That Criminal Religion

"Yinghua Chen's life is in imminent danger. Chen's father, a Calgarian and a Canadian citizen, was turned away from seeing her [on April 15] at the No.2 Shijiazhuang Detention Centre and he is desperately concerned over her safety, as am I."
Joan Crockatt, Canadian Member of Parliament, Calgary Centre

"We want to see immediate action in this case."
"Her family is not permitted to see her, but her lawyer visited her in jail on April 13 and said Ms. Chen is very weak and close to death and her condition continues to deteriorate."
"Please do everything in your power to ensure she does not perish in jail for no reason."
James Lunney, Canadian Member of Parliament, Nanaimo-Alberni

Both Canadian members of Parliament have taken up the cause of a young Chinese woman whose family members are Canadian citizens living in Calgary, Alberta and in Nanaimo, British Columbia. They have written a letter of appeal to China's Canadian ambassador Zhang Junsai appealing to him for intervention on behalf of Chan Yinghua.

Epoch Times

"Help my daughter, she's dying!" appealed an anguished Huang Jinling at a press conference in Calgary on April 15. Her daughter, Chen Yinghua, is on a hunger strike at a detention centre in China, and near death. The young woman had been arrested previously, in August 2003 when she was brutally tortured during that detention. She stuck to a hunger strike for 39 days then was force-fed causing internal hemorrhaging.

At that time, her brother, living in Canada, called on the international community to help her family secure her release. She was arrested once again in July 2013 and detained for 22 days during which time she began another hunger strike, protesting mistreatment, and was later released. This time she was arrested in Shijiazhuang in mid-March, while accompanying her niece, Bian Xiaohui who was trying to visit her father in the detention centre.

When Bian Xiaohui's request to visit her father was rejected she protested holding aloft a banner that read, "I want to see my father", in front of the prison. Both women were then arrested. All of the members of this family who have been imprisoned are guilty of what China sees as a cardinal sin: they are practitioners of Falun Gong. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese have been sent to labour camps or prisons for the crime of practising Falun Gong.

The charge levelled officially against Chen Yinghua is that of "using heretical religious activities to undermine the implementation of the law". For that criminal offence incarceration is deemed a deserved punishment, along with intimidation and torture and attempts at 're-education'. Falun Gong prisoners are known to have undergone the removal of internal organs for transplantation through China's transplant program.

Organs that can end up extending the lives of those wealthy enough to pay for an organ transplant. And that might include 'medical tourists' coming from abroad for first-class treatment in hospitals and surgical theatres by skilled doctors supplying a service hard to come by elsewhere.