Amendments to Vancouver Falun Gong Bylaw ‘Not even close,’ Says BCCLA

After intense public criticism the City of Vancouver posted amendments to its "Public Expression" bylaw on Thursday, but some say it still has a long way to go.

At first glance, the bylaw appears to have improved: exceptions were made to allow structured protests in front of consulates, the mandatory traffic management plan was removed, and structures were allowed to remain unattended at times.

The city’s department of engineering says it is “precedent-setting” in North America and “is designed to specifically enable and facilitate the use of structures on City streets for the purpose of political expression.”

But Clive Ansley, legal counsel for the Falun Gong, said the amended bylaw is a way to distract the public from serious underlying flaws while continuing to appease the Chinese consulate.

“The fact is that the Vancouver City Council, at every stage since launching its petition against the Falun Gong protest, right up to the present moment, has spared no effort to safeguard the interests of the Consulate-General, and to frustrate the free expression of the Canadians maintaining the protest outside the Consulate-General,” he wrote in a statement.

Upon closer inspection, the amended bylaw retains similar restrictions that were heavily criticized from the beginning: structures must be taken down daily between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. The structure size, which was previously considered safe, was ordered to be reduced to half of its original size when placed in front of a consulate.

The structure targeted by the bylaw are signs and a small hut the Falun Gong built in front of the Chinese consulate to allow a silent 24-hour, meditative vigil, protesting the murder of their fellow practitioners in China.

The amended bylaw leaves heavy restrictions on this hut, and therefore the Falun Gong’s ability to protest. Many of the protesters are elderly women who can only participate through the protection of the hut, which contains a small heater to ward off Vancouver’s damp chill. The new rules say the hut must be removed every 12 hours, making it virtually impossible for the Falun Gong to sustain their previous round-the-clock vigil.

“This requirement serves no purpose but to make it unlikely that the elderly protesters who maintain the vigil will be capable of continuing it,” said Ansley.

“In short the City still seeks to impose punitive, grossly restrictive, arbitrary, and totally illogical constraints designed for no purpose but to assure the Consulate-General that any attempted protest in its area will be completely ineffective.”

The structure would also only be allowed for a maximum of 30 consecutive days, with a following 30-day “reprieve.” The previous $200 application fee and $1,000 damage deposit have been removed, but replaced with a $1,000-$5,000 fine for any violations.

The Falun Gong started their protest in front of the consulate in 2001 to raise awareness of escalating state-sponsored genocide against practitioners in China. The city ordered an injunction to have the 24-hour protest removed in 2009 claiming a bylaw infraction, but in 2010 the BC Court of Appeal ordered the city’s forced removal unconstitutional.

The court also ruled that the billboards and the hut were an integral part of the Falun Gong’s political expression under the charter of Rights and Freedoms. It acknowledged that the crimes against humanity the Falun Gong were protesting were well documented by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and top Chinese communist officials charged with genocide against Falun Gong in an Argentinian court.

Controversy was fuelled last week regarding the city’s bowing to consulate pressure after city staff admitted to “confidential” meetings with the Chinese consulate, to get “some degree of feedback” on the proposed bylaw. The initial injunction by former Mayor Sam Sullivan to remove the protest was also suspected to be caused by pressure from the consulate after Sullivan was seduced by the Chinese Communist Party on a business trip to Beijing.

Micheal Vonn, policy director for the BC Civil Liberties Association, said the amended bylaw has some small improvements but is “not even close” to being acceptable.

“We have some good things to point to but we don’t want those improvements to essentially camouflage for what continues to be a deeply flawed piece of legislation,” she said. “We absolutely do not support it.”

Vonn said if the city does not bring the bylaw up to standard it will soon be facing another court challenge.

“If the bylaw as its currently proposed is not amended in ways that meet what we believe to be charter scrutiny, then we will undoubtedly be either initiating or joining another party in a court challenge.”

