Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners yesterday accused the French police of violating their rights and harassing them while visiting France during the Lunar New Year.
According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Institute, over 170 Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioners went to Paris to celebrate the Lunar New Year with their fellow practitioners.
On Jan. 26, several dozen devotees were arrested simply because they were wearing Falun Gong's yellow scarves on the streets of Paris, the institute said.
"We don't understand why the French police made these arrests, and we feel sorry that the whole incident occurred," secretary-general Hung Chi-hung (洪吉弘) said.
Hung and other Falun Gong practitioners also visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday afternoon to protest the conduct of the French police and urged the ministry to communicate with the French government over the incident.
They said the arrests were an infringement of their human rights, and demanded the French government investigate the incident and apologize to Falun Gong members.
The institute's press release also quoted a Ms Fan, a reporter who had apparently been mistaken for a Falun Gong practitioner. When Fan was arrested a police officer allegedly told her: "Falun Gong is legal during normal times, but it is illegal today."
Chung Cheng (
"I arrived in Paris on Jan. 20, and I took a small Falun Gong flag with me to the Chinese Embassy on Jan. 21. At that time no police officers or employees from the embassy told me it was illegal," he said.
"But when I took the flag to the embassy again on Jan. 26, I was arrested. I asked the police why they arrested me, and they told me it was because of the flag," he said.
Chung said that he was arrested at around 7pm and taken to a police station. But the police did not put him behind bars or ask for a statement, instead leaving him to sit in the station. At around 11pm, Chung said, the police told him he was free to go, but his flag was not returned.
The arrests coincided with Chinese President Hu Jintao's (
Earlier this month, the Falun Gong group said they had been barred from joining a parade on the Champs Elysees to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
They claimed that the authorities had been acting under pressure from the Chinese embassy in Paris.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS