FALUN GONG

 Former Falun Gong Practitioners Write Letter to Ministry of Justice

("People's Daily, " July 29, 2001)

Some 110 former Falun Gong practitioners recently wrote a letter to China's 
Ministry of Justice, expressing their gratitude to the ministry for saving 
them from the clutches of the cult.

The letter says that they had been brainwashed by cult leader Li Hongzhi's 
fallacious preaching and had done things to violate Chinese laws. However, a 
re-education program by the government has helped them realize the error of 
their ways.

The ministry sent workers to counsel the practitioners, who are now living in 
a re-education institute in the northern city of Tianjin, the letter says.

At first, some of the followers described the ministry workers as "demons," 
but finally they were convinced the workers were good people after the 
workers explained to them the values of life.

Some workers even bought medicine for practitioners who were ill, and 
arranged entertainment activities for them, according to the letter.

Such generosity caused the practitioners to regard the workers as friends -- 
even family -- and their words and actions have touched the followers at 
their emotional core, the letter adds.

"It is they who let us know the principle of serving the people 
wholeheartedly, and the importance of maintaining a peaceful society," the 
letter says.

The authors of the letter, on behalf of all Falun Gong practitioners, called 
on all of Chinese society to learn from their experiences, and to distance 
themselves from Li Hongzhi's theories.

Tortured Member of Banned Chinese Sect Recovering in Houston

(AP, July 28, 2001)

HOUSTON  A member of the Falun Gong sect tortured in China before a 
harrowing escape to the United States was due to be released from a Houston 
hospital Saturday after treatment for severe burns.

Tan Yongjie, who hitchhiked to Houston after escaping to Hong Kong and 
stowing away aboard a California-bound cargo ship, was admitted to Park Plaza 
Hospital July 13 after his wounds opened.

"He's had extensive skin graft surgery on his legs," said Jack Xiong, a 
member of the Houston Falun Gong community, adding that doctors expect Tan to 
make a full recovery.

Tan was expected to return to the Star of Hope homeless shelter, where he was 
living before his admission to the hospital. Xiong was hopeful the estimated 
100 to 200 local Falun Gong members could help Tan.

Through translators, Tan said his story began as a factory worker in Baoan, 
Guangdong Province, where he began practicing Falun Gong since June 1998. 
China banned the sect in 1999, and Tan said he was detained 15 days for 
different times, each time refusing to renounce his beliefs.

Tan said he was arrested April 26 for distributing fliers calling for an end 
to government persecution of Falun Gong members. He said he was beaten, then 
sent without trial to a labor camp in Baluo County.

After repeated torture sessions, Tan said he was hung by handcuffs for more 
than five hours. On June 2, Tan said he was tied to a post and burned about 
his legs 13 times with a red-hot iron rod, urging him to give up Falun Gong.

Tan escaped the camp soon after and fled to Hong Kong, where he sneaked 
aboard a cargo ship headed to Long Beach, Calif.

"He didn't even know where the ship was going," Xiong said.

After two weeks of living in a crate at sea, Tan said he caught a ride with 
someone headed to Florida on Interstate 10 and was dropped off in Houston. 
Houston police directed him to the Star of Hope shelter.

Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with a blend of 
slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's 
exiled leader, Li Hongzhi.

Thousands of followers are in jails and labor camps and tens of thousands 
have been arrested and pressured to renounce the group in the government 
crackdown. Falun Gong says many followers have been tortured and that 250 
have been killed, including 50 in the last month.

The government banned Falun Gong as a threat to Communist Party rule and 
Chinese society.

"On one hand, we'd like people (in Houston) to help Mr. Tan, but also we'd 
like everyone to know what is going on in China," Xiong said. "We hope this 
will spur some kind of action to alleviate the situation in China."

Xiong said Tan intends to return to China some day. His immigration status in 
the United States is uncertain, but Xiong said he is hopeful Tan can stay 
based on religious persecution by his native government.

"Basically, he is not sure quite what to do," Xiong said. "His plans are not 
very definite."

One voice, a thousand names

by Michael Wells ("Messenger Post," July 26, 2001)

In many ways, the last two years of Louise Huang's life has mirrored the plot 
lines of George Orwell's novel, "1984."

A totalitarian state tried to erase her spiritual belief system. Her 
disillusion quickly provoked virulent cruelty. Her purported crime? State 
subversion.

Huang practices Falun Gong, benevolent spiritual teachings derived from 
Chinese traditions. On July 20, 1999, the communist Chinese government 
outlawed its doctrines.

From that point on, China unleashed unbridled and vehement repression; blows 
of fist and feet, pervasive surveillance, detainment, brainwashing, brisk 
pressure to renounce subversive beliefs, and for some, death.

China is bent upon squeezing Huang and other Falun Gong practitioners into 
submissive control.

Huang refuses to relinquish. She endured imprisonment and torture for the 
decision, but found a way out last summer. In July 2000, she fled China and 
came to live with her brother and his family in Fairport.

Two years later, countless more remain in her native country and the 
repression continues.

"Their basic rights of existence are in danger," Huang said of her fellow 
practitioners in China. (Her brother, Weidong Huang, translated for his 
sister). "But I have the forum for them. I can stand up to speak for them."

@Subhed:The world looks on

@Body Copy:Huang is driven in her responsibility to her fellow mainland 
practitioners.

She walked from New York City to Washington, D.C., over the past weeks, 
sharing her stories with those she passed. Over the weekend in D.C., she 
joined thousands who protested the two-year anniversary of China's crackdown 
on Falun Gong and its peaceful practitioners.

They beseeched their representatives to stop the injustice.

Huang's brother, his wife, and Penfield practitioner, Helen Chou, left for 
the Washington protest Wednesday from Perinton Park. They presided over a 
brief ceremony, calling attention to the problem.

Amnesty International sponsored the local send-off. The organization has 
called for the immediate release of all of the jailed practitioners in China.

"This is such an important issue because the persecution of the practitioners 
of Falun Gong in China is so severe," said Chris Dygert, coordinator for the 
Rochester Chapter of Amnesty International.

Sally Poole Gonzalez, a local resident, said she first learned of the problem 
a year ago from a Wall Street Journal article. The article exposed the death 
of a practitioner while in police custody. She said she was appalled.

"I wanted to see what I could do as an American to help out," she said of her 
attendance at the event.

More than 250 practitioners have died in police custody, the victims of 
brutality and deprivation, Huang charges. The Chinese authorities have said 
the deaths are the result of medical ailments.

A Web site listing recent deaths flashes portraits of mainly young, innocuous 
looking Chinese citizens.

The situation is urgent, Huang said. Banners reading, "SOS Urgent: Rescue 
Falun Gong Practitioners Persecuted in China," and pins could be seen 
throughout the Washington protest.

Locally, about 10 people gathered to call attention to the situation.

"When I heard about the persecution and abridgement of human rights of the 
practitioners of Falun Gong, I felt it was important to make my voice and our 
community's voice known," Brighton Town Supervisor Sandy Frankel said at the 
local event.

A step toward amity

Huang journeyed nearly 200 miles on foot to make her voice known. She left 
from New York City July 3.

Those she met offered support. Some knew nothing of her situation. Many were 
incredulous.

A man in his 50s cried after he read a flyer Huang handed him. It described 
the death of a Chinese women and her 8-month-old child while in police 
custody. He hugged her.

Another women stopped her car and shook Huang's and her marching companion's 
hands. Restaurant owners offered free drinks and food to those on the trek.

"Even though I can't understand English, I could obviously see from their 
hearts they are kind hearted and righteous minded," Huang said.

Many asked what they could do to help. Huang directed them to write to their 
congressmen, sign petitions and stay informed.

"They all said, 'Don't be afraid in our country, because you have the freedom 
to practice your belief,'" she said.

Freedom revoked

Huang attempted similar outward protest in her native China. Chinese 
authorities were not as welcoming. They offered no hugs or handshakes, only 
imprisonment and brutality.

When the Chinese government first announced its ban on Falun Gong in July 
1999, she left her native Guangdong province and traveled to Beijing to 
protest the decision. She planned to file a formal appeal with the 
government, a right Huang said is guaranteed under the Chinese constitution.

She arrived in Beijing and booked a hotel room. She never made it to the 
appeal office.

"The police basically broke into the hotel and arrested me because they 
thought I was a practitioner," she said.

Authorities shipped her back to the Guangdong province, where local 
authorities interrogated her for seven hours upon her arrival. She was in a 
small room surrounded by five policemen. They asked her for names of other 
practitioners, and how many she knew within the area.

They tried to force her to write a confession, agree not to appeal the 
state's crackdown and not to practice Falun Gong.

"They told me I can no longer have my belief," she said.

She would not acquiesce. She remained indignant.

"I feel I didn't commit any wrongdoing as a citizen. All the things I did, 
did not violate the law," she said. "I feel I'm a law-abiding citizen. I 
refused to answer their questions."

Police threatened to send her to jail. In the interrogation, Huang said she 
realized police had tapped her phones. She signed a quasi-statement, she 
said, simply to get out of there.

A work supervisor escorted her home.

She would continue to practice, she would continue to appeal, and she would 
continue to suffer for it.

Enduring persecution

Huang said she was never left alone again.

Police monitored and harassed her. At work, where she coordinated activities 
for the Communist Youth Party, supervisors asked her to write a statement of 
thoughts denouncing Falun Gong. She told them she must write for the truth, 
she said.

She asked for vacation days, and a supervisor informed her the police said 
she was not allowed to leave the area. Thousands of other practitioners 
endured the same treatment. The government began a caustic propaganda 
campaign against the practice.

Huang's frustration mounted. By October of that same year, she made another 
appeal. She would be detained nearly a month this time.

"I decided to go to Beijing again to appeal for the unjustified situation," 
she said.

She made it to the appeal office, but she never reached an official. Police 
confronted and arrested her in the building. They sent her to a local 
detention center.

Authorities detained her for 12 days. Huang and other cell mates staged a 
hunger strike during the ordeal. Shortly after the detained refused to eat, 
police came into the cell and pulled out a white-haired older woman from 
Beijing who was participating in the hunger strike.

Police later returned the women with blood dripping from her nostrils. Huang 
said authorities had shoved two plastic tubes up her noise and forced a salt 
water solution into her stomach through the tubes.

"Her face was paper white," Huang recalled.

The women was their example to stop the hunger strike.

Huang was transferred to another cell. She watched as police beat a male 
practitioner in that cell, she said.

She was sent home and held in a detention center there for another 15 days.

Enduring faith

Her spirit would not be broken.

"No matter how much trepidation or difficulty I will go through, I firmly 
believe Falun Gong is good," Huang said.

After her release, she was expelled from the Communist Party. She lost her 
job. The authorities asked her family, with whom she lived, to sign a letter 
attesting she would not appeal government decisions again. Huang said her 
family had little choice but to sign.

Police warned her if she appealed again, she would be sent to labor camps.

Yet, she continued to practice Falun Gong.

Two months after her release, she sat in the home of a fellow practitioner. 
They conversed and prepared a meal. Police broke through the door, Huang 
said, and charged each person in attendance with disturbing the public order.

Authorities sent her to a labor camp for 15 days. She weaved baskets at the 
camp, and was forced to walk 15 to 16 hours a day, she said. The prison 
uniforms were dirty and unwashed, she said. She ate rice and a few vegetables.

"The conditions were cruel," she said.

She was arrested so suddenly, her family didn't know what had happened to 
her. They went to local authorities to ask of their daughter. The police told 
them nothing, Huang said.

"This time, I could feel we are losing more and more of our rights to 
practice Falun Gong," she said.

The crackdown increases

In America, her brother watched and read the reports coming out of China. The 
crackdown had increased at the beginning of last year, and so too had his 
worry.

"We knew the persecution was brutal," Weidong Huang said.

He called her at home, but decided it was too risky because of police taps. 
In China, his sister was about to undergo the harshest of her detainments.

She traveled to Tiananmen Square in June 2000. She ruled out another appeal, 
and decided to protest by conducting Falun Gong exercises in the square.

She was quickly arrested, and thrown into jail - again.

There, the violence reached its harshest tone. She watched as police 
forcefully beat a male practitioner in her cell.

The practitioner refused to give his name. A group of four police officers 
began punching and kicking him, she said. The beating continued for 10 
minutes. Police dragged the man to another room and continued beating him, 
Huang said.

He screamed in pain, calling for help in desperation, she said. Police 
brought the man back to the room. He was bloody and bruised, hunched over and 
vomiting, Huang said.

Police transferred her to a basement room. About 30 others were in the room. 
The males were handcuffed to a water pipe. Police asked Huang her name. She 
refused to tell it. They told her to face the wall and spread her legs apart.

"He punched my back with his fist," she said of her interrogator.

She wouldn't talk.

"I didn't tell them my name because I refused to bow to the violence," she 
said.

She was jailed for two days. Police recognized her accent and sent her back 
to her providence.

Escape

Huang had not told her parents she left for Tiananmen Square. When their 
daughter returned, the family planned a trip out of town. They worried for 
her safety.

The Public Security Bureau denied Huang's visa. Huang was not allowed to 
leave the country. She plotted a clandestine escape, but would not provide 
details because she said she did not want to incriminate those who helped her.

By July, she was free and at her brother's Fairport home.

Her voice has only grown louder in America.

"One voice is small," she said. "One hundred voices is still very small. Ten 
thousand voices you can maybe just start to hear. One million voices, then 
everybody around the world will hear."

