[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 605 Introduced in House (IH)]
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 605
Recognizing the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in
China on the 10th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party campaign
to suppress the Falun Gong spiritual movement and calling for an
immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and
torture Falun Gong practitioners.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
June 26, 2009
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen (for herself, Mr. Poe of Texas, Mr. Bilirakis, Mr.
Burton of Indiana, Mr. Rohrabacher, Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida,
Mr. Minnick, and Ms. Waters) submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Recognizing the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in
China on the 10th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party campaign
to suppress the Falun Gong spiritual movement and calling for an
immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and
torture Falun Gong practitioners.
Whereas Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline which consists
of moral teachings for daily life, meditation, and exercise based upon
the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance;
Whereas, according to the 2008 Annual Report of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, ``tens of millions of Chinese citizens practiced
Falun Gong in the 1990s and adherents to the spiritual movement inside
of China are estimated to still number in the hundreds of thousands
despite the government's ongoing crackdown.'';
Whereas in 1996, Falun Gong books were banned in China and state media began a
campaign criticizing Falun Gong;
Whereas in 1998 and 1999, Chinese police began disrupting Falun Gong morning
exercises in public parks and began searching the homes of Falun Gong
practitioners;
Whereas, on April 25, 1999, over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered
outside the State Council Office of Petitions in Beijing, next to the
Communist Party leadership compound, to request that arrested Falun Gong
practitioners be released, the ban on publication of Falun Gong books be
lifted, and that Falun Gong practitioners be allowed to resume their
activities without government interference;
Whereas on the same day, immediately after then-Prime Minister Zhu Rongji met
with Falun Gong representatives in his office and agreed to the release
of arrested practitioners, Communist Party Chairman Jiang Zemin
criticized Zhu's actions and stated that the Communist Party must
``defeat'' Falun Gong in order to ``avoid becoming a laughing stock.'';
Whereas, on June 10, 1999, Jiang Zemin ordered the creation of the 6-10 office,
an extrajudicial security apparatus, given the mandate to ``eradicate''
Falun Gong;
Whereas, on July 20, 1999, Chinese police began arresting leading Falun Gong
practitioners;
Whereas, on July 22, 1999, Chinese state media began a major propaganda campaign
to ban Falun Gong for ``disturbing social order'' and warning Chinese
citizens that the practice of Falun Gong was illegal;
Whereas in October 1999, Party Chairman Jiang Zemin, according to western press
articles, ``ordered that Falun Gong be branded as a `cult', and then
demanded that a law be passed banning cults'', the term ``evil cult''
was subsequently utilized by Chinese authorities to undercut public
sympathy in China for Falun Gong and to play upon Western fears of cult
movements;
Whereas Chinese authorities have devoted extensive time and resources over the
past decade, both at home and abroad, to distributing false propaganda
claiming that Falun Gong is a suicidal and militant ``evil cult'' rather
than a spiritual movement which draws upon traditional Chinese concepts
of meditation and exercise;
Whereas Chinese official harassment of Falun Gong practitioners has extended to
interfering with the exercise of the constitutional rights of assembly
and free speech by United States citizens and lawful permanent residents
within the boundaries of the United States, including the physical
assault on Mr. Sheng Mei on October 22, 2000, in San Francisco's China
Garden Park ``by a mob of thugs who shouted allegations about Falun Gong
practitioners identical to those published in various Chinese
government-controlled newspapers'' while he was distributing Falun Gong
literature, the physical assault on Falun Gong practitioner Bill Fang
outside the Consulate of the People's Republic of China in Chicago on
September 7, 2002, by an assailant with reported ties to the Chinese
Government who pleaded guilty to battery charges in the Circuit Court of
Cook County, and the physical assault on May 19, 2008, on United States
citizen Judy Chen, the mother of two United States Marines then serving
in Iraq, outside the public library in Flushing, New York, by
individuals who also have reported links to the Chinese Government;
Whereas, on October 18, 2005, highly respected human rights attorney Gao
Zhisheng wrote a letter to Chinese Communist Party Chairman Hu Jintao
and Premier Wen Jiabao calling for an end to the persecution of Falun
Gong and Chinese authorities, in response, closed his law office and
took away his law license, with Chinese security forces suspected of
being directly involved in Mr. Gao's disappearance on February 4, 2009;
Whereas Gao Zhisheng's family has subsequently been granted political asylum in
the United States;
Whereas in July 2006, former Canadian Secretary of State, David Kilgour, and
Human Rights Lawyer David Matas, published a report, titled ``Report
into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in
China'', of their investigation into the reports of organ harvesting of
Falun Gong practitioners in China which concluded that large numbers of
Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting,
whilst still alive, throughout China and that the practice is still
ongoing;
Whereas the Amnesty International 2008 annual report states that ``Falun Gong
practitioners were at particularly high risk of torture and other ill-
treatment in detention . . . during the year 2007 over 100 Falun Gong
practitioners were reported to have died in detention or shortly after
release as a result of torture, denial of food or medical treatment, and
other forms of ill-treatment.'';
Whereas, according to the 2008 Department of State's Human Rights Report on
China, ``Some foreign observers estimated that Falun Gong adherents
constituted at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in
re-education through labor (RTL) camps, while Falun Gong sources
overseas placed the number even higher.'';
Whereas, according to the 2008 Annual Report of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, ``The (Chinese) central government intensified its
nine-year campaign of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in
the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games.'';
Whereas, according to the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group report of March
6, 2009, ``in April 2007, a secret document of the Public Security
Bureau listed Falun Gong among 11 groups that were to be monitored and
prohibited from attending the Olympics, in February 2008, the Beijing
Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad issued an
internal instruction to `strictly monitor and control Falun Gong''', and
subsequently ``over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in the
name of the Beijing Olympics' security.'';
Whereas Falun Gong-related websites remain among the most systematically and
hermetically blocked by China's internet firewall, clearly demonstrating
the paranoia and hostility directed against Falun Gong by China's
communist leaders; and
Whereas the Falun Dafa Information Center received reports of over 8,000
practitioners having been detained in 2008, with numerous reports of
death from torture or other abuse while in custody: Now, therefore, be
it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) expresses sympathy to Falun Gong practitioners and
their family members who have suffered persecution,
intimidation, imprisonment, torture, and even death for the
past decade solely because of adherence to their personal
beliefs;
(2) calls upon the Government of the People's Republic of
China to immediately cease and desist from its campaign to
persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong
practitioners, to immediately abolish the 6-10 office, an
extrajudicial security apparatus given the mandate to
``eradicate'' Falun Gong, and to immediately release Falun Gong
practitioners, detained solely for their beliefs, from prisons
and re-education through labor (RTL) camps, including those
practitioners who are the relatives of United States citizens
and permanent residents;
(3) calls upon the Government of the People's Republic of
China to end all harassment and intimidation within the borders
of the United States of Falun Gong practitioners and to end all
interference in their exercise of rights guaranteed under the
United States Constitution and applicable laws of the United
States;
(4) calls upon the Secretary of State to ensure that
officials of foreign embassies and consulates are not engaged
in activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,
including interference in the exercise of constitutional rights
by United States citizens and permanent residents within the
borders of the United States; and
(5) calls upon the President and Members of Congress to
mark the 10th anniversary of Chinese official repression of the
Falun Gong spiritual movement appropriately and effectively by
publicly expressing solidarity with those practitioners in
China persecuted solely because of their personal beliefs, and
by meeting with Falun Gong practitioners whenever and wherever
possible to indicate that support for freedom of conscience
remains a fundamental principle of the United States
Government.
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