Vonn said the city’s late minute introduction of the bylaw and subsequent rushed amendments raise questions about the hurry to meet the “arbitrary” April 19 deadline.

“If you have a feasible means to do this right in the first place and collect more input from important stakeholders, what’s the hurry?” she asked.

More at Epoch Times

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Vancouver's Falun Gong show

Falun Gong practitioners meditate outside the Chinese Consulate

Ever since adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China, began a silent protest vigil outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver in 2001, it was little secret that diplomats from the communist power weren’t amused by the group’s presence.

As it turns out, Chinese diplomats in Vancouver were consulted on the proposed new bylaw, allegedly on the grounds that they are a “stakeholder.” Consulted how? What was said? Apparently, we’ll never know. City manager Penny Ballem says those discussions are confidential.

Since then, Vancouver’s Chinese consulate-general made a rare public comment, debunking suggestions it pressed for changes to the bylaw – a proposition dismissed as “impossible” by Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat who had defected to Australia in 2005.

More from Gary Mason at Globe and Mail

Nearly 100 Falun Gong supporters staged a dramatic demonstration in front of City Hall to protest the new bylaw

Nearly 100 Falun Gong followers and supporters lined the street in front of Vancouver City Hall on Wednesday to urge city council not to impose restrictions on shelters in front of the Chinese consulate.

The mostly Chinese protesters acted out scenes of China police beating Falun Gong practitioners handcuffed to a pole and China surgeons removing organs from convicted group members for transplants. They also told stories of persecution in China.

Falun Dafa Association spokesperson Sue Zhang said any move by council to restrict protest shelters would infringe on the Charter of Rights, as interpreted by the B.C. Supreme Court. She said the shelters are necessary for protesters to keep up their 24-7 vigil outside the consulate on Granville Street, and blasted city officials for consulting with the Chinese consulate on its new protest bylaw.

“It would be immoral and unethical if our government officials stood on the side of the perpetrators, and the pressure from these perpetrators to help them cover up their crimes against humanity, and stifle the voice of victims by using a so-called traffic bylaw,” said Zhang.

City council is set to look at a revised version of the bylaw next Tuesday.

More at 24 Hours

Related:

1. G&M: Final wording on controversial B.C. protest bylaw still unfinished

Quotes: What people are saying about the Falun Gong vs VanCity bylaw issue

“It’s pretty clear that this amendment is focusing on the Falun Gong vigil—it’s targeted at the Falun Gong.”

— Lawyer Scott Bernstein, Epoch Times

“That particular protest was a fantastic demonstration of how a structure can be completely safe and non-obstructive,”

—Micheal Vonn, BCCLA , The Province

“Is there any other bylaw that you can think of that we brought in that we would have consulted with a foreign government, a government that imprisons a Nobel laureate, that imprisons an artist that exhibits at the Tate? Why would we consult with them about our bylaw?”

— Councillor David Cadman, Vancouver Sun

"Consulted how? What was said? Apparently, we’ll never know. City manager Penny Ballem says those discussions are confidential."

—Gary Mason, Globe and Mail

"In my opinion, based on my years of service in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and my intimate knowledge of the War on Falun Gong implemented by Chinese missions worldwide, at the orders of Beijing, it would be absolutely impossible that in this situation the mayor of the city in which the Consulate-General and the vigil are located would receive no pressure from the Consulate-General."

—Former Diplomat Chen Yonglin, Vancouver Sun

“The Chinese government is not a ‘stakeholder’ in anything in this city, especially when it comes to making law. It’s none of the Chinese government’s business, especially considering its dim view of inconveniences like freedom of speech.”

—Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun

"An extremely controversial report is being slipped in at the last minute without allowing for any meaningful public discussion" … “Some of the most important examples of protest in our city’s history that have sparked public debate and political change would be banned under this bylaw”. ... “To now be considering something that is an affront to a strong history of peaceful social change is very disappointing”

—Susan Anton, City Councillor, Epoch Times

“The city’s just asking for another lawsuit, for which the taxpayers of Vancouver are going to have to pay.”

