May 12, 2009: Falun Gong News Bulletin

•    New York Times: “With New Software, Iranians And Others Outwit Net Censors”
•    News-Leader (Springfield, Missouri): “A Mother’s Day Wish: End Persecution for Beliefs”
•    Des Moines Register: “Women Detail Their Torture in China Camps”
•    The Epoch Times: “Vice President of European Parliament Calls on UN for Genocide Investigation”; Prominent Author Reveals Research on Organ Harvesting
•    Letter to the Editor: “A Missing Chinese Lawyer”
•    Letter to the Editor: “China and the Falun Gong”

New York Times: “With New Software, Iranians And Others Outwit Net Censors”
May 1: “By late autumn more than 400,000 Iranians were surfing the uncensored Web. The software was created not by Iranians, but by Chinese computer experts volunteering for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999.

… [U]ntil now the Falun Gong [volunteers] ha[ve] devoted the most resources, experts said, erecting a system that allows the largest number of Internet users open, uncensored access…. Each week, Chinese Internet users receive 10 million e-mail messages and 70 million instant messages from the consortium.”

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/technology/01filter.html

News-Leader (Springfield, Missouri): “A Mother’s Day Wish: End Persecution for Beliefs”
May 10: “My name is Jin Pang. I’m a graduate student at Missouri State University in Springfield. Today will be a sad day for me. It will be the first Mother’s Day in my life that I can’t talk to my mom. Instead, I will be worrying about her well-being, because she has been held for over nine months in a detention center in China, simply for her belief in Falun Gong…

This isn’t the first time that my mother has been persecuted for her belief…In January 2000, my mom and eight other Falun Gong practitioners began practicing the exercises quietly in a public square. After a few minutes, all of them were arrested and taken to a local police station. That night, they were detained in a cold cement cell that was less than nine square meters, where they were shocked with electric batons and beaten with spiked clubs….

May all the mothers who are prisoners of conscience be set free. This is my special wish on this Mother’s Day.”

Full story: http://www.news-leader.com/article/20090510/OPINIONS02/905100304/1006/OPINIONS/A+Mother+s+Day+wish++End+persecution+for+beliefs

Des Moines Register: “Women Detail Their Torture in China Camps”
April 26: “The mother and daughter sat cross-legged on the living room floor of their tiny Des Moines apartment, calmly describing the horrors of Chinese prisons and labor camps….  The retired doctor [Guizheng Yang] said she was watched constantly, that 40 prisoners, all Falun Dafa practitioners, worked day and night sewing garments and gloves in a tiny room.

“Those who refused to work were beaten and hung by their wrists for many hours,” she said. “We were starved if we didn’t work fast enough.” Yang said her weight dropped from 140 pounds when she arrived at the prison to about 80 pounds when she was released after her health began to deteriorate. She was released after two years of imprisonment.

She didn’t know that during that time, on Aug. 28, 2004, her husband died. Her daughter, Zhang, was arrested walking home from the funeral. She spent two years in China’s infamous Masanjia prison camp.”

Full story: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090426/NEWS03/904260379/-1/LIFE04

Ethan Gutmann, award-winning investigative reporter on China issues,…has been intensively interviewing over 100 people for a book on the fate of Falun Gong at the hands of the Chinese communist regime….

“Fifteen per cent [of the 50 Falun Gong refugees interviewed] had clearly been assessed for harvesting, in many cases, again and again, endless blood tests and urine tests and so on,” said Gutmann, who wasn’t expecting to find this information.

How many Falun Gong have been harvested for organs? “I come up with a total of 13,500 on the low end. On the high end 162,000 have been harvested,” said Gutmann, acknowledging that reliable data is hard to come by.”

Full story: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/16303/

Letter to the Editor: “A Missing Chinese Lawyer”
May 9:  …“Some persecuted Falun Gong practitioners in China have recently been represented by lawyers. But it should be noted that such lawyers themselves face severe repression for taking on these clients.

Urgent in this regard is the case of Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who was “disappeared” by police in China on Feb. 4 and has not been heard from since. Mr. Gao had represented members of Falun Gong and had written a letter to President Hu Jintao calling for an end to their persecution. He was later detained for two months and left a detailed account of torture he suffered at the hands of his captors.”

Martin Flaherty New York, April 28, 2009; The writer, a professor of international human rights at Fordham Law School, is vice chairman of the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/opinion/lweb09china.html
To read more on Gao and other lawyers defending Falun Gong, see: http://www.faluninfo.net/topic/152/

Letter to the Editor: “China and the Falun Gong”
May 4: “At a meeting of the World Psychiatric Association in 2004, the Chinese Psychiatric Society agreed to allow an independent review committee to investigate reports of involuntary psychiatric “treatment” of non-mentally ill Falun Gong practitioners. In short order, however, the Chinese government forbade such interference in its internal affairs.

In subsequent years, many American and other foreign psychiatrists have visited China, but no inspection of any of the maximum-security psychiatric institutions has taken place. Reports of misuse of psychiatry in China persist.”

Abraham L. Halpern Palm Beach, Fla., April 28, 2009; The writer is emeritus professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College.

To read: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/opinion/l04china.html
To read more on the use of psychiatric torture and psychological abuse against Falun Gong, see: http://www.faluninfo.net/topic/148/; http://www.faluninfo.net/topic/13/