freedom of conscience

On 16 March, the American House of Representatives adopted with 412 votes against 1 a resolution condemning persecutions undergone by Falun Gong practitioners, a Chinese movement of buddhist and taoist inspiration. The text demands from the government of Popular China  « an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners.”

According to its sources, the House of Representatives estimates to 3,000 the number of members of the movement who would have been tortured to death in Chinese jails, or even in high security psychiatric hospitals. According to the report, « Political activist, hidden believers, individuals having petitioned several times to the government, members of the forbidden Chinese Democracy Party (CDP), and Falun Gong practitioners are among those confined with mentally ill patients in [high security psychiatric institutions of hospitals for alienated criminels]. Regulations to confine a person in one of these institutions are not clear, and prisoners had no means to oppose decisions of mental illness public security officials. These hospitals patients have been administered drugs against their will and subjected under duress to electrical shock treatment. »