—Joseph Arvay, Lawyer, Vancouver Sun

“The bylaw is specifically worded to prohibit the hut which the demonstrators use in inclement weather, even though the structure does not impede traffic. I always saw this demonstration as a demonstration of the strength of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to allow peaceful protests against repressive government actions at home and abroad.”

—Susan Lindenberger, White Rock, Vancouver Sun

"Protests and free speech are part of the culture of our city. They are part of the culture of our party. We will not accept changes to the law that restrict these critical social expressions."

—Vision Vancouver Party Executive Director, Ian Baillie, Vancouver Courier

"When you have a silent meditation out there with a message and the people inside don't like the message and say 'that offends our dignity', I can't see any court in our country restricting free expression to accommodate that."

—Clive Ansley, Lawyer, Vancouver Sun

“It’s faulty in one very, very fundamental respect: It excludes the Chinese consulate from any protests, by physical structure … After all these years in which the Falun Gong challenged the city for absolutely prohibiting its protest in front of the Chinese consulate, and even though the court struck down the city’s bylaw, the city continues to absolutely prohibit the Falun Gong from its protests outside the Chinese consulate.

—Joseph Arvay, Lawyer, Vancouver Sun

“Opposing Falun Gong is the top priority of "Chinese Embassies and Consulates today."

—Former Diplomat Chen Yonglin, Vancouver Sun

Falun Gong appeals to City to conform to court judgment on bylaw

Statement by the Vancouver Falun Dafa Association read at a rally outside City Hall on April 13.

Our 24 hour vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate started in 2001 and lasted over 2723 days until such time as the BC Supreme Court granted the city’s injunction to remove the billboards and hut in January 2009. In October of 2010, the BC Court of appeal struck down parts of the bylaw that city used to remove the Falun Gong’s protest structure and hut. The Appeal court recognized that the billboards and the hut were an integral part of the Falun Gong’s expression in their protest against the torture and killing of practitioners in China.

As a result of this Appeal Court ruling, it has become the constitutional right of practitioners to have the billboards and the hut as part of our political expression and the newly drafted city bylaw must not override this constitutional right of freedom of expression of practitioners, which has been upheld by the highest court in British Columbia.

The Chinese Communist Party has committed crimes against humanity in persecuting Falun Gong for 12 years and 100 million practitioners have been completely deprived of legal protection. Hundreds of thousands were arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured and are still languishing in Chinese gulags. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture has reported that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and ill-treatment in China are Falun Gong practitioners. The report states: “The cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts of torture defy description.” The UN Rapporteur has also confirmed that Falun Gong practitioners are being killed in order to harvest their organs for profit. In December 2009, an Argentine federal judge ordered the arrest of former Chinese communist leader Jiang Zemin for his crimes against humanity committed against Falun Gong practitioners and the genocidal strategy used against Falun Gong in China.

Thirty-five (35) practitioners here in Vancouver, have experienced persecution first hand while in China and some others still have family members who have either disappeared or are in jail for their belief in Falun Gong. Just yesterday, we learned that the Visa Office refused to renew a practitioner’s passport because she has joined the protest in front of the Consulate. The Chinese authorities’ campaign to defame Falun Gong is increasingly and actively promoted in Canada. We are aware that the Chinese Embassy and consulates actively pressure government officials to curb our appeal activities in front of the Chinese missions.

It’s a very serious situation that warrants continuous visibility and the attention of all Canadians. The on-going torture, killing and organ pillaging of Falun Gong practitioners, who are innocent people only wishing to meditate and to live by Truth, Compassion and Forbearance, is unacceptable. Practitioners in Vancouver have personal experience demonstrating that our presence and distinct visibility with the billboards and the hut outside the Chinese consulate has great effect on not only raising awareness of this atrocity in Canada, but also directly helping practitioners in China.

