Inappropriate levity
Sir: Since my last visit to Beijing in 2006, when all with whom I had contact were later arrested, imprisoned and several tortured, I have been following the persecution of China’s most popular qi gong movement, Falun Gong,
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which has more adherents than the Chinese Communist Party (‘The Falun Gong show that meekness can be provocative’, 19 July). Lloyd Evans may not find their Buddhaschool spiritual exercises to his taste, but their horrific treatment at the hands of the authorities should move all of us to outrage.
The UN’s torture rapporteur Manfred Nowak believes that many of the seven million in China’s prison camps are practitioners. Most are sent away for three years’ ‘administrative detention’ to an escalating torture regime aimed at getting them to recant their practice. Methods used include beatings, sexual abuse and the forced ingestion of excrement. I have met many survivors but have also seen a list of some 3,000 practitioners who have died under torture since 1999.
For their willingness to defy a regime that inflicts unimaginable suffering on them, they deserve sympathy and respect, not levity. Edward McMillan-Scott, MEP
Vice-President, European Parliament Boston Spa, Yorkshire
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