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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Pulitzer Prize Winner Ian Johnson on Falun Gong

Wall Street Journalist Ian Johnson won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, and several other awards, for his amazing coverage of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and in 2004 he published Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China. He was also featured in the CBC documentary probing the persecution of Falun Gong in 2007 "Beyond the Red Wall".

Here is part of Johnson’s prize-winning articles from a piece called A Deadly Exercise:
The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head. Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness, and died on Feb. 21.
Brother Li Love“:

As the campaign against Falun Dafa enters its second year, many wonder how the group has withstood the government’s security onslaught. The crackdown has involved a deployment of uniformed and undercover security agents not seen since the massacre of antigovernment protesters near Tiananmen Square 11 years ago.

And here is the full series of articles that won him the Pulitzer Prize:


In his book Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China draws on three stories of individuals who have turned to the legal system to fight injustice to demonstrate his belief that the Chinese political system is under great stress -- and that major change is imminent. In vivid detail, he recounts a farmer's struggles against local officials; a Beijing resident's efforts to save his beloved old city neighborhood with the help of a lawyer; and an elderly woman's fight with the state over her practice of Falun Gong.

Johnson's most recent book "A Mosque in Munich" examines how the Muslim Brotherhood found a haven in Europe.

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