On June 28, 2004, at around 8:30 p.m., five Falun Gong practitioners were driving from Johannesburg International Airport to Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, when a white car came up from behind and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle. The practitioners tried to change their speed to dodge the attack, but the assassins kept speed with them and continued to shoot. The practitioners’ car and driver, Mr. David Liang, an Australian Citizen,  were hit, and forced off the road; the injured driver managed to stop in a field. The gunmen stopped and watched for a few seconds, then fled the scene.

This shooting was by no means a simple homicide attempt. The victims were among the group of nine Falun Gong practitioners from Australia who were there to file a lawsuit – charging China’s Vice President, Zeng Qinghong, and the Minister of Commerce, Bo Xilai, who were visiting South Africa from June 27 to June 29 – with torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Even before they left Australia, one of them had received two threatening phone calls. When they arrived in Johannesburg International Airport, they noticed a suspicious-look man following and watching them. In addition, Mr. David Liang, the driver who was shot, was wearing a Falun Gong jacket. The South African police noted that the shooting site was not a high-crime area. The gunmen obviously did not want to rob the practitioners. These factors point towards a political motive for this shooting.

A hasty statement on June 30 by China’s embassy in South Africa only adds to the suspicion. As the representative of Chinese nationals in South Africa, the embassy showed no sympathy towards Mr. Liang, who suffered gunshot wounds in both feet and bone fractures in the right foot. On the contrary, the embassy claimed that the incident was a Falun Gong conspiracy, but warned the international media not to make any “irresponsible report about the incident.”

This shooting was by no means an isolated attack on Falun Gong practitioners, either. Ever since Jiang Zemin, former president of China, launched a violent persecution against Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, the Chinese government has been trying to stifle overseas Falun Gong practitioners’ efforts to reveal the brutality of the situation in China. The Chinese government has used economic pressure to coerce foreign governments to mistreat and stifle Falun Gong practitioners. In France, Germany, Iceland, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, and a few other countries, there have been cases in which local police forces were pressured into arbitrary and wrongful detention of Falun Gong practitioners who were merely exercising their rights of peaceful demonstration. Chinese authorities have also resorted to violence and hate crime to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners; in Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, there have been multiple incidents of physical assaults against Falun Gong practitioners by Chinese nationals with close ties to the Chinese consulates.

While the factual details of the South Africa shooting await police investigation, there is clearly no dispute regarding the Chinese government’s crimes against Falun Gong. The only issue in question is how universal principles and values weigh against China’s market. As long as international society acquiesces, the Chinese government’s actions will continue, and the escalating terrorist attacks against Falun Gong practitioners overseas will not stop until its state terrorism against Falun Gong in China is stopped.

For updated information: www.628watch.net