[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.
                                 <all>