The people who appeal at the Chinese consulate do so not for self-interest but to rescue others from torture and death. The hut and display boards are not intrusive in any way; rather they serve to protect justice and awaken conscience and compassion, in that they give voice to the persecuted in China who have no voice of their own.

Throughout the years that we maintained the 24-hour vigil, all our activities outside the consulate have been peaceful and orderly, and we have conducted ourselves responsibly. Numerous individuals, organizations have told us that they admired our efforts and perseverance and encouraged us to continue.

Indeed it is out of concern for our fellow human beings that we strive to stop the persecution. Our effort deserves support. The basic human rights of practitioners is not just a Falun Gong issue, it is a universal issue that should concern all people including our city officials.

It would be immoral and unethical if our government officials stood on the side of the perpetrators, under pressure from those perpetrators to help them cover up their crimes against humanity, and stifle the voice of victims by using a so-called traffic bylaw. The laws are meant to serve the people and the good of society, to protect principles and justice.

The city raised the issue of dignity of the Chinese consulate. We would like to point out that the only way for the Chinese consulate to acquire dignity is for the regime to stop their crimes against humanity. The City of Vancouver should not seek to stifle the voice of protest against these crimes for the alleged purpose of maintaining so-called “dignity” of a genocidal and criminal regime. We ask: what “dignity” do they have when they are killing innocent people?

We hereby appeal to the city to conform to the Judgment of the British Columbia Court of Appeal which found that Falun Gong’s hut and billboards were integral parts of the protest outside the Chinese Consulate-General on Granville street. The hut and billboards were therefore protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.We ask that the city not use the bylaw to help the perpetrators cover up their crimes and at the same time override the constitutional right of Falun Gong practitioners' freedom of expression.

Related:

• 'Absolutely impossible' that Vancouver city not pressured to remove Falun Gong
  

• Another (Falun) Gong show, hosted by Vancouver

'Absolutely impossible' that Vancouver city not pressured to remove Falun Gong

Former diplomat says Chinese consulate-general would have been on orders from Beijing to have protesters stopped

Pete McMartin: Last Saturday, I wrote about the City of Vancouver's clumsy attempt to draft a bylaw that would effectively ban the Falun Gong from maintaining a 24-hour vigil outside the Chinese consulate on Granville Street.

To recap our story so far:

- In 2001, the Falun Gong begin their vigil to protest what the group claims is persecution by the Chinese government.

- In 2006, after five years of the Falun Gong's peaceful vigil, then mayor Sam Sullivan decides the Falun Gong's little shack and banners must go -not because of pressure by the Chinese government that they be removed, the mayor says, but because they contravene a street-and-traffic bylaw.

- In 2008, the issue goes to a hearing in the B.C. Supreme Court.

- In 2009, the judge orders the shack and banners removed. They are soon after.

- In 2010, the B.C. Court of Appeal reverses the decision and finds the city bylaw unconstitutional. It orders the city to draft a new bylaw within six months.

Which brings us up to last week, when, during council's deliberation over the new bylaw, the city engineer and city manager made the stunning admission that the city not only consulted with the Chinese government before drafting the new bylaw, but that the particulars of that meeting were confidential.

In light of all this, and in light that for all these years the city has maintained its campaign to remove the Falun Gong had nothing to do with Chinese government pressure, it might be worth looking back to the original 2008 hearing in B.C. Supreme Court.

Of particular interest were exhibits submitted by Falun Gong lawyer Clive Ansley. They purport to show the local campaigns of vilification the Chinese government waged against the Falun Gong.

Among those exhibits was an affidavit signed by Chen Yonglin, who from 1991 to 2005 worked as a diplomat with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It was in 2005 that Chen, then first secretary of the Chinese consulate-general in Sydney, Australia, defected. He alleged that China maintained an extensive spy network in Australia, with one of its main aims being to discredit the Falun Gong locally.

Opposing Falun Gong is the top priority of "Chinese Embassies and Consulates today," Chen stated in the affidavit.

