Herman Salton

TAPE 11:00:13Andrew Moody: I just thought like a self-introduction, erm and go from there, so just, yeh, who you are and what you've done...Herman Salton: also my name? No (AM: yeh). OK.

1:00:25INTRODUCTIONHM: OK so my name is Herman Salton and I'm an international relations and international law... an international lawyer and I've been working in Iceland in 2002, erm during the events that happened in Iceland I was working at the Human Rights Centre there. And as a result I was, I experienced first hand what happened when the Chinese President came and visited. Erm, and after that I was in New Zealand, I studied international law, and er right now I am here in Oxford doing international relations, so I'm both an international lawyer and an international relations so called 'specialist' by training.

1:01:07WHAT HAPPENEDAM: So although it's a big question, and we can break it down as we go, but it would be just good to get your perspective on what happened, and a step by step if you, if you can do so... yeh, and we can ask questions as we go...HM: Sure. So even the events? (AM: Yeh, just what happened (HM: Right) as you found it as you've investigated it) Sure. Yeh. Well just about a week before the President of China arrived, and the President of China at that time was Jiang Zemin, erm, we had er, I was working at the Human Rights Centre and we had some Falun Gong practitioners coming into the centre, and we talked to them, and they required a meeting because they said there was something happening there, and basically what they told us was that there was some form of prohibition for Falun Gong practitioners to come into Iceland and that the Icelandic government was implementing a policy against the Falun Gong, specifically erm, during the time of the visit of the Chinese President. And that was very surprising because Iceland is a very small country. It only has three hundred thousand in terms of population. Its also a very quiet country in the sense that nothing happens, and so for these people to come to us and tell us that that was going on, we just found it very surprising and I particularly found it extremely surprising, erm, partly as I said because Reykjavik particularly is a very small town, is only one hundred thousand people, so if anything that happens you really know it. Er, and we didn't so we obviously acquired more information but it was not, er a long process because after like one hour it was on the news that the Icelandic government had implemented and issued a ban on the Falun Gong movement, specifically to enter Iceland during the visit of the Chinese President, which was happening like three days after, afterwards. Erm, so the confirmation came from the TV and from the radio, and from that moment on it was obviously big news in Iceland because Iceland is supposed to be a country that respects human rights and respects erm, freedom of travel, and freedom of expression, and freedom of religion.

1:03:34INVESTIGATIONErm, so what happened is that we investigated the issue straight away, and we learned that erm, the ban itself was a ban that was coming from the Minist...Ministry of Justice, erm, that basically sent out a communicae, erm, saying that known or suspected practitioners of Falun Gong were prohibited from entering Iceland, erm, beginning from the following day there was a specific day that was set, erm, for the beginning of the ban. And not only that, at this time the ban was erm, only communicated to the press, there was no official release, and to all effect and purposes it was secret in the sense that it was not intended to come out explicitly. Erm, it did come out because there was some form of action, erm, particularly towards I would say the second or third day after these events erm, just before the Iceland, the presi...Chinese president visit began there was an action erm on the part of some practitioners erm, and some Icelandic journalists as well to basically have the ban released, so the formal document er, released. Erm, the problem with this situation was that it turned out afterwards that this ban was sent to a number of people and a number of institutions; at that time we didn't know it, so it was to some extent we were in the dark. We just knew there was this situation, but we didn't know what was going on because the Icelandic government decided that erm, these documents could not be released for national security reasons, which we will get to later is the classical erm explanation, and the classical justification that every government gives when there is a situation that the public, potentially impinges on public order. So that was the explanation that was given, the explanation was first of all that there was potentially a public order problem because Iceland has er, a very small police force and to have a lot of prac... a lot of protesters coming into Iceland, at that time it was seen as was kind of an invasion, er if you listen to the government. This could have been a danger to the country, not to the country itself but to the life of the Chinese President, and not only, not so much because of the Falun Gong practitioners themselves but the government, but the government, the Icelandic government said because the Chinese bodyguards that defend Jiang Zemin are armed and they will use the weapons if they suspect that his life is in danger. So there was a situation that the government regarded as a public order and public security issue, we took this seriously and we inquired, er but it turned out very soon that there were some problems with these explanations. 1:06:33REASONSFirst of all, because the numbers were small er, the government said we only had two hundred policemen available for these events so we are unprepared and basically we would not have been able to handle that kind of demonstration, but it also turned out, in the end, that were only two hundred practitioners of Falun Gong who actually came into the country; so a ratio of one policeman per practitioner, or per potential protester is I think a situation that every chief of police in every country would find desirable and indeed ideal, because its basically impossible to have one policeman per protester, its just the ideal world for any security body and any ??. So we had a problem in that respect er, and what happened was that it turned out that this ban was accompanied by a list, a blacklist of Falun

Gong practitioners, so it was not only a blank prohibit..., well it would have been very serious anyway, but it was not a blank prohibition on Falun Gong... it was not only a blank prohibition, it was a prohibition of Falun Gong with attached list of people who were going to arrive in the country in the next ten days during the official visit. And this was a very detailed list which no-one has seen because it is still secret and the government has kept it secret, but we know from various sources that it contains the names, the surnames, the flight number, the day, the time when these people were supposed to arrive into the country, and we know exactly the airport of pro... obviously they came from. Therefore, this... and the passport numbers. So er, this is not the kind of information that, er, I mean its very detailed kind of information that has obviously been the object of some investigation for quite some time because we're talking about a list of probably about, certainly in the hundreds. So it is... it requires some kind of investigation.

1:08:41BLACKLISTThere is an immediate question that we raised and we asked ourselves how the Icelandic government could have this blacklist, and how it could have this kind of information. And my investigation following the events, I asked the Icelandic authorities about the source of this erm, of this blacklist and the Icelandic authorities took immediate responsibility for it and they said, well we compiled that blacklist, we are responsible for the blacklist. Er, the chief of police of Iceland, who was in charge of this project, we have effectively gathered the information. And obviously there is a problem with that kind of approach in the sense that if you only have two hundred policemen it becomes very difficult to compile a list, and to have enough resources to compile a list that, as I said, listed several hundred people coming from just about twenty five different countries, as far away as Australia and New Zealand, and knowing the passport numbers and all the data, and obviously the religious affiliation, is er, obviously there is a question there in terms of the reliability of the answer of the Icelandic government. Partly also because the Icelandic government then was pressed by the Icelandic Data Protection Commission. They wanted to know where the data came from because there was a potential problem in terms of privacy. The Icelandic government said the information itself, we gathered it, but we had external sources. The Icelandic Data Protection Commission said we want to know where this information comes from, the Icelandic government replied, well for national security reasons we can't... we are not allowed to give out this information and these sources. The Icelandic Data Protection Commission again asked for this information saying national security reasons can only be invoked in very extreme cases, you can't possibly say that just the release of this list would be a security issue, a national security issue is something that basically is something to do with war and with attack, and this doesn't seem to be the case. So eventually the Icelandic government basically said, the Icelandic Ministry for Justice said we got this information from Chi... sorry, from Germany and the United States, and Interpol was also involved in the process of gathering this information. They were asked specifically whether the information came from the Chinese government, they said absolutely not, the Chinese government was not involved in any, at any stage. Erm, there is a problem with this approach and with this kind of information because apparently both Germany and the United

States have denied er, to have provided any kind of information to Iceland. You can imagine that the United States, with all the importance that they attach to religious freedom, they are not going to give information about religious affiliation to a government that is willing to ban a religious movement just on the basis that it is basically a spiritual movement and there might be some public order problem. So there were some problems with that kind of answer, there were even more problems with the Interpol answer, the answer saying that Interpol was involved because Interpol directly denied and straightforwardly denied. Erm, and when I was in Iceland, we just found the answer very strange because Interpol, by constitution, is not allowed to give out information on sensitive data, and therefore race, religion, creed, belief, sexual orientation, all these things are not the object... er Interpol has absolutely nothing to do with it, and is actually prohibited from holding that information in the first instance. So we got a letter from Interpol saying this is absolutely not the case. The Icelandic government said, well yeh, Interpol didn't even, didn't really give the information to us, but there was some kind of third, er, they were involved to some extent, even thought they didn't give directly to us, so erm, that was the answer of the government itself. The Icelandic government, as I said, took responsibility for it, and that raises a number of questions about it. But the problem with this blacklist is also, and with the ban itself is also in terms of implementation. This blacklist was not only kept by the government, and was not only given by the government to the police, which is a part of the government, and therefore in theory if they are allowed to gather this information, they are also allowed to give it to the police because its part of the government. But this information was, and this list in particular was sent to Iceland air, which is the private company, and the official national carrier of Iceland, but a private company, erm, and it was also sent to all Icelandic missions abroad, er everywhere in the world. And this blacklist was also, with the request, the explicit request made to the Icelandic diplomats abroad to deny visas to all known or suspected Falun Gong practitioners, and also not only to deny visas but even to recall the visas that were already, had already been issued. So you had cases of people who had actually been given a visa, and they were called back to the consulate in Chicago, or in Washington, or anywhere in the world, the Icelandic government called back, or called these people back and said you're actually not allowed to go. Just forget about it because you will not be allowed to board.

1:14:36ICELANDAIRSo er, in terms of an additional problem is with Icelandair, because as I said Icelandair is a private company, and yet it was ordered to deny passage and boarding to these people. Now there is a very interesting question er, of how you can distinguish a Falun Gong practitioner, and I don't think I am very good at it because I still haven't learned er, and I don't think I want to learn, and I don't think it is possible to learn, unless you go into the spiritual reasons and background of everything. Certainly it was for the Icelandic government, and especially for a private airline to distinguish known or suspected Falun Gong practitioners. They had a blacklist, so those names were easy to deal with, but there were others who wanted to come in, for example there were a lot of tourists, you know visa tourist exemptions, so you don't need a visa if you are from

Germany to get into Iceland. So there was a potential problem there. Er, in terms of people on the blacklist, that is the most straightforward case. When these people went to the airport, and I have to remind you these people bought, legally bought er a ticket with Icelandair, so they were entitled to travel, erm. It was people who had already bought also accommodation in Iceland and they had a valid visa, otherwise they wouldn't go to the airport. And they went to the airport, and at check-in there was immediately a problem, there was at that time, during that week, Iceland, Icelandic, Icelandair check-in operated not only with the Icelandair people but also with policemen because the Icelandic government sent Icelandic policemen, policemen into airports around the world. Everywhere that was served by Icelandair there was also an Icelandic policeman because of the request of the government and because Icelandair people were actually kind of embarrassed because of the whole thing. So, erm, the Icelandic government wanted to make sure that the ban was properly implemented er, and I will get to that because it was not. So in terms of the people who were prevented boarding erm, it was a very kind of straightforward matter and the Icelandair officer basically had the blacklist and they went through the scanning, if you were on the blacklist you were prevented from boarding the plane. There was some embarrassment from Icelandair because they didn't know how to explain the matter to the practitioners. There was particularly a memo that was sent from the public relations manager of Icelandair to all the staff. And it was a kind of panicking memo in the sense that the memo said please do not say anything except that these people would not be allowed [cough] sorry, allowed to board. So do not get into the detail, do not explain the situation, just say that they are not allowed to get into, and that tells you how embarrassed the airline itself was, erm because this was an unprecedented situation, never before, obviously the airline, Icelandair was given an order to deny passage of some people, and never before the order itself was based on a specific group, so it was not a prohibition of protesters cannot get into Iceland, it was a very specific prohibition targeting the Falun Gong.

1:18:02THE BANErm, just about, obviously this situation created a lot of problems, a lot of discussions in Iceland. The Icelandic Minister... Ministry then tried to enlarge the ban, saying er, well its not only the Falun Gong who is prohibited to get in, we don't want protests at all, and protesters at all, but in fact the ban was a Falun Gong ban, it was, there are official documents that only mention Falun Gong, so it was kind of a dressing up er, the one that the Ministry was making at the time. And, there is also an interesting point when it comes to the check-in process because as I said, there are, there were a lot of people who didn't need a visa, so coming specifically from Schengen countries and erm, what is particularly disturbing of that process was that there was racial profiling. So the authorities, both from Icelandair and from erm, the Icelandic police effectively just stopped people of Asian traits, so apart from people on the blacklist, er the others had to be identified, and as I said I don't know how you distinguish a Falun Gong practitioner but apparently the Icelandic government decided all Falun Gong practitioners were Asians because, and Asian looking, because the Icelandic government did not know what the Falun Gong was. This is a very important point, there is an ignorance point. There's not, I don't think there is any

kind of bad faith from the part of the government itself. There is an ignorant point, ignorance point whereby the government was taken, basically, by surprise, to some extent, in the sense that it didn't know erm, about Falun Gong at all. Obviously that is not justifiable, but that is what happened. So the racial profiling was a consequence and effect of ignorance, as all racial profiling is, but particularly in this case, so people of Asian origin were stopped and asked about there spiritual beliefs, not specifically at the airports but once they got into Iceland. So there was, because of the Schengen prohibition, erm they were not, it was not possible to deny them the passage, the air passage, because they had the right to get into Iceland because of the Schengen provisions, although at some point they were suspended as well. But at the beginning there was entry for Schengen people, they arrived in Iceland, some people arrived in Iceland, and as I said, those of Asian origin were questioned, they were put aside and basically what happened is they asked them about their spiritual beliefs, whether they knew about the Falun Gong, whether they participated, whether they were members of the Falun Gong and why they came to Iceland etc. etc. So not only was there a problem specific with Falun Gong because you are effectively prohibiting the entry of people on the basis of religious or spiritual affiliation, there is also the problem that you are basically erm, focusing on people with certain racial traits, which is possibly even worse, and possibly even more clumsy. Erm so there were these problems that came up erm, and we get into the implementation part of the ban itself, because it was so widespread, because there were so many people involved, because these practitioners came from America, from Canada, from basically many other countries, even Australia and New Zealand, there was the problem, the main problems happened at the airports were these people were stranded, so you would have people stranded for like denied passage er repeatedly, so one day, and they would wait there for the situation to clear, it wouldn't clear normally, you had different situations, some people were allowed to get in, some others were not, there were problems with implementation itself, because it seemed to be not consistent, so for example you had a group of about seventy practitioners who came, and who arrived at Reykjavik airport. They arrive into the country, they were questioned about there spiritual beliefs. The Icelandic police determined that they were there as members of the Falun Gong and erm, I think there's something unprecedented for Iceland happened in the sense that these people were at a certain point arrested and they were put in a make-shift detention centre. And obviously you have to remember that at this point they haven't done, they haven't done absolutely anything, so they were just their physical presence there. Erm, as I said these seventy people were put in this kind of make-shift detention centre, which was actually an elementary school, because everything in Iceland happens somewhat randomly and without plan, so Iceland obviously doesn't have a proper detention centre and they just use a school. And they were kept there for some hours, and there was some discussion, they were told they would be sent back with the first planes available and because of the schedule of the flights into and out of Iceland that would have been in the morning, but during the night there was, during the evening the news of their arrest came out, broke out to the media, and that basically prompted a demonstration from the Icelandic people, and I can tell you that the Icelandic people are not very effusive, and are not, and I mean are not overly effusive and they don't protest unless they really

feel they have to. So this was obviously a situation that Icelandic people took in a very serious way, and because of these protests these people were, the Falun Gong practitioners were allowed into the country, and they effectively were given the green light to get into. So you have a situation of the ban not being taken away, and therefore, basically practitioners abroad not being able to come into Iceland, but practitioners who were already in Iceland, they were allowed to stay there. Er, and people from Schengen countries, at a certain point, the Icelandic authorities wrote to the European Commissioner who was {inaudible} and er, they required, and they said that for security, national security reasons we suspend the Schengen agreement, so basically from this moment we reinstate passport controls, even for people coming from European countries, which is also an interesting, erm, is not unprecedented but is certainly, it denotes a very kind of a serious approach from the Icelandic government. That meant that for example you had a situation whereby one German practitioner came into the country and he was questioned about his beliefs, he was released because there was nothing wrong with his beliefs apparently, but then they were, the authorities were not quite sure what to do with him, because they found some Falun Gong flyers in his bag, they took away the Falun Gong flyers, they requestioned him and then they released him and he was out waiting for a bus and they, the authorities came out again and he was questioned again, he was again asked to go through immigration, which I think is erm, I've never heard of anyone who has been gone through immigration and is waiting for a bus, and is called back by immigration, and then he is effectively told that he cannot get into the country. He afterwards called a lawyer, the lawyer interceded, and he was released and he was allowed to get into the country. So you have a situation that is problematic for a number of reasons, not only for the ban, not only for the blacklist, but because the implementation of the ban was effectively impossible, it was impossible to keep these people out. It is something that possibly China or North Korea can do, but certainly not a country like Iceland, there are so many er, different kind of tourist, you know, exemptions and stuff. So the situation was, that happened was serious and the Icelandic government was immediately on the defensive, and as I said there were several reasons why it was on the defensive, chiefly because of the privacy erm, issues and the discrimination issues. Er, the problem with the Icelandic government in my opinion is that it was really never straightforward in its answers, it was always extremely secretive, and that I think made matters even worse. Because if you had a situation whereby the government clearly said, look we have a situation where potentially we have hundreds of practitioners coming in, we have a very small police force, we need to take action, and therefore we need all protesters, to be, to some extent limited in various way, that would have been acceptable, there is legislation that allows that. But you cannot single out a specific group, you cannot say Asian people cannot come into Iceland, you cannot say erm, people from Norway cannot come into Iceland, you need to be generic, and you need to give the reasons why, especially you are going into this kind of behaviour. So I think there was a transparency policy, sorry, and transparency issue with the Icelandic government that was never really fully solved. Er, and I think that back-fired on the Icelandic government erm, when it comes to the trust of the Icelandic population, and their trust, possibly, of the world as well when it comes to the reputation of the country in terms of human rights.

1:28:12EVENTSSo, that is basically what happened in Iceland, there is, er, an additional problem is what happened after the President arrived er, because there were incidents in the country. None of them was caused by the demonstrations itself, themselves, but they were caused by unfortunate events that happened when some members of the Icelandic diplomatic corps. and the Icelandic security erm, officials, basically to some extent interfered with the freedom of expression and freedom of demonstration of the Icelandic people. Erm, and I say this, this is not an opinion, this has been er, there are documents that testified it. There are documents that testify, for example, a Falun Gong press conference, in Iceland, was erm, attended by a person who claimed to be an AP journalist, and it turned out he was not an AP journalist erm, he was dismissed by the conference because he was not an AP Journalist, he went outside, there was an Icelandic journalist there. The Icelandic journalist asked him, why didn't you present your credentials you are, you know, you are an AP journalist so why didn't you just give the documents to the, to the Falun Gong people. They would have allowed you in, as they allowed me in. And then he denied he was from AP, in fact he denied that he was, that he spoke English at all, erm, then he went in a car, and he went away. And this Icelandic journalist took the numbers of the car, the registration, called the ?? authority in Iceland came out that this was a rented car from the Chinese Embassy in Iceland. So you had cases of spying on the Falun Gong activities, you had cases of bogus demonstrators who were put there by, apparently, Chinese officials. You had cases of people and hotel owners in Iceland who were visited by Chinese security officials, they were told you need to cancel the bookings of these Falun Gong people because these are dangerous people. So it is against your interest, these are people who are mentally unstable and will create problems to your property and to your erm, to your erm, to your guest house or hotel. The problem is that these security officials, in addition to do this, also said they were coming on behalf of the Icelandic police, and the Icelandic police obviously denied that, and it came out very clearly because many of these documents were released, there was official confirmation from the Icelandic Ministry of Justice. I interviewed the Chief of the Ministry of Justice and I asked him specifically whether there had been pressures from the Chinese Embassy in Iceland on the hotel owners to cancel Falun Gong reservations, or reservations from Falun Gong people. He explicitly said yes, we have recalled the Chinese Ambassador, and there was an official protest from Iceland on this issue. And then you had obviously the photo... taking pictures of practitioners, that was also documented and there are documents, and there are various, there is various documentation testifying that there was a campaign of photographing and taking pictures and following around practitioners in Iceland, erm, and that these are things that are all easy to demonstrate, er, that have been demonstrated through various documents.

1:32:06THE PUBLICSo the problem is not that the Falun Gong people these thing, these things and this situation, the problem is that it came out very clearly, at a very early stage, that these events were true. Now, it

happens all the time that you have minority, and especially dissident movements, that because of the pressure they are under, they try to over blow their ply, they try to some extent to make the situation worse, er, and make it look worse to the outsiders. And that is why we as the Icelandic Human Rights Centre, we were extremely careful, extremely cautious, I have to say also extremely suspicious about the Falun Gong group, not because we had anything against it, but because Falun Gong people tend to be very committed in their belief, and therefore they sometimes come across as particularly assertive, but er, as I said er, everyone who is convinced and er, who has some kind of belief should be assertive and there is nothing wrong with that. And that is what we discovered, that these facts were actually true, that there were documents, there were information available. If you wanted to know, you could find out. In fact, the whole country found out because then it went to the press. Iceland, as I said, has a very small press, this was front news for probably about two or three weeks, so it was a situation that came out very clearly, and erm, one of the reasons, as I said, is that Iceland is very small, its very easy for anyone to know what is going on, because people have family connections, with, for example, the Icelandic Ministry of Justice, there are leaks all the time, it is impossible, totally impossible to keep a secret in Iceland at every level. So er, I think this was one of the reasons why the Icelandic events came out so clearly was that any other country, take Italy, take France, and the Chinese government, the Chinese President goes and visits, nothing comes out, or very little comes out, because its a big country, its difficult to see what is going on, and difficult to see the movements when you have protest actions, its difficult to see who is actually doing what, whereas in Iceland, there is, as I said, you don't have many people going around the Geysers and the tourist attractions of Iceland because they are, its a sparsely populated er, inhabited country so its easy to see what is going on, and I think that was the problem, and that is what caused the problem to the Icelandic government, and partly also to the Chinese government, because these things came out very clearly and effectively immediately, so that is basically what happened in Iceland in terms of the events.

1:35:01*CHIT CHAT*Herman: Sorry, that was very long. Jamie: Not at all. It was er, amazing. Herman: I just hope I covered everything, I don't know.Andy: Completely, yeh. Yeh, that's exactly what we want. I think with the blacklist, is it still a very open ended thing as to the source of it. Has it hit a point where it is no longer easy to any further, you know, where it actually came from, because of the secrecy of the document. Herman: Yeh, because there is a privacy, a privacy issue there that basically means its impossible, well the Icelandic Data Protection Commission said, well if you release the blacklist, you will release the names of these people, so it is to protect them. Jamie: Sorry, could you not move the er...Herman: Oh, sorry. Jamie: Perfect. We don't want to lose your great responses. Herman: So er, I don't know whether, I could cover the legal side, I haven't covered the legal side, I don't know if you want me to do that? Andy: Yeh, yeh go ahead. Because it, it sort of emphasises the

importance of what happened so yeh, please, yeh.Jamie: Er, lets wait for the bell. And I have one question, oh no not again...Herman: Oh it'll be fine, its only a fourteenth century carpet.Jamie: Something that struck me is erm, cos we've seen footage of the citizens protest, and I was wondering where on earth all of the banners, and er material and things came from, if you have any idea, and the number of people that protested. Herman: Erm, I mean I was myself at one of the protests, I mean one of the protests and er, the Icelanders took this thing, and I can tell you if you want but er, its actually very interesting because it tells you the reaction of the population in opposition to the reaction of the government of Iceland, so it might be interesting.Jamie: So OK, yeh, you can er, carry onHerman: Should I just keep going?Andy: Yeh.

1:37:31REACTIONHerman: So there was also an interesting erm, difference I think between the reaction the Icelandic government had and the reaction that the Icelandic population had, and I think that is very interesting because the reaction of the Icelandic population was basically outrage. Er, there was anger because, partly because Iceland is not very often on the news er, internationally and er, sure it was on the news at the time and it was not good advertising for the country, for a country that, as I said, prides itself on human rights, erm, a country that elected its first president, or rather the first country in the world to elect the first female president, it was Iceland. Iceland was also the first country in the world er, to have a parliament, that was in the year 1,000. Er, so it is a country that is very small, but in terms of democracy, very very important, its a, to some extent its a small gem that you have, when it comes to human rights, when it comes to democracy. And the Icelanders are very proud of that, they are very, very independent people, and they are proud of that. And I think that is what upset the Icelanders most was the approach of the Icelandic government was unethical. It was to some extent as if Iceland had been sold, because obviously the Chinese government, the Chinese President came to sign some contracts. Now Iceland, er sorry, China is a country of 1.3 Billion people, Iceland is a country of 300,000 people, er so not, the whole country of Iceland is not even remotely a small town in China, erm, so it was not in the interests of China to sign those agreements, and obviously contracts, it was in the interest of Iceland obviously. Er and I think obviously there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the problem is that the Icelandic people took it, I think, very personally, and as a threat to their independence. And they said, well it is important to have good relationships with China, but it is also important that our reputation is defended, and we are not defending it by prohibiting a specific group, just on the basis of religious or spiritual affiliation to come into the country. So the reaction that the Icelanders had were different, there was letters to the newspapers, but mainly to the form of protests around the country, mainly Reykjavik, and in terms of the size of the protests, we're not talking about big numbers because in Iceland we're never talking about big numbers, we're talking probably about, as I said, probably about like three or four hundred people protested in Reykjavik itself, but as I said this is a big demonstration by Icelandic

standards. And I have to say that that demonstration was er, almost, its er, participation of the population was striking to the extent that er, it was not a typical demonstration like you have in other countries where you have students, or you know, liberals, and I don't have anything against liberals, in fact I'm a liberal myself, but very often those are the people that tend to protest, that tend to some extent, to put forward their arguments. Here there was a situation whereby the whole of the country was effected by these actions, and er, what happened was that you had babies, babies and mothers with their, you know, there were babies in the protest, which was totally peaceful obviously, and it was more a demonstration, I think, to the government of Iceland that they did not, to some extent, agreed with the decision that was being made. So it was interesting to see how different the reaction of the government and the population was.

1:41:44LEGISLATIONI also have to add that the difference is, to some extent, normal in the sense that every country er, every government has some res...[footage jerks] it is very difficult where you have a situation whereby you are effectively singling out one specific group. So as I said, if the Icelandic government lawyers had said, we are going to hit problems for public order reasons when it comes to protesters, when it comes to people who want to come into the country and have, make some kind of protest, and therefore we need to be pro-active because there might be a problem, then its justifiable and is acceptable and is understandable. The problem in this case was that there was the targeting of a very specific group, which is a spiritual group and that you cannot just single out for er, public order reasons, unless you prove that there is a public order problem. It is true that the people who came, because we need to be clear about that as well, the people who came, its not that in Iceland you have like thousands of people coming and visiting the country within one week. It was obviously, it was obvious that there was people coming into the country to protest against Chinese visit, and it was obvious that, it was obvious from the very beginning that those people would have been Falun Gong practitioners for the majority. So the point of the Icelandic government that said well, it was obvious that this was a ban against protesters is not valid to the extent that its not necessarily all the protesters were Falun Gong, because there were also you know, people from Iceland, but its certainly true that, to some extent, you have a situation of potential potential public order erm, problem. The problem that, in my opinion, the Icelandic government never really erm, dealt with was, I have to say that very naively erm, basically never really considered, was that if you, that you don't really ban like a specific group of people, I mean you are really not smart if you do that, its like there are so many prohibitions, you are on a very shaky ground, because basically what tells you that er, some other people, for example, people from Iceland in this case, were not going to protest against, as it effectively happened. So its a problem I think, also, to some extent naivety, or naivety of the Icelandic government when it came to this justification because I think that no other government would have said that so candidly, and er, would have said that to an extent that is embarrassing, because you don't, I mean, as a lawyer, you don't just, you know you have to keep away from the very specific kind of, er, for example basing your prohibition on very specific grounds, as I

said, that are race, religion, spiritual beliefs and all these things, its just a known no go area that you have to tread very very carefully, erm, especially because there is legislation within Europe that protects sensitive information, and spiritual belief is sensitive information, is regarded as sensitive information, so you cannot make a list of people who belong to a certain spiritual belief without justification that is based on proportionality. And as I said, it is, in the end it will be for the courts to decide whether that its, the ban was to some extent legal, because there was no court action so far, there might be in the future but I don't think so, so we might never know, to some extent, the position of the Icelandic courts, and I think the regret was that if you don't go through the Icelandic courts, then its difficult to go through other courts, for example the European Court of Human Rights, in fact it is impossible unless you exhaust all the national instruments. But that does not mean that we cannot have a picture of the situation, and that we cannot have an assessment of the situation. And I think that the general assessment in this case er, that you had a prohibition against certain people who were peaceful, who did not create any kind of trouble, er and who did not intend to create any kind of trouble from the beginning. In fact any trouble that was created in Iceland was created because of the ban, and because of the difficulty to implement that ban. So to some extent, this ban was problematic exactly because of the discriminatory nature erm, of the prohibition and of particularly the blacklist. So from my point of view, there is, there is a certain ingenuity in the actions of the Icelandic government, I think this was a big issue and a big lesson for the government. But I'm afraid the lesson might be that next time they will be more cautious and that, they, they will be more, as I said, less naïve when it comes to these legal justifications, just because to blacklist people, and to take responsibility for that blacklist is quite something for a government to do, er, its something that is not easily acceptable and accepted by the population, as in this case was demonstrated by the protests, so... and I don't know whether you want me to go any further into that. You just tell me what you want, basically. Because I mean I can go on forever.

1:47:58*CHIT CHAT*Andy: That sort of leading us nicely into the wider erm, the wider sort of reasons as to why it happened in terms of... [inaudible]...pressure, why the Icelandic government would have acted like that in, relative to the other examples that you've found.Herman: Yeh, that is important. Andy: Is that a good place to lead the...Herman: Erm, and that also leads to the erm, if you want very briefly I can touch upon, because Jiang Zemin was instrumental, for a variety of reasons, obviously came after Tiananmen and everything, so there is a connection there that I can make with Tiananmen, in a sense that, as I told you, its part of a dissident movement and everything, so if you want I can just flash that up.

TAPE 21:00:00OTHER COUNTRIESHerman: ... more widely in the sense of human rights, and China and

the problems they have; instability and stuff so...Andy: Yes that would be really good.Herman: Just let me revise the... yeh, yeh. So this I can't touch is it?Jamie: Er, best not to touch the left side of your body yeh...Herman: Right, yeh. Sorry, so just, yeh. So I think something that should be added is also context of the Icelandic events, because the Icelandic events did not did not happen in a vacuum, in the sense that there was, to some extent, there were events before, in terms of the visits that the Chinese President made to other countries, there were problems before and afterwards. So the Icelandic events are important and they are transparent, exactly because Iceland is a small country and is possible to, for this thing to come out. But to some extent these events are erm, that uncommon, in that they don't strike me as being particularly surprising, to the extent that, for example, in other countries both in Europe and in Asia, there were incidents, to some extent reminiscent of Iceland when it comes to, for example to, erm, Italy there was a letter of protest written by the Ice... er the Chinese authorities and the Chinese Embassies to the member, members of parliament er saying, you need to single out the Falun Gong specifically, er because these are dangerous people er, who are basically mentally unstable. There are situations like Lithuania, for example, where the chief of the police himself apparently, said that he could not guarantee that the Chinese body guards of Jiang Zemin would not shoot demonstrators, in that case it was Tibetan, from Tibet, on the spot. Erm, you had other situations whereby, for example, in Germany, the Chinese President apparently explicitly asked for protesters to be shut down and not to be allowed to be within his earshot. In fact, in Switzerland, The Washington Post, I think, reported that there was an official complaint from Jiang Zemin to the, erm, to the Justice Minister in this respect, because there were some yellow banners of Falun Gong that he could see, and Jiang Zemin certainly did not appreciate that. Erm, so there are to some extent disturbing erm incidents and episodes. You have to consider that we are talking about the world, so a lot of thing happen, er, things happen in the world, so these would be no problem accept that to some extent there are even more serious things. Er, we have evidence for example, in Australia er, sorry New Zealand there was a banner of Falun Gong, promotional banner, that was taken down from Auckland, by Auckland airport, in Auckland airport, er following a protest by the Chinese Embassy, or consulate there. The Chinese official said, well we want this Falun Gong banner, that basically welcomed to New Zealand and said like, and then there was the Falun Gong inscriptions there, so perfectly innocent, and erm, the Chinese official said we want it done because Falun Gong is illegal in China, so we want it taken down from New Zealand airport, and unfortunately it was taken down by the airport so, that is kind of disturbing erm. Also was disturbing was, for example, when the Chinese President visited erm, Australia, I think it was Canberra, er, he was specifically, basically the Australian authorities went to extreme lengths to accommodate him, in terms of prohibiting demonstrations just outside the Chinese Embassy. So there is this kind of cushioning of erm, the Chinese leadership to the extent, for example, foreign dignitaries seem to be extremely sensitive when it comes to making the Chinese leaders happy, and that is obviously partly to do with the fact that er China is a superpower when it comes to the economy. So, er, no one wants to lose the money that comes form China. And that is perfectly understandable, except that you should also consider that there

