April 27, 2006 Thursday

A silent Falun Gong protest against alleged death camps in China was held on the steps of city hall yesterday morning.

Five practitioners of the spiritual movement -- which is banned in China -- were here from Toronto. They stood in silence on the steps of city hall, holding up banners and signs against the mass killings of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Group spokesman Michael Pawlett said the Chinese government is maintaining concentration camps where organs are "harvested" from dissenters for sale to people who can afford to pay.

"They're using people like cattle," Pawlett said. "These types of atrocities can't be tolerated, in the world."

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He and his companions -- Tianqi Li, Cindy Li, Lee Wang and Yan Wu -- have been travelling around Ontario by car over the last three weeks, making similar stops in other cities. Sometimes elected officials attended, he said, and other times they didn't.

"It's sad -- but plenty of politicians are playing it cautious," he said, adding some are worried about protecting trade relations with China. Pawlett said he and his friends started their tour three weeks ago, shortly after a Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper, The Epoch Times, reported about organ transplant prisons.

The Times, published in 60 countries, quotes various witnesses, including a doctor who performed cornea transplants from live victims.

Recent stories in The Times state about 120,000 people are being held in 36 camps across China.

That prompted several travelling protests in the U.S. and in Europe, Pawlett said.

He and his companions -- who constitute the only roving protest in Ontario -- have been to Napanee, Kingston, Newmarket and Huntsville. They plan to continue to North Bay and to Timmins, he said, before the tour is done.

Pawlett thinks signing online petitions and urging elected officials to stand up for human rights will help.

Chris Galley stopped as he was walking down George Street and signed the petition. He also took pamphlets, which he said he would distribute among his co-workers.

"There's really no excuse for this," he said of the alleged camps. "You'd never even want to treat an animal that way -- let alone a human."

Pawlett said he's been practising Falun Gong for six years. He describes it as a meditative philosophy that focuses on tolerance and truthfulness. It poses no threat to the communist regime, Pawlett said -- except that there were 100 million people practising in China in the late 1990s.

"That's more than the Communist party," Pawlett said.

Pawlett says Falun Gong is all about meditation and gentle exercise.