Canberra Times
October 23, 2006 Monday

FALUN GONG WANTS APOLOGY FROM DOWNER

FALUN Gong practitioners are continuing to pursue Foreign Minister Alexander Downer over what they say was his unreasonable crackdown on their long-running protests outside the Chinese embassy in Yarralumla.

Members of the group appeared in the ACT Supreme Court on Friday and are due back there on November 1. They originally argued in their long-running case that Downer's efforts to restrict their protests were illegal.

Downer began issuing orders in March 2002 to restrict the protesters, including preventing them from using banners or loud speakers. Falun Gong says the orders came just before the Chinese foreign minister of the time visited Canberra and Downer had ''made a wrong decision to help a foreign communist regime to silence citizens of Australia from peaceful expression''.

Downer said he supported the right to protest but was obliged under international and domestic law to ''prevent the impairment of the dignity of diplomatic missions and staff''.

Downer stopped issuing the orders earlier this year and asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the action by Falun Gong because there was now no reason for them to pursue the litigation. But Falun Gong, which claims its followers are tortured and killed in China, is not stopping there. It wants a court ruling that the original orders were illegal and an apology from Downer.

Falun Gong practitioners, most from Sydney, have conducted protests outside the embassy in Yarralumla since 1999 when the Chinese Government declared the practice of Falun Gong illegal in mainland China. Canberra residents had been ''very kind'' to them during their rain-hail-or-shine protests, even bringing them coffee in winter. One of the more interesting claims by Falun Gong is that officialdom has used other means to silence them, including a police random breath-testing bus being positioned in front of protesters in April this year to stop visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao from seeing their banners. It remains to be seen how those claims stack up in court - or if they will be tested at all.