ARCTIC HOST, ICY VISIT

China and Falun Gong Face Off in Iceland:

A Report on the 2002 Events

(2010)

In July 1999, when the Chinese government began to crackdown on a movement called Falun Gong, few expected a showdown to take place in one of the most remote countries in the world.

Yet when President Zemin paid an official visit to Iceland in 2002, the struggle between these antagonists moved to the Arctic. In contrast to the anti-Falun Gong campaign in China, most observers expected democratic Iceland to allow peaceful protests.

But the Icelandic authorities were in no mood to tolerate dissent. They banned practitioners from the country; used a secret blacklist to identify those already in Iceland; ordered national airline Icelandair to deny them passage; and arrested those who managed to slip through the net.

Originally a report commissioned by the Icelandic Human Rights Center, Arctic Host Icy Visit reviews these little-known events and situates them in the context of global politics and human rights law. The report facilitated the Icelandic Parliament’s own investigation into the incident and led the Icelandic authorities to deem the government’s actions of 2002 unlawful.

Though what happened in 2002 was unprecedented for Iceland, it was hardly unusual overseas. These events are especially relevant from an international relations standpoint, given the relative decline of the US and the rise of China on the global stage – including in Africa, South-East Asia, the United Nations, and beyond.

My preliminary account on the events was published by the Nordic Journal of Human Rights in 2006, while my legal assessment appeared in 2008.