SYDNEY—On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, a media event was held in Sydney's Chinatown protesting the recent deportations of hundreds of Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners from Hong Kong airport.
"We are here to show our concern for three Australians as well as approximately 500 Falun Gong practitioners who were turned away from entering Hong Kong," said the MC of the event Kay Rubacek. "Some were treated quite seriously simply because they practise Falun Gong and simply because they wanted to ask the Chinese president Hu Jintao to stop the persecution of Falun Gong."
The three Australian passport holders Australian citizens Ms Stacey Miao Chen Lin Lan, Mr Fan Chiang Fu Long, and Ms Huang Yueh Hsiu Lan Miao flew in from Taiwan and were detained and interrogated by Hong Kong police. As of the writing of this report, Mr Fan and Ms Huang had been deported and Ms Lan's whereabouts were not able to be confirmed.
It is understood that while Chinese communist leader Hu Jintao was visiting the former British colony for the anniversary, the Falun Gong practitioners were to join activities to try call for the end of the persecution of Falun Gong in the mainland.
John Deller, from the NSW Falun Dafa Association, told reporters that the actions at Hong Kong airport showed that the rule of law in Hong Kong has been subverted to the will of the Chinese communist regime.
"Everyone has heard when Hong Kong was handed back to Communist China 10 years ago there was a commitment from the Communist regime to 'One country – two systems'. "But what many people do not realise then is that 'One country – Two systems' is really a metaphor for 'One Party – Two faces'."
Sandra Hattingh, President of human rights organization Free China said she recorded the testimony of a Falun Gong practitioner from Queensland who had been forcibly detained from Hong Kong two years ago.
"She was denied entry to Hong Kong for a conference there. She suffered excruciating agony and inconvenience for two years following this same kind of overnight detention, under Mainland Chinese Communist guard, at the Hong Kong airport," said Ms Hattingh.
"It was eventually discovered, back in Australia, when her family business, her life and health all lay in ruins, that she had been sedated, and when she woke up hours later, she started getting pain and numbness in her leg where she had been injected with an archaic neurotoxin that's been outlawed by medical professionals in the civilised world for years."
The recent Hong Kong deportations had been ongoing in the lead up to the tenth anniversary of the handover with one high profile a Taiwanese-American human rights lawyer, Theresa Chu, being forcibly deported on Sunday June 24. In protest, David Kilgore, the former Canadian Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific, wrote to the Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang.
Ms Rubacek read out Mr Kilgore's letter at the event which in part said: "The denial of entry to Falun Gong practitioners to Hong Kong, including their brutal rejection on arrival, shows that the principle of one country, two systems which Hong Kong boasts in describing its relationship to China is eroding. Where are the two systems when it comes to abusing Falun Gong innocents the Chinese government has arbitrarily decided to target? The entry practices of Hong Kong make these two supposedly distinct systems harder to see."
Feeds