Falun Gong is an ancient form of qigong, the practice of refining the body 
and mind through special exercises and meditation.

It consists of self-improvement through studying founder Li Hongzhi's 
teachings, and performing five gentle exercises, including seated meditation. 
At the heart of the practices are the supreme principles of the universe; 
truthfulness, benevolence, and forbearance.

Through a combination of studying the books and performing the exercises, 
practitioners strive to become better people by embodying these principles in 
everything they do.

Falun Gong members meet in La. to raise awareness of persecution

by Amy Wold ("The Advocate," July 15, 2001)

Beijing's selection as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics Friday stirred mixed 
emotions for Dakun Sun.

As a Chinese citizen, Sun said it is an honor.

"But on the other side, I'm very worried about the Falun Gong practitioners," 
said Sun, a Dallas resident who has lived in the United States for six years.

Sun was one of eight Falun Gong practitioners who stopped in Baton Rouge on 
Saturday en route to Washington, D.C. The group, traveling from Houston, will 
be meeting other Falun Gong practitioners Friday in the nation's capitol to 
raise awareness about alleged persecution. July 22 is the two-year 
anniversary of the People's Republic of China's ban on the spiritual group.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, practices meditation and exercise and 
espouses the principals of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. It was 
started in 1992 by Li Hongzhi.

"This practice was very popular in China and it grew too fast for the Chinese 
government," Sun said. The size of the group--2 million members at one point 
by China's own count--is what led the government to ban it, Sun said.

Since the government ban in 1999, there have arrests, harassment and 
deportations to "reeducation" camps where Falun Gong members are beaten and 
killed, Sun said. The Chinese government has said any deaths have been the 
result of suicides and that the Falun Gong is a cult that endangers the 
welfare of the state and the general public.

"Falun Gong is a doomsday cult in China," said Chen Ligang, consul at the 
Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. Ligang said the group has caused death, 
committed fraud and held illegal demonstrations. "Under the people's demand, 
the government banned this group," he said.

Ligang said the Falun Gong practitioners' activities in the United States, 
including the Washington rally, are attempts "to fool the American public."

"The American people only know the second part of the story," Ligang said.

Sun and other practitioners, who met Saturday outside the State Capitol, 
weren't surprised by the allegations.

"There are many lies over there that can easily be proven wrong," Sun said. 
Sometimes, he said, tapes are altered, confessions are faked and wrong 
information is released to the public. "All the state media is tightly 
controlled by the government," Sun said.

In fact, several practitioners on Saturday gave their accounts of persecution 
before coming to the United States.

Until 1999, Amy Lee was a wife, mother and fashion designer in China. 
However, after the Falun Gong ban, Lee said she was arrested several times 
for practicing her beliefs. After one of the arrests, Lee said she was sent 
to a camp, forced to work 15 hours a day, taken to a mental hospital several 
times, force fed (although she wasn't on a hunger strike) and repeatedly 
questioned and beaten.

"There were a lot of scars on her face and body and she asked for a medical 
check on her body and they said, "We'll just say you're choosing suicide," 
Lee said through Sun's translation.

After she was released, Lee said she lost her job and her family. Yet, she 
refused to signed the papers renouncing her beliefs like others had.

"After they're released, they feel bad because it's against what they 
believe," Lee, who lives in New York, said through Sun's translation.

Falun Gong adherents protest in Phila. 
Members of the religious order object to their treatment by Chinese leaders.

by Jennifer Lin ("The Philidelphia Inquirer," July 11, 2001)

From afar, the 15 out-of-towners in sun hats and walking shoes looked like 
lost tourists making their way to the Liberty Bell via Frankford Avenue.

But these visitors knew what they were doing and where they were going. From 
a starting point in Boston, they were passing through Philadelphia on their 
way to Washington to call attention to human-rights abuses in China.

The 15 protesters, walking in single file toward Center City, were followers 
of Falun Gong, an outlawed spiritual movement in China.

Sweating from the morning heat, they carried signs and handed out leaflets to 
explain the plight of Falun Gong practitioners in China. In the past two 
years, as many as 200 followers have died in police custody in the country, 
while thousands more have been beaten or detained.

"It takes a stretch of the imagination to understand what is going on in 
China," said Hao Wang, 16, of Boston.

In a statement last week, the U.S. State Department called reports of 
violence against Falun Gong practitioners at one labor camp "chilling." On 
June 20, more than a dozen died at that camp.

"China has murdered a lot of Falun Gong followers," said 55-year-old Cao 
Jian, a marcher from Princeton.

The protest walk, which began June 26, has passed through Providence, R.I., 
New York City and Trenton.

Today, marchers and local followers will gather at the Liberty Bell, with a 
larger rally planned for July 19 in Washington.

China's repression of the Falun Gong movement is its most brutal crackdown 
since the silencing of pro-democracy advocates following the 1989 Tiananmen 
Square massacre. President Jiang Zemin has set out to eradicate the movement, 
which he views as a cult and a threat to his authority.

Started in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk, Falun Gong is 
an amalgam of exercises similar to tai chi, meditation, and Li's own view of 
the cosmos, drawing on the traditional teachings of Buddhism and Taoism.

In China, Falun Gong followers were thought to number as high as 70 million. 
Many practitioners are hiding, but a number still make public protests. Five 
followers set themselves on fire last spring in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. 
One died.

Li, who lives in New York City, has made few public appearances and shuns all 
interview requests. But at a rare public appearance last May in Canada, he 
called China's leaders an "evil political gang of scoundrels" who must be 
eliminated.

Li's reclusiveness makes some U.S.-based human rights activists uneasy. 
Although they renounce the group's persecution, they privately would like to 
know more about the man whose followers are putting their lives on the line.

Li Sihui, a 28-year-old marcher from Rochester, N.Y., said she had 
experienced the Chinese government's repression of Falun Gong firsthand. A 
native of Guangzhou in southern China, Li came to the United States last year 
after being beaten and detained by police on three occasions.

As Li marched along Frankford Avenue, she said she had started practicing 
Falun Gong eight years ago. "The Chinese government is making a mistake, 
because Falun Gong teaches truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance," she 
said. "And that's good for society."

by Phil Brennan ("News Max," July 10, 2001)

China's war against the Falun Gong organization is going global.
Already engaged in a vigorous drive at home to destroy the huge 
quasi-religious group, Beijing is taking steps overseas to disrupt the 
activities of Falun Gong abroad.

"Chinese diplomats are seeking to discredit the sect and undermine its image 
in the United States, Australia and other countries by pressing public 
officials not to have dealings with the group or allow its participation in 
local activities," wrote Associated Press correspondent Helen Luk. 

According to Center for the Study of New Religions (CESNUR) 
(http://www.cesnur.org/testi/falung101.htm), Falun Gong is a form of the 
Bhuddist concept of Qi Gong. The movement's leader, "Master Li describes the 
Falun in terms derived from both Buddhism and Taoism as a microcosm 
containing all the secrets of the universe."

To Beijing, however, the group which teaches Bhuddist-style physical and 
spiritual exercises is subversive and constitutes a threat to the Chinese 
communist leadership. As such it must be stamped out.

What frightens China's leadership, is the ability of Falun Gong to attract 
huge throngs of followers. According to the AP, "the group was once estimated 
to have up to 100 million followers in China, or more than the Communist 
Party's 64.5 million." 

In the latest domestic incident involving Falun Gong, some imprisoned woman 
practitioners died at a labor camp in the northeastern province of 
Heilongjiang in June. Official Reports say as many as 14 female prisoners 
hanged themselves in a mass suicide, but Falun Gong insists its teachings 
prohibit suicide, and charged that Chinese authorities had fatally beaten 15 
inmates to death. 

The domestic crackdown on Falun Gong spread to Hong Kong, where the sect is 
legal.

Officials there barred about 100 Falun Gong practitioners from entering Hong 
Kong in early May during a visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

On a worldwide scale, Falun Gong's largest number of practitioners are in 
Taiwan, where the membership is estimated at 100,000. According to Falun Gong 
it has about 500 members in Hong Kong, 3,000 in Australia, 10,000 in the 
United States, 1,000 in Singapore and 3,000 in South Korea. There are also 
small communities in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. 

Chinese Dictatorship Interferes in U.S.

Beijing has now taken aim at the U.S., going after local officials in the 
drive to destroy the organization. The AP reports that Beijing's "attempts to 
use diplomatic pressure to silence Falun Gong have enraged members and 
government officials in the United States."

A former mayor of Saratoga, Calif., Stan Bogosian told the AP that late last 
year, a few days after he signed a proclamation declaring Falun Gong week, 
two officials from the Chinese consulate urged him to rescind it. 

When he refused, Bogosian reports, the Chinese asked him to remain neutral 
and questioned him about his position on Taiwan. Enraged Bogosian called a 
news conference to denounce the Chinese regime for ``highly irregular'' 
actions. ``The Chinese government should not be interfering in the political 
process,'' Bogosian told the Associated Press. ``The issue of whether Falun 
Gong is a cult or not is not important. For me, these are basic human 
rights.'' 

Bogosian and many others see Falun Gong as a harmless group whose adherents, 
clad in their yellow T-shirts, practice controlled breathing exercises and 
move slowly to ethereal music in parks. 

But Bogdosian's experience was not unique. AP says that at least a dozen 
other mayors of cities in California, Illinois, Washington, Maryland and 
Michigan have been pressured by Chinese officials, who often try to tie their 
anti-Falun Gong position to U.S.-Chinese trade relations. 

``The whole thing sounded like a propaganda pitch to me,'' said Tod 
Satterthwaite, mayor of Urbana, Ill., who ignored the Chinese demands. 

But some mayors have given in to Chinese pressures. In 1999, mayors in 
Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Baltimore - all important east-west 
trade centers - revoked proclamations honoring Falun Gong. 

In Australia, Falun Gong members reveal that Chinese officials have sent 
letters to civic leaders describing the group as ``an out-and-out heretical 
sect, which is anti-science, anti-humanity and anti-society in nature.'' 

``The letters were sent to local government offices in order to try and 
persuade them to disallow perfectly legal activities being conducted in the 
area,'' Michael Molnar, a spokesman for Australia's Falun Gong, told the AP. 

According to the Australian government, the Chinese Embassy had denied 
sending the letters. Rebecca Tromp, spokeswoman of Blacktown City Council, 
said officials from the Chinese consulate in Sydney raised the issue of Falun 
Gong participation in a festival sponsored by the city government. 

``We advised them that any participation Falun Gong has is within our 
festival and that is what they do and we would continue to allow them to 
participate,'' Tromp told the AP.

Falun Gong is headquartered in New York, where its founder, Li Hongzi, 
established his peculiar brand of Qi Gong in 1992. In 1998, Li moved 
permanently to New York City, from where he oversees the expansion of Falun 
Gong internationally. Small groups exist in the major metropolitan areas of 
the U.S. and Canada, and in some 30 other countries.

According to CESNUR, the Chinese regime launched a campaign against spiritual 
and religious groups in 1999, and Falun Gong was targeted as a superstitious 
and reactionary group by a media campaign. Unlike other groups, Falun Gong 
responded by staging an unauthorized demonstration of more than 10,000 
followers outside Beijing's Zhongnanhai, the residence of China's top 
leaders. It was the largest such demonstration in recent Chinese history.

Beijing was especially alarmed by its intelligence service's failure to 
prevent the demonstration, and by the disturbing news that some of China's 
medium-level political and military leaders were adherents of Falun Gong. 
"The authorities started an unprecedented public campaign against the 
movement - and hundreds of local leaders and members were arrested," CESNUR 
reported. China also asked the U.S. to arrest and extradite Li, a request the 
U.S. quickly rejected, asking the Chinese instead to stop what the outside 
world saw as religious persecution.

Although the persecution has driven many members underground, millions remain 
in China and several thousand abroad. Exactly how many "members" Falun Gong 
has is a matter of dispute (the government uses a figure of 2 million; Li 
claims 100 million), and "membership" might not be an entirely applicable 
concept. Although the movement recommends a nine-day introduction course and 
frequent contacts with local centers, it also states that everybody can 
simply start practicing Falun Gong by following the instructions from one of 
the many books, cassettes and Web sites quickly available in a variety of 
languages.

Despite ban on Falun Gong, China finds sect still a force to

be reckoned with

by Sheryl Ubelacker ("Calgery Herald," July 10, 2001)

TORONTO (CP) - Every weekday morning and Saturday evening, at least 20 people 
gather outside the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, where they silently begin a 
series of slow, rhythmic movements.

Men, women and often children, mostly Chinese-Canadians, come to practise the 
meditative exercises of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that began a decade 
ago in China and has spread around the world.

Despite the tranquillity of those assembled, their presence has a more 
pressing motive, proclaimed by placards exhorting the Chinese government to 
"Stop Persecuting the Falun Gong," replete with grisly photos of alleged 
victims.

Adherents have accused China of torturing thousands of their members and 
killing more than 250 since 1999 when the Communist government began a 
crackdown on what it called an "evil cult." China blames Falun Gong for 
causing the deaths of 1,600 followers by encouraging them to forgo medical 
care and leading them to suicide.

Last week, it was disclosed that up to 14 female practitioners died in a 
Chinese labour camp in June. The movement says they were tortured to death. 
China's government says they hanged themselves.

News of the latest deaths came at a critical time. On Friday, the 
International Olympic Committee will announce which city - Beijing, Toronto 
or Paris - will host the 2008 Summer Games. Beijing has been seen as the 
front-runner but concerns over human rights in China may hinder its bid.

