Dr. YANG Jianli Joined the Last 10 Miles of LA-DC Ride2Freedom
and Spoke at Its Culmination Rally in West Lawn of Capitol Hill
Speech by YANG Jianli
July 16, 2015, Capitol Hill
Dear Friends
Good morning.
First, I want to thank my friend Keith Ware for his leadership in the wonderful project Ride to Freedom. You are my hero, Keith.
I salute you, the young people, the members of the Ride to Freedom team, some of whom are as young as 11 years old. I tell you if you were my children, I would be the proudest father in the world. I thank you for your heroic act of riding 3,000 miles to bring attention to the American public of the Chinese regime’s oppressive, systematic torture of its citizens, men, women and children, many of them prisoners of conscience, particularly the Falun Gong practitioners. I am proud to join you in the last 10 miles of your journey to arrive at Capitol Hill, the center of democracy of the United States of America.
I also want to thank all the friends for coming today to protest the crimes against humanity that have now continued for 16 years against Falun Gong practitioners across China.
Since July of 1999, the Douzheng against Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party through mass imprisonment, torture, propaganda and coercive “reeducation” has resulted in thousands of deaths. Numerous Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed and their organs forcibly removed for transplant operations. Even today, many Falun Gong practitioners are held extra-judicially in forced labor camps where torture is routinely used. There is no neutral position to look at these atrocities. In front of such crimes, silence is simply the act of an accomplice.
Since the end of May of this year, more than 10,000 Chinese citizens have filed criminal charges against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Communist Party. Jiang is being targeted in the lawsuits because he initiated the Douzheng against Falun Gong in 1999, and saw that the entire Party and state apparatus was concentrated on the campaign.
Suing Jiang Zemin is a laudable move. I strongly support the action of Falun Gong practitioners, especially because it’s initiated by practitioners inside China. The campaign will gain the attention of China’s society, and can lead to an outpouring of public dissatisfaction over the persecution, which has long been suppressed. But in order for this campaign to be viable and ensure its petitioners’ safety, we must work harder to mobilize international support.
Dear friends, we are deeply outraged by the recent round-up of scores of human rights lawyers and activists in China and the senseless death of the prominent Tibetan religious leader Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, who had served thirteen years of a life sentence based on politically motivated charges and who had been repeatedly tortured and denied medical parole for his heart condition.
Dear brothers and sisters, let’s unite in solidarity for those persecuted in China and for those daring stand up to CCP’s repression. We urge the U.S. government and all governments around the world to do all they can to put pressure on China to end the persecution, and not to allow their own economic and political interests abroad to rule over the fundamental human rights for Falun Gong practitioners, people of all faiths and ethnicities, indeed, all men, women and children living in People’s Republic of China. These are not American rights, nor Chinese rights. These are the universal rights we are defending.
Thank you all.
