May 9, 2006

Practitioners of Falun Gong, [...] were in Alexandria on Monday morning, part of a national campaign protesting alleged organ harvesting in the communist country.

The group of five demonstrators spoke from the Alexandria City Hall parking lot and also displayed graphic photographs of what they said were Falun Gong victims.

The Falun Gong in China, they said, are targets for imprisonment, torture and removal of organs that fetch a premium price.

The demonstrators were scheduled to conduct another news conference in Lafayette later Monday.

They also are urging residents to contact their representatives in the U.S. Congress to lobby for dropping the charges against Dr. Wenyi Wang.

Wang yelled out protests against Chinese President Hu Jintao at a news conference with President Bush last month.

Wang was protesting alleged organ harvesting and now is facing six months in jail, said Edward Wei, a Falun Gong practitioner who lives in Tennessee.

The Chinese government doesn't "think (organ harvesting) is a crime -- it's a business," Wei said.

Wei claimed organ harvests are common among prisoners in China, and that Falun Gong members became enemies of the state in 1999 and have been subjected to torture and kidney, liver and heart removals ever since.

"Prisoners are condemned to death," said Mike Chen, also a practitioner who lives in Birmingham, Ala.

[...]

The demonstration started at 10 a.m. and ended peacefully at 10:30 a.m.