August 28th New York
Press Conference Opening Remarks
Hello, and thank you everyone for attending.
I'm Gail Raichlin, a spokesperson for Falun Gong, and today we are here to announce a significant development in the effort to bring to justice the perpetrators of the brutal persecution against Falun Gong in China. At about 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon, a high-ranking xx Party official from Sichuan Province, China, Mr. Zhou Yongkang, was served in Chicago, Illinois, in front of the city's 911 Center, with a complaint for violation of the Alien Tort Claim Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act. Zhou serves as the General Secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Chinese xx Party (PCCCP) of Sichuan Province. He is being charged with the commission of serious human rights abuses against the plaintiff and his sister -- including torture, disappearance, false imprisonment, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and crimes against humanity. As General secretary of the PCCCP, Zhou, in concert with other officials of the xx party and high-ranking government officials, authorized, supervised, and implemented a campaign to persecute, intimidate and ultimately eliminate the Falun Gong spiritual movement in the province of Sichuan, and elsewhere in China. This campaign has involved a catastrophic loss of lives, the loss of jobs, the disappearance of select persons, brutal torture--which is often conducted in police stations to extract false confessions--the systematic breaking of families, and the disruption of civil society. In addition to subjecting innocent citizens to arbitrary arrests and detentions, cruel and inhuman treatment, torture, disappearance and death, this campaign is a breach of a number of international agreements to which China is a signatory.