"Chinese diplomats in all Embassies and Consulates worldwide are constantly told to lobby and pressure local MPs and elites that the Falun Gong is an 'evil cult' and they should keep their distance; moreover diplomats should stress that any relationship with the Falun Gong will damage bilateral relations."

As a consular diplomat, Chen stated, he was a member of the local Special Anti-Falun Gong Working Group -versions of which exist in every Chinese mission wherever Falun Gong has a presence.

"Every Chinese Embassy and Consulate, in all foreign countries," his affidavit reads, "has at least one diplomat whose primary job it is to implement the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners who are Chinese nationals with temporary or permanent residency, and citizens of the host country."

And that mandate is carried out in a number of ways, Chen stated, including "writing letters to all levels of government in the host country, and to individual politicians at all levels, pressuring them to have no contact with Falun Gong practitioners ...

"Such letters also often state that if the wishes of the Chinese Government are not respected ... the result may be a 'severe blow' to the bilateral relations meaning decreased trade and investment opportunities with China. Standard practice requires that a senior diplomatic official, often the Consulgeneral himself, must always write letters to the political figures responsible, and to local newspapers, opposing every public event or move hosted by Falun Gong practitioners in the host country."

Characterizing the Falun Gong's Vancouver vigil as "a major embarrassment to the Chinese Government," Chen recalled one occasion when all Chinese missions were provided with an example from Canada, "wherein the Chinese Consulate-General in Toronto had rallied over 40 Chinese organizations to write to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien and foreign affairs minister John Manley, opposing Falun Gong."

In Sydney, Chen stated, a "blacklist" was maintained of prominent Australians perceived to be sympathetic to the Falun Gong. He stated also that the Sydney Consulate-general regularly promoted "the private business ties of some Australian political leaders, state and federal MPs, and members of local councils."

Chen stated the Consul-General also regularly hosted dinners for them.

Told that Sullivan publicly stated his decision to remove the Falun Gong was not the result of consulate pressure, Chen, in his affidavit, offered this view of the world:

"In my opinion, based on my years of service in the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and my intimate knowledge of the War on Falun Gong implemented by Chinese missions worldwide, at the orders of Beijing, it would be absolutely impossible that in this situation the mayor of the city in which the Consulate-General and the vigil are located would receive no pressure from the Consulate-General."

Read more at Vancouver Sun

Another (Falun) Gong show, hosted by Vancouver

Chinese Terrorist State Continues to Torture & Kill Falun Gong

A closeup of Gao Rongrong's face disfigured by two policement who shocked her with three electric batons for seven hours burning her face to a crisp. The photo was taken 10 days later.

Vancouver City staff consulted with the Chinese government over a proposed bylaw that would banish Falun Gong protestors from the Vancouver consulate

Pete McMartin: Clive Ansley knows something about China.

He speaks and reads Mandarin. In 1985, he was the first foreign lawyer to establish an office in Shanghai. He taught law at Shanghai’s Fudan University and Tongji University, both of which are among the best in the country. He is a recognized expert on Chinese law and the Chinese judicial system. He spent, in all, 19 years in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

He now lives in Courtenay where at the age of 70 he should be enjoying retirement. Instead, he is busier than ever. Clive, for the past six years, has been representing the Falun Gong in its legal fight with the City of Vancouver.

He took the case, he said, because in China, he witnessed first-hand the Communist Chinese government’s propaganda campaign vilifying the Falun Gong — the daily announcements depicting it as a dangerous cult that inspired, among other atrocities, mass murder, infanticide and rape.

“I saw the persecution there and, aside from the Falun Gong, I chafed at the generally repressive policies of the Communist party and its habit of suppressing any opposition. So I felt compelled when I came back here to take up the Falun Gong case.”

Ansley and constitutional lawyer Joe Arvay have been steering that case through the courts since 2006. It was in that year when then-mayor Sam Sullivan suddenly felt the need to remove the Falun Gong’s little shed and banners from the front of the Chinese consulate on Granville Street. The protesters had been there since 2001, where they bothered no one, impeded nothing and sat 24 hours a day in silent, damning meditation.

