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Comments

• [1] Chris Hale July 25, 2007 - 12:41PM

  No discussion of social life in China can fail to address the laogai. These are slave labor camps where mostly political disidents and Falong gong are forced to labor for up to 20 hours a day under deadly conditions. They are tortured and beaten and suicide is rampant. There are 6.8 million Chines dissidents, half of which are Falon gong, in these camps. Please address this

  
  
• [2] Milene Wirth Fernandez from Vienna, Austria July 25, 2007 - 01:05PM

  Thank you for the interesting program and for mentioning the persecution of Falun Gong which is unfortunatelly usually ignored by most media.

  For an accurate explanation for the reason why Falun Gong practitioners are being brutally persecuted in China and about the Peaceful Appeal on April 24 at Zhongnanhai, which Rob Gifford refered to, I suggest reading the latest report from the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group:

  http://www.flghrwg.net/newsletter/TheLastStand.pdf

  
  
• [3] oken from alabama July 25, 2007 - 09:40PM

  I'm for Tibet independence and I like Dalai Lama. But somehow I don't have sympathy for Falun Gong. I have as much doubt about them as I do about the Chinese government. 1st of all, they seem to be well funded, have their own TV channel in many places in the world, their own paperS, magazineS and look like a very huge organization. but can somebody tell me where they get their money from? None of the people I know donates money to them. Yet last time I went home in Taiwan, I saw them having stands with big banners EVERYWHERE (it got to the point of annoying).

  Although I'm a skeptic, don't believe in any religion, I am fine with people with religion like my parents. But it's really hard to tell about the spirit part of this Falun Gong religion, especially it's got a name more like Tai-Chi than a religion. And I am not comfortable with any religion leader depicting himself as god-like figure. We've got some one like that back home already.

  About "soft speaking" or "speaking in low volume" in Chinese, I know a bunch of phrases(words) for them if you really want to know.

  
  
• [4] Milene from Vienna, Austria July 26, 2007 - 04:39AM

  Dear Oken,

  Maybe I can clear up some of your doubts and skepticism. Falun Gong practitioners around the world all understand that practitioners in China are being brutally tortured and persecuted. This has been confirmed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr. Manfred Nowak. For example, in 2006, he found that out of 314 cases of torture, representing 1,160 individual instances reported to the Chinese government since 2000, 66% involved Falun Gong practitioners, (11% Uighurs, 6% Tibetans, 5% human rights defenders, 2% political dissidents, etc...) Therefore, Falun Gong practitioners have been doing everything that they possibly can to inform the public about this brutal persecution by handing out flyers etc.. and they have been paying for such materials voluntarily out of their own pockets. There is no centralized office or formal organizational structure for Falun Gong and there is no hierarchy. The practice itself is open and free to the public (www.falundafa.org) and anyone is free to come and go as they please, also anyone is free to help stop the persection within their own means.

  If you would like to have a better understanding of what Falun Gong is really about, I suggest that you go to:

  http://www.flghrwg.net/

  and click on: "What is Falun Gong"

  With kind regards, Milene