"The persecution is escalating," says Joel Chipkar, a Toronto practitioner 
who likens Chinese President Jiang Zemin's targeting of the Falun Gong to 
Hitler's persecution of the Jews. "We are out calling for an international 
investigation into the deaths and torture."

So just what is Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, and why is China so 
afraid of it?

Roughly translated, Falun Gong means "power of the wheel." Falun refers to a 
cosmic intelligence symbolized by the wheel. Gong refers to a practised skill 
- physical or mental. Through the exercises, meditation and a life of 
"truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance," practitioners believe they can 
connect with the cosmic entity and reach enlightenment after death.

Falun Gong owes its existence to one man, Li Hongzhi, who began disseminating 
his ideas in 1991 when China relaxed religious controls. Careful never to 
call it a religion, Li preached his philosophy - dubbed "McBuddhism" by one 
writer for its mixed bag of Buddhist, Taoist and other beliefs - to growing 
crowds.

The number of his adherents snowballed in China, reaching an estimated 100 
million, including top-ranking Politburo members. Li, feted across China, was 
honoured even by the government.

But with his followers outnumbering Communist party members two to one, and 
his ability to mobilize them for rallies, the Chinese government began to 
view the sect as a powerful threat. In July 1999, Li was declared an enemy of 
the people and Falun Gong was outlawed.

Li fled to the U.S., where he is said to be living in New York. But his 
followers have continued the movement in China and abroad. There are groups 
across Canada, although membership is hard to determine.

Li Ming, a Chinese Consulate spokesman in Toronto, calls Falun Gong a 
dangerous cult led by a man who has "concocted a series of fallacies and 
heresies to deify himself and to deceive and control followers."

China accuses Li Hongzhi of defrauding adherents of more than $7 million Cdn 
and inciting them to besiege schools, the media and government offices.

"We adhere to the policy of educating, persuading and helping Falun Gong 
followers get rid of this kind of spiritual control," the consulate spokesman 
says. "The Chinese government isolates and punishes only those diehard, core 
members who have violated Chinese laws."

While adherents maintain there is no central organization, just groups coming 
together to practise and learn, many believe Li or his inner circle operate a 
well-oiled organization, communicating with members worldwide through the 
Internet.

"Everything in Falun Dafa is absolutely volunteer-based," insists Jillian Ye, 
who became a practitioner about six years ago when her family moved from 
China to join her in Toronto.

"How Falun Dafa has been spreading in China and around the world has always 
been family through friends, friends to colleagues . . ."

"We all feel . . . a kind of upgrade on the body, mind and spirit," says Ye, 
35. "We take the tribulations in daily life more lightly. . . . so we have a 
more positive, kind and open-minded attitude."

Ye stresses there are no rituals, places of worship or godhead, and the 
collection of money is forbidden. Li's teachings can be downloaded from the 
Internet or purchased to lend to others.

Ian Adams, co-author of the book Power of the Wheel: The Falun Gong 
Revolution, dismisses the notion that Falun Gong is a cult. "There's no drive 
to create masses of wealth for the leader, the leader is not exhorting his 
people to go out and carry out terrorists acts."

"Our analysis was that he appeared to be at the right place at the right time 
with the right kind of stuff," says Adams, dubbing Falun Gong a "McBuddhism" 
that struck a familiar chord with the Chinese.

"Very simply, it came down to the fact that after 60 years of communism and 
Marxism, people were starved for a spiritual dimension to their lives."

But Adams doesn't buy the argument it's non-political.

"As soon as you tell people to stand up for what you believe in, that's a 
political act. I think it's a way to try and deal with a very repressive 
regime."

"I think (Falun Gong) is an incredible phenomenon," says Adams. "This 
anonymous guy becomes the leader of 100 million people. Li (Hongzhi) locked 
into something."

"The phenomenon exists, and after two years, the Chinese government has not 
been able to crush him."

Immigrants turn to Falun Gong to help kids behave
U.S. freedoms have a price, parents say

by Laura Vozzella ("Baltimore Sun," July 9, 2001)

The meditation and exercise practice called Falun Gong can lead to arrest and 
prison in China. But it is said to have quite the opposite result in the 
United States, where a small but growing number of immigrant parents say it's 
helping kids stay out of trouble.

Concerned about violence, casual sex and drugs in American culture, they see 
Falun Gong as a way to keep their sons and daughters on the straight and 
narrow.

Children are receiving instruction in small, informal groups at a Howard 
County park, in a rented Silver Spring elementary school cafeteria and 
elsewhere. About 30 students, ages 3 to 17, attend a new Falun Gong school in 
Rockville, said to be the first of its kind in the world.

"[The majority of] people try to introduce Falun Gong to adults. Because I'm 
a mother, I'm thinking differently," said Judy Chao of Columbia, who helped 
establish the school and believes the practice has improved the behavior of 
her own children.

"If we start them young, we probably don't need policemen anymore," she said.

Falun Gong combines meditation with a series of slow, controlled movements 
similar to those used in tai chi. It is based on qigong, the ancient practice 
of perfecting mind and body with exercise and spirituality.

A former Chinese government clerk named Li Hongzhi developed Falun Gong and 
began teaching it in 1992. Li and his followers insist the practice is not a 
religion or a political movement, but it has been wildly popular, alarming 
the Chinese government. The movement claims 100 million practitioners 
worldwide.

In April 1999, 10,000 followers surrounded the Communist Party's Beijing 
compound in a bid for government recognition. The government responded 
instead by banning the practice. Chinese officials call Falun Gong a 
dangerous cult, pointing to the attempted suicide of five purported followers 
who set themselves ablaze in Tiananmen Square in January. Falun Gong 
supporters have questioned whether the five were actually followers.

Amnesty International estimates that tens of thousands of Falun Gong 
practitioners have been detained, some of them sent to mental hospitals and 
labor camps for up to three years. Human rights groups estimate that more 
than 100 practitioners have died from torture and beatings while in police 
custody.

The difficulties that afflict followers in China are in stark contrast to the 
scene on the grassy shores of Columbia's Lake Elkhorn one recent morning.

Sitting in a circle, eyes closed, legs folded in the lotus position, arms 
suspended in midair for minutes at a time, nine men, women and children 
practiced Falun Gong in peace.

A bright yellow banner strung across a picnic table announced what they were 
doing to passing dog-walkers and summer camp kids, who didn't appear to pay 
them much attention. Followers set out brochures, listing 56 chapters across 
the United States, including 14 in Maryland, Virginia and Washington. They 
had bumper stickers on their cars.

But the freedom that followers enjoy in the United States comes with a price, 
immigrant parents say. Many worry about the downside to American freedom, 
fearing the permissive culture will lead their children astray. They look to 
Falun Gong to keep that from happening.

"I can tell you from the TV and everything, all these teen-agers [have] 
problems," said Chao, 48, a graphic designer who came to the United States 
from her native Taiwan 30 years ago.

"I really don't want them to get into that," she said. "I see they go to 
school and [are] exposed to this. ... I really want them to know right from 
wrong."

With Falun Gong, she said, "good philosophy" is being put in their heads. 
"For their whole life, they will benefit from it."

After an hour of exercise and meditation, Chao and the others who meet at 
Lake Elkhorn every weekday morning usually spend a second hour reading from a 
book of Li's teachings. It stresses three principles: truthfulness, 
compassion and tolerance.

"Every human should follow those principles," said Mallik Basoor, a software 
engineer from Savage who participates with his wife and 14-year-old son. 
Basoor, an Indian immigrant, said Falun Gong suits his native culture and the 
goals of his son, Tejaswi.

"He said he wants to be a good man in life, not attach too much to worldly 
things," said Basoor, 44. "He wants to be a good person, good moral 
character. ... He doesn't have a girlfriend. He doesn't have any habits like 
smoking or anything."

Kokuei Chen, 15, of Columbia has been practicing Falun Gong with his mother 
since last summer.

"It teaches higher moral values for everyone," said Chen, a Taiwanese native.

He said Falun Gong has led him to stop watching violent TV shows and has 
helped him turn away from potential fights with classmates at Long Reach High 
School, where he will be a sophomore in the fall. "My friends were goading me 
into fights and stuff," he said. "I just ignored them until they cooled off."

In Baltimore, Catherine Tsai takes her 1-year-old son along when she 
practices Falun Gong with four to six people every Saturday and Sunday at the 
Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus. She said she will begin formal 
instruction for her son, Borong, when he gets a little older.

"It definitely helps the children to be more aware of their own behavior, to 
be more responsible, not only in the family, to be a better son or daughter, 
but also in school, to be a better student, and in society, to be a better 
person," said Tsai, 29, a homemaker and Singapore native whose husband is a 
graduate biomedical engineering student at Hopkins.

In a Silver Spring elementary school cafeteria, about six young children join 
their parents for Friday night Falun Gong. Among them is Graciela Borda and 
her 14-year-old son.

"I feel like it was good for him so that way, he [could] learn how to behave 
better," said Borda, 52, a clerical worker who grew up in Bogota, Colombia. 
"Other kids want to be wild, and they want to make my son wild."

In addition to straightening out wayward kids, followers credit Falun Gong 
for giving them better health and curing serious illnesses. But none of this 
is automatic, they say.

There's no guarantee that sitting in the lotus position will turn someone's 
life around, practitioners said. A troubled teen who goes through the motions 
won't be changed, they said. The follower must "change from inside, from 
their heart," for Falun Gong to work, Chao said.

For that reason, Chao said, followers cannot promise that the practice will 
help troubled children, especially those who don't want to be helped.

She said people have approached her about sending their troubled teens to the 
new Falun Gong school, which opened in January in space rented in Rockville's 
Richard Montgomery High School.

"We can try," Chao tells them.

She said some guidance counselors from area public schools have expressed 
interest in referring problem students to the school, which is free and in 
session on weekends. But so far none has done so.

Thirty kids, from preschoolers to high school students, spend four hours 
every Saturday at Ming Hui School, named with the Chinese words for 
understanding and wisdom. They practice exercises and meditation and talk 
about how to live according to Li's principles.

Chao said the practice has made a difference in her own children, Lian, 12, 
and Leon, 14. They are more apt to listen to her, she said, when she tells 
them not to wear ripped jeans or watch violent TV programs.

"Of course, we have those moments, believe me," Chao said. "But it's easier 
to handle situations. It becomes a good cycle instead of a vicious cycle. 
Instead of parents and children not getting along, [it gets] better and 
better."


Falun Gong: Cult, spiritualism or McBuddhism? 

("Toronto Star," July 9, 2001)

Every weekday morning and Saturday evening, at least 20 people gather outside 
the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, where they silently begin a series of slow, 
rhythmic movements.

Men, women and often children, mostly Chinese-Canadians, come to practise the 
meditative exercises of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that began a decade 
ago in China and has spread around the world.

Despite the tranquillity of those assembled, their presence has a more 
pressing motive, proclaimed by placards exhorting the Chinese government to 
''Stop Persecuting the Falun Gong,'' replete with grisly photos of alleged 
victims.

Adherents have accused China of torturing thousands of their members and 
killing more than 250 since 1999 when the Communist government began a 
crackdown on what it called an ''evil cult.'' China blames Falun Gong for 
causing the deaths of 1,600 followers by encouraging them to forgo medical 
care and leading them to suicide.

Last week, it was disclosed that up to 14 female practitioners died in a 
Chinese labour camp in June. The movement says they were tortured to death. 
China's government says they hanged themselves.

News of the latest deaths came at a critical time. On Friday, the 
International Olympic Committee will announce which city - Beijing, Toronto 
or Paris - will host the 2008 Summer Games. Beijing has been seen as the 
front-runner but concerns over human rights in China may hinder its bid.

''The persecution is escalating,'' says Joel Chipkar, a Toronto practitioner 
who likens Chinese President Jiang Zemin's targeting of the Falun Gong to 
Hitler's persecution of the Jews. ''We are out calling for an international 
investigation into the deaths and torture.''

So just what is Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, and why is China so 
afraid of it?

Roughly translated, Falun Gong means ''power of the wheel.'' Falun refers to 
a cosmic intelligence symbolized by the wheel. Gong refers to a practised 
skill - physical or mental. Through the exercises, meditation and a life of 
''truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance,'' practitioners believe they can 
connect with the cosmic entity and reach enlightenment after death.

Falun Gong owes its existence to one man, Li Hongzhi, who began disseminating 
his ideas in 1991 when China relaxed religious controls. Careful never to 
call it a religion, Li preached his philosophy - dubbed ''McBuddhism'' by one 
writer for its mixed bag of Buddhist, Taoist and other beliefs - to growing 
crowds.

The number of his adherents snowballed in China, reaching an estimated 100 
million, including top-ranking Politburo members. Li, feted across China, was 
honoured even by the government.

But with his followers outnumbering Communist party members two to one, the 
Chinese government began to view the sect as a powerful threat. In July 1999, 
Li was declared an enemy of the people and Falun Gong was outlawed.

Li fled to the U.S., where he is said to be living in New York. But his 
followers have continued the movement in China and abroad. There are groups 
across Canada, although membership is hard to determine.

Li Ming, a Chinese Consulate spokesman in Toronto, calls Falun Gong a 
dangerous cult led by a man who has ''concocted a series of fallacies and 
heresies to deify himself and to deceive and control followers.''

China accuses Li Hongzhi of defrauding adherents of more than $7 million Cdn 
and inciting them to besiege schools, the media and government offices.