Sullivan pooh-poohed Ansley’s accusations at the time that pressure from the Chinese government was influencing his street-cleaning impulse. Politics had nothing to do with it, Sullivan claimed: it was merely that the Falun Gong was contravening city ordinances.

But there was nothing mere about it: Sullivan, who clearly had no idea what he was starting, had given a street-and-traffic bylaw precedence over the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

This did not escape the attention of the B.C. Court of Appeal, which ruled in 2010 the application of the bylaw to be unconstitutional.

If I read its ruling correctly, it found the bylaw gave the city too much discretionary power, and that the Falun Gong’s hut and placards were integral parts of the group’s political expression. It therefore deserved protection under the Charter.

The Appeal Court then gave the city six months to draw up a better bylaw.

On Tuesday, city council saw for the first time the new bylaw proposed by city staff.

As law, it’s so contorted you can practically see the bureaucrats bending over backwards to try to make it work. Public protest structures — read “Falun Gong huts” — would be allowed in commercial and industrial areas, and only if they met certain criteria, but they would be banned in residential areas — read “in front of the Chinese consulate” — since the consulate is in an area zoned residential.

Ansley, in addressing council, argued the proposed bylaw would do exactly the same thing the Appeal Court said was unconstitutional.

But then came the startling admission from city engineer Peter Judd that staff had consulted with the Chinese government over the proposed bylaw because it was a “stakeholder” in it.

When Coun. David Cadman asked about the particulars of that meeting, city manager Penny Ballem replied the city entered into a “confidential agreement” with the Chinese consulate, and that she wasn’t about to divulge any details.

Ballem’s revelation left Cadman aghast.

“Council,” he would tell me later, “should not be in the business of controlling free speech in Canada. It strikes me as being a very heavy-handed way of dealing with a very specific thing.”

He’s right. In its clumsy foray into law-making, the city appears to have treated constitutional rights as nuisances to be stepped around, given itself more intrusive powers over all manner of political protest than it had before, and left nothing but questions in its wake, such as:

Whose idea was it to talk to the Chinese government? The Chinese government is not a “stakeholder” in anything in this city, especially when it comes to making law. It’s none of the Chinese government’s business, especially considering its dim view of inconveniences like freedom of speech.

And why is the Chinese consulate operating in a so-called residential area, anyway? Does it conduct government business out of the consulate? And if that is the case, will the city be as bravely vigilant in enforcing zoning bylaws prohibiting such activity as it was in chasing off those Falun Gong scofflaws? Just asking.

If the city passes the bylaw, and it probably will, Ansley said he and Arvay will have no choice but to challenge it again in court.

That is, here we go again.

Meanwhile, Sam Sullivan, who started this whole needless mess, has gone on to found the Global Civic Policy Society, in which Sullivan and invited eminent guests get together in his loftily-if-pretentiously-named Public Salons, in which they reflect on “local government and citizenship,” or some such claptrap.

Read more at the Vancouver Sun

Vancouver city staff consulted Chinese government over bylaw to silence Falun Gong

The admission by city engineer Peter Judd stunned some city councillors Thursday

That admission by city engineer Peter Judd stunned some city councillors and drew a strong note of protest from a lawyer representing the Falun Gong, who said no foreign government should be consulted about issues that restrict people’s right to free speech.

“They are representatives of a foreign government and the issue we are discussing here is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and how it applies in Canada and the right to free political expression on the part of Canadians,” Ansley said.

Asked Coun. David Cadman: “Is there any other bylaw that you can think of that we brought in that we would have consulted with a foreign government, a government that imprisons a Nobel laureate, that imprisons an artist that exhibits at the Tate? Why would we consult with them about our bylaw?”

