A press conference was held last Thursday at the university to express support for a Concordia student who has been held in China, probably because she is a practitioner of Falun Gong.

Ying Zhu, an undergraduate in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, was apparently arrested by the Chinese government during a recent visit to her family in city of Guangzhou, China. Her detention has been widely reported.

Governments in the West and organizations such as Amnesty International have expressed concern at reports out of China regarding the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. “Besides being a permanent resident of Canada, [her enrolment at] Concordia is perhaps the only other affiliation to the country Ying has,” said Jennifer Nadeau in a letter to CTR last week.

“Ying’s friends here at Concordia wish to help in her release in any way we can. We are making a nation-wide appeal to the Chinese government to release Ying and to ask for an end to the unreasonable and often brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China.”

The concerned students and supporters met with Rector Frederick Lowy. He drafted what Nadeau called “a wonderful letter” of protest to the Chinese government, reminding them of Concordia’s ties to a number of Chinese academic institutions.