As the gold-medal tally for China soars in Beijing, Linda Wang’s heart fills with pain.
“This is not the Olympics of humanity,” the somber Kansas City woman said. “This is the Olympics of hypocrisy.”
Wang and other Falun Gong practitioners in the region held a press conference today at the Johnson County Library to pressure the Chinese government to live up to the humanitarian ideal of the Olympics and release the parents of a Missouri college student arrested last month.
Jin Pang, 25, a first-year MBA student at Missouri State University in Springfield, said she hasn’t heard from her parents since they were arrested July 29 in a “Peaceful Olympics” sweep by Communist Party officials.
Earlier in the month, Pang said her parent’s apartment in Weifang City in Shandong province was ransacked by police and their valuables and lifesavings were taken to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners and do it under the guise of a pre-Olympic law-and-order sweep.
Her mother, Junping Cao, 51, a retired sales clerk and Falun Gong practitioner, and her father, Xiaoqiang Pang, 53, a detention center engineer who doesn’t practice the Buddhist-like discipline banned by the government, are being held at the Weifang City Detention Center, she said.
“It’s very ridiculous,” Pang said in an interview after the press conference. “They have taken advantage of the Olympics to persecute their foes.”
In place for nine years, Falun Gong practitioners say they read and exercise to create an inner peace that fosters competence, truthfulness, tolerance and good health. In China, the numbers who practice the discipline rivals that of the Communist Party.
Wang, who runs a nonprofit organization and is a freelance reporter for a Chinese newspaper, said today’s press conference was designed to expose the Chinese government’s inhumane and bloody persecution of Falun Gong.
As of Jan. 1, the Falun Dafa Information Center reports that at least 8,037 Falun Gong practitioners from 29 provinces have been arrested.
Scores of human rights organizations, Congress and even the City Council of Kansas City have recognized Falun Gong and condemned the Chinese government’s crackdown.
Over the past nine years, the Communist regime is believed to have murdered and tortured 3,175 Falun Gong practitioners, including 319 from Shandong province and 94 from Weifang City.
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