Source: ChinaAid
Date: May 23, 2018
ChinaAid reports that lawyers of Falun Gong practitioner Sun Qian, a Canadian citizen jailed in China for her religious practices, issued a petition appealing to Canadian officials and citizens to pay closer attention to the crimes committed against this religious group, calling it “China’s biggest human rights crisis.”
Beijing law enforcement seized Sun in February 2017 and charged her with “using a cult organization to undermine the law” as part of a 19-year campaign to eliminate Falun Gong devotees. The persecution began in 1999 under the direction of then-President Jiang Zemin. Over the past two decades, people who practice Falun Gong have been systematically rounded up and imprisoned.
Bitter Winter reports on how religions are allowed, or not allowed, to operate in China and how some are severely persecuted after they are labeled as “xie jiao,” or heterodox teachings. We publish news difficult to find elsewhere, analyses, and debates.
Placed under the editorship of Massimo Introvigne, one of the most well-known scholars of religion internationally, “Bitter Winter” is a cooperative enterprise by scholars, human rights activists, and members of religious organizations persecuted in China (some of them have elected, for obvious reasons, to remain anonymous).