My name is Dong Yuexing, and I'm a Chinese citizen and a Falun Gong practitioner. I am visiting the U.S. for personal reasons with a general passport that expired on December 17, 2001. I went to the Chinese Consulate in New York to apply for a passport extension and was told to come back to get my application on December 18, according to the instructions on the receipt from the consulate.

When I returned to the consulate to pick up my passport on the morning of December 31, the officer looked up my application on the computer using the receipt number. She took a look at the screen and had a few words with another officer. The other officer went to another computer to retrieve my records and came back to tell me that my passport extension application did not meet the regulations and had been refused. I asked him, "Which regulations don't I meet?" He could not answer me and asked me to check it out on my own. I said, "I looked through all the regulations and I still do not understand which regulations I do not meet; please explain it clearly to me." He said it was not his duty to give me an explanation and asked me to talk to the supervisor.

A consul whose last name is Dai came to meet with me. He looked at my passport and told me that my passport extension application could not be processed right away. I asked him why this was so and he could not give me any reason. He just said that he only had limited authority. I asked, "Was the decision to refuse my passport extension application under directions of higher officers?" He said that basically it was his decision not to approve my passport extension application, but he could not tell me the reason either. He continued, " I don't have any motives to create trouble for you, but you should give it a second thought and don't be too serious on certain matters. Aren't we all here to make a little more money?" I said, "A human being certainly needs to make a living, but the most important thing in being a human being is to live openly and aboveboard, to be a good person, and not to do bad deeds, or one will create a huge amount of karma on one's own." He said that I sounded like a Falun Gong practitioner, [talking about] this karma and that karma. I said, "Everyone talks about karma and that doing bad deeds incurs karma."

He regretted that he did not have time to talk with me and advised me to come back a couple of years later if I wanted to extend my passport. I said, "If you do not approve my passport extension, I will have a great deal of difficulty making a living." He did not say anything else and headed back to his office.

It is because I am a Falun Gong practitioner that the Chinese Consulate in New York refused my passport extension application for no reason. I could not figure out what other reason would cause them to make such a decision. Consul Dai certainly was uncooperative. However, it is a fact, and this is evidence that the unreasonable persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China has extended to overseas.