''We adhere to the policy of educating, persuading and helping Falun Gong 
followers get rid of this kind of spiritual control,'' the consulate 
spokesman says. ''The Chinese government isolates and punishes only those 
diehard, core members who have violated Chinese laws.''

While adherents maintain there is no central organization, just groups coming 
together to practise and learn, many believe Li or his inner circle operate a 
well-oiled organization, communicating with members worldwide through the 
Internet.

''Everything in Falun Dafa is absolutely volunteer-based,'' insists Jillian 
Ye, who became a practitioner about six years ago when her family moved from 
China to join her in Toronto.

''How Falun Dafa has been spreading in China and around the world has always 
been family through friends, friends to colleagues . . .''

''We all feel . . . a kind of upgrade on the body, mind and spirit,'' says 
Ye, 35. ''We take the tribulations in daily life more lightly. . . . so we 
have a more positive, kind and open-minded attitude.''

Ye stresses there are no rituals, places of worship or godhead, and the 
collection of money is forbidden. Li's teachings can be downloaded from the 
Internet or purchased to lend to others.

Ian Adams, co-author of the book Power of the Wheel: The Falun Gong 
Revolution, dismisses the notion that Falun Gong is a cult. ''There's no 
drive to create masses of wealth for the leader, the leader is not exhorting 
his people to go out and carry out terrorists acts.''

''Our analysis was that he appeared to be at the right place at the right 
time with the right kind of stuff,'' says Adams, dubbing Falun Gong a 
''McBuddhism'' that struck a familiar chord with the Chinese.

''Very simply, it came down to the fact that after 60 years of communism and 
Marxism, people were starved for a spiritual dimension to their lives.''

But Adams doesn't buy the argument it's non-political.

''As soon as you tell people to stand up for what you believe in, that's a 
political act. I think it's a way to try and deal with a very repressive 
regime.''

''I think (Falun Gong) is an incredible phenomenon,'' says Adams. ''This 
anonymous guy becomes the leader of 100 million people. Li (Hongzhi) locked 
into something.''

''The phenomenon exists, and after two years, the Chinese government has not 
been able to crush him.''

China Expands Falun Gong Campaign

by Helen Luk (Associated Press, July 8, 2001)

HONG KONG (AP) - While forging ahead with its attempt to eradicate the Falun 
Gong movement at home, China is taking its campaign against the spiritual 
group abroad.

Chinese diplomats are seeking to discredit the sect and undermine its image 
in the United States, Australia and other countries by pressing public 
officials not to have dealings with the group or allow its participation in 
local activities.

Critics of the Beijing regime say Hong Kong authorities are caving in to the 
anti-Falun Gong campaign. They contend officials weakened the enclave's 
autonomy by barring about 100 Falun Gong practitioners from entering in early 
May during a visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Falun Gong remains legal in Hong Kong, under Western-style freedoms left 
behind by the British. But its active presence here has provoked much local 
friction as members lash out against China's suppression.

The conflict between China and the sect escalated last week over the deaths 
of some imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners at a labor camp in the 
northeastern province of Heilongjiang in June.

Chinese officials offered conflicting numbers, with some saying three deaths 
and others 14, but all said the women hanged themselves in a mass suicide. 
Falun Gong, which says its teachings prohibit suicide, insisted Chinese 
authorities had fatally beaten 15 inmates to death.

China's government is drawing criticism for its efforts to weaken Falun Gong 
overseas.

In the United States, some mayors have complained that Chinese diplomats 
attempted to stop them from giving public recognition to Falun Gong.

Falun Gong members in Australia accuse the Chinese Embassy of spreading 
distorted information about the group and attempting to persuade Australian 
officials to ban its participation in local events such as village festivals.

China's government fears Falun Gong's organizational abilities - the group 
was once estimated to have up to 100 million followers in China, or more than 
the Communist Party's 64.5 million.

Because the sect has no formal membership, it is hard to gauge the number of 
practitioners worldwide. Taiwan is believed to have the biggest following 
outside China, with 100,000 adherents.

Falun Gong says it has about 500 members in Hong Kong, 3,000 in Australia, 
10,000 in the United States, 1,000 in Singapore and 3,000 in South Korea. 
There are also small communities in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan.

Beijing's attempts to use diplomatic pressure to silence Falun Gong have 
enraged members and government officials in the United States.

Stan Bogosian, the former mayor of Saratoga, Calif., said that a few days 
after he signed a proclamation late last year declaring a week in honor of 
Falun Gong, two officials from the Chinese consulate urged him to rescind it.

When he refused, Bogosian said, the Chinese asked him to remain neutral on 
the issue and asked about his stance on Taiwan, which Beijing considers a 
renegade province. Angered, Bogosian called a news conference to denounce the 
Chinese government for ``highly irregular'' actions.

``The Chinese government should not be interfering in the political 
process,'' Bogosian told The Associated Press. ``The issue of whether Falun 
Gong is a cult or not is not important. For me, these are basic human 
rights.''

To Bogosian and many others, Falun Gong is a harmless qigong group, whose 
adherents, clad in their yellow T-shirts, practice controlled breathing 
exercises and move slowly to ethereal music in parks.

At least a dozen other mayors from cities in California, Illinois, 
Washington, Maryland and Michigan have reported pressure from Chinese 
officials who often pointedly mention the importance of U.S.-Chinese trade.

``The whole thing sounded like a propaganda pitch to me,'' said Tod 
Satterthwaite, mayor of Urbana, Ill., who ignored the Chinese demands.

Others have yielded. In 1999, mayors in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles 
and Baltimore - all important shipping centers - revoked proclamations 
honoring Falun Gong.

Falun Gong adherents in Australia say Chinese officials have sent letters to 
civic leaders describing the group as ``an out-and-out heretical sect, which 
is anti-science, anti-humanity and anti-society in nature.''

``The letters were sent to local government offices in order to try and 
persuade them to disallow perfectly legal activities being conducted in the 
area,'' said Michael Molnar, a spokesman for Australia's Falun Gong.

The Australian government said the Chinese Embassy had denied sending the 
letters.

Rebecca Tromp, spokeswoman of the Blacktown City Council, said officials from 
the Chinese consulate in Sydney raised the issue of Falun Gong participation 
in a festival sponsored by the city government.

``We advised them that any participation Falun Gong has is within our 
festival and that is what they do and we would continue to allow them to 
participate,'' Tromp said.

Seeing behind Beijing's veil of lies

by Chang Ching-hsi and Chang Chin-hwa ("Taipei Times," July 7, 2001)

In order to prove to the outside world that it was not persecuting Falun Gong 
practitioners, Beijing recently invited Western reporters -- as well as 
reporters from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau -- to visit the Masanjia   
"education-through-labor" camp in Liaoning Province and the Tuanhe   
camp in Beijing.

China has also said that accusations about its labor camps by overseas 
members of the Falun Gong are all fabrications. During the visit, reporters 
from Taiwan found no gloomy atmosphere at the labor camps. In fact, they they 
did not even look like labor camps. The South China Morning Post described 
the visits as "a spectacular show performed in a dreamlike prison." Reporters 
saw a humane scene, with soft music, fresh air and tame little deer strolling 
around in rose gardens and chickens and rabbits everywhere.

After journalists reported what they saw, we cannot help but feel concerned. 
China has strictly limited news gathering by reporters. So what "truth" did 
China's labor camps reveal when they were opened to the media? Over the past 
two years, have reporters from China and overseas had the freedom to 
interview Falun Gong practitioners who were arrested, detained, imprisoned, 
beaten and cruelly persecuted? We can get an answer from the following 
examples.

During the Chinese New Year, China announced that seven Falun Gong 
practitioners had burned themselves to death. Officials used the announcement 
to launch an anti-Falun Gong movement nationwide. Beijing not only forbade 
the foreign media from interviewing the burned survivors or their families, 
but also forbade their families from visiting the injured. What kind of 
country is it that deprives people of their freedom of speech, their right to 
know, and even their most basic right to care for their families? Why did 
China restrict news coverage on the event? Were those people who burnt 
themselves really Falun Gong practitioners? What was the truth?

Falun Gong's international Web site has listed 222 practitioners tortured to 
death at police stations, detention centers, labor camps and prisons all over 
China. The website provides the names of those victims, as well as details 
about what happened to them. There were even pictures of livid, swollen or 
deformed body parts. These victims were beaten savagely, given electric 
shocks, forced to take drugs that damaged their brains, or subjected to other 
extreme cruelties.

If those kinds of things happened in a free society, it would immediately 
become headline news and shock the entire world. In China, however, the Falun 
Gong practitioners had to die behind layers and layers of concealment just 
because they believed in the teachings of Falun Gong: truthfulness, 
benevolence and forbearance. Even their families were not allowed to find out 
the truth. No lawyers dare file a petition on behalf of Falun Gong followers. 
They have no channels whatsoever for petitions. The Chinese media will not 
and dare not report these.

Apart from the stage-managed visits, what other freedoms do reporters from 
the free world have in China?

Certainly, not all the truth has been concealed. Ian Johnson, a Wall Street 
Journal correspondent in Beijing, won this year's Pulitzer Prize for 
international affairs reporting for his in-depth coverage of the Falun Gong. 
This series of reports was about how Chen Zixiu (Òø?l¬q), a retired female 
employee of an auto parts company, was tortured to death by police. The 
reports were published on April 20, 2000.

Johnson also wrote a story about how a follower took risks to spread the 
Falun Gong teachings, and how Chen's daughter tried in vain for six months to
persuade police to issue a death certificate for her mother. Chen's daughter 
was not a Falun Gong follower, according to recent reports, but after knowing 
what her mother had gone through, she too became a follower and was detained.

The Wall Street Journal's managing editor, Paul Steiger, commented that 
Johnson's reports were "a tremendous example of courage and determination to 
get a story in the face of strong police pressures against the reporting, 
combined with very sensitive and powerful writing." He also pointed out that 
in order to prevent police surveillance and harassment, Johnson often had to 
make detours around other cities, constantly change his cellphone numbers and 
live in common family homes.

Finally, he was able to tell the world a tearful, blood-stained story about 
how common people are tortured and oppressed by China's state machine. After 
completing the reports, Johnson left China, where he can never again be a 
correspondent.

If we observe the history of natural or man-made disasters in China, we can 
see a three-step method that Beijing has used to deal with them.

The first step is to conceal the truth from the public and impose a news 
blackout, or to allow only the Xinhua News Agency to report the "official 
version."

The second step is to accuse the media and critics of "conspiring to 
overthrow socialism." If that does not keep a lid on things, China will come 
up with accusations of "colluding with anti-Chinese forces overseas and 
pro-Taiwan independence forces." Then, all criticism will become as silent as 
a cicada in winter.

The last step is to pretend to pacify people or to show that the government 
has fulfilled its responsibility to take good care of the people. To clarify 
responsibility and pursue those responsible is something Beijing has never 
done.

We can see the same method in China's suppression of the Falun Gong movement 
over the past two years, as well as in its treatment of the Qiandao Lake 
(?d¨q«˜) robbery and mass murder case in 1994 and the explosion at the 
Fanglin (»ò»L) elementary school in Jiangxi Province in March.

International human rights organizations have time and again investigated and 
condemned China's suppression of the media and human rights.

According to a human rights report released by the US State Department this 
year, China's human rights record was one of the poorest among the 195 
countries. For many years, China's President Jiang Zemin has been 
one of "the Worst Enemies of the Press" listed by the Committee to Protect 
Journalists. The committee said in a report that the Jiang regime used harsh 
prison sentences as a method to maintain its iron grip and that China had 
detained more reporters than any other country in the world.

In another development, at the UN Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva 
this year, psychiatrists from the US and UK condemned China for using 
psychiatric hospitals for political persecution. Their study revealed that 
more than 1,000 healthy Falun Gong practitioners have been detained at 
psychiatric hospitals, where they are given drug injections or electric 
shocks aimed at forcing them to give up their beliefs. There have been 
reports of people being tortured to death.

Where is the truth about these people? Was what was seen during the 
stage-managed visits to the labor camps real or just a lie? Ultimately, the 
truth cannot be suppressed. Certainly, in the near future, more journalists 
with a sense of justice will reveal more to the world. We look forward to 
this.

Chang Ching-hsi is a professor of economics at National Taiwan University. 
Chang Chin-hwa is an associate professor of journalism at the same 
university. Both are Falun Gong practitioners.