are some human rights and some important principle reasons, and you cannot just shut down protests because a lot of money is involved, basically. Er, we also know that for example that in Chi... sorry, in Australia, there was some desertions from the Chinese Consulate in Sydney. First, there was one official who apparently was reported as, er, by the Australian media as being one official from the Chinese Consulate who resigned from his job. He went into an immigration, an Australian immigration office and said I want to ask for asylum, and they asked why. Because I don't want to be er, involved in what is effectively a spying on activities of dissidents in Australia. He said, we have in Australia, the Chinese authorities, in Australia, we have detailed information every time there is an important event, we get very detailed information from China about the people who are here, and who are going to protest. And he asked for asylum, and by the way I think his asylum, the man was refused, I think the Australian government advised him to get in touch again with the Chinese, just because they said we are not going to give you asylum. So, erm, there was also another case of desertion from another official that was reported, and again it was a situation whereby he said we have very detailed information about people who want to come to protest into Australia, and also Australian people as well. And he apparently produced, and he had them on his MP3 player. So the problem with the Icelandic events is not so much that they happened in a vacuum, but that there seems to be a connection with these other events that happen in the world, and this is not specifically a Falun Gong problem, although Falun Gong has been particularly targeted I think, partly because of its success and the numbers, er, if you have Tibetan, protests from Tibet, they are very vocal, but they are limited in numbers, whereas people from Falun Gong, you have them anywhere in the world, and therefore it is more difficult to control. And the Ice... the Chinese authorities obviously want to have control of the situation because it is a potential danger for the stability of the country. And this, I think it's important to recall here, that the position of the Chinese government on the matter of the Falun Gong is itself extremely interesting because the Falun Gong movement, I think er, the leader of the Falun Gong had the first public lecture in 1992, and from 1992 up until 1999 there was absolutely no problem, in fact the Falun Gong movement was even given some awards by the Chinese government because it helped, apparently it helped, helps to improve health, erm, the practice of Falun Gong. And therefore the Chinese government itself recognised this, and said, well because you guys have to some extent helped keep the hospitals, you know, free of people, and you have kept, and apparently you have helped peoples health, then we recognise you, and they were given some awards even. And apparently there was even some United Nations activities that went on with the Falun Gong with the involvement of the Chinese government, so there was no problem up until 1999, so the question is why then is there a problem with the Falun Gong, between the Falun Gong and the Chinese government. And in my opinion, the turning point has been, first of all the numbers, and the fact that there was an augmentation in the number of practitioners, which at some point, according to independent sources like Human Rights Watch and others, they reached like 40 Million people in China, and that was more than the numbers of the Chinese Communist Party.

1:09:09THE PERSECUTION

Now if you have, for a Communist regime to have more people from a spiritual movement than from the Chinese Communist Party doesn't look very good, and I think that was to some extent, the reason why the Chinese government got worried, and they started to arrest people, particularly in Tianjin, and because of that there were, there was on the 25th April of 1999 there was, I think what was a turning point in the relationship between the Falun Gong and the Chinese government was the demonstration erm, which was a very interesting demonstration by the Falun Gong practitioners, just around the compound in Beijing, er where the Chinese leadership live. So it was obviously a very symbolic place. This demonstration was interesting to the extent that it was not only totally peaceful, but silent, so there were no banners, there was no shouting, there was absolutely nothing, just people sitting down. But, symbolically around, basically encircling the compound at Zhongnanhai, the compound of the leadership in Beijing. And that happened over night, we are talking about ten to fifteen thousand people, and we are happ... we are talking about something that happened without the knowledge of the Chinese government. Now you don't have a protest in China, from ten or fifteen thousand people, without the Chinese government knowing it within a few hours, because these protests apparently went through SMS, so it was something very quick. It was also very ordered, to the extent that there was no, as I said, no complaint, everything happened very quietly, apparently the Falun Gong people even collected there own garbage before they left. But before they left, also something interesting happened. The Premier, the Chinese Premier came out and talked to the practitioners. The practitioners basically just wanted recognition of the Falun Gong movement, and the free... erm, for the practitioners that had been arrested to be erm, freed. And er, the Prime Minister at the time was, I think was Rong Xu [spelling to be confirmed], and he came out, and he assured the leaders of Falun Gong, and the people of Falun Gong, that he would have dealt with the movement, and he would have got, er, the movement would have had his attention, as it indeed had afterwards, because basically from that day there was a campaign, a systematic campaign from the part of the Chinese government against Falun Gong. There were arrests immediately afterwards, already the day after, and from that was a downward relationship that became very very sour, and basically that turned into a confrontation, except that it is difficult to be equal when the Chinese government comes to repression. So it was obviously a very kind of unequal situation, and then yeh the, obviously the arrests and also the child practitioners, in big numbers.

1:12:23DICTATORSHIPSo, there was, I think, a fear factor there that came out from this demonstration, and I think the fear factor is entirely justified. I am more surprised when people, er, are surprised that the Falun Gong has been treated so harshly in China. Obviously, I am not condoning anything that has been done in China, but I am just saying that it makes perfect sense from an international politics, and even from a political science perspective, if you are a leader of an authoritarian country, erm, regime, you don't really want to have like, growing numbers of people going into the Millions of people who believe in Truth, Compassion and Forbearance. And I think that both, that all three are a problem for any kind of authoritarian government. But I think the Truth one is the one that certainly doesn't sound very

well, or very good, for the authorities. So if you are a Chinese leader, you do not want er, this movement to have power, you do not want this movement to grow, and that is exactly what happened in China with the Falun Gong. Therefore, the answer of the Chinese government is perfectly consistent, because that happened not only with the Falun Gong. There were other spiritual or Qigong movements that were banned, but they were low profile, so there was no problem, it was just shut down, and people were arrested and re-educated and that was it. But because the Falun Gong has ramifications internationally, and that is where Iceland comes in, you have a situation that is more difficult to control, and therefore it is more difficult for China to be, to some extent, er to be silent about it, and to some extent, condescending. So the Compassion that the Chinese government was, has never really been very good at. But when it comes to compassion towards the Falun Gong, it was very little precisely because it became a danger, and it became a danger, I think, in terms of the stability of the country. And there are two things to be mentioned. First of all, Jiang Zemin himself defined Falun Gong as the most serious threat in terms of protest movement we had since Tiananmen. Er, so that tells you something about the importance of the movement in the eyes of the Chinese government. And that is not by chance, for example, a specific office was built, er in China, the 6-10 Office, which is infamous, because apparently it is the one that organised the persecution, and the torture of a lot of practitioners. You don't have these mechanisms, the Chinese authorities wouldn't have never bothered to deal with the Falun Gong in this way unless it had to. It's not in the interests of the Chinese government to be so high profile with arrests, with persecutions, with torture. The Chinese government, like any other government, authoritarian government, they want to control people's minds. They don't really, they are not really afraid of the banners, of the protests, if that is purely a matter of going to a place and showing some banners. That's not what scares an authoritarian government. An authoritarian government is scared when it sees people are difficult to control when it comes to their mind. And I think with Falun Gong, that was precisely the problem. You have a spiritual movement, that people can agree of disagree with the tenements, I personally am not a Falun Gong practitioner, and I have to say that I have read, even the readings, and I am not a religious person, so I'm totally ignorant, and I have major problems to understand religions and spiritual groups, so those kinds of teachings, for me, sound very good from a human rights perspective. When it comes to the spirituality, anyone can accept or reject them as you please, but you need to give them a basis, and you need to be, to allow them to be expressed freely, because otherwise how can you basically understand whether they are good or not, if you cannot choose and you cannot get to know them basically.

1:16:51ECONOMICSSo my position personally is that the attitude of the Chinese government has been entirely consistent. You even have some institutionalised religions like Christianity and Buddhism and others that, once they became too powerful in China, they were clamped down, there was a clamp down. So there is that kind of threshold, that the Chinese government is afraid of, and if you are below that threshold, well we can deal with you, we have re-education, we have ways to deal with you if you are inside of China, we will deal with

you. But with the Falun Gong it was different, with Tibet, for example, it is different precisely because it has such a huge international appeal, and international importance that by shutting down dissent within China is not enough. You need to tackle it internationally, and how do you tackle it internationally? Well, basically by using business as a sword, and by, and this is not only China doing it by the way, its every country, but when you have an authoritarian regime it is more obvious, because you can see it is politically motivated. Er, I mean America, just to take one example of a country that I am very fond of, America does that all the time, erm, basically saying we will deal with you if you do this and this and this, otherwise we are not going to deal with you. That is something that has been done by governments all the time, so in this, China is definitely not an exception.

