Deportation Results in a Three-Year Labor Camp Sentence
May 3, 2005 |
By The Epoch Times |
FRANKFURT—On March 7 officials of the German Federal Border Police accompanied Jiang Renzheng, his wife Guo Rui and their two small children to the door of the Aeroflot flight that would take them from Germany via Moscow to Peking. On the plane they were accompanied by two Russian officials, who handed over their papers to a Chinese official on their arrival. Deportation. Earlier that same day Jiang Renzheng’s and Guo Rui’s appeal of the deportation order had been heard and rejected by the Bavarian Administrative Court. As adherents of the peaceful meditation practice Falun Gong, the couple claimed they would face persecution in China. The judge found that there is no danger in China for them, so long as they practice the Falun Gong exercises at home. On April 9, the Judge’s opinion was refuted. In the northeastern city of Shenyang, Jiang Renzheng was condemned to three years in a labor camp and carried away to an unknown location. The charge was “endangering public security.” The true reason for the sentence was Jiang’s practice of Falun Gong. This is called “administrative detention.” On March 22 the German Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer spoke before the United Nations Human Rights Commission demanding China reform this practice. Guo Rui has gone into hiding with one of their children so that she can avoid suffering the same fate as her husband. There were various torture instruments On March 17, just ten days after Jiang’s return to China, police officers appeared at the house of Jiang’s father. As they did not find Jiang, they asked his father, “Do you see what we have with us?” The police showed him several of a very widely used torture device in China, the electric shock club. The father was terrified, and upon his son’s return home, asked him to stop practicing Falun Gong. Jiang refused. The police officers kept visiting, and soon undertook the first of several severe interrogations of Jiang and the 54 year old father. The first one lasted 12 hours, from four p.m. to four a.m. The officers pressured Jiang and, among other things, demanded he write down what activities he took part in as a Falun Gong practitioner living abroad. In fact, the police officers were obviously already well informed about Jiang’s activities, according to their own admission, from information supplied by the German authorities. They demanded he stop practicing Falun Gong. Attention from media and human right organizations Jiang Renzheng has already gained widespread attention, both in the German media and from human right organizations. Amnesty International and the German Foreign Office are informed about the case. The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) stated in a press release that the secret service of China spies on Chinese living abroad, and presented a petition calling for the release of Jiang Renzheng and for freedom of conscience in China. Dr. Ulrich Delius of the Society for Threatened Peoples considers it “scandalous, that the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the UN Human Rights Commission and before the German Parliament denounced administrative detention in China, but does nothing to prevent the deportation of the married couple, who in China would surely be threatened with the labor camp.” Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg has followed the case closely and built up a group of supporters in Würzburg (Bavaria, Germany). In similar cases, the Chinese government has feared publicity, and so Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg’s group strives to bring public attention to the case. Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg reports what she was told in an April 16 telephone call from China with Jiang’s family. On April 10, Mr. Yuan, the director of the Benxi Public Security Bureau (Benxi is a large city 60 miles southeast of Shenyang), visited Jiang’s family. Mr. Yuan said to the father that his son was arrested because he published an article about the circumstances of his interrogation on a Falun Gong web page, so that the whole world could know about it. The father heard from Mr. Yuan what his son had written, and then said to the policeman that his son had only written the facts and asked, “What is wrong with that?” Asked about their goal in the Jiang case, Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg says spontaneously, “We just want to have them back.” Many German government officials have written to Falun Gong practitioners to express their regrets about the deportation of Jiang Renzheng. Christine Stahl, a member of Parliament from Bavaria, wrote to Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg, “We really regret the big problems Mr. Renzhang Jiang and Mrs. Rui Guo are now facing. We will forward the information [from Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg’s phone calls to China]… to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to integrate this news into the reports about the persecution and intimidation. Jiang Renzheng remains in labor camp. Mrs. Tang-Wiesberg reports that Jiang’s mother is in tears everyday, and Jiang’s father is on the brink of a mental breakdown as a result of the shock—he can no longer recognize his relatives. From the German-language Epoch Times, with reporting from the Chinese-language edition. |