Sect is like smoking or drugs: Elsie

by Carmen Cheung ("Hong Kong iMail," July 6, 2001)

SECRETARY for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie yesterday became the third senior 
official to support Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's recent labelling of the 
Falun Gong as an evil cult.
She said Mr Tung had a duty to speak out on the religious sect, just as he 
had a duty to speak out on other social issues such as drugs or smoking.
She insisted during her speech at a Japan Society luncheon that the 
government ``cannot wait until actual damage is done before expressing any 
concern or exercising any monitoring over the actions of this cult in Hong 
Kong''.
Last month, during a Legislative Council question-and-answer session, Mr Tung 
said the Falun Gong was ``undoubtedly an evil cult'', although he added that 
the government did not have any plans to outlaw the group.
Since then his comments have been defended by Chief Secretary for 
Administration Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau 
Suk-yee.
Mr Tsang told journalists at the Foreign Correspondents' Club two weeks ago 
that Mr Tung was expressing a personal opinion, although an official 
statement the next day claimed this was not what Mr Tsang had said, in that 
Mr Tung's comments were the official line.
And earlier this week, Mrs Ip reiterated Mr Tung's comments of the need to 
keep a close eye on the Falun Gong but added that there was no need to enact 
an anti-cult law now.
Yesterday, Ms Leung said: ``Mr Tung has a duty to speak on a matter of public 
concern and to warn people about the problematic behaviour of an organisation 
that has reportedly caused damage in the mainland when we find its presence 
in Hong Kong.
``He has the duty to warn such an organisation not to cause any social 
disorder in the territory, just as he has a duty to speak on drugs, rave 
parties, smoking, air pollution and any apparent deficiencies in our 
educational system and other social issues,'' Ms Leung said.
She added, in the absence of malice, it was absurd to suggest that the Chief 
Executive could be sued for defamation when he expressed such concerns. ``A 
statement is not defamatory if it is true or expresses an opinion which is a 
fair comment,'' she said.
``To accuse the Chief Executive of defamation instead of examining the 
substance of the problem is a disservice to our community.''
Ms Leung explained the government's stance on any legislation. She said if 
Hong Kong had moved legally against Falun Gong when the sect was banned on 
the mainland in 1999, it would have justified claims that Hong Kong was 
``just another Chinese city''. And equally, if the SAR had followed France's 
lead when it passed an anti-cult law on May 30 ``you might say that Hong Kong 
has succumbed to pressure from the Central People's Government''. She said 
the government was displaying ``responsibility, prudence, rationality and a 
high degree of autonomy'' in the handling of the issue.

Falun Gong supporters blame President for prisoner deaths

Supporters of a meditation group banned in China are blaming China's  
President for the increasing number of their supporters dying in Chinese  
jails.

  (Australian Broadcasting Corp., July 6, 2001)

Jiang Zemin ordered the crackdown against Falun Gong two years ago.

More than 240 Falun Gong practitioners have died while in police custody  in 
China.

In most cases, police list the deaths as suicide or say they are a  result of 
natural causes.

However, human rights groups say there is evidence to suggest Falun Gong  
detainees have been routinely mistreated and abused.

In the latest case, family members say many of the 15 women who died in  a 
labour camp this week had been tortured to death.

A reporting ban is preventing any independent verification of the  official 
version of events, which says the 15 committed suicide.

Spokeswoman Sophie Xiao says President Jiang Zemin should take  
responsibility for every death because he issued the order to eradicate  the 
group.

Falun Gong supporters estimate 35 followers have died in custody in the  past 
month.

China says three dead in Falun Gong mass suicide

(Reuters, July 5, 2001)

BEIJING, July 5 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday three followers of the 
banned Falun Gong spiritual group died and eight were saved in a mass suicide 
attempt at a labour camp.

The statement by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue followed a report 
from a Hong Kong-based rights group on Tuesday that 16 people attempted 
suicide at the Wanjia Labour Camp on June 20 and 10 of them may have died.

Falun Gong followers based overseas denied on Wednesday there had been a mass 
suicide and said more than 15 female followers were tortured to death around 
June 20 at the camp in Harbin, capital of the northeastern province of 
Heilongjiang.

Zhang told a news conference the 11 women, detained for "disrupting social 
order," tried to hang themselves with ripped sheets.

"Eleven female Falun Gong practitioners at a women's dormitory in Harbin's 
Wanjia Labour Camp attempted suicide in the early hours of June 21," she 
said.

"Camp guards on duty immediately rushed the women to hospital for treatment, 
where three of them died and the rest were revived and declared safe," Zhang 
said.

In January, five people identified by Chinese officials as Falun Gong 
followers set fire to themselves on Tiananmen Square in an apparent mass 
suicide attempt. A mother and her 12-year-old daughter died.

Falun Gong followers denied the five were adherents.

SENTENCES EXTENDED

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights & Democracy said the 
Falun Gong adherents at Wanjia tried to hang themselves after their sentences 
were extended for staging a hunger strike.

But the Falun Dafa Information Centre said they were beaten and tortured, and 
could not have committed suicide as they were under 24-hour surveillance.

Falun Gong says it does not sanction killing of any sort, including suicide.

China says the group is an "evil cult" responsible for the deaths of 1,660 
people by suicide or refusing medical treatment. It says a handful of Falun 
Gong followers have committed suicide or died from illnesses while in police 
custody.

"This again shows that Falun Gong is an evil cult that destroy lives," Zhang 
said of the labour camp incident.

"The legal rights of inmates at labour camps are consistently protected by 
Chinese laws and there were no such things as persecuting and abuse against 
them as rumours had it," she said.

Followers outside China say more than 200 Falun Gong adherents have died in 
Chinese police custody since Beijing banned the movement in July 1999.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, combines meditation and exercise with 
Buddhist and Taoist teachings. The group has disavowed any any political 
aims.

China protesters take cause through region


by Amanda Cuda ("Connecticut Post," July 5, 2001)

While other kids his age were at family cookouts or chillin' with friends, 
Hao Wang, 16, was striding along Boston Avenue in Bridgeport on Wednesday, 
protesting persecution in China.

His 20-mile Independence Day walk through the region came just hours after 
Chinese authorities claimed that as many as 16 Falun Gong members had 
committed mass suicide in a prison camp in June. Supporters of the banned 
sect, however, claim they were tortured and beaten to death.

Wang, of Boston, was one of
a half-dozen supporters of the movement who marched from Orange to Fairfield 
as part of a 24-day protest walk from Boston to Washington, D.C.

The trip protests what they say is China's maltreatment of practitioners of 
Falun Gong, a group of five meditative exercises similar to tai chi that the 
Communist government considers a dangerous religious cult.

We're very concerned about the persecution in China, Wang said. The Chinese 
government is trying to stop people from speaking out.

The 450-mile walk began June 26 in Watertown, Mass., and the group entered 
Connecticut on Saturday, getting as far as Mystic that day.

China considers those who practice Falun Gong -- also known as Falun Dafa -- 
a dangerous cult and has banned it for the past two years.

Falun Gong members say the Chinese government feels threatened by the 
spiritual practice because it has become more popular than the Communist 
Party.

Wang said banning Falun Gong is absurd, because it's a legitimate way of 
attaining physical and spiritual health. It's similar to jogging in the 
morning, Wang said. No one wants to give up jogging, because there's nothing 
bad about it.

The government also vigorously clamps down on Falun Gong demonstrators, and 
has reportedly imprisoned hundreds.

On June 20, up to 16 Falun Gong followers died in a north China labor camp. 
China claims the victims, mostly women, committed suicide by making ropes 
from sheets and hanging themselves from bunk beds.

Officials said camp guards stopped another 11 prisoners from committing 
suicide.

I don't think anyone believes that, said Tracey Zhu of Bethany. I don't think 
they committed suicide.

Falun Gong followers maintain that some 220 other practitioners have died in 
police custody since the July 1999 ban. Independent sources say more than 100 
have died.

The ban came seven years after the group began operating in China.

Wang has relatives in China, including an aunt he said is being spied on by 
the Chinese government. We call her on the phone and we can hear her being 
very nervous, Wang said.

Wednesday, the group of five protesters walked along Route 1 through Orange, 
Milford, Stratford, Bridgeport and Fairfield, distributing information about 
Falun Gong and carrying a sign that read Stop the Killing in China.

Susie Truong of Boston said the march was kept small for safety reasons. We 
didn't want it getting out of hand, she said.

Truong said she heard about the walk through friends and wanted to 
participate. I knew I should come and support and get the message out about 
persecution in China, she said.

The walkers will leave Connecticut on Friday and are expected to arrive in 
Washington July 18.

Wednesday's group also included Benjamin Zgodny of Hamden, who drove a 
support van alongside the group, handing out bottles of water.

Zgodny said he wanted to help the protesters in some way because he practices 
Falun Gong himself and thinks the movement has merit.

It's a very good cause, he said.

Further information on the walk can be obtained at www. walktodc.org. General 
information on Falun Gong can be obtained at www.falundafa.org

Sect Clings to the Web in the Face of Beijing's Ban

by Craig S. Smith ("New York Times," July 5, 2001)

BEIJING Tapping away at one of his computers in a cramped two- room apartment 
in western Beijing, Lloyd Zhao is engaged in an extraordinarily dangerous 
endeavor searching through the night for holes in the electronic wall that 
the government has built to keep Chinese from seeing Web sites of Falun Gong, 
the outlawed spiritual movement.

Periodically, firewall programs that Mr. Zhao has installed on his computer 
detect a signal from another computer in China that is trying to identify 
him. The string of numbers from the snooping computer that appear on Mr. 
Zhao's screen can invariably be traced to a branch of the Public Security 
Bureau.

"They look for anyone who tries to reach Falun Gong Web sites overseas," says 
the shaggy-haired Mr. Zhao, 33, a fervent Falun Gong follower and an advanced 
computer technician. When the surveillance becomes too intense, he switches 
Internet accounts, operating systems, even hard-disk drives and telephone 
lines to mask his online identity.

He says the threat of detection will not dissuade him from his self-appointed 
mission to keep open the lines of communication between the discipline's 
United States-based founder, Li Hongzhi, and followers here, where a 
government campaign to eradicate the movement has entered what Beijing hopes 
is the endgame.

Since China set out to crush Falun Gong nearly two years ago, as many as 200 
people have died, possibly thousands have been beaten or tortured, and 
millions have been cowed into renouncing their faith in Mr. Li's apocalyptic 
cosmology.

[On Wednesday, Chinese officials confirmed a human rights report of a mass 
suicide by Falun Gong followers in a labor camp, but Falun Gong adherents 
continued to insist that the inmates were tortured to death.]

But Mr. Zhao and hundreds like him continue to elude China's internal 
security forces, using temporary cell phone numbers, encryption programs and 
obscure Internet services based overseas to keep the remaining network of 
followers connected.

That makes Mr. Zhao one of the "most dangerous" of Falun Gong's remaining 
proponents, according to He Zuoxiu, a physicist and a Communist Party member 
who has played an integral role in having the movement banned. Mr. He says 
Falun Gong is an evil cult that, unchallenged, could threaten China's tenuous 
stability, should it galvanize the millions of people disenfranchised by the 
transition from a centrally planned to a market-driven economy.

Sitting in his apartment a few miles from Mr. Zhao's apartment, Mr. He said 
people like Mr. Zhao should be hunted down and locked up until they have 
recanted their beliefs.

The two men, separated not only by age but also by spiritual beliefs Mr. He, 
74, is an avowed atheist, and Mr. Zhao believes in multiple gods are on 
opposite sides of a confrontation that has drawn considerable attention in 
the West, in part because it represents the most sustained challenge to 
Communist Party authority in more than a decade.

On one side is a group that believes that it is engaged in a battle with evil 
beings for control of the universe. On the other is a government that 
promotes atheism and feels so threatened by a relative handful of people that 
it has marshaled the full force of its police power to bend them to its will.

"The number of followers is getting smaller, and the crackdown is growing 
fiercer, but it's going to end with our victory soon," Mr. Zhao said at one 
of many recent interviews, almost always at restaurants or bars or shopping 
malls around the city, for which his lanky frame, clad in black, would 
suddenly emerge from the crowd at the appointed hour.

Mr. Zhao said he had decided to speak out because Master Li says followers 
should step forward to "validate" Falun Gong. Mr. Zhao said he believed that 
the authorities would find it difficult to identify him, because Zhao is a 
common surname in China. He asked that this article use his anglicized first 
name, which he uses with foreigners but which does not appear on any of his 
identity papers.

One meeting was in a private room on the second floor of a Thai-Indian 
restaurant where Mr. Zhao and two visitors were obliged to order too much 
food to buy some isolation. Yet he still chose his words carefully, stopping 
in midsentence whenever a waitress passed by outside or entered the room. No 
matter where he is, his eyes have a habit of looking out their corners as if 
he were listening for footfalls from behind.

He turns vague when asked how the end will come.

Under attack, Falun Gong has evolved from a well-regulated movement with a 
structure not unlike that of the Communist Party into a nonhierarchical mass 
movement whose structure mirrors that of the Internet, on which it depends.

There are no longer any national Falun Gong posts in China, only local 
volunteer "tutors" and "facilitators" like Mr. Zhao who look to Master Li for 
guidance. Although Mr. Zhao is an important node in that network, he is the 
first to concede that he and his friends are dispensable.

If they are caught, he said, other devotees will take their place. The 
Communist Party can punch large holes in the Falun Gong movement. But until 
the government "re-educates" or imprisons every last true believer, he 
explained, the network will endure.

Still, the destruction of the group's internal hierarchy has fragmented its 
members into loosely connected groups, some following charismatic tutors or 
even fake scriptures that are circulating in China.

Interpretations of Mr. Li's messages now vary widely among followers. One 
manifestation of the less cohesive dogma may have been the self-immolation of 
followers this year on Tiananmen Square, an act that senior followers in the 
United States say went against Mr. Li's teachings.

Inspiration: After Bar Binges, a Spiritual Quest

Mr. Zhao got his start on computers in the early 1980's. By the time he 
reached his 20's, he was among the first computer geeks in China, going days 
without sleep while he hacked away at his keyboard. His expertise later 
landed him a string of high-tech jobs. One was at a company that installed 
pinhole video cameras and other surveillance equipment in hotel rooms.

For years, he softened the edges of his spiritually arid life among computers 
with binges in Beijing's bars. With beer, cigarettes and sleep deprivation, 
his health deteriorated to the point that he began losing his teeth. He 
speaks today with a self- consciously stiff upper lip that hides a gap where 
his eyeteeth once were.

