(Clearwisdom.net)
Minister of Foreign Affairs for Canada
Honourable William Graham,
We would like to thank you for your consistent strong support in standing up for Falun Gong practitioners' rights of belief on numerous occasions.
As you and your colleagues mentioned this morning, there is serious and real concern regarding the current state of the United Nations. We as Falun Dafa practitioners we share in this very real concern.
The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China has been one of the starkest and most horrifying campaigns of repression and one-sided brutal violence in our world and has continued for over three years. In the last three months, 58 death cases have been reported of Falun Gong practitioners in China. To date, details of more than 560 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners have been confirmed, while sources in the Chinese Government admit the true number is in the thousands. Chinese people are threatened with persecution themselves for revealing the deaths of their family members who practice Falun Gong and can be charged with "leaking state secrets" for revealing such information.
To date more than 100,000 practitioners of Falun Gong are known to have been arbitrarily detained in prisons and labour camps where countless practitioners face brutal violence, rape, medieval forms of torture, etc.
The number of reports submitted to United Nations Committees and Special Rappateurs is very high and we have kept the United Nations abreast of the severity of this issue. Despite all this, we have seen no clear mention by or action from the Security Council or the General Assembly at the United Nations on the Falun Gong issue. The UN was formed just after a very similar tragedy took place.
Please review the following three articles from Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
Article 1
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article 3
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d ) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
These articles describe precisely the campaign of genocide by Chinese Leader Jiang Zemin and a few other key officials against Falun Gong practitioners in China. We all know that the Holocaust did not begin with the murder of 6 million Jewish people. It was a gradual process hidden behind politics and propaganda. Before the persecution of Falun Gong began there were 70 to 100 million people all throughout Chinese society practicing it. Add to this all of these people's family and friends and the cross-section of society in China that is affected by this persecution is enormous.
When the Nuremberg Trials were invoked for those who participated in the Nazi crimes against Jews, we witnessed many German soldiers who had been coerced and forced into committing crimes against humanity with pressure and propaganda having to face justice for their crimes. Likewise, at the end of the Cultural Revolution in China many of those who had committed crimes of arresting and executing others during the Cultural Revolution committed suicide, knowing that they would be held responsible for what they'd done.
Today in China there are a many officials who do not agree with the persecution of Falun Gong and the number who do not want to take part in this campaign is steadily growing. There are many who continue to commit crimes under pressure. These people will also be thankful in the future for our efforts to stand up against this persecution and to bring its end.
Daily, there are more reports of the general public in China standing up against this persecution or refusing to follow along with it after coming to know the facts that have been misconstrued in the state-run propaganda campaign. At the same time, the intensity of the persecution is being escalated by President Jiang. The time for action is indeed critical.
We ask that Canada break the silence at the United Nations General Assembly on the Falun Gong issue by raising a resolution that states in no unequivocal terms that this persecution must end and that those responsible must be punished. This is the greatest step we can make towards a long and prosperous relationship with China.
With sincere respect,
Falun Dafa Association of Canada