Dr. Apichart Chinwanno, Ambassador.
Royal Thai Embassy,
Floragatan 3,
Box 26220 100 40, Stockholm.
18th December 2005
Ref: Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, with UN refugee protection status, detained by the Thai police
Your Excellency,
People in Europe consider the Thai people to be kind, helpful and courageous. Their struggle to recover from the tsunami catastrophe won the hearts of many Europeans. With this background, it came as a shock to us that the Thai police detained seven Chinese Falun Gong practitioners with UN refugee status, two of them children, thus worsening their suffering.
On December the 15th about twenty Thai police officers arrested three men, two women and their children aged five, six and fourteen. These Falun Gong practitioners did nothing wrong, but the Thai police chose to lock them up like they were criminals. They were peacefully meditating in front of the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok on December the 15th most probably in sympathy with two female Falun Gong practitioners who were raped by the policemen of Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province in China. They were very sad about what happened to their fellow practitioners in China.
They are now even sadder that Thailand, the country that has protected them earlier, has given in to pressures from the Chinese embassy.
According to the Falun Gong Information Centre, a Thai immigration investigator, Wikorn Jarupruch, told Falun Gong practitioners that it was the Chinese Embassy who directed the police to take action against them.
At around noon that day, the Thai police officers went in and out of the Embassy. Then for no reason, they forcefully searched Falun Gong practitioners' bags, took their banners, and arrested them.
The official reason for arresting the five adults, given by Officer Pithipan Krisdakorn, was that they failed to show proper evidence of legal entry into Thailand. This is an unreasonable claim. Like many refugees, they do not have passports but official letters of protection status from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office.
The police action was taken with disregard for refugees in need of humanitarian help and avoiding persecution. This really disappoints us in Europe.
The fourteen-year-old girl was released but seven people are still detained. Among them are Mr. Huang Guohua and his five-year-old daughter Kaixin whose mother Luo Zhixiang was three months pregnant when she was killed in Chinese police custody in 2002. The poor girl has been living with her grandparents in China until last December when she was reunited with her father in Bangkok. He had fled to Thailand earlier, after having been arrested and tortured in China himself.
The normal procedure for handling refugees is for the police to call the UNHCR, but once again we regret to say that the police did not act accordingly.
What happened in Thailand is part of the evil scheme by the communist regime to persecute Falun Gong practitioners who strive to follow their beliefs in the principles of truth, compassion and tolerance, rather than the communist ideology. The Chinese Communist Party fears that virtue and morality will challenge the authority of its corrupt dictatorship.
Falun Gong has been senselessly persecuted in China for over six years, and at least 2790 practitioners have died from torture.
Protests in front of the Chinese Embassies and Consulates are being held all over the world and will continue until the persecution in China ends. During the past six years of sufferings, Falun Gong practitioners have never asked for anything else except the right to practice their belief peacefully.
What happened in Thailand recently must be a mistake. We sincerely hope that the Thai authorities will release the seven refugees, two of them are children. They have come a long way. They have suffered enough.
We are anxiously waiting for the release of the UN refugees.
Yours sincerely
Malin Nordstrand
Board of Directors
Category: Rallies & Protests
