Mr. Zheng’s accomplice,
Mr. Weng, was arrested in the early morning of November 5 in Chicago’s Chinatown.
His case will go to court on December 5, 2002.
Ties to Chinese Consulate — “Something Very
Shady Going On”
According to Mr. Fang, F.B.I. officials who are
investigating the case say Mr. Zheng denied all charges when he was first
arrested in June 2002. The next day, however, two Chinese men visited
Mr. Fang’s apartment to offer him $2,000 to drop the case. Their offer
was later raised to $15,000. Both offers were refused.
Mr. Fang says one of the men identified himself
only as “Mr. Guo.” The other man is often seen visiting the
Chinese Consulate in Chicago.
Chicago police have opened a case regarding the
attempted bribe.
“It is obvious to us that there is something
very shady going on here, and the Chinese Consulate in Chicago appears
to be behind it,” says Chicago-native and local Falun Gong practitioner
Stephen Gregory, who has been involved with the case. “After all,
how does a Chinese immigrant [Mr. Zheng] who, according to the police,
has no job come to drive a new Mercedes-Benz, be in a position to offer
a $15,000 bribe and have the means to hire Steven Weinsburg — one of
Chicago’s more expensive lawyers — as his attorney? The defendants have
known ties to the Chinese Consulate.”
A Violent Attack
At the beginning of September 2001, Chicago Falun
Gong practitioners started a peaceful 10-day relay hunger strike appeal
in front of the Chicago Chinese Consulate. The appeal was in response
to news that at least five women had died in police custody in China under
suspicious circumstances, with multiple accounts identifying torture and
beatings as the cause of death.
According to eyewitnesses, at 4:40 pm on September
7, three men driving a new black Mercedes-Benz SUV stopped in front of
the Chinese Consulate. They got in and out of the car several times while
cursing at the Falun Gong practitioners who were on hunger strike.
Seeing this, Ms. Feng Lu, one of the practitioners
on hunger strike, says she wanted to clarify the facts of the persecution
to them and explain why they were conducting a hunger strike. She walked
over to their car, handed flyers to them with information regarding the
recent deaths in China and said, “I would like to give you some materials
describing the persecution of Falun Gong. So many Chinese people were
tortured to death simply because they practiced Falun Gong. You are also
Chinese, doesn’t this matter to you?”
According to Ms. Lu, the three men began shouting
at her: “Go back to China and die! I’ll beat you! Don’t you believe
me?”
Mr. Zheng then threatened to expose himself to
Ms. Lu.
Mr. Bill Fang, a practitioner of Falun Gong who
witnessed the disturbance from across the street, took out his camera
to photograph the scene. Mr. Zheng and Mr. Weng then jumped out of their
vehicle and charged Mr. Fang. They beat Mr. Fang about the head and body,
causing him to feel dizzy, have trouble breathing, and vomit.
Witnesses say the two men then grabbed Mr. Fang’s
camera and threw it to the ground, exposing part of the film.
After destroying the camera, the two men rushed
back to their car and sped away. As they left, seeing that Ms. Lu was
recording the license plate number of their car, Mr. Zheng threatened
her, “If you report us, I will kill you!”
Two minutes later, policemen arrived at the scene.
Mr. Fang had multiple injuries and bruises, and was sent to the emergency
room for treatment.
Ms. Lu says she received many threatening and harassing
phone calls for many days afterwards.
U.S. Officials, Citizens and Residents Targeted
The story of Ms. Lu, Mr. Fang and their attackers
is not an isolated incident.
Across the United States, what began in July, 1999
as a series of isolated incidents of intimidation, harassment and illegal
activity on the part of Chinese officials and those working under their
direction, has been uncovered as a targeted campaign against officials,
citizens and residents who practice or support Falun Gong in the U.S.
and other countries.
Under the orders from China’s former Communist
Party leader, Jiang Zemin, to “strengthen the campaign overseas,”
Chinese officials have employed economic ties at the national, state and
city level, political pressure, and illicit means in an attempt to slander
Falun Gong and undermine support for the practice in the U.S. As reported
in a Wall Street Journal article on Feb. 21, 2002: “The Chinese government…has
[urged] local U.S. officials to shun or even persecute [Falun Gong] right
here in America. The approach…tends to combine gross disinformation
with scare tactics and, in some cases, slyly implied diplomatic and commercial
pressure.”
There have also been dozens of cases across the
U.S. of citizens and residents being intimidated, harassed and physically
attacked by Chinese consulate officials or those working for them.
On October 22, 2000 in San Francisco’s China Garden
Park, for example, Mr. Sheng Mei was physically attacked by a mob of thugs
while distributing Falun Gong literature. The assailants punched him repeatedly
and shouted allegations about Falun Gong practitioners identical to those
published in various Chinese government-controlled newspapers. The attack
on Mr. Mei was part of a larger assault involving a group of 30-40 thugs
believed to be hired by Chinese Consulate personnel.
Further Ties to the Chinese Consulate
“We know that Mr. Zheng’s accomplice, Mr.
Weng, stayed at the office of the former “Chen Pao” newspaper
until the early hours of the morning before he was arrested,” stated
Mr. Gregory. “This office is where the Chinese American Association
of Greater Chicago is located. The Association is actually a small circle
of people affiliated with the Chinese Consulate.”
Mr. Gregory explains, “The Chinese Consulate
has held a number of what they call ‘denouncing Falun Gong’ meetings in
this association’s name, which are basically meetings where they get together
and figure out ways to discredit and persecute those who practice Falun
Gong here in Chicago. The officers of the Chinese Consulate often show
up here. In fact, we know of at least one occasion when the Vice General
Consul Wei-Lian Shen chaired such a meeting.”
Mr. Gregory concludes, “The connection between
the Chinese consulate and these two men is not lost on us, nor anyone
else looking into this case.”
Indeed, there are very strong ties between Chinese
consulates and Chinese community associations throughout the country.
Consulate officials have utilized these ties to rally the associations,
and members of the Chinese community overall, against Falun Gong. On September
6, 2001, New York City’s Newsday newspaper ran an article exposing this
activity: “[Chinese] Government officials have appeared at ‘seminars’
in Manhattan to decry [Falun Gong], egging on local Chinese immigrants
to oppose the movement. In one session, the consul-general told his audience
that immigrants who have not become U.S. citizens were expected to obey
Chinese laws, which ban Falun Gong. Further poisoning the atmosphere for
local Falun Gong practitioners, powerful organizations in Chinatown —
which had expressed no concern about Falun Gong before the government
crackdown started in July 1999 — began holding countermarches against
the group, their charges echoing the government’s virulent accusations.”
Mr. Gregory says it makes him sad that things have
come to this. “In China,” Mr. Gregory explains, “Jiang’s
regime can use the police to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong.
That’s not really possible overseas, especially in free countries like
the United States. So, they use these thugs instead. It is really a shame
that some Chinese officials and policies have fallen so low under Jiang’s
dictatorship.”
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