In an unusual Australian refugee case, eight Falun Gong practitioners and two other Chinese asylum seekers had a closed-door meeting in Darwin with immigration officials today, as they tossed up whether to continue on a dangerous voyage by boat to New Zealand or stay in Australia.
The Immigration Department is endangering failed Falun Gong asylum seekers
by forcing them to apply for travel documents from the Chinese consulate in
Sydney, exposing their status to authorities and putting them in danger of persecution,
refugee advocates say.
In a landmark case, a judge at the Seoul Administrative Court granted two Falun
Gong adherents political asylum in Korea on January 16, 2008, finding that their
fears of persecution in China well-founded.
Chinese police detained Falun Gong practitioner Yuan Sheng, a veteran airline pilot at China Eastern Airlines based in Shanghai, on August 8, 2006 at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport prior to his flight to the United States. It was because he told one of the security personnel about the persecution of Falun Gong.