The Honorable George W. Bush

President of the United States

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Bush:

Friends of Falun Gong USA, a human rights organization based in New Jersey, urges you to specifically discuss human rights abuses against Falun Gong practitioners when you meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao later this month. The United States is widely admired for defending the human rights of its citizens and the citizens of the world. Your public acknowledgement of the Chinese government’s persecution of Falun Gong, along with Catholics, Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and other faiths, will have a very profound effect and will help others to better understand its seriousness.

The Chinese government’s ongoing and inhumane persecution of 100,000,000 followers of the Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) belief system has reached staggering and shocking levels. By sheer numbers alone, it is the largest faith group being persecuted by the Chinese. However, inhumanity is not a numbers game and the acts of the Chinese government against Falun Gong practitioners are what make the persecution so alarming. As you may be aware, a former Chinese journalist has fled China to expose the existence of a secret medical facility and underground prison in Sujiatun, a suburb of Shenyang in northwest China that has been used to imprison up to 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners and to harvest their organs for sale. This death camp is part of the Sujiatun District Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital and includes a crematorium to burn the bodies and cover up this gruesome practice.

The journalist’s account was supported by the statements of a former employee at the hospital whose ex-husband is a neurosurgeon there. By her account, his role in performing several cornea harvests on live Falun Gong practitioners each year drove him nearly insane and destroyed their marriage.

The horrors do not stop at Sujiatun. A veteran military doctor in the General Logistics Department of the Shenyang Military Region reports that Sujiatun is one of 36 concentration camps across China that harvest organs from live Falun Gong practitioners.

Mr. President, as a deeply religious man, I am sure you are repulsed and astounded by these revelations. It is incomprehensible to anyone of good conscience that such facilities and horrible practices would exist in the 21^st century. Nonetheless, they have been confirmed by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a non-profit investigative body based in the U.S. WOIPFLG has found that organs from Falun Gong practitioners were used for transplant in provinces and cities such as Henan, Shandong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, Hunan, Hubei, and perhaps others; they are still being made available on demand.

Writing about the Sujiatun concentration camp in the March 30 edition of the National Review Online, managing editor Jay Nordlinger wrote:

No one should bet that Sujiatun will penetrate the world’s consciousness. Governments everywhere are keen on smooth relations with the PRC; media, even in free countries, seem to want to help them. The reluctance of major newspapers and TV networks to report on atrocities in China is a sad subject.

And I recall what Robert Conquest, the great analyst of totalitarianism, once told me: The world has seldom wanted to believe witnesses. Ten, 20, or 30 years later, maybe, but rarely sooner.

In your upcoming meeting with President Hu, you have the rare opportunity to challenge the barbaric acts of a totalitarian government now, not in 10, 20, or 30 years. Your leadership in this regard could pave the way for greater awareness and worldwide calls for an independent investigation of Chinese concentration camps before thousands more Falun Gong practitioners lose their lives to the persecution. Friends of Falun Gong strongly urges you to take that bold and humane step. Please publicly renounce the Chinese government’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Respectfully,

cc:

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State

The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense

The Honorable Stephen Hadley, National Security Advisor