About 200 Falun Gong practitioners converged on Rome...

About 200 Falun Gong practitioners converged on Rome from all over the world for an SOS Falun Gong day. They practiced spiritual exercises in a colourful but silent demonstration in front of the seat of the Italian Parliament in Piazza Montecitorio to request Italian MPs to denounce the persecution of Falun Gong adherents by the Chinese authorities.
The event was organised by Hands Off Cain and the Transnational Radical Party.
At a news conference, HOC Secretary Sergio D'Elia warned against the risk of overlooking breaches of human rights by totalitarian or fundamentalist regimes in the overriding interests of the international anti-terrorism alliance.
"Democratic countries must not, in the name of this alliance, legitimise violations of human rights or persecution of political opponents by dictatorships, and this goes for China with regard to the Falun Gong, the Tibetans, the Uighurs and the Taiwan independence movement, as much as for Russia with regard to Chechnya," D'Elia said.
Erping Zhang, international spokesperson for the Falun Gong, said that Chinese president Jiang Zemin had ordered a new crackdown against Falun Gong adherents to mark the Chinese National Day on October 1. Zhang said that between July 1999 and August 2001 in China there were more than a 100,000 arrests, 283 deaths from torture, more than 1000 people sent to labour camps and another 1000 interned in psychiatric hospitals.
MEP Emma Bonino talked of the necessity of fighting terrorism and fundamentalism, but underlined the need to defend and uphold liberty, freedom of belief and opinion.
Falun Gong adherents who suffered persecution in China also gave touching accounts of persecution, arrest and torture.
An HOC initiative for a parliamentary resolution in favour of the Falun Gong was taken up and spearheaded by Senator Natale D'Amico, the chairperson of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission Gustavo Selva and the Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Representatives Alfredo Biondi. Biondi also received a Falun Gong delegation during the Falun Gong day in Rome.
MEP Marco Pannella was among the demonstrators who participated in a march from Trinità dei Monti to the Chinese Embassy following the press conference.
However even the Chinese embassy staff refused to accept an open letter from the Falun Gong to the Chinese ambassador in Rome.
Pannella tried to deliver the letter as an ordinary post-boy but the Italian woman who answered the intercom declared she had strict instructions not to receive any letter from Falun Gong. Pannella defined the incident "grotesque" and the woman a "political prisoner within the embassy".
The Falun Gong adherents reacted by calmly meditating.