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WITH THE WORLD CUP well under way in Germany, across the world Beijing is preparing to host the 2008 Olympics. But if what I was told there recently by former prisoners is true, the civilised world must shun China.
In a dingy hotel room with the curtains drawn, the men I met told of brutal persecution of their spiritual movement and worse, the sale of living organs, to order.
Along with my interpreter, the men were rapidly arrested, detained and questioned for the 'crime' of meeting me. One practitioner is still missing and it is feared that he is being tortured.
A few days before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre - June 4 1989 - I visited Beijing to pin down a terrifying new development: reports of 'organ harvesting'...
As the founder of the EU's democracy and human rights initiative I wanted to find out why the Communist regime which has dominated the world's largest country since 1949 had now descended to genocide.
In 1992 Falun Gong - a new Buddhist Tai chi-like movement - had begun to sweep China. When I first visited Beijing in 1996 every open space was filled with people practising its slow exercises and meditation. By 1999 it had some 100 million adherents. -- See next page Continues.