Many Falun Gong followers live in an industrial urban jumble of half- 
finished concrete shells, smokestacks and high-tension power lines where 
traditional religion has been replaced by official atheism.

Mr. Li, a former clerk in a government grain bureau, was among dozens of 
self-styled "masters" who stepped in to fill that void in the early 90's with 
spiritual disciplines based on the practice of traditional Chinese breathing 
exercises that seek to channel qi, the body's vital energy, to improve health 
or obtain supernatural powers.

He wrapped his exercises in a complex cosmology that mixed traditional 
religious tenets with popular notions of extraterrestrials and U.F.O.'s to 
create a vivid belief system that struck a chord with many Chinese who were 
searching for moral and spiritual guidance.

In 1996, a friend sent Mr. Zhao an e-mail message that directed him to a 
Falun Gong Web site in the United States. He logged onto the site and spent 
the night reading an online edition of Zhuan Falun, Mr. Li's main text, which 
followers regard as their bible. Mr. Zhao bought a copy the next day. Three 
days later, he said, he stopped smoking and drinking and was immersed in the 
world that Mr. Li presents.

At its core, Mr. Li's message is a simple one be a better person and you will 
be saved. He cast his followers in the pivotal role of a cosmic morality 
play, the aspect that most attracted Mr. Zhao.

"Master Li has said that there is not much time left, and so all followers 
should grasp this chance to reached the highest spiritual level that they can 
before the day comes," Mr. Zhao said at another meeting, this time beneath 
the soaring escalators of a new shopping mall here. "My aspirations are 
different now. I'm pursuing the improvement of my inner self."

At the peak of the movement two years ago, thousands of Falun Gong "tutors" 
guided followers in exercise and study sessions in parks and plazas at dawn 
each day. The tutors were, in turn, grouped into "stations" and met regularly 
to discuss the development of the movement and the planning of periodic mass 
events.

Station "chiefs" communicated with the Falun Dafa Research Society in 
Beijing, which took orders from Mr. Li. Falun Dafa, or Great Law of the 
Dharma Wheel, is the formal name for Falun Gong, or Dharma Wheel Practice.

Mr. He, the physicist, was among the first prominent Chinese to speak out 
against the growing organization. According to Mr. He, one of his students 
became mentally unstable after practicing the discipline in the mid-90's, and 
the physicist faulted Falun Gong for the student's trouble in a televised 
interview in 1998.

In a magazine article a year later, Mr. He warned again of the movement's 
danger to youth. That article inspired a 10,000-strong Falun Gong 
demonstration outside the leadership compound here in April 1999, the event 
that precipitated the government's eradication campaign.

Falun Gong's formal structure in China broke down after the crackdown, as 
members of the hierarchy were rounded up, with the most active sentenced to 
lengthy jail terms. Those tutors not under detention are now under close 
surveillance by the neighborhood committees that are the lowest rung of the 
Communist Party's national surveillance system.

Nonetheless, many Falun Gong followers continue to meet daily, though it is 
impossible to tell how many remain active. Mr. Li says there are 70 million 
practitioners in China and 100 million followers worldwide, though he has 
never offered evidence to support that. Closer scrutiny suggests the movement 
in China never numbered more than several million, and China's anti- Falun 
Gong campaign has most certainly scared off many.

The government has had more than a year to measure the breadth and depth of 
what is left, and it apparently believes that it has identified the remaining 
core, 40,000 people, according to Mr. He. By dealing harshly with the most 
militant, a manageable number in the scope of the vast internal security 
apparatus, Beijing hopes to neutralize the rest.

"The detention centers are all full up!" Mr. He exclaimed, sitting in his 
study in black long johns and a gray hand-knit sweater one afternoon.

He said that at the beginning of the year the government switched from its 
strategy of sending followers arrested in the capital back to their home 
provinces and began collecting the detainees at centers here. As many as 
6,000 of the most active followers are in detention, to be held until they 
have recanted their beliefs or are sent to reform-through-labor camps in the 
countryside, Mr. He said.

Mr. He has become one of Falun Gong's prime enemies, described in the group's 
literature as a demon in league with evil beings, including President Jiang 
Zemin, who are fighting Falun Gong for control of the universe. Mr. He smiles 
at the reference, his eyeglasses and thin gray hair askew, but he insists 
that such talk is far from harmless. He said it recalled the language of the 
Taiping, the mid-19th century spiritual movement that turned into full-scale 
armed rebellion, which took over a huge swath of the country, cost millions 
of lives and threatened to bring down the last imperial government before it 
was suppressed.

That assessment paints Mr. Zhao as a threat to China's social order, a role 
Mr. He knows well. "I did underground work," he said, recalling his early 
days as a Communist Party member before the party took power in 1949. "We 
went to demonstrate, but the core in the movement wouldn't go to the streets. 
Falun Gong is the same."

Practice: As Pressure Grows, a Movement Adapts

In Mr. Zhao's crowded apartment, a diptych that shows the Falun Gong founder 
both seated and standing sits atop a white enameled bookshelf beside Mr. 
Zhao's bed. The apartment's only other decoration is a round pillow with a 
large yellow swastika, a Buddhist symbol of good will, surrounded by smaller 
swastikas and yin-yang symbols, associated with Taoism, the other ancient 
philosophical strain that has contributed to Master Li's teachings. This is 
where Mr. Zhao sits to perform his exercises each day.

The pillow's emblem represents the Falun, or Dharma Wheel, and is described 
by Mr. Li as a miniature of the cosmos that he says he installs 
telekinetically in the abdomens of all his followers, where it rotates in 
alternating directions, throwing off bad karma and gathering qi. Many Falun 
Gong adherents say they can feel the wheel turning in their bellies.

The rest of Mr. Zhao's Falun Gong paraphernalia books, tapes and photographs 
of Mr. Li are stored elsewhere in case his apartment is raided. Mr. Zhao and 
others like him download and disseminate inspirational Falun Gong videos, 
Falun Gong propaganda fliers and even Mr. Li's books formatted for desktop 
printers, all with the intent of keeping the movement in China alive.

Mr. Zhao has distributed hundreds of compact disks containing a complete 
Falun Gong kit, including links to secure Internet servers overseas and 
dozens of Falun Gong Web sites, as well as photographs of U.F.O.'s and videos 
of the corpses of some of the followers reportedly tortured to death by the 
police.

"When Master Li issues a new message, 99 percent of the followers in Beijing 
will have it within three days," Mr. Zhao said.

China recently issued a new legal interpretation of the antisubversion laws 
that allows it to hand down lengthy prison terms to followers like Mr. Zhao 
who distribute leaflets or disseminate Mr. Li's messages, which have grown 
increasingly apocalyptic.

"It is in fact time to let go of your last attachments," Mr. Li wrote to 
followers in August, adding that believers should "let go of all worldly 
attachments (including the attachment to the human body)."

On Jan. 1, Mr. Li told his disciples: "The present performance of the evil 
shows that they are already utterly inhuman and completely without righteous 
thoughts. So such evil's persecution of the Fa can no longer be tolerated."

That set off a debate among Falun Gong followers in China about what Mr. Li's 
message meant. Senior followers in the United States were quick to issue an 
appeal that followers keep calm. A week later, a similarly cautionary note 
was posted on the Web site by followers in China, who wrote that "certain 
disciples had some extreme interpretations" of the message.

Mr. Li never clarified his remarks, and three weeks after he made them, five 
followers ignited themselves on Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese government seized on the self-immolations as proof of its 
contentions that Falun Gong is dangerous. Some Falun Gong followers insisted 
that Mr. Li prohibits the taking of life, even one's own, and that the five 
could therefore not have been Falun Gong followers.

But contrary to the Falun Gong public relations campaign, which is organized 
in the United States, Mr. Zhao said he believed that at least some of the 
people who set themselves on fire were indeed followers. "What they did was 
wrong," he said. "But it was very brave."

Mr. Zhao said his job was to keep Mr. Li's message pure and to prevent 
additional followers from going astray. With a few keystrokes in the 
darkness, he circumvents the government's electronic barriers and up pops Mr. 
Li's image on the screen, along with a message that reads, "Removing the evil 
beings that manipulate people to damage humankind is also protecting 
humankind."

14 Die in Mass Suicide in China

by John Leicester (Associated Press, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) - Fourteen imprisoned followers of the banned Falun Gong sect 
committed suicide in a north China labor camp, making ropes from sheets and 
hanging themselves from bunk beds, a government official said Wednesday.

Falun Gong, however, blamed camp authorities, saying in a statement Tuesday 
that at least 15 women followers were tortured to death at Wanjia labor camp 
in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang on or around June 20. The 
statement cast doubt on the official claim of a mass suicide, saying the 
victims were watched around the clock.

The reported suicide at Wanjia would be the most deadly involving Falun Gong 
practitioners confirmed by the government since it banned the spiritual 
movement in July 1999.

Lan Jingli, director of the Heilongjiang government's judicial bureau, said 
that another 11 followers were rescued by camp guards. In all, 25 Falun Gong 
members tried to kill themselves on June 20 in Wanjia labor camp, he said.

Lan said guards watched the practitioners closely, patrolling every five 
minutes. But the followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang 
themselves from their cell beds with sheets, he said.

``One minute is enough to kill,'' Lan said. ``While 11 of them were 
immediately rescued by the camp guards, 14 others died.''

China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 
followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use 
meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim 
followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will to go heaven 
when they die.

Falun Gong, however, says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, 
including suicide. The group disputed government claims that five people who 
set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing earlier this year were 
Falun Gong practitioners.

The meditation sect says the government is running a smear campaign against 
it and that hundreds of practitioners have died of torture and abuse in 
police custody during the crackdown on the group.

It said the Wanjia labor camp used torture to make practitioners renounce 
Falun Gong. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an 
electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners 
after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group.

In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest Wednesday outside 
China's representative office to call on the United Nations to investigate 
the deaths.

The sect members accused the Chinese government of ``inhumane and beastly 
crimes'' and denied that the 14 had tried to commit suicide.

``S.O.S.: Save Falun Gong practitioners from being killed in China,'' said 
one banner displayed during the protest as members practiced their 
slow-motion exercises.

Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas on having a hand in the 
suicide.

``Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the 
so-called `instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to 
make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level 
of practicing,'' he said. ``The mass suicide of June 20 could also be caused 
through this way.''

The government denies that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are 
mistreated.

Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of 
imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong 
followers would now be watched 24 hours a day, he said.

Meanwhile, two dozen sect members in New York started a 250-mile walk from 
Manhattan to Washington on Tuesday to protest Beijing's increasingly violent 
crackdown on the group.

The official confirmation of deaths at Wanjia came after a Hong Kong-based 
rights group reported Tuesday that 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hung 
themselves after officials extended their sentences by three to six months 
because they had staged a hunger strike to protest abuse and beatings.

The group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, cited the 
relative of a practitioner who was resuscitated as saying 10 people died.

Falun Gong Deaths Set Off Dispute on Suicide Report

by Craig S. Smith ("New York Times," July 4, 2001)

SHANGHAI, Wednesday, July 4:  At least 10 followers of the banned Falun Gong 
spiritual movement were reported on Tuesday to have died at a labor camp in 
northeast China last month, either in a group suicide or from torture.

The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said 10 
women killed themselves to protest their treatment at the Wanjia labor camp 
outside Harbin in Heilongjiang Province.

A government spokesman in Beijing said early today that 14 followers had 
committed suicide at the camp. Another 11 attempted suicide but were stopped 
by camp guards, he said.

Falun Gong's Web site (www.minghui.org), based in the United States, was 
quick to denounce the rights group's report on Tuesday of a mass suicide, 
saying that 15 women at the camp had been tortured to death and that the camp 
had labeled their deaths suicide to cover up its crime.

Thousands of Falun Gong adherents have been sent to labor camps since the 
government banned the movement two years ago, arguing in part that it was a 
dangerous cult that had persuaded people to forgo necessary medical care or 
even kill themselves. Since the ban, there have been persistent reports of 
torture and deaths of followers by the authorities. Falun Gong's Web site 
says 236 followers have died as a result of confrontations with the police or 
prison guards.

The government has acknowledged a handful of deaths, but has attributed them 
all to natural causes or to suicide. And it says it thwarted several 
group-suicide attempts by followers. In May, the government took a group of 
Western reporters on a tightly controlled tour of Masanjia labor camp in 
northeastern Liaoning Province, which Falun Gong had also accused of 
torturing followers. The reporters saw nothing untoward.

Without independent reporting, it is impossible to determine which accounts 
are factual, and independent reporting on the subject is strictly forbidden.

Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, has spoken out against suicide in the past, 
though he has been silent on the subject after recent suicide reports, most 
notably the self-immolation of five followers on Tiananmen Square in January. 
Other Falun Gong members have denied that the five who set themselves on fire 
were actually followers, and charged that the government staged the event.

Meanwhile, Mr. Li's cryptic exhortations to followers on the Falun Gong Web 
site have grown increasingly strident, chastising those people who cannot 
endure torture or even death in defense of his cosmology, which holds that 
Falun Gong is engaged in a struggle with evil beings for the redemption or 
destruction of the universe.

"Even if a dafa cultivator truly casts off his human skin during the 
persecution, what awaits him is still consummation," Mr. Li wrote a few days 
after the labor camp deaths. Dafa means great law or dharma, and refers to 
Falun Gong, which can be translated as Law Wheel Practice. Consummation is an 
apparently transcendent event that is the goal of all followers.