Read more at Vancouver Sun

Falun Gong lawyer promises another lawsuit over city bid to remove protesters

Clive Ansley received the Human Rights Torch at a ceremony in D.C. in 2008

“The passage of the present form of bylaw is too broad and will guarantee another lawsuit,” lawyer Clive Ansley, who was involved in Falun Gong’s successful five-year court battle against the city, told councillors at a committee hearing.

He also chastised high-level city staff for having confidential communications with Chinese officials before drafting their proposal. (The staffers also spoke with the Falun Gong and B.C. Civil Liberties Association.)

“It’s strange that we would consult with the consul general of a foreign government” for input into a bylaw.

“I find it disgraceful and indefensible,” said Ansley.

Read more at the Province

Related:

Vancouver city staff consulted Chinese government over bylaw to silence Falun Gong

Falun Gong can't erect hut, billboard in front of Vancouver's Chinese consulate: New bylaw

Update:

Vancouver city staff consulted Chinese government over bylaw to silence Falun Gong

Joseph Arvay, a lawyer representing a group of the Falun Gong practitioners, called the city's proposal "shocking."

"It's faulty in one very, very fundamental respect: It excludes the Chinese consulate from any protests, by physical structure," he said. "After all these years in which the Falun Gong challenged the city for absolutely prohibiting its protest in front of the Chinese consulate, and even though the court struck down the city's bylaw, the city continues to absolutely prohibit the Falun Gong from its protests outside the Chinese consulate. The city's just asking for another lawsuit." More at Vancouver Sun

Now NPA city councillor Suzanne Anton is also taking aim at the Vision Vancouver-dominated council's late-distribution report on political expression.

"An extremely controversial report is being slipped in at the last minute without allowing for any meaningful public discussion," Anton states in the release. "This has become a regular pattern with the Mayor and his caucus colleagues. Freedom of expression is fundamental to democracy. Any possible restriction on that freedom must be well-understood and properly debated. Two days notice is not enough."

After Falun Gong practitioner Sue Zhang and others went to the B.C. Supreme Court, the court ruled in favour of the city in 2009.

The B.C. Court of Appeal subsequently ruled in favour of the practitioners.

More at Straight.com

Ai Weiwei's detention suggests the bad old days are returning in China

Although freedoms in China have long ebbed and flowed, there are elements of the current campaign that suggest it is more than just another tightening of the screw ahead of the transition to a new leadership in 2012, as Mr Hu and his premier, Wen Jiabao, step down.

First, there is the scope of the clampdown: lawyers, academics, journalists, bloggers, artists, even individuals who have posted seditious messages on Twitter or its equivalents, have all been targeted. Second, there is the re-emergence of the catch-all subversion charges that make it a crime to challenge the state. Third, there is the willingness to take on high-profile figures, such as Ai Weiwei, who were previously tolerated. And fourth, and perhaps most worryingly, there is the cold threat of violence.

China's leaders have always reacted violently to existential threats – the suppression of the Tiananmen uprising, the torture of members of the Falun Gong movement, the routine brutality towards Tibetan activists. And now it appears as if any elements of civil society that could galvanise Middle East-style protests are being treated as similar threats, too.

More at Telegraph UK

What has the Chinese communist party done to Falun Gong?

Vancouver, Canada - Ten years after the Tinanmen massacre, on July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin began his suppression of Falun Gong. By the end of 2002, inside information from government sources in Mainland China confirmed the cover-up of over 7,000 deaths in detention centers, forced labor camps, prisons and mental hospitals, with an average of seven people being killed every day.

During the Central Committee’s working conference, in which the suppression of Falun Gong was ordered, Jiang Zemin claimed, “I just don’t believe that the CCP can’t beat Falun Gong.” In planning the strategy of the suppression, three policies were put in place: “to ruin Falun Gong practitioners' reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.”

Falun Gong is the #1 human rights violation in China today. China has not seen an attack on its people of such force since the Cultural Revolution, where every social, legal, and government apparatus is forced and manipulated to eliminate a targeted group from society. In March 2006 the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture reported that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and ill-treatment in China were Falun Gong practitioners. The report states: "The cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts of torture defy description."

