Dear Member of Parliament,
I am honoured to send you my recommendation of the company Shen Yun Performing Arts. As a great admirer of the Chinese ancient culture and a delighted viewer of many Shen Yun performances in Canada, I recommend this show as a uniquely enriching experience.
The New York based art company, promoting authentic traditional Chinese culture, is independent of any political party. In their show, they present legends with deep roots in Chinese culture representing divine inspiration from the Buddhist and Taoist traditions of ancient China. They also relate those traditions as a message for today to enrich and educate the audience by evoking positive scenes about virtue, compassion and the strength of the human spirit. The performance includes presentations relating to the persecution of Falun Gong and the power of the human spirit with divine guidance to overcome such adversity.
During 2009, Shen Yun Performing Arts gave 42 performances in 16 cities in 12 European countries and all of them were successful. This year's tour is the fourth in Europe (http://ro.SHENYUNperformingarts.org) and each time it gets more and more triumphant.
On Feb. 24th, for the third consecutive year, the European Parliament hosted, under the patronage of Edward McMillan-Scott, a Vice President of the European Parliament, a ceremony dedicated to the European tour of Shen Yun Performing Arts. A video of the opening speech by Jerzy Buzek, the President of the European Parliament, is found at: http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/b5/2010/02/25/a400471.html#video while Edward McMillan-Scott’s speech, is at: http://epochtimes-romania.com/articles/2010/03/article_75393.html.
I understand that China’s party-state is pressuring you and your country to block this performance. Such pressure from the Chinese Embassy has existed in many countries where each time the Embassy officials insist that the friendly relations between China and that country is in peril if this show is allowed to perform. However, in my experience when these threats are disregarded, as they have been in dozens of countries, there is no measurable economic consequence. The Chinese regime is dependent on trade and raw materials from around the world for their own economic well-being.
You and your constituents will no doubt recall such practices by other authoritarian/totalitarian regimes in the past. Following last year's Universal Periodic Review of China by the UN Human Rights Council, China’s human rights record was challenged on many fronts but its government rejected most recommendations by other governments out of hand.
In 2006, David Matas, a much-honoured Canadian human right’s lawyer and I co-authored an investigative report on the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. It can be accessed on my website at www.david-kilgour.com. This study was updated in our book Bloody Harvest-The killing of Falun Gong for their organs published in the fall of 2009. I have been invited to speak about our study before a committee of the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week. This is only one of many presentations David and I have made to parliaments and human rights agencies around the world since the summer of 2006.
Falun Gong practitioners today comprise two-thirds of the torture victims and half of the people in detention in 're-education through labour' camps across China. The main conclusion of our book is that there "continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners. We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and 'people's courts', since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.
Shen Yun Performing Arts is a North America-based cultural group of high quality artists which seeks to promote the ancient culture of China and provide uplifting entertainment for its audience. Rather than add to the persecution, I hope you will welcome this company to your capital.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
"David Kilgour"
Canadian Member of Parliament (1979-2006)
Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia (2002-2003)
Phone: 001 613 747 7854 Ottawa
