, DC
• New York
• Berlin
• Los Angeles
• Chicago
• Ottawa, and
• Toronto

Yoko Kaneko's life is in danger

• Editors at the Clear Wisdom Web site have received a report detailing the torture inflicted on Yoko Kaneko (Luo Rong). The Chinese wife of a Japanese businessman, Yoko was recently sentenced to one and a half years in a Chinese labour camp for distributing Dafa materials on a Beijing street.
• The report said that she was shackled to a bed in the basement of the Beijing Police Hospital where numbers of practitioners are illegally and secretly detained.
• The handcuffs tying her hands and feet to the bed were so tight that there was no room for a bedpan and after weeks of lying in this state, she was covered with sweat, blood, excrement, food and infusions she had managed to pull out of her body
• According to a July 30th report in Japan Today, a group of 21 Japanese lawmakers handed a letter to Senior Vice Foreign Minister Seiken Sugiura calling on the Japanese government to ask China to release Yoko Kaneko.

Falun Gong is still in the Icelandic public spotlight In the last two or three weeks, we've touched briefly on the Nordic SOS Tour undertaken by Scandinavian and other European practitioners. They travelled to Gothenburg, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Malmo and Copenhagen.

• On July 20th, the third anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong, the group arrived in Reykjavik, capital of Iceland, their seventh and final destination.
• They reported, "Meeting with the Icelandic people showed us clearly that they have not forgotten the issue of Falun Gong. It is still a hot topic in the media. As an Icelandic human rights watcher put it: "Icelandic people tend to forget similar issues a few days later. This time, it is so encouraging that weeks after the event (when Falun Gong practitioners were initially denied entry to the country during Jiang Zemin's visit), Icelandic people keep asking their elected officials for an explanation of why they keep making wrong decisions."
• A news conference was well attended and well reported, and meetings with members of parliament from both the ruling party and the opposition were very encouraging. They were both very supportive and are urging their government to condemn the human rights violations against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

On July 8, Falun Gong Practitioner Dai Zhizhen and her two-year old daughter Fadu were interviewed by one of the Italian State TV Stations (Raiuno) in the program Uno Mattino

• When asked by the interviewer what it was like for families in China when the persecution began, she replied:
• "We lived in horror. My husband was killed. I got the information from a Falun Dafa Web site. My husband's sister went to identify the body. At that time, his remains had started decaying.
• Next my husband's sister was sentenced to a Labor Camp, and my father-in-law also passed away. I had only my little daughter left.
• After my husband died, my daughter and I wanted to go back to China to fetch his ashes, but the Chinese government would not give us a visa. I asked for help everywhere. Finally, with the help of the Australian government, I got my husband's ashes.
• The suffering of my family is only one example of millions of Chinese families, who are unable to have their own voice heard. My daughter and I can stay alive because we have Australian passports."

Fake drugs manufactured in China are killing thousands:

• The San Francisco Examiner reported recently that fake drugs in China are killing thousands of people there, and they are increasingly making their way overseas.
• Quality problems in China's drug industry have gained international attention in recent weeks, as five women in Japan and Singapore have died and 60 more have become sick after taking Chinese-made diet pills.
• The state newspaper Shenzhen Evening News reported that last year, 192,000 people in China died after using fake, or poor quality drugs. But the real death toll could be much higher.
• In 1996, 89 children in Haiti died after being given a Chinese-made syrup for fever. Instead of any real medical ingredients it contained the same chemicals found in antifreeze.
• In the United States, 36,000 fake Viagra pills were seized by police in Ohio before they could be sold. They were traced back to China, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has singled out as a top producer of counterfeit medicines.
• The state-run newspaper, the China Daily reported that last year, authorities closed 1,300 factories while investigating 480,000 cases of counterfeit drugs worth $57 million.
• But health experts and officials say thousands of producers still operate, some clandestinely, but others in the open, protected by local officials.
• Experts say this illegal production thrives in China partly because of a disregard for patents and copyrights, and also because local officials either take bribes from drug counterfeiters or don't want to lose the jobs and tax revenue that they provide.

Many people spend their summer weekends in the countryside. Falun Dafa practitioners are no exception...

• On the weekend of July 11-14, Dafa practitioners from New York and New Jersey introduced Dafa at a carnival in upstate New York.
• The event was an annual family carnival with lots of music, rides and various booths.
• Practitioners demonstrated and taught the Falun Dafa exercises from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day. Hundreds of people learned about the practice, and many learned the movements.

The Falun Dafa Information Center in New York has received the following reports of two highly respected individuals who have been persecuted because they practice Falun Gong:

• Wenyi Jiang, an assistant professor at the School of Architecture in Guangzhou City, and an associate director of the Sub-Tropical Research Institute was detained in September 2001. He has since undergone intense mental and physical torture. In 2001, Prof. Jiang was awarded an "Outstanding Faculty Member" certificate by the university for his excellent work.
• Mr. Fangliang Zhang, a 47-year-old deputy head and a native of Guangshun Town in Rongchang County of Chongqing City in Sichuan Province, was arrested for distributing Falun Gong truth-clarifying literature in October 2001. He was tortured to death on July 9, 2002. He is remembered as an honest and well-respected official who, unlike many others, never accepted bribes or took advantage of perks such as free meals. His integrity and upright conduct were highly respected by his colleagues and the people of Rongchang.

Berlin Freedom TV interviews Falun Gong practitioners

• On the evening before the third anniversary of the crackdown, the noted Berlin Freedom TV Station interviewed a local group of practitioners in the city center. It was broadcast on the morning cultural program.
• The program also interviewed a member of Amnesty International who testified to the cruelty of the persecution.
• Also mentioned was the blacklist that Jiang Zemin gave to the Icelandic government in June before his visit there, to prevent Falun Gong practitioners from entering the country.
• Nine German practitioners were stopped at the Frankfurt airport, including two carrying German passports.

And finally...

at the 200th meeting of the American Astronomical Society held in June 2002 in New Mexico,

• A report was presented by Antony Stark of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his colleague, Chris Martin.
• Their research indicates that drastic changes to our universe are on the way. Namely, that our Milky Way could become a star factory.
• A gas ring containing the diffuse mass of millions of Suns is collecting near the galactic center. It is near a critical density, the new study shows, beyond which it will form one or two clouds that will collapse into the center of the galaxy, triggering the star formation.
• Ancient China deems that the cosmos and human society are one. Through the observation of cosmic changes it is possible to predict changes in human society. The predicted events in the Milky Way may mean great changes for our earth - in about 200 million years' time.

Thanks for watching FGMtv, dedicated to breaking through China's information blockade, revealing propaganda, and bringing you the truth of Falun Gong.