Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 12, 2000
BEIJING, Dec. 12 Less than a month after China agreed to resume human rights talks with the United States, a senior U.S. diplomat today protested two new actions by Chinese authorities: the apparent destruction of scores of underground Christian churches in southern China just weeks before Christmas, and the sentencing today of a Chinese-born U.S. resident to prison for investigating repression of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
The diplomat, briefing reporters in the U.S. Embassy here on the condition he not be identified, said he remained hopeful that new human rights discussions promised by Chinese President Jiang Zemin during a meeting with President Clinton in Brunei last month might still result in changes in how China treats its people.
But he said he was disturbed and disappointed by reports in Chinese newspapers of a renewed crackdown on religious activity in the southern province of Zhejiang, and by a Beijing court's decision today to sentence New York acupuncturist and Falun Gong adherent Teng Chunyan to three years in prison over the repeated protests of American diplomats.
"Razing churches before Christmas? I'm incredulous," the diplomat said. "It doesn't sound like a very good situation, and when we find out more facts, we'll try to take the appropriate action. It's certainly disappointing."
He said U.S. officials will also take up Teng's case with the Chinese government again, but noted that the chances of success are limited now because Chinese officials often say they cannot intervene after sentencing. "It doesn't look good," he said. "This isn't the result we were looking for."
On Monday, Chinese officials also confirmed that a court had rejected the appeal of Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent businesswoman from the restive Xinjiang region who is serving eight years in prison for mailing Chinese newspaper articles to her husband in the United States. Both the U.S. Senate and the House had passed resolutions demanding her release.
The holiday-season crackdown on religious activity centers on the coastal city of Wenzhou. Since early November, according to articles in local state-run newspapers, more than 1,000 temples, churches and ancestral halls in the area have been shut down, demolished or converted to recreation centers. Others have been forced to register with the government, the reports said.
One article said local officials destroyed a 400-square-meter church with explosive charges on Dec. 1. Another newspaper published a photo of workers taking a sledgehammer to one of 16 "illegal religious centers" in a nearby county.
China says it guarantees freedom of religion, but the government requires people to worship in one of its "patriotic" or government-controlled churches. The country is in the midst of a crackdown on a range of unapproved cults, sects and underground religious groups that are prospering as Communist ideology loses its appeal in a society undergoing rapid change.
The government has singled out Falun Gong for particularly harsh treatment, partly because 10,000 practitioners of its breathing and meditation exercises surprised the leadership last year and surrounded Communist Party headquarters in a protest. As many as 72 adherents have died in police custody and an estimated 3,000 people have been sent to labor camps.
But Falun Gong members continue to resist. At least two dozen were arrested on Sunday in Tiananmen Square after unfurling protest banners. And in recent weeks, people have been putting up posters on lampposts and walls, and distributing flyers in Beijing apartment complexes and universities to counter the government campaign to vilify their movement as [].
The flyers represent an unusually bold challenge because many of them attack President Jiang Zemin by name, portraying him as a short-tempered "autocrat" who is pressing the campaign against the movement despite reservations among his Politburo colleagues. Informal verbal criticism of Chinese officials by name is common today, but written, public attacks on specific leaders remain taboo.
Teng is the first U.S. permanent resident to be sentenced to prison for Falun Gong activities, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. A green card holder who has lived in New York eight years and is married to an American citizen, she was convicted of disclosing national security information to foreigners.
Before her arrest in March, she tipped off foreign reporters about Falun Gong protests, arranged interviews for them and gathered evidence on the detention of members in Chinese mental hospitals. Prosecutors charged her with e-mailing photos of members who were detained inside one Beijing hospital to reporters, and providing the digital camera used to take the pictures, the center said.
China broke off bilateral human rights talks with the United States after the NATO bombing of its embassy in Yugoslavia last year. It is not expected to restart the dialogue until a new administration is in place in Washington.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60301-2000Dec12.html
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
