Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE — Roger Williams Park will be the site tomorrow of an event intended to heighten awareness of what organizers say is China’s dismal human rights record.

The Rhode Island Human Rights Torch Relay is part of a worldwide campaign by the Coalition to Investigate Persecution of the Falun Gong, a 15-year-old religious movement banned by the Chinese government in 1999.

It will take place 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., beginning with a 5K walk and race and culminating in a rally featuring musical performances and a roster of speakers expected to include prominent Chinese dissident Xu Wenli.

Organizer Al Iannotti, a practitioner of Falun Gong, says the event is being staged to highlight China’s failure to improve its human rights record since the decision to hold the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing in August.

For more information about the Human Rights Torch Relay, call Iannotti at (401) 829-1382, or at al@HumanRightsTorchUSA.org.

-- From a Journal staff report

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