Man convicted of murders “had mental problems for a long time.”
By Nathea Lee/ The Epoch Times
A man found guilty of poisoning 16 people and accused by Chinese officials of being “inspired” by Falun Gong was mentally ill, according to the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG).
A court in Wenzhou, Zhejiang in eastern China sentenced Chen Fuzhao to death on December 30 for poisonings that were carried out last spring. News reports by Reuters and the BBC repeated the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency’s claim that Chen committed the crimes in an effort to attain “spiritual perfection”.
In a July 2nd article, Xinhua claimed that Chen was “suspected” of being a follower of Falun Gong, the meditation and exercise practice was banned by former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin in 1999. Since Jiang outlawed Falun Gong and began what has been described as a campaign of “genocide”, world leaders from the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere have urged their Chinese counterparts to end the persecution.
Falun Gong followers in the U.S., Taiwan, Germany, Belgium, Spain and South Korea have sued Jiang and others for genocide, torture, and civil rights violations.
Last week, The Epoch Times reported that the Falun Dafa Information Center refuted Xinhua’s accusations about Chen. The Information Center was established to track and report on the persecution of Falun Gong.
“The claims put forth by Xinhua…follow a pattern of fabricated reports that have – under the orders of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin – been faithfully churned out by China’s state-run media over the last four-plus years,” read a statement released by the organization.
In a report translated for The Epoch Times, WOIPFG says it contacted the condemned man’s father, Chen Xi, in July and learned that the family had taken Chen Fuzhao to see a psychiatrist because of his troubling behavior. A doctor reportedly told WOIPFG, “Chen Fuzhao has had mental problems for a long time”.
An official at a hospital in Chen’s hometown, Cangnan, told WOIPFG investigators earlier this week that “Chen Fuzhao has mental problems” and that “he relapsed after several people beat him up”.
“He did not do well when he was in Longxin Hospital,” the official revealed. “He went to see doctors and relapsed quite often”.
The WOIPFG report also revealed that very few people in Cangnan practiced Falun Gong. “There was only one who went out of town to do business,” the investigators found. “He never read any Falun Gong books and only learned the exercises twice, yet he was taken as a Falun Gong practitioner and sent for ‘re-education’ or ‘reform class’”.
According to its web site (www.upholdjustice.org), WOIPFG was established to “investigate the criminal conduct of all institutions, organizations, and individuals involved in the persecution of Falun Gong”.
WOIPFG began investigating the Chen case six months ago.
Posting date: 9/Jan/2004
Original article date: 8/Jan/2004
Category: Media Report