"Any fear is itself a barrier that prevents you from reaching consummation," 
Mr. Li wrote.

No account of the labor camp deaths could be immediately verified.

A woman from the home village of Zhao Yayun, one of the dead followers 
identified in the reports, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that Ms. 
Zhao had indeed practiced Falun Gong and committed suicide.

"She died in jail," said the woman in Lequn, Heilongjiang Province, declining 
to give her name. "She killed herself-- everybody is talking about it."

The human rights group quoted a relative of one of the dead women as saying 
that 16 Falun Gong followers tried a group suicide on June 20 and that 10 had
died. It said the 16 were among 30 followers who had gone on a hunger strike 
in mid-June. The 16 hanged themselves with ropes fashioned from bedsheets 
after the camp extended their sentences by up to six months in punishment for 
the strike, the report said.

The human rights group said an officer from the township police station and a 
township official named Wang Guonan confirmed Ms. Zhao's death and the group 
suicide attempt.

The Falun Gong report, meanwhile, said that the women had all been tortured 
to death and that 15 had died. It said Ms. Zhao "died with injuries all over 
her body," but gave no information to substantiate the claim.

Chinese officials issue conflicting accounts of Falun Gong suicide; sect 
says its followers were killed

by John Leicester (AP, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) -- Fourteen followers of the banned Falun Gong sect died in a 
Chinese labor camp, a provincial official said Wednesday. The official and a 
Hong Kong-based rights group termed the deaths mass suicide, but the sect 
said the prisoners were tortured to death.

However, an official with China's central government claimed the provincial 
official was wrong and said only three people had died in the incident at the 
Wanjia in the northeastern Heilongjiang province. "That's the official 
answer," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Lan Jingli, director of the regional judicial bureau in Heilongjiang, said 
the 14 inmates made ropes from sheets and hanged themselves from bunk beds 
during a gap between patrols by prison guards. Another 11 were rescued by 
camp guards as they tried to kill themselves, Lan said.

The conflicting accounts came after a Hong Kong-based rights group reported 
Tuesday that 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hanged themselves. The 
Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said the officials had 
extended prisoners' sentences by three to six months because they had staged 
a hunger strike to protest abuse.

Falun Gong blamed camp authorities, saying in a statement Tuesday that at 
least 15 women followers were tortured to death on or around June 20. The 
sect said its followers could not have committed suicide because they were 
watched around the clock.

"There's no way they could be allowed to have the opportunity to even find 
anything to hang themselves," said Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in 
Hong Kong.

Lan said guards watched the practitioners closely, patrolling every five 
minutes, but that the followers acted quickly when the guards were gone.

"One minute is enough to kill," Lan said. "While 11 of them were immediately 
rescued by the camp guards, 14 others died."

Lan's account would make it the deadliest mass suicide involving Falun Gong 
practitioners in the government's relentless two-year crackdown on the 
spiritual movement, which was banned in 1999.

But the central government official, responding to reporters' phoned 
questions, said 11 sect followers, all women, had attempted suicide, and that 
eight of them survived. The survivors are now "out of danger," said the 
official for the cabinet's State Information Office.

China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 
followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use 
meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim 
followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will to go heaven 
when they die.

Falun Gong, however, says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, 
including suicide. The group disputed government claims that five people who 
set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in Beijing earlier this year were 
Falun Gong practitioners.

The meditation sect says the government is running a smear campaign against 
it and that hundreds of practitioners have died of torture and abuse in 
police custody during the crackdown on the group.

It said the Wanjia labor camp used torture to make practitioners renounce 
Falun Gong. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an 
electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners 
after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group.

In Hong Kong, Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest Wednesday outside 
China's representative office to call on the United Nations to investigate 
the deaths.

The sect members accused the Chinese government of "inhumane and beastly 
crimes."

"S.O.S.: Save Falun Gong practitioners from being killed in China," said one 
banner displayed during the protest as members practiced their slow-motion 
exercises.

Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas on having a hand in the 
suicide.

"Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the so-called 
`instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to make them 
believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level of 
practicing," he said. "The mass suicide of June 20 could also be caused 
through this way."

The government denies that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners are 
mistreated.

Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of 
imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong 
followers would now be watched 24 hours a day, he said.

Meanwhile, two dozen sect members in New York started a 250-mile walk from 
Manhattan to Washington on Tuesday to protest Beijing's increasingly violent 
crackdown on the group.

Chinese Labor Camp Deaths Disputed

by John Leicester (Associated Press, July 4, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) - China and a human rights group said Wednesday that followers 
of the outlawed Falun Gong sect hanged themselves in a mass suicide at a 
prison camp, but the sect claimed the inmates were tortured to death.

Reports of the number of dead of ranged from three to 16, with the number 
differing even among government officials.

A judicial official in northeastern Heilongjiang province, Lan Jingli, said 
14 followers hanged themselves from bunk beds with sheets at the province's 
Wanjia labor camp before dawn on June 20. Another 11 followers were stopped 
from hanging themselves by camp guards, Lan said.

However, a spokesman for the central government's State Council Information 
Office said three died and eight were rescued. All 11 were women, he said.

The other eight are now ``out of danger,'' said the spokesman, speaking on 
condition of anonymity. He also said the suicides occurred June 21, instead 
of June 20.

A human rights group, The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights 
and Democracy, first reported the deaths and said 16 Falun Gong practitioners 
had hanged themselves as a protest.

It said the suicides came after camp officials extended their sentences by 
three to six months to punish them for a hunger strike.

Falun Gong denied the group committed suicide, saying at least 15 followers 
were beaten to death at Wanjia on or around June 20.

On Wednesday, about 30 Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest outside 
China's representative office in Hong Kong, the Chinese-governed territory 
where the group remains legal. They called on the United Nations to 
investigate the deaths.

Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in Hong Kong, cast doubt on the official 
claim of suicide, saying prisoners are watched around the clock in labor 
camps.

``There's no way they could be allowed to have the opportunity to even find 
anything to hang themselves,'' she said.

Lan, who directs the Heilongjiang bureau that oversees the province's labor 
camps, said camp guards patrolled every five minutes. But he said the 
followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang themselves from their 
cell bunks with sheets.

The State Council spokesman identified the three dead as Zhao Yayun, 53; 
Zhang Yulan, 54; and Li Xiuqin, 60. All three women were from Heilongjiang, 
he said.

Falun Gong also identified Zhao, Zhang and Li as among those it said were 
killed. Li's body was cremated before her family could view it, the group 
said. Zhang's family saw her body June 23 and observed deep marks on her 
neck, it said.

Zhao's body had strangulation marks on the neck, bruises on the back and 
shoulders, and finger marks on the face, the group said.

During the government's two-year crackdown on the spiritual movement, 
thousands of followers have been sent to labor camps where China says they 
are counseled into breaking ties with Falun Gong.

China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 
followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use 
meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim 
followers also have killed themselves in the belief they will go to heaven 
when they die.

Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas of having a hand in the 
suicides.

``Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the 
so-called `instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to 
make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level 
of practicing,'' he said.

Falun Gong says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, including suicide, 
and says the government is running a smear campaign against it.

Falun Gong says 250 followers have died from police brutality since July 
1999, more than half of them in the past six months.

The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy says it has confirmed 
153 deaths in the crackdown.

Falun Gong said the Wanjia camp tortures practitioners to make them renounce 
the group. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an 
electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners 
after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group, it said.

Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of 
imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong 
followers will now be watched constantly, he said.

Students stage protest march to nation's capital

by Joseph Fitzgerald ("The Call," June 30, 2001)

WOONSOCKET -- Wearing vivid yellow shirts emblazoned with the words "Falun
Gong," a group of young Chinese students passed City Hall on Main Street
carrying a banner that read: "Stop the Killing in China."
Greeted with quizzical looks from passersby, the students were traveling
through Woonsocket on Thursday as part of a nationwide walk from Boston to
Washington D.C. to raise awareness regarding China's human rights abuses
against practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation sect targeted by the
Chinese government as a subversive threat since 1999

"This is a very peaceful protest and our goal is awareness," said Meng
Yang-Jian of Boston, one of five Falun Gong practitioners in the group
undertaking the 450-mile walk to Washington D.C. where more than a thousand
Falun Gong practitioners are expected to gather on July 20.

In one hand, Jian holds a picture of Wang Lixuan, a 30-year-old Falun Gong
practitioner, and her 8-month-old-son, Meng, both of whom died in a Chinese
labor camp.

According to the Falun Gong Human Rights Update, a weekly newsletter
reporting on human rights abuses against Falun Gong, Lixuan and her baby were
tortured to death in police custody on Nov. 7, 2000. The coroner's
examination revealed that Ms. Wang's neck and skull had been crushed. Her
son's ankles had deep bruises presumably from being hung upside down by
handcuffs. There were also bruises around his head and blood in his nose.

Falun Gong is an ancient Chinese exercise that improves health, reduces
stress and increases energy. The practice involves slow, gentle movements of
the body, while teaching the principals of truthfulness, benevolence and
forbearance. Similar to Tai Chi and other popular practices, Falun Gong is
easy to learn, enjoyable to do and enhances practitioners spiritually,
mentally and physically.

Falun Gong was brought to the public in 1992 and became popular through word
of mouth due to its many benefits. So far, Falun Gong has attracted over 70
million people around the world. Some people do the exercise alone, while
others meet in parks to do the five exercises together.

While Falun Gong has received overwhelming support from the U.S. Congress,
other governments and human rights groups, it remains a target of suppression
by the communist regime in China.

"The totalitarian government, which rejects freedom of conscience, expression
and assembly, groundlessly felt threatened by the growing number of Chinese
who regularly do the ancient exercises. This led to the government's
crackdown beginning in July of 1999," says a fact sheet prepared by the Falun
Dafa Informational Center.

In the past year, the organization says, at least 50,000 Falun Gong
practitioners have been detained, over 10,000 sent to labor camps without
trial, hundreds sentenced to prison terms up to 18 years, and more than 1,000
illegally imprisoned in mental hospitals where they suffer through forced
injections and psychological torture. To date, more than 200 practitioners
have died as a result of police brutality.

"In China there is no way to speak out and our voices can't be heard there,"
says walker Hao Wang, a high school sophomore from Boston. "This is our way
of speaking out for those who can't."

According to Wang, those who practice Falun Gong worldwide, as well as
international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International, are calling for an open dialogue between the Chinese
Government and its citizens who practice Falun Gong.

Falun Gong protests in HK against China crackdown


  (Reuters, June 26, 2001)


HONG KONG, June 26 (Reuters) - Followers of the controversial Falun Gong 
spiritual movement rallied in heavy rain in Hong Kong on Tuesday and urged 
the United Nations to conduct an independent probe into China's crackdown on 
the group.

Clad in yellow t-shirts bearing the slogan "China, stop persecuting Falun 
Gong," about 100 members of the group sat in lotus positions and meditated 
for an hour outside Beijing's Liaison Office in the territory's western 
district.

A spokeswoman for the group said it wanted the United Nations to set up an 
independent investigation into the crackdown on its members in mainland 
China, where the movement is banned and branded an "evil cult."

To mark the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of 
Torture, the group also held a separate photo exhibition showing what they 
said were injuries inflicted by Chinese police.

In a petition letter which they left outside the Liaison Office, they urged 
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji to end the persecution.

Despite the mainland ban, the movement has remained legal in Hong Kong. The 
former British colony was promised a high degree of autonomy when it reverted 
to Chinese rule in mid-1997.

But the territory's leader Tung Chee-hwa recently called the Falun Gong in 
Hong Kong an "evil cult," echoing Beijing for the first time.

The Falun Gong said 233 practitioners have been tortured to death in China so 
far this year versus 22 in the same period last year. At least 10 members had 
died in police custody in the past week, it said.

Spiritual Society or Evil Cult?

by John Leicester ("TimeAsia," (AP). June 25, 2001)

(Picture-Falun Gong practitioners watch a video about a solar eclipse, part 
of China's deprogramming efforts.)

Not much is known about Li Hongzhi, 48, the man who created Falun Gong in 
1992. He worked as a grain clerk in northeast China's Liaoning province. He 
played trumpet in a troupe run by the forestry police in neighboring Jilin. 
And then he wrote a very odd book that affected millions.

Li's rambling dissertation, Zhuan Falun, has only added to accusations that 
Falun Gong is a cult. Li writes he can personally heal disease and that his 
followers can stop speeding cars using the powers of his teachings. He writes 
that the Falun Gong emblem exists in the bellies of practitioners, who can 
see through the celestial eyes in their foreheads. Li believes "humankind is 
degenerating and demons are everywhere";"extraterrestrials are everywhere, 
too,”and that Africa boasts a 2-billion-year-old nuclear reactor. He also says 
he can fly.

Wacky, perhaps. But is Falun Gong a cult? Not necessarily, if classic 
characteristics of cults are taken into account. A reckoning:

Typical Cult Techniques Falun Gong's Record 
â€¢ Exerts tremendous pressure on people to join            NO 
â€¢ Fosters an us-versus-them approach to life                YES 
â€¢ Believers remove themselves from society                 NO 
â€¢ Uses jargon that outsiders don't understand                YES 
â€¢ Believers required to donate large sums of money      NO 
â€¢ Led by a charismatic master                                         YES

We'll do nothing on Falun Gong

 
by Benedict Rogers ("Hong Kong Mail," June 22, 2001)

DOING nothing is Hong Kong's way of dealing with the Falun Gong, Chief 
Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang Yam-kuen disclosed yesterday.
``We are dealing with Falun Gong by not dealing with Falun Gong - that is the 
Hong Kong way,'' he said in the most candid description of the government's 
policy so far.
Mr Tsang appeared to distance himself from Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's 
statement last week describing Falun Gong as ``an evil cult'', by saying that 
it was ``immaterial'' how Falun Gong described itself.

