Mostly Water: The BC Supreme Court has ruled for the removal of the Falun Gong protest billboards and hut outside the Chinese Consulate on Granville Street. The city was granted an injunction under the pretext that the group breached some street structure bylaw.
The Falun Gong has maintained that hut and those billboards for over seven years to protest their consistent persecution and torture by the Chinese government.
Their values and beliefs were perceived by the Chinese government as a distinction from the Marxist-atheist ideology and a challenge to party rule. They were banned from practice in 1999. Since then a massive crackdown began on the group; criminalization, torture, illegal imprisonment, and psychiatric abuse were used to persecute practitioners. Several human rights investigators reported the ongoing practice of systematic organ harvesting from living Falung Gong practitioners in China.
The terror campaign doesn't stop there, the party uses everything they could to persecute the group[:] the education system, the workplace, family members, and a large scale of media propaganda.
During the past seven year, the dismantl[ing] of the billboards and banners was ordered only once in 2006, by the former [Vancouver] Mayor after major pressure from an important economic partner: the Chinese government. Then, the freedom of expression prevailed, but today they are fighting against more powerful forces: the Olympics.
Not only the Canadian Government failed them in doing nothing against the human rights violations in China, but now because of the coming of the 2010 Olympics, the BC government and the city have raised some concerns that were absent for seven years and under the pretext of some kind of bylaw they are depriving this group of one of the most fundamental [freedoms] of a democratic society; the freedom of expression.
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