1:18:19COMMUNISMThe problem is that when you have issues of human rights, then you have a problem because governments are not only, if you have an authoritarian government, it can decide the issues it wants to deal with, it can to some extent plasm and mould the public opinion, because it can control it. Whereas when you have a democratic government, well they need to be more careful, because it's not necessarily that public opinion agrees with the government, and you have seen that very clearly in Iceland, so to some extent in authoritarian governments, the government is controlled by very little. Basically it controls rather than being controlled, and is certainly not controlled by public opinion, except of very limited extent. Whereas democratic governments both control, and are controlled by, public opinion. And I think why the Chinese approach to Falun Gong was so harsh, is precisely because there was a threat there that was not, to some extent it was immaterial, it was spiritual, it was a threat to ideas and it was a threat to, its like kind of a worm that gets into people. Now they say we are talking about a cult, we are talking a sect, we are talking about something that is a disease that gets into the country and can bring down the country. And I have to say that I would probably agree with that, except that I would say that that kind of warm, that kind of thing that gets into people, Chinese peoples minds, was to some extent, freedom, because it was the extent and the realisation that you have a moral dimension to life, and that the Chinese government is not necessarily, and the Chinese Communist Party is not necessarily the beholder of Truth, er, but there are other avenues. And I think that is what scared the government to hell. The realisation that if you don't control peoples minds, then basically you have lost them, because then you have Tiananmen, then you have the Chinese students in Tiananmen. The reason why the government was scared is because it could not control their minds, it could not erm, ask them to do things because they were not dealing with people who were indoctrinated, they were dealing with people who were attached by freedom, and by the realisation that, to some extent, there was another truth, and the government was not conveying the truth.

1:21:00DEMOCRACYNow as I said, when you are dealing with an authoritarian government, that is very worrying, and that is why I think the Icelandic events are so important, because er, China is going to be, if

it is not already, the next superpower, economically, and it is obviously undergoing major transformations, even I have to say, in relation to the Falun Gong. I'm not updated, but I think the attitude of the current President has been more moderate, in the sense that it realises the importance and the gravity of the actions, to some extent, that were committed against Falun Gong. I don't know whether that is a matter of going softly, but still going after the Falun Gong, but to some extent, the international pressure is important, you have seen it also during the Beijing Olympics, that doesn't deter China from doing bad things, but it certainly, there is some kind of realisation in the Chinese leadership they cannot do whatever they want because they have people checking on them, and public opinion, particularly from democratic country, countries checking on them. So I think in the end, erm, the Icelandic events are important because they show how fragile, to some extent, democracy is. Erm, and we have said that Iceland is one of the first democratic countries in the world, and yet it was so easy for Iceland to, basically be, to some extent, to become authoritarian and become overly protective, and therefore to limit the human rights and the freedom of people. That is very easy, I think happened frighteningly easily, and erm, if one of the oldest democratic countries in the world can be so easily, to some extent, erm, convinced to go against its own laws and its own principles, then I think we should be careful because governments themselves er want, they just want more power, and they want to control situations. Now, in democratic countries governments are controlled by the people, at least in theory, but in authoritarian countries they are not, so I think it is the responsibility of public opinion to be aware of what happened, and to know what happened, and just to be aware that they need to check on their own governments. Whichever the government is, whatever the government does, because it is not just by democratic act of voting you are just giving away your freedom, you are basically delegating some responsibilities and some obligations, in the case of Iceland, the Icelanders delegated to the Icelandic government, with their vote, the responsibility to take care of them. But this is not a blank cheque, this is something that needs to be checked. In the case of Iceland, I think that the Icelanders were very successful to show that, erm, that was not a blank cheque, there was, and that was needed for some control and the Icelandic government had overstepped that authority, to some extent.

1:24:25INFORMATIONErm, so do you want me to go over to.Jamie: Have you got any questions?Andy: No, no that was fantastic, you really...Jamie: Yeh its just er...Andy: You touched on, er, in your understanding of why the Chinese regime became so frightened, because it represented a sense of freedom for Chinese people. We came to see that that was...Jamie: A revolution of the mind is the way of describing it.Herman: But I mean its always been the case with, I mean its not only China, its every country that is, to some extent, controlled by, you know, like the military, they are always afraid of the mind, that is the problem. If you only, if you have people, like even the Oxford students, you train them from a very early stage, you indoctrinate them then you can ask them to do whatever they want. To some extent Oxford does it because there are some things in the, for

example, like the traditions, obviously there is no comparison with China, but there is a mindset that is reproduced, and when these people go out in the world, then they will reproduce it themselves. So this can be both good and bad, so you have it from your parents, you, thats what happened, but at the same time, you have it from governments because the information received from governments is not necessarily correct, and in fact is very often not correct, but that is, you just have to be careful and to be critical of anything that happens, and in the end you just have to make your own assessment. So for example in the case of the Icelandic events, its like people don't know about them, so its difficult for people to make the assessment if they don't know what happened. And I think that is the reason why...like the Tibet issue is much more high profile, you have the Dalai Lama, so you have someone who the West in sympathetic to. In the case of Falun Gong, you have also the founder but He is low profile and is, you know its just a different kind of thing, so I think that explains partly the difference in the treatment and er...

1:26:59FALUN GONGAndy: I think as well when you touched upon the naivety of the Iceland government, they sort of found themselves facing a group of people that they essentially knew nothing about. It seems to be, or at least it was early on, around the world there was a similar situation, and the only information they could access at the time was from the Chinese government, which was of course (Herman: Yeh) very, very negative, and so great challenges have had to be overcome in terms of trying to understand what is actually going on.Herman: I mean I can assure you, because I interviewed personally the Chief of the Ministry of Justice, and I have to tell you that he was just he, I asked him so what kind of information did you have on Falun Gong, he said absolutely nothing, we didn't know anything about the Falun Gong. There was no information, the information came, he said, we received information from the Chinese authorities and I have to say, that information went straight into the bin, because we know how the Chinese authorities, how reliable they are. And erm, that is what he told me, but that doesn't mean that, yeh so there is a naivety but still you had an national government, they knew the visit was happening, they could have taken the steps, and er, they were, you know, you just can't say its, we didn't know anything because you have an obligation to manage your own country. And if you have a Chinese Com... President coming, this is not every day that the Chinese President, obviously the first visit of the Chinese President to Iceland, so its not like every day they have the Chinese President coming for dinner. Its like they knew there were protests, it was controversial, it was controversial even before the Falun Gong came in, because some people said like we don't want Jiang Zemin here, because he is like the leader of an authoritarian state, we don't want him to come here. That was a minority position but, and then you have all the problems of the Falun Gong so, like, from the point of view of the Chinese, I mean from the Icelanders, it was partly naivety, and partly incompetence, basically. Because there was incompetence as well, in the way it was dealt with, the ban was a disaster, the implementation was a disaster erm. Yeh, that is why it came out so clearly, you can't have a more clear example than that because the country is more you know, and just saw whatever happened.

Andy: It was interesting you highlighted that inconsistency that the Icelandic government essentially knew nothing about Falun Gong, but yet they took responsibility for the creation of the blacklist, so they would have at least had, they should have had a lot of information. Do you think, or...?Herman: From the Icelandic government perspective (Andy:Yeh...) Well its not clear what kind of information they had exactly, but it is clear that the Chinese government came for signing some important business agreements, so if you have a Chinese, like, if you have that kind of situation, its natural that you will be, I mean its like if you have a benefactor coming here tomorrow, and the benefactor says I'm going to give you, I don't know, one million pounds, because I really like you, or your work, for example. You are not going, the following day, to tell that benefactor that, you know, I don't really like your suit or you know, actually your background, its kind of, you have like kind of a dark background, business-wise. You don't say those things, so there is nothing naïve in that in the sense that you don't really, you don't do those things. Its perfectly understandable that the Icelandic authorities didn't want to create any problem, and didn't want any trouble, not only at the level of the business side, but also in terms of public order. So there is like nothing surprising in that. The problem is that the Chinese... the Icelandic government is not a private corporation, its not a private individual. Its there because it has been elected, and its there because it is enforcing a body of laws and legislations, among which is also freedom of expression and freedom of religion. So its more complicated than a private individual can get money from wherever he wants. The Icelandic government should think twice before doing that, I think that was the problem. Jamie: Has there been any, you know, the recent banking situation, and the connections with China, is there any connection there. Herman: I think there is a connection with the UK apparently.Jamie: Yeh, there is a connection with the UK and the Icelandic banks, indeed. The economy is suffering at the moment, obviously people are talking about it being a very serious situation. I just wondering whether the rich benefactor [laughs] what the relationship is now?Herman: I wouldn't have any idea about that...Jamie: Yeh its too soon isn't it..Herman: Yeh its too soon and these are also things that don't come out very openly, so its, I think its impossible to say, but erm, in terms of the attitude of the authorities, I personally found the Icelandic government, as far as I am concerned, very open, in the sense that they received me, they said we don't have any problem with you interviewing us, although I have a policy of always sending the questions beforehand, of going to the interview, of writing down and sending it back for approval, and never publishing it unless it has been approved by the governments, or by the people, so there's no, you don't have surprises, people saying no, thats not what I said, this is what happens. And in this respect that have been very open, and very erm...Jamie: Yes we intend to do the same, actually. Herman: Yes that is what everyone ought to do...Jamie: It just makes sense really...Herman: Yeh, and also if I can give a suggestion to you, you should make sure, and also make sure in this interview, because its not that, because I know that Falun Gong practitioners a very committed, and I really admire you for that, because I admire anyone who has its own opinion and is not afraid of you know, putting it forward because

