Taiwanese Public Sends a Letter to Chinese Premier Asking for the release of a Falun Gong practitioner
By Zhu Dingshi & Wu Cenxi
Epoch Times Staff
More than 1,800 Taiwanese VIPs including politicians, celebrities, professors, lawyers, doctors, and others put their thumbprints on the letter. The idea of sending a letter with fingerprints originated in Botou City, Hebei Province, where 300 villagers signed and thumb printed a similar letter asking for the release of a local Falun Gong practitioner. Since then, villagers in other parts of China have done the same, calling on the Communist Party to redress Falun Gong.
Zhang Qingxi, the head of the Falun Dafa Association in Taiwan, said the letter is being sent to encourage more Chinese people to stand up against the persecution and to call for the release of detained Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner, Chung Ting-pang. Chung was abducted from the Ganzhou Airport in Jiangxi Province in mid-June as he was preparing to return to Taiwan.
There is also an ongoing petition campaign to collect more than 10,000 signatures with the hope that it will put enough pressure on the Chinese Communist Party to release Chung, according to Zhang.
Zhang said that Chung was arrested because he allegedly attempted to break through China’s censorship of television broadcasts. Human rights organization Amnesty International previously told The Epoch Times that Chung faces torture and ill treatment while in detention.
Falun gong is a meditation discipline that is being persecuted in China. Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin initiated the crackdown on Falun Gong on July 20, 1999 because of its widespread popularity in China. Practitioners have faced torture and intimidation. There is also a large body of evidence that tens of thousands of adherents have been used as forced donor’s in China’s organ trade.