Right Honorable David Blunkett MP
Home Secretary
UK Home Office
Dear Secretary Blunkett
Re: Detention of Ms. Lin Lili
We respectfully request your urgent attention to the plight of Ms. Lin Lili, a Falun Gong practitioner and Chinese citizen, who we understand is currently held in a Detention Centre at Manchester Airport and is scheduled for deportation to China on 7 March 2003.
Mr Secretary, no matter what assessment has been made of her case, be it reasonable in terms of the Home Office frame of reference, we ask you to look clearly at the heart of this matter. The proposal to return Ms Lin to China is not one where she is being returned to a society under the rule of law as we enjoy in Australia or the United Kingdom. She would be returned to a systematic and all encompassing persecution that targets all of China’s 1.3 billion people that we find hard to imagine in a free society a persecution where the vast resources of manpower and money of the Chinese state have been diverted to identify any Falun Gong practitioner or sympathizer and forcibly have them give up their belief in the principles of Falun Gong “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance.”
We ask that you intercede to stop this deportation and to allow consideration of Ms Lin’s application for asylum. We trust you will find our request is clearly reasonable and one to which you can accede in good conscience once the ramifications are truly known to you.
Ms. Lin had applied for asylum to the Home Office in Manchester in October 2001. In April 2002 Ms Lin was married to Mr Jinfei Zhang, a doctoral candidate at Liverpool University who is a Falun Gong practitioner. She then moved from Manchester to Liverpool, informed the Home Office of this change of address and reported in person on a regular basis. Ms Lin was also an active practitioner of Falun Gong, helping her husband run free Falun Gong classes in Liverpool and frequenting the Chinese Consulate in Manchester and the Chinese Embassy in London to appeal for an end to the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China.
We understand the Home Office’s refusal of Ms Lin’s application included an understanding that in her home Province of Fujian there was not much risk for Falun Gong practitioners. We believe the families of the many practitioners who have died in that Province would beg to differ. (Please refer to the website – http://media.minghui.org/gb/dstats/death_namelist_province.htm#Fujianm).
The refusal letter was also sent to her previous address, thus she was not aware of the refusal and failed to make an appeal in the appropriate time and is now listed for deportation on 7 March 2003. She had complied with previous reporting requirements and while at the Home Office in Liverpool on 26 February, she did not understand why she was forcibly detained overnight without being able to contact her husband till the next day. Ms Lin is also pregnant.
Ms Lin would be well known to Consulate and Embassy staff who photograph and identify those involved in public appeals. It is clear that Ms Lin would suffer persecution if returned to China. She has a well-founded fear for her safety and it is clear that, as a person being forcibly returned from the UK she would be identified as someone who has spoken out against the torture and abuse of Falun Gong practitioners and be subject to the systematic persecution of the Jiang regime.
We urge you to investigate the serious threat that is posed to anyone returned to China who is known as a Falun Gong practitioner and who is known to have publicly appealed against the persecution. We also ask you to consider that such forced return would violate the principle of non-refoulement under International Law. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in the US have clearly identified that any practitioner returned to China is in danger, not only those named as “leaders”.[1]
Recently several Falun Gong practitioners from western countries have also been arrested in China.
Australian citizen Nancy Chen was kidnapped on 22 January this year while visiting her parents and was fortunately released 10 days later because of the Australian government’s intervention. During her detention she was taken by the Chinese National Security Bureau to Nanmusi Women’s Detention Centre in Zizhong City, where she saw first hand the brutal attempts to “transform” practitioners into giving up their beliefs.
American citizen Mr Charles Li was also taken on 22 January is still being detained. He arrived at Guangzhou airport for a Chinese New Year family visit and was then transferred 1,000 miles away to the Yangzhou Detention Center in Jiangsu Province even though he is not from that Province.
German practitioner, Ms Lin Wenrong went back to China to visit her family on 17 January this year, but was kidnapped on 29 January in her hometown of Wuhan City and is still detained.
Mr Secretary, we hope you can begin to understand there is no rationale or logic to the Jiang regime’s crazed persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. How to make sense of the systematic torture and incarceration of peaceful people who wish to meditate, practice 5 exercises and live by the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance? This tragedy has to date led to the documented deaths of 578 good people, while other sources within the Chinese government have confirmed over 1600 have died and 100,000 are in labor camps.
In Australia we are fortunate to have inherited the UK system of justice where the voice of common sense can be heard. In that light we note your speech of 2 October 2002 confirmed, “Compassion is only really possible when people believe that common-sense prevails.” How can it make sense to send a pregnant woman, who is now trying to live by the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance to certain persecution and possible death? We implore you to act swiftly to safeguard the life of Ms Lin Lili and her unborn child. This act of kindness and compassion will show that common sense prevails in the face of the madness and horror endured by Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Yours Sincerely
Falun Dafa Association of NSW Australia
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[1] – Human Rights Watch “Dangerous Meditation ?China’s Campaign Against Falun Gong” at: http://hrw.org/reports/2002/china/
– Amnesty International Report 23 March 2000 AI-Index: ASA 17/011/2000
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called ”heretical organizations”
Posting date: 6/March/2003
Original article date: 5/March/2003
Category: Australian News