otherwise the world would never be changed. So I have great admiration. You just have to be careful to also give the other side, in the sense that there are good reasons why the Icelandic government would do this. Its been done in a very bad way, and ultimately it was a disaster, and you have to show that it was a disaster, and everyone can see it is a disaster, but by giving, and this is what Oxford teaches you, its like you always have to give the two points, and then you can come to your conclusion. Because by giving the others point of view, you basically strengthen your own. Especially in this case, there's nothing to hide, so if you come out with, for example, this China thing, the reason why the Falun Gong was banned, all these things are very important, because otherwise people who watches this thing, they think well we never heard of the Falun Gong, maybe its not important, maybe these people were really just bad people who were, you know, creating problems. Maybe there was a public order problem in Iceland. But if you put it in the context of Tiananmen, Tibet, of everything, and you explain, and you give, even in terms of Iceland, the governments point of view, its just very important because then people can make there own judgement. And in this case no one is in any doubt about the judgment, the final judgement. So if I can give a suggestion, just make sure you are balanced on your coverage, because its not that by putting, for example, when I interviewed the Icela...sorry the Chinese Political Affairs officer in Iceland, it was very interesting to hear what they, what he said. I also find him very naïve, er, in the sense that he said well we have these people are a danger for us, they are a danger for the Icelandic... for the Chinese State, because they destabilise us, and he is right, I mean how can you deny that, its, but its a destabilisation that comes through the mind, and through the spirituality, and therefore it is an entirely legitimate destabilisation as far as the Western States are concerned. So if you make that understood in the commentary, it will be stronger, your point, rather than just saying the Icela... the Chinese people, the Chinese leaders are bad, they just persecute people without any reason. No there is a reason, and I think you should bring it out because otherwise people will, you will be just another group that claims that you are right, but then people will, they will not read about Li Hongzhi and these things, they will just think like well we hear this every day, unfortunately bad things happen every day, even like you know you see nowadays with the terrorist, like law, legislation, even in America its like terrible things are done by governments, even democratic governments. So its not by denying the position of the government that you make your point stronger, its by basically showing, bring it out and showing that its wrong. That is what you have to do. I think.Andy: I would agree with you, I think a lot of mistakes have been made, in a sense, with what practitioners, in their work, because I mean they're people who are sort of learning, they're finding their feet as they're not professional protesters (Herman: Sure). I think out of a fear of people, a fear of people not understanding, or misunderstanding, they have avoided, erm, trying to express the reasons why the government would do this, in case that people didn't understand this or got it wrong. They've just steered towards saying, look this is bad, they're bad, we're doing, you know, we're right, and it has created a difficulty, in a sense that needs to be rectified.Herman: Yeh, and I think you, that, you more than opinions you deal with facts. I mean you should really bring out the facts, because in

the end those are the important things. Because even myself, as I said, I have no previous knowledge of Falun Gong, and when I was asked to get into this matter, the position of my director was, oh you know these people are really really pushy and its like they really, for example they came, wonderful people by the way, but they came to the Icelandic centre consistently, and quite insistently, erm so they were kind of pushy. So the approach was, mmm, maybe there's something wrong with that because if someone is too pushy, maybe there is something beneath it, and so my director said, just go into this, and go through the readings and everything, and its like, if you look at the facts then you understand things. But if you only, er, to some extent, deal with the way, and only give one side of the story then everything becomes more difficult, because then it becomes a problem of, are you really one sided, sorry are you really two sided and balanced, or pushing forward your own argument for your own sake. So I think that you really have to make clear that there are facts there, and these facts can be, they are out there for anyone to see, its not that someone invented them. There are statements that might not be, like for example, there are statements that I would never, I was never able to prove from the side of practitioners. Not in Iceland, but in China about the persecution. That is something that I will never be able to prove, so I have to remain neutral, but then you have reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and then you go through these, and then you go, well its not so secret after all, I mean these things are going on.

1:40:14BIASSo erm, I think its important that people are aware of the facts, and they are told the facts, and then they will just come up with their own opinion. Erm, but there is, if you only give your side, you will play in the hands of the Chinese propaganda, because to some extent then they will say, well they don't even consider our point of view, we had good reasons. And as I say, from their perspective, I think they had very good reasons to be afraid of the Falun Gong, to be afraid of Tibet. I mean I was working at the UN during the summer, and every day in front of the UN building you have this, like, you know God bless them, the Tibet protesters they were there like every day rain or no rain they would be there, and I just have an enormous amount of admiration for them because they just express their own ideas. But that is a high profile cause, because you can see it, its there, its in front of the UN, and therefore if you stop someone on the street and ask them about Tibet, in the West people will say, will know what you are talking about. The Falun Gong is different for a variety of reasons, so I don't think you should be afraid of showing the facts, and erm because then people will believe the facts, well they should at least.Andy: Yeh very much.Jamie: There was one final thing wasn't there, Luo Gan.Andy: Oh yeh (Herman: The Luo Gan?) Yeh he visited Iceland in 2003 (Herman: Oh yeh yeh yeh), just wondering if there was a significance to that?Herman: Erm, I'm not because I'd left by that time. I left in December 2002. I knew there was erm.Andy: I was looking last night because I didn't really know much about it because I knew that Ragnar helped practitioners to try and...

Herman: Oh yeh because of the erm...because of the legal action that was taken.Andy: I found a newspaper report, I'm sorry I didn't prepare you for this but I'll read it anyway. “So nearly 150 people took part in the protests yesterday in Reykjavik in front of the Culture House while Luo Gan had lunch there with the Minister of Justice Bjorn Bjarnason. There was also a large group of Chinese supporters who turned up to cheer the Chinese flag. Representatives of Amnesty International thought the second group had been organised by the Chinese embassy to obscure the protesters...Herman: I wouldn't be surprised, I mean it happened . I mean I saw it so...I mean I literally saw it. There is like footage from the State TV of Iceland that shows clearly that there was staged demonstrations and staged support like people in business suits going, being very close to the Chinese president and suddenly bringing out huge Chinese flags. I mean huge, like 5 m, 6m and they don't just appear by chance so I'm not surprised.Andy: Yeh its incredible.Herman: Well its not so incredible. Maybe you are just too naïve.Andy: Yeh I'm very naïve.Herman: I'm very naïve too but its, I try to be realistic as well. Yeh so I am not aware of this, cos i don't follow it very much but...Andy: Cos I think Luo Gan was reputed to be erm, quite high up in the 6-10 Office...Herman: Right, oh yeh cos there was the Andy... significance of him visiting Iceland cos it's quite unusual for someone of that stature to visit.Herman: Yeh I would be surprised if he had visited just on the basis that he is the head of he 6-10 Office cos I can tell you Iceland would have no interest to even remotely recall the events of June 2002, so I'm sure there is some, he must have been maybe President of the Assembly or something. Because if I understand the Icelanders correctly, even the authorities, they had enough of the Chinese, of the Embassy, of everything, so especially if this is related to the Falun Gong, so I don't think he would. I mean if you are implying that the Icelandic government had a connection with this because of the 6-10, I don't think so personally.Andy: It was more of a wondering of...Jamie: We don't have an opinion, we Herman: I mean I don't know, I don't. I mean there must be a reasonJamie: It just seems interesting. Like you say, what is it that Iceland has to offer China, whereas what does China have to offer Iceland, and then why is there this Gestapo-style leader visiting the country.Herman: Yeh that was I think must have been very controversial, but I didn't follow it because I was in New Zealand at that time, so I wouldn't be able to comment on that.Andy: No that fine, just wondering if you knew.Jamie: So I understand you're writing a book now about this subject.Herman: Er, well its, I wrote a report on this which was for the Icelandic Human Rights Centre and erm, but I don't think its being released, and I don't think its been, there are some problems with funding for the Icelandic Human Rights Centre, so I'm not sure what is the stage of that, but erm, I did write a report for the centre that was kind of an internal document, that then produced the two publications. So the report is, focuses more on the Falun Gong itself, and obviously I've been through the readings, and I've been through the history, and one very interesting thing is also the way the Chinese government has outlawed Falun Gong in China, cos it did

