Thank you very much for bringing up this question, and Joel can add more after my input.
Canada is the first country in the world to condemn the persecution of Falun Gong, officially on July 26, 1999. A headline in the Globe and Mail was entitled “Canada condemns China's crackdown”. Later on, Axworthy also spoke out, on November 9, as reported by Reuters. So we are quite proud of the initial government gesture.
We are also, at the same time, disheartened when we hear that Hu Xiaoping, a Montreal practitioner, was scheduled to be deported in early August of last year, and that was just one month prior to the Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit. Timing-wise, this case is really disheartening for us. We can now confirm it was for the purpose of pleasing the Chinese visit, but we were very disheartened by the gesture or the action taken.
I understand there could be errors or mistakes in the process, but prior to that a similar situation also occurred. About four years ago, there was another individual scheduled to be deported back, but the Falun Dafa Association stepped forward and identified that he was a practitioner and Canada took immediate action to stop the deportation, even within a very short period of time.
We did the same, we made our efforts even just before the airplane was scheduled to fly from Vancouver in early August, and we held a press conference on Parliament Hill. We see that somehow there's a kind of determination to return him back. So this is the only case in Canada for the Falun Dafa Association to identify a practitioner who was being sent back to China.
Besides Canada, we know that Cambodia did this on August 9, 2002, with the pressure from China to send back two practitioners. They even had a certificate of UN refugee protection, and they sent them back regardless, and they got condemnation worldwide. Also, Thailand made such an effort, and the United Arab Emirates made efforts.
For the case of the UAE, United Arab Emirates, and Canada, we appealed to the Canadian ambassador there, and Canada gave a special visa so that Yuzhi Wang, the lady, could come to Canada. With regard to the case—and this is one of our requests—we hope, number one, that this will not happen any more. Number two is we want him to come back to Canada, because when he was sent back to China, first, he was already persecuted mentally and he could not practise freely. Secondly, he's facing physical persecution at any time. Even with our fellow colleague in Montreal...trying to reach her to verify her status in China...she is fearful and does not want to reveal the situation.
Sorry.