In December 2009, Argentine federal judge Octavio de Lamadrid ordered the indictment and international arrests of former Chinese communist leader Jiang Zemin and his right hand man Luo Gan, on charges of genocide and torture against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Falun Gong practitioners are persecuted to force them to give up their belief in “Truth, Compassion and Tolerance.” The cruel tortures often last for several days, several months or even several years. The persecution has been well documented by human rights organizations around the world, such as the UN, Amnesty International and others.

Falun Gong practitioners who suffered all kinds of tortures and escaped from the jaw of death have recorded more than 100 cruel torture methods. The following are only several examples.

Cruel beating is the most commonly used torture method to abuse Falun Gong practitioners. The police and head prisoners directly beat practitioners and also instigate other prisoners to beat practitioners. Many practitioners have become deaf from these beatings, their outer ear tissues have been broken off, their eyeballs crushed, their teeth broken, and their skull, spine, ribcage, collarbone, pelvis, arms and legs have been broken; arms and legs have been amputated due to the beatings. If the practitioners did not give in, torturers would continue the beating until the practitioners’ skin was torn and the flesh gaped open. Practitioners' bodies have become completely deformed from torture and covered in blood, yet the guards have still poured salt water on them and continued to shock them with electric batons. The smell of blood and of flesh burning mix together and the screams of agony are miserable. Meanwhile, the torturers also use plastic bags to cover practitioners’ heads in an attempt to make them yield out of fear of suffocation. The police have raped and gang raped women practitioners. In addition, police have stripped off female practitioners’ clothes and thrown them into prison cells filled with male prisoners who rape them too.

In 2006, an investigation lead by 2 prominent Canadians concluded that Falun Gong practitioners are the target of illicit organ harvesting for profit in China and that at least 41,500 practitioners lost their lives as unwilling donors. According to experts, this macabre practice is still going rampant across the country and is escalating.

In the six months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 8,037 practitioners were arrested. Some were killed within days or weeks of arrest, while hundreds of others were subsequently sentenced arbitrarily to labor camps or prisons.

In Vancouver alone, 22 practitioners have been persecuted first hand in China and a few others still have family members who have either disappeared or are in jail for their belief.

Besides violent assaults and even death threats, in the past 12 years numerous Canadian practitioners have suffered severe mental torment, such as blacklisting, surveillance, threatening of personal safety, and threatening the safety of relatives living in China. Reports filed at local police stations across the country show barrages of harassing phone calls and email attacks originating from China to homes of practitioners in Canada. Falun Gong practitioners have also been deprived of their legal rights and benefits, such as refusal or delay in issuing visas or renewing passports, and loss of membership in certain overseas Chinese organizations.

At the same time that the suppression campaign went into full operation, the CCP’s diplomatic system has spread lies in the international community and enticed foreign governments, senior officials and international media with political and economic incentives so that they will remain silent regarding the issue of the persecution of Falun Gong.

The hate propaganda pumped into Canada by the Chinese Embassy and consulates against Falun Gong practitioners has caused severe harm and has damaged Falun Gong practitioners’ reputations forcing them to face discrimination, physical attacks and isolation from other overseas Chinese.

Former diplomat Chen Yonglin who visited Vancouver in 2007, told of the #1 mission of all Chinese officials in and around the world which is to protect the image of the Chinese communist party and threatening and attacking Falun Gong overseas.

“The Chinese Communist Party has always relied on violence, lies, and advocating atheism to maintain its power. They could not understand Falun Gong practitioners' peaceful efforts to protect their freedom of belief. Now they feel they can't let people know about what has been done to Falun Gong in China."

Join us in our fight for justice and freedom by asking your house representative to put pressure on the Chinese government to stop this wrongful persecution.

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Vancouver city staff consulted Chinese government over bylaw to silence Falun Gong