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EUROPEAN UNION. MARCO PANNELLA DEPOSITS PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION ON CHINA’S RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
February 14, 2006: Hands Off Cain President and MEP Marco Pannella deposited a question to the European Parliament regarding the violation of human rights and religious repression perpetrated in China commencing with the case of Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who for years has taken up the case of those fighting government abuse, censorship and freedom of speech. The lawyer is famous throughout the country for his open letters denouncing Communist Party misrule and for defending the rights of unofficial Christians and Falun Gong practitioners. His stance has cost him the closure of his legal studio and the withdrawal of his licence to practice. Upon learning that human rights lawyer Guo Feixiong had been beaten by police in Guangdong Province, Gao began a hunger strike on February 6 to protest the Chinese communist regime's illegal persecution of the Chinese citizens.
The hunger strike, which lasted 48 hours, was joined by people both within and outside of China. "We don't need more words. I can only use action to express my anger. Though in the context of an inhuman and gangster government, they will simply sneer at our hunger strike, we will not choose our correspondence based on others' values," Gao said "From the start and until the end, we shall always promote a non-bloody, non-violent approach, but this definitely does not mean that we will not protest. When legal means are blocked, we can only use our most primitive form of capital – our physical body, to conduct this struggle – for maintaining the minimum level of morality for human existence, for the dignity of humanity, and the value of human civilization!" "As a lawyer, a human rights lawyer, I have to use this primitive form to uphold Chinese citizens' rights which are supposed to be protected by law. We have no alternative living in such a society of distorted human nature."
Marco Pannella asked what action the Commission (the Council) intended to take to ask the Chinese government to stop such persecutions and to guarantee freedom of belief and whether the Commission (the Council) intended to take firm action with respect to the human rights situation at the centre of relations between the EU and the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Meanwhile, Hands Off Cain Secretary Sergio D’Elia and Treasurer Elisabetta Zamparutti adhered to the hunger strike for 24 hours. (Sources: HOC, 14/02/06)
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