40 Non-governmental Organizations Adopt Resolution Calling for Censure of China

GENEVA (FDI) – 40 international human rights organizations have adopted a resolution urging the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure China for widespread human rights violations against Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Catholics, Protestants and other groups in China.

The following is the full text of the resolution, followed by its signatories:

WHEREAS  the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, is the most important international forum for discussing human rights issues and expressing international support for human rights improvements; and

WHEREAS the Commission is devoted to identifying human rights problems and taking action to address them, and the Commission’s success is measured by its ability to make a difference in the lives of individuals; and

WHEREAS all States that accept the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights are obliged to implement the rights they entail and to report regularly to international bodies set up to monitor their compliance; and

WHEREAS the People’s Republic of China is a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, however, the People’s Republic of China has yet to demonstrate its willingness to abide by internationally accepted norms of freedom of belief, expression, and association by repealing or amending laws and decrees that restrict those freedoms; and

WHEREAS according to Falun Dafa Information Center, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and international human rights organizations, China, under the leadership of Jiang Zemin, continued to commit well-documented human rights abuses last year against the Chinese people, including repression of spiritual and political groups such as Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Catholics, Protestants; the unjust arrest and detention of spiritual leaders and political dissidents; harsh conditions in prisons and labor camps; forced labor in labor camps; coercive family planning policies; organ harvesting on prisoners; and deprivation of fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly, and press; and

WHEREAS the violent assault on Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual practice whose three principles are Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance, is a prime example of that very injustice; and the on-going persecution against Falun Gong, like other human rights abuses in China, violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and China’s own constitution; and

WHEREAS Falun Gong originated in the People’s Republic of China but has grown in popularity worldwide and is now embraced by over 100 million people in over fifty countries; and

WHEREAS the persecution against Falun Gong aims at removing the wish to live with the basic, fundamental values of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance from people’s hearts, and is thus a persecution of all of humanity, and thus what we are witnessing today in China is the criminalization of innocence; and

WHEREAS the persecution against Falun Gong destabilizes and demoralizes the People’s Republic of China, and makes it more difficult for China to stop the persecutions against other spiritual groups and dissidents; and

WHEREAS Jiang Zemin’s regime has established the notorious government “6-10” offices throughout the People’s Republic of China with the special task of overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners through organized brainwashing, harassment, surveillance, job discrimination, exorbitant fines, education deprivation, prolonged detention, incarceration in mental hospitals, forced labor, torture, murder; and

WHEREAS in order to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, Chinese officials at various levels have been ordered by “6-10” offices to “destroy their reputations, cut them off financially, and destroy them physically,” and that “no measures are too excessive;” and

WHEREAS Jiang Zemin’s regime has mobilized China’s state-run media to defame and incite hatred against Falun Gong in China by flooding the printing presses and airwaves with fabrications and slander; and to keep Chinese people and the outside world from knowing the truth about Falun Gong and the suppression, the Jiang regime has taken steps to shut down Internet access and jam or wire-tap phone calls; and foreign journalists in China covering Falun Gong and the persecution have been harassed and even threatened, and people reporting the facts to the outside world have been severely reprimanded; and

WHEREAS the number of known deaths from tortures has reached 901; and official measures have been taken to conceal all atrocities, such as the immediate cremation of victims, the blocking of autopsies, the false labeling of deaths as from suicide or heart disease, the intimidation towards family members of victims; and

WHEREAS women in particular have been the target of numerous forms of sexual violence, including gang rape, sexual assault, and late-term forced abortion, for instance, Miss Xingyan Wei, a Falun Gong practitioner and a graduate student from Chongqing University was reported to be openly raped on May 13, 2003 by a policeman at the Baihelin Detention Center in the Shapingba District of Chongqing City; and

WHEREAS Jiang’s obsession with eradicating Falun Gong has not been confined to China; and

WHEREAS Dr. Charles Lee, a United States citizen, was arrested as soon as he arrived China on January 22, 2003, and was rushed through a one-day show trial on March 21, 2003 and sentenced to a 3-year prison term for no crime but his intention to expose the human rights violations towards Falun Gong practitioners that the Chinese Communist Party has tried to conceal; and

WHEREAS Dr. Lee has since then been illegally detained, isolated from the outside world, beaten and physically abused, deprived of sleep and handcuffed for days at a time, forced to go through daily brainwashing sessions, force-fed, and forced to do hard labor, just in order to break his will, destroy his spirit and eventually make him give up his belief in Falun Gong; and 

WHEREAS Chinese consular officials have pressured local elected officials in the United States to refuse or withdraw support for Falun Gong; and

WHEREAS over the past 4 years China’s diplomatic corps has been actively involved in blacklisting, harassing and persecuting overseas Falun Gong practitioners; and exerting diplomatic and financial pressure on foreign nations, such as Iceland, Germany, Thailand and France, to stop Falun Gong practitioners from holding peaceful public appeals; and

WHEREAS these acts by the Jiang regime have greatly endangered the national security of these nations, and jeopardized the principles of freedom, justice, and democracy cherished in the West; and

WHEREAS the Jiang regime has illegally arrested, interrogated, and detained Falun Gong practitioners of different nationalities, and those who practice Falun Gong overseas cannot freely travel, do business, or visit relatives in China without being concerned that they will be arrested and/or tortured; and

