Falun Gong Meditation Protest

Back to an earlier theme, China. With the Beijing Olympics less than 3 months away, Amnesty International groups worldwide are using the event to publicise China’s Human Rights record.

I am co-ordinating one such event for a local Amnesty group based in Tower Hamlets in London’s East End (Event at the St.John’s Church yard Stratford, in the Olympic Borough of Newham, on the afternoon of 28th June 2008… so come along and enjoy the entertainment and a bouncy castle for the kids!).

So I took the opportunity to cover a story on the Falun Gong Meditation protest group outside the Chinese High Commission on Portland Place in London’s West End.

The meditation protest stated on June 5th 2002 by a group of Falun Gong observers. I met up with Yudon Gong, who was in meditation when I arrived, and after getting the requisite photos I spent some time talking with her about her family’s experience which led her to claiming asylum in the UK in 2001.

Yudon, a financial officer for a charitable organisation and Falun Gong observer from childhood, came to the UK from Beijing, China in 1999 to study for her Masters in International Business. While Yudon was in the UK studying, her husband had given accommodation to a Falun Gong observer from outside Beijing [Mrs Wu] who was putting together a formal appeal to the Chinese government’s clamp down on Falun Gong.

The police came to their flat in the middle of the night and took Mrs Wu away, she has not been seen or heard of since. Her husband immediately fled to Shen Zhen with their son. Following the arrest of Mrs Wu, her husband’s travel visas and flights for visiting Yudon in the UK were immediately cancelled by the government and Yudon was unable to return to china and claimed asylum in the UK in 2001. Shortly afterwards, a family friend visited the UK and brought Yudon’s son with her, mother and son were reunited after three years apart.

Her husband’s journey took him to Hong Kong and an eventual flight to the UK in 2003 when the whole family was united again for the first time in 5 years.

Last year Yudon’s son, now sixteen years old, passed eleven GCSEs. Yudon attributes her son’s focus and good temperament [attributing his not being naughty or ill tempered] on the Falun Gong meditation, which he learn from his mum at age five. Yudon learnt it from her mother, who learnt it from her mother before her.

Yudon worries that many more Chinese are unable to gain exit visas and claim asylum in the UK and other countries and she continues the protest outside the Chinese High Commission to maintain visibility for the plight of fellow observers and campaign for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong observers inside China.

Look out for a photo story I am planning with Yudon in the next couple of months, you can find out more about Falun Gong at http://www.clearharmony.net/ and more information on Human Rights in China and Amnesty International’s ‘Human Rights for China’ Campaign at http://www.amnesty.org.uk/china/.