![\"Practitioners](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2015\/09\/download-3.jpg\")
<\/a>Practitioners of Falun Gong, who say the religious movement is persecuted in China, protest the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seattle, Washington, September 22, 2015. REUTERS\/David Ryder<\/p><\/div>\n
Practitioners of Falun Gong, who say the religious movement is persecuted in China, protest the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seattle, Washington, September 22, 2015.
\nREUTERS\/DAVID RYDER<\/p>\n
About 100 people protesting against human rights abuses in China greeted President Xi Jinping in Seattle on Tuesday, in what is likely to be the first of a series of demonstrations against China’s leader during his week-long U.S. visit.<\/p>\n
In downtown Seattle, a crowd supporting Falun Gong, a religious group that says it is repressed in China, waved signs against what it called China’s theft of prisoners’ organs.<\/p>\n
“Falun Gong practitioners have been put into forced labor camps, prisons, and mental hospitals, and they have been killed for their organs,” said Michael Green, 38, of Seattle.<\/p>\n
At the same time, a group of pro-Chinese protesters, some of them wearing hats emblazoned with “USA,” waved Chinese and U.S. flags and large red cloth signs that read “Hello President Xi” in Chinese characters.<\/p>\n
At one point, Xi’s supporters attempted to drape a giant flag over a Falun Gong banner that read: “Forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners is not tolerated by heavenly principles.”<\/p>\n
There were no arrests by late Tuesday during what police said were peaceful demonstrations.<\/p>\n
China’s official atheist Communist Party does not tolerate challenges to its rule and religious activities must be state sanctioned.<\/p>\n
In 1999, China’s then-President Jiang Zemin launched a campaign to crush Falun Gong after thousands of practitioners staged a peaceful sit-in outside the leadership compound in Beijing to demand official recognition of their movement.<\/p>\n
In Seattle, pro-Tibetan groups joined the protests against China’s fight against separatism in the mountainous region, as did activists calling for China to curb militarization of the South China Sea.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Yu Zhengsheng, a high-ranking member of the ruling Communist Party also in charge of religious groups and ethnic minorities, stressed China’s official line that the Dalai Lama, a spiritual leader who fled China in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, is a violent separatist.<\/p>\n
Technology | Tue Sep 22, 2015 10: … Continue reading
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