WHEREAS the Jiang regime’s information blockade efforts have been extended to North America, where web sites (including, for example, the home page of the California Institute of Technology) have been “hacked” and even shut down by Chinese programmers from the Ministry of Public Security of China; and

WHEREAS the Jiang regime has gained controls over many overseas Chinese-language media to incite hatred against Falun Gong; and people with close ties with the Chinese consulates have harassed and assaulted Falun Gong practitioners in cities such as Chicago, New York, and San Francisco; and China’s high-ranking diplomats openly rallied behind assailants who attacked Falun Gong practitioners on June 23, 2003 outside a Chinese restaurant in New York City; and

WHEREAS China’s diplomatic corps has coerced overseas corporations and organizations to compromise their ethics by discriminating against Falun Gong practitioners in regular business activities, for instances, hotels in Houston to cancel practitioners’ registered rooms, Chinese-language newspapers to breach advertising contracts with Falun Gong, schools to fire teachers for practicing Falun Gong, parade organizers to stop Falun Gong from participating; and

WHEREAS the Jiang regime has forced some multinational corporations, such as Volkswagen, to become its accomplice in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners by forcing their employees in China to give up their practice or sign documents against Falun Gong; an

WHEREAS police and security personnel in China who have killed Falun Gong practitioners, following the mandate of the top leadership, are commended and are encouraged to continue murdering and torturing;

WHEREAS the Jiang regime has also attempted to obstruct the due legal process to bring justice to him and his cohorts in the United States and elsewhere all over the world; and

WHEREAS we, citizens of the world in the 21 century, cherish human rights and, the freedom of belief, the freedom of conscience, the freedom to live without fear, and the freedom to pursue goodness; and

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT it is the sense of the undersigned that

1. the United States Government should continue its tradition in taking the lead in drafting a China Resolution to highlight Falun Gong persecution and other human rights abuses and taking the lead in organizing multilateral support to obtain passage by the Commission of such a resolution;
2. at the 60th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, a China Resolution should be introduced to call upon the People’s Republic of China to end its human rights violations and meet internationally recognized standards for human rights;
3. all countries with representatives at the 60th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission should support passage of such a resolution;
4. officials from U.S. and other governments should continue to speak out in all international forums and elsewhere against Chinese repression of freedom of belief, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly;
5. the Commission should send experts, representatives and rapporteurs to monitor the human rights situation in China.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the Commission should urge the People’s Republic of China to immediately stop the repression of spiritual and political groups, including but not limited to Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Catholics, Protestants; immediately release from detention all Falun Gong practitioners and all other prisoners of conscience and political dissidents; stop the slave labor in labor camps; ban the organ harvesting on prisoners; end the coercive family planning policies; and abide the internationally-accepted standard to implement freedoms of belief, expression, association and press.

Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners http://www.globalrescue.net

Global Coalition to Bring Jiang to Justice http://www.grandtrial.org

China Support Network (USA) http://www.chinasupport.net

Global Coalition against Article 23 Legislation http://www.againstarticle23.org/en/

Friends of Charles Lee (USA) http://www.rescuecharles.org/en/

World Organization to Investigate Persecution of Falun Gong http://www.upholdjustice.org

China e-Lobby (USA) http://www.geoctities.com/china_e_lobby

Global Information Freedom (USA)

Safeguarding Rights of Women and Children Association (USA)

Mothers and Grandmothers for a Safe China and a Safe Canada (Canada)

Fa Wang Hui Hui (USA) http://www.fawanghuihui.org

China Forum (USA)

China’s Human Rights and Press Freedom League

Chinese Labor Party (Australia)

China Affairs (USA) http://www.chinaaffairs.org

Lao Gai Foundation (USA) http://www.laogai.org

Heavenly River Writing House (Australia)

Free China Movement (USA) http://www.freechina.net

Free China Forum(USA) http://www.freechina.net/fcf

China Democracy Party Joint Head quarters(USA) http://www.freechina.net/cdp; http://www.jh-cdp.org

Party for Freedom and Democracy in China(USA) http://www.freechina.net/pfdc

Alliance for Democracy in China(USA)

International Association of Chinese Workers(USA)

China Labor Party(USA) http://www.freechina.net/cwp

Leiter der Foederation fuer ein Demokratisches China in Rheinland (Germany)

Campaign to Free Dr. Wang Bingzhang http://wangbingzhang.us/main/index_en.htm

Chinese VIP Reference http://www.bignews.org

Campaign For Abolishment Of Laojiao Concentration Camp http://www.laojiao.org

Broad Alliance for Rescuing Dr. WANG Bingzhang http://www.geocities.com/drwangbingzhang

Chinese Alliance for Democracy (USA)

China Peace (USA)

International Institute of Future Science and Culture http://www.iifsc.org

The Press of Overseas Chinese Students (USA) http://www.love-china.org/

Boston New Life and Culture Center (USA)

The Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition (Australia)

Alliance of China Youth and Democracy (France)

Friends of Falun Gong (USA) http://www.fofg.org

Association for Asian Research (USA) http://www.asianresearch.org

International Advocates for Justice (Taiwan)

Washington Forum (USA)