NEW YORK—Local officials spoke out against recent hate crimes in Flushing, Queens, where Falun Gong practitioners have been verbally and physically abused. The officials, including City Councilman and mayoral candidate Tony Avella, spoke on Saturday at a forum held to educate the American public about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) activity on American soil.
Falun Gong was banned by the Chinese communist regime in 1999 because the regime saw the peaceful spiritual practice as an ideological threat.
“Anytime, any group or individual advocates violence and takes violence against an individual or select group, that is when they cross the line and that is when government agencies should act decisively to put these people in jail,” said Councilman Avella.
Since May 17, Chinese Consul General Keyu Peng of New York encouraged mobs of Chinese to verbally and physically attack local adherents of the peaceful spiritual practice Falun Gong. Some local Chinese report having been offered money to do so.
The Consul’s encouragement, admitted to in a recording verified by the U.S. State Department and the New York Post, played on the strong nationalist sentiment triggered in the Flushing Chinese community by the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan that killed at least 65,000 people.
Flushing Democratic District Leader Martha Flores-Vazquez said that while she held a copy of The Epoch Times in Flushing, she was harassed by some anti-Falun Gong people who were against Falun Gong practitioners’ peaceful demonstrations against the Chinese communist regime.
“Last Saturday I went out into the community for the first time to see what was actually going on and to my surprise there was a very non-aggressive group and there was a very aggressive group… I was accused of being part of the non-aggressive group,” District Leader Flores said, “And I was verbally attacked, almost physically attacked.”
“It wasn’t until I got a translator and told them that I was a district leader that I began to get apologies because they knew that there was an elected official on site,” she said “Basically what they said to me was that I was holding a Falun Gong paper [The Epoch Times] and that they thought I was part of the practitioners and this was why they were very verbally abusive to me.”
“I began to explain to them that they did not have the right to attack individuals here in America for their religious beliefs because that is their right,” said Ms. Flores-Vazquez. “I had nightmares for three nights.”
A representative of the independent Chinese-language television network New Tang Dynasty TV said that the CCP is infiltrating U.S. community and government relations through student groups and Chinese associations.
“All the branches of the Chinese Consulate are registered as local organizations but they are following orders directly from Beijing,” said the representative, Yiyan Xia. “United Chinese associations, Chinese student associations, and associations of Chinese scientists and engineers are all taking orders from the CCP … One Chinese engineer’s association from Chicago went back to China claiming ‘We have five hundred votes under our control in America.’”
“All the Chinese student associations surround centrally located Chinese consulates that takes direct orders from the CCP,” said Xia.
Councilman Avella said that Americans shouldn’t settle for systematic hate crimes on their own soil.
“We should never allow these organized attacks to go on and whatever they do, whatever mechanism they use to initiate these attacks should be investigated too,” said Councilman Avella, who likened the anti-Falun Gong mobs to neo-Nazi groups that he took on when he was first elected.
“They are entitled to their opinion but when they start spreading it and advocating violence that is when we have to step in,” he said.
Another forum speaker was Dr. Charles Lee, a medical doctor and Falun Gong practitioner who was arrested for trying to break the CCP’s blockade on information. Dr. Lee gave background on the situation in China.
“There are 3,000 documented deaths from the persecution of Falun Gong,” Dr. Lee said. “Due to the secretive nature of the CCP, many more undocumented deaths have occurred.”
“The CCP harvests internal organs from living practitioners to vend on the world market,” stated Dr. Lee. “They have harvested organs from executed prisoners for years; I observed it as a young doctor.”
Doctors confirmed in 2006 that people must wait three years to get a kidney transplant in the United States, while in China people can get one in a few days.
“Falun Gong believers are tortured to death, brainwashed, sent to mental hospitals, and put into forced labor. Why not remove organs from their living bodies,” said Dr. Lee. “The CCP has committed as many heinous crimes and types of crimes against humanity as any regime throughout history.”
“The Chinese people believe that Falun Gong practitioners kill themselves or others during their practice due to the CCP’s propaganda” Lee stated. Dr. Lee was imprisoned for three years, although he was an American citizen at the time. He was released in 2006 and has been an American citizen since 2002.