What mattered, he argued, was that Hong Kong was run by the rule of law, 
``and nothing less''. 
Falun Gong and democratisation, were, Mr Tsang said, ``peculiarly Hong Kong 
issues'' that had to be dealt with in a ``Hong Kong way''. The Hong Kong way, 
he explained, meant doing nothing.
``The Hong Kong way means it is different from the mainland way. We do it our 
own way, within our own rule of law, and that is what we have been doing.''
Falun Gong members, he said, were able to practise their exercises freely 
every day. ``Nobody bothers them if they are going to continue with their 
breathing exercises,'' Mr Tsang told a lunch at the Foreign Correspondents' 
Club. 
Mr Tsang said the question of anti-cult legislation was a rumour. ``We are 
not legislating,'' he said.
Hong Kong's freedom, he added, was ``non-negotiable'', and the rule of law 
must be preserved.
In an echo of remarks last month in which he said his Catholic beliefs guided 
his definition of a cult, Mr Tsang said there were differing views on what 
constituted a cult.
``You have your own definition, Mr Tung has his own definition, the Buddhists 
have one, the Catholics have another, the Christians have other things. But 
this is the beautiful thing about Hong Kong,'' he said.
In a free society like Hong Kong, he said, ``it is natural for people to have 
different views on what a cult is and what an evil cult is''.
But, he added, regardless of whether Falun Gong is ``a cult, and whether it 
is evil or not'', the most important thing is that in Hong Kong ``religion is 
totally free''. 
Although Mr Tung and Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee had said 
there were no immediate plans to legislate, Mr Tsang was more direct.
``I think there is no need for us to speculate on what we are going to do but 
we are not legislating.''
Mr Tsang ruled out a public meeting with Falun Gong leaders, saying that 
would ``not be conducive to dialogue'', but admitted that officials were in 
contact with Falun Gong representatives..

``Our colleagues have been talking to them ... What is conducive to the 
dialogue is quiet chats about what you are here for, what you are doing and 
what you are going to do. I believe that's taking place between my colleagues 
and some of the Falun Gong practitioners here,'' Mr Tsang said.
``I think we make things better by dealing with it in a discreet and quiet 
manner.''
However, an official said later that contact with Falun Gong related only to 
arrangements for protests and public events, and not negotiations over policy.
This was echoed by Falun Da Fa convenor Kan Hung-cheung who said there had 
never been any meeting, private or open. ``We have not met with any 
government officials so far, we have only contacted the police and officials 
from Leisure and Cultural Services Department,'' he said.
On ``one country, two systems'', the Chief Secretary said he regarded it as 
part of his mission to ``foster a greater sense of understanding'' in Hong 
Kong and the mainland.
``I believe this is the best way to increase its effectiveness and protect 
its integrity,'' he said. ``Safeguarding our system is the key to its 
success. Hong Kong people cherish their freedom.''
    There was a mixed reaction to Mr Tsang's comments from legislators. ``It 
is quite obvious that what Mr Tung said represented the government's 
position,'' said Tsang Yok-sing, the chairman of the Democratic Alliance for 
Betterment of Hong Kong.
    Independent Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee could not accept Mr Tsang's explanation. 
``Mr Tung made the statement at Legco's question-and-answer session, not a 
tea gathering. I can't see it as a personal view,'' she said. 
The Frontier's Cyd Ho Sau-lan felt that Mr Tsang's comments were aimed at 
helping Mr Tung fend off critics.
Benedict Rogers  
22 June 2001 / 01:46 AM

US, UK pressure HK over Falun Gong


Any ban would spell death of 'One Country, Two Systems',

they warn Tung administration


by Quak Hiang Whai ("Business Times," June 21, 2001)

THE United States and Britain are said to have put pressure on the Hong Kong 
government not to ban the Falun Gong movement in the territory.

Sources told BT the two governments have signalled to the Tung Chee-hwa 
administration 'in the strongest terms' that any ban on Falun Gong would 
effectively spell the death of the 'One Country, Two Systems', as Hong Kong 
would then be just another Chinese city.

Diplomatic pressures are said to have built up after Mr Tung declared last 
week that Falun Gong was 'an evil cult'.

The US and Britain are also said to be considering retaliatory measures. In 
the case of the US, this could include a reassessment of trade links with 
mainland China.

The British government is also said to have issued through informal channels 
a stern warning that it would initiate measures that will severely hurt Hong 
Kong's international image and signal a political fallout between Hong Kong 
and its former colonial master.

But some of America's allies - particularly in Europe - are not too keen on 
supporting these measures.

The Falun Gong movement, banned in the mainland, has been a political 
minefield which has plagued the Tung administration for months as the 
international community watched the principle of One Country, Two Systems 
being put to its greatest test to date.

Not since the controversial right of abode case, where Beijing was asked to 
interpret certain provisions of the Basic Law, has the territory been faced 
with a bigger threat to the survival of the 'Great Concept' laid down by the 
late paramount leader Deng Xiao-ping.

Faced with conflicting demands from different factions, Mr Tung is in an 
almost no-win situation as he attempts to balance perceived demands from his 
Beijing political masters and his Hong Kong constituents as well as 
international opinion.

In February, he said Falun Gong was 'more or less' a cult. Last month, he 
described them as 'a bit of a cult'. In his remarks to lawmakers last week, 
he cut out all ambiguity and declared the group an 'evil cult'.

But for now, the Hong Kong leader is unlikely to take the step of outlawing 
the group which practises deep-breathing exercises most of the time, although 
members do take part in public demonstrations to protest against persecutions 
of their members in the mainland.

Observers feel an outright ban would have too high a political cost on Mr 
Tung.

'Pressure is not just coming from the north but also from across the 
Pacific,' said one political watcher here. 'With China at the doorstep of WTO 
and when passage of NTR (normal trading relations) is hanging in the balance, 
I believe our masters will take a more moderate stand, for the time being at 
least.'

Any decision by Mr Tung may also have a huge impact on the jittery relations 
between China and the new US administration, fresh from the recent ugly spy 
plane incident.

Despite his statement last week, Mr Tung has also indicated he will not be 
enacting anti-cult laws soon. In fact, the Hong Kong government is not 
expected to carry out any concrete measures other than uttering the usual 
rhetoric to pacify its Beijing masters.

One observer said: 'Most Hongkongers do appreciate that we are living under 
the shadow of China and would not quibble with any measures justified by 
concrete evidence that the religious movement is indeed aiming to destabilise 
Hong Kong. Perhaps everyone is holding their breath for Falun Gong to step 
out of line.'

Until that happens, Mr Tung has little room to manoeuvre. He has already 
suffered a huge political setback over the issue.

In the past week, the chief executive has come under sharp criticism from not 
just the liberals for his hardline statements on the movement but also from 
pro-Beijing figures who claimed he has been too indecisive for too long.

It has also been reported that Beijing has not been too happy with Mr Tung's 
handling of the issue, although the Chinese leaders, including President 
Jiang Zemin, have opted not to comment openly on the issue in Hong Kong.

Some analysts cite the high-profile activities of Falun Gong as one of the 
main factors that led to the departure of former chief secretary Anson Chan 
who was popularly seen as the defender of democracy in Hong Kong.

China blamed for Falun Gong death


(CNN, June 21, 2001)

BEIJING, China -- Police in China beat to death a handicapped follower of the 
banned Falun Gong meditation sect, the group said Thursday.

Zhang, a 38-year-old laid-off factory worker, walked with a cane.

He died three days after he was dragged from his home in Shuangcheng, a city 
in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, the group said in a statement 
from the United States.

An official at the Shuangcheng detention center confirmed that Zhang was 
dead, but said he died of illness after going on a hunger strike.

"One thing for sure is that he was not beaten to death. I can't tell more 
details," said the official, who would not give his name.

Police refused requests for comment.

The Falun Gong said Zhang had been harassed by police and local officials and 
detained several times.

He was declared dead on arrival at a hospital emergency room June 12.

His family was not informed until the next day and forbidden to view his body 
or have an autopsy performed, the Falun Gong said.

The location of his remains is unknown, the group added.

Fatal measures
Zhang is the first Falun Gong member reported dead since Chinese authorities 
announced harsher punishment for practitioners.

Rules published June 10 allow courts to try followers who spread information 
about Falun Gong for subversion, separatism, and leaking state secrets -- all 
crimes punishable by death.

The Falun Gong said Zhang's death brought to 224 the number of followers who 
have died in police custody since China launched a crackdown on the group 
nearly two years ago.

Other independent sources say more than 100 have died.

China says some followers committed suicide in custody, but denies abuses.

Falun Gong attracted millions of members during the 1990s by mixing 
traditional Chinese exercises with hybrid oriental philosophy.

China calls the group an evil cult and outlawed it in July 1999.

Dodging the crackdown
Public protests by sect followers in Beijing's Tiananmen Square have grown 
increasingly rare, since harsh suppression measures were imposed.

Practitioners protesting in Beijing have routinely been kicked, punched, 
dragged across the ground and thrown into police vans in view of Chinese and 
foreign tourists.

But adherents have continued to anger officials by stuffing mailboxes with 
their literature, spraying graffiti supporting the group, and posting 
information online, including the names and phone numbers of police and 
prison officers whom they accuse of abusing and killing practitioners.

The government has been trying to counter negative reports on its crackdown 
by taking foreign reporters on tours of labor camps were members are 
detained.

The camps are invariably clean and their inmates passive. Wardens deny 
abusing followers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

HK's Falun Gong slams Tung for "evil cult" label


  (Reuters, June 15, 2001)


HONG KONG, June 15 (Reuters) - More than 100 Falun Gong members gathered 
outside Hong Kong's government headquarters on Friday in protest at the 
territory's leader, Tung Chee-hwa, branding the spiritual movement an evil 
cult.

Wearing the trademark yellow tee-shirts, they performed their slow-moving 
exercises, while some waved banners denouncing Tung's comments as 
preposterous.

Tung on Thursday called the Falun Gong a well-organised, evil cult with a 
political agenda, but he said he had no immediate plans to propose 
legislation banning the movement.

The remarks were his bluntest yet on the group, which was banned in mainland 
China in mid-1999.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to China in 1997 with the 
promise of broad freedoms and a high degree of autonomy.

"All we do is exercise either at home or in a park to improve our health, and 
study the teachings to upgrade our moral standards. As a result, we have 
become mentally and physically healthy people. Mr Tung, why is that evil?" 
the group said in a petition letter.

The group also said it was "vicious" for a senior Tung aide to have compared 
the movement recently to the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult, whose nerve gas 
attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 left 12 dead and thousands ill.

China, which accuses the Falun Gong of trying to topple its communist 
leadership, has intensified a crackdown on the group since an apparent 
suicide attempt by alleged members in Beijing in January.

A mother and her 12-year-old daughter died after the self-immolation on 
Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Several Hong Kong newspapers lashed out at Tung on Friday.

In an editorial headlined "The Communist Party looks more like an evil cult 
than the Falun Gong," the widely-circulated Apple Daily said: "What's 
frightening is...Mr Tung is paving the way for policies or laws to suppress 
or ban the Falun Gong."

The South China Morning Post said Tung's remarks were "alarming and 
unnecessary" and "would raise doubts about Hong Kong's willingness to protect 
freedoms of religion and assembly."

Media `re-educated' on Falun Gong treatment


("Hong Kong Mail," June 14, 2001)

MEDIA representatives from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan were escorted around a 
re-education-through-labour camp in Beijing yesterday as the Central 
Government sought to prove it was not ill-treating Falun Gong members.
About half of the 800 inmates at the Tuan He camp are members of the banned 
sect or their families who have been sent there without trials.
Beijing officials say that most of the detainees have abandoned the sect 
after spending terms ranging from one to three years, attending lessons, 
planting flowers and vegetables and breeding animals at the camp.
But one man interviewed on Hong Kong television said he had adhered to his 
beliefs and was being kept in isolation.
``The government cannot oppress beliefs, Falun Gong should not be defined as 
evil. Oppressing people's beliefs is the root of the problem,'' said Fang 
Bing, who was arrested last year.
He said everything would be ``back to normal'' when the government came to 
understand the Falun Gong.
Other detainees, however, thanked the government for retraining them and 
changing their beliefs. An anonymous inmate told reporters that the educators 
were nice to them and ``treated us like friends''. 
Re-education camps, introduced in the 1960s to house drug dealers, 
prostitutes and political and religious dissidents, have come under attack by 
the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Tuan He camp director Zhang Jingsheng insisted that inmates were not abused.
``We ban hitting, scolding or physical penalties against those being 
re-educated. They even have voting and religious rights,'' he said.
But Beijing academics were reluctant in supporting the re-education system.
``By putting citizens in a camp without going through the judicial system and 
manipulating their freedoms for a long period is a violation of human 
rights,'' Professor Chen Weidong of the People's University told Hong Kong 
media..
``The system should be monitored by the judicial system,'' Professor Chen 
said, adding that more