so retro-actively, which is a very very interesting, and, even for a lawyer as myself, its kind of a striking thing to do erm, first because there was no problem, as I said, before 1999, and then there were these problems. As soon as these problems appeared, the Chinese leadership basically er decided that it needed some legislation against the Falun Gong, and that is not only for the Falun Gong, every dissident group, the Chinese government acts like that. The threat arises, and then the Chinese government orders up some legislation, which is very easy to twist, because you have State secrets legislation that basically is so broad that anyone can be accused of leaking State secrets, literally someone has been accused of leaking State secrets when the information was already available to Millions of people abroad, like for example by sending one Chinese newspaper abroad, you are libel of breaching State secret legislation, so potentially everybody can, even someone who complains against the authorities in China potentially is a State secret issue. So, and that is typical of all the authoritarian regimes. So the fact that this was not a problem before 1999, then you had the Zhongnanhai protest, and then you had the Chinese government going into this state of anxiety and worry, and therefore you come up with legislation that was not specifically related to the Falun Gong. Legislation was adapted to the Falun Gong, but it was very clear that it was against the Falun Gong. And only after two years you have a piece of legislation that actually prohibits the Falun Gong. So there is, to some extent, a retroactive application of the legislation, and er, that is something that is typical of the authoritarian regimes, er I just want to flesh it out, because it tells you something...Andy: Its interesting because we interviewed a lady who worked in International Law, and she was co-editor for a book by Gao Zhisheng. And she, I think she spoke about that retro-active, put in place, and I think I've read about it as well, how when the law was put in place, they were charging practitioners who had broken the law before the time the law was put in place, which in legal terms is wrong.Herman: Oh yeh, its outrageous, I mean, definitely.

1:49:21MONEYJamie: And finally, the subject, you've been researching it, its obviously a very big subject, the whole thing, erm and its been going on for a long time (Herman: Yeh). Whats your opinion on the media response, or the media handling of this story, when you consider everything.Herman: You mean specifically for the Icelandic events or China...Jamie: Specifically, just the persecution in general, because I'm still sort of you know surprised that there's Genocide going on in the country where the Olympic Games are being held, but when you go out there and ask them they won't have heard of it, and thats something that I don't fully understand yet, this media apathy, or this media hands off. I was wondering if you have an opinion on that?Herman: First of all I have to say that Genocide, I wouldn't probably define it Genocide for a reason that goes back to what I told you already that the, we're not talking about Hitler here, we're talking about a person who, well he had a plan as well, he went overboard, and to some extent there was an irrational component to it. For the Falun Gong, and for China, the fact that there is a persecution is not itself related to the Falun Gong, but to the Falun Gong is the most dangerous dissident movement in China, so I think that is the

real problem, er that when a movement becomes too strong in China, then you have the persecution, then you have the arrests, then you have, so it's not a Genocide in the sense that as I said, Falun Gong was legal and omitted before because it was not a threat, then it became a threat, and the Falu... the Chinese government would have never persecuted the Falun Gong people before 1999, because it had no interest in doing it, so Genocide, its I wouldn't call it that its one of those terms that people say, oh come on, we know what Genocide is, its like, its kind of a different thing, here we're talking about, not an irrational thing, not something that is evil in the sense that it is irrational, but in the sense that it's very rational, and has to do with basically the threat, the mental threat, the spiritual threat the Falun Gong poses to the Chinese leadership. And I think in terms of the question of the media themselves, I think that you cannot obviously generalise. There are different kinds of approaches according to the country, according to the newspapers. For example, the American media has been quite prominent in covering the Falun Gong, and the American government has been very prominent, the politicians, there were resolutions from the US congress, the House of Representatives appraising Falun Gong. So its, but I also have to point out that having been studying international politics, erm, those also don't happen by chance, in a sense that the American government has an interest, in kind of making the Chinese government look bad, so you also have to take into account that the governments are playing each other here, so its not a matter of oh the American government is so good, and the Chinese government is so bad, its a matter of the American government saying, well we agree with human rights in any case, but in this case even more, because its convenient politically. So you also have to take into account, you know this kind of game playing between the governments. But anyway, the American media has been very proactive, and the American media is not part of the American government, so from the public opinion point of view, you certainly have a situation of being proactive, partly because of the history of the United States and a country being fond of its religious freedom, so obviously they feel this very very very intensely. And that is why, for example, the Tibet thing is a huge issue in the United States. Then you have other countries that are more apathetic, erm, but I think in general the media is, there is a problem of information that I wouldn't, if you asked me about the governments and why the governments are so reluctant to deal with this issue and are so skeptical, I would tell you that money is involved, I would tell you that business is involved, I would tell you that there are some interests that governments are afraid of basically compromising. And if we were, we need to be honest, if we were working for the government, we would be finding that, we wouldn't bring out a lot of issues because they are not convenient, and I've seen that in the UN, but at the same time the people are different. There is one thing is the government, the other thing is the media.

1:54:28MEDIASo for the media, I don't think it is a question of they are afraid of business or connections with China, I wouldn't say that for example they play down the Falun Gong, I would say its more a problem of information, of not being made aware of the facts, and once the facts are out, I would be surprised if the liberal media played down just because er, China is a big country and is strong. You have seen

it from the Olympics, I mean there is a lot of criticism of China, you can't say that China is to some extent not dealt by the media just because it is powerful. I think in the specifically in the Falun Gong case there is a problem of lack of information, and there is a problem of the media being overburdened to some extent by facts, so when you have Guantanamo, when you have er, you know, September 11th, these things, that to some extent is closer to home, and is more direct, the results are more obvious, therefore the media deals with that. But from my experience, the media, if anything, are always there ready to pick on things that might be interesting, and might be potentially from a liberal perspective, be interesting. So I think on the Falun Gong issue, its a matter of bringing out the events, and bringing out the facts, and then in alerting, but I think the Falun Gong practitioners been very good at this, from my Icelandic experiences that they were very good in terms of public relations, and I was in touch with Heping Zhang, you met him (Andy: I know his name) yeh, he's in New York I think. We were in touch by email and he was very very kind and we'd be in touch for a long time afterwards, and I interviewed him as well, and he is an excellent, like if you have a spokesman like that its just, its very very good. And I think the Falun Gong has been very good in putting, you know in contacting the media and making the media aware, and I think honestly that is the card to play because if you play the governments, the governments are going to tell you, you know, we have a lot of issues, and anyway we respect human rights so don't worry. But the media have an interest in, you know, scrutinising the government, so if you come up with things, and bring the facts to them, I would be surprised if they came out with an opposition of you know, China is too powerful to talk about it, cos it doesn't just seem to be the case. Especially the Icelandic media, I have to say, it was instrumental, in the sense that it came out in the newspapers, and people talked about it for like months to come, and I don't think the Icelandic media was anything like sympathetic to the police itself. You might have had some occasional newspapers, you know, being close to the government, so being, you know, quiet about it, but there were no cover up, its just impossible, and I would be surprised if there were any in the Western world, because its, and you are too know anyway. I mean there is Amnesty International following you, and er, Human Rights Watch, and these are very good institutions. I think you should target more like the UN, honestly, but then obviously you will have a lot of opposition from China, which is a permanent member, so thats not going to go, its a security council I can tell you, so its like, but the UN is an interesting forum for discussion. I mean they have approved, the General Assembly have approved declarations that were quite, because then you obviously have a majority vote, and er, and you have like 195 countries, so China is just one, so of you ever thought about erm targeting like a, that would be an interesting place. Still, more than that you know, its like the facts, and just making sure that they come out so.Andy: That in a sense is the bigger purpose of the film, is just to give people (Jamie: Inform), yeh inform people in a broad a sense as possible, like as you say present both sides of the story which is something that the director is guiding us more to do, so when you're very heavily involved in all the research its quite easy to be sort of swept away (Herman: Of course), so we're really sort of trying to find a balance. Yeh it would be interesting to sort of look into approaching the UN more, because its part of the film is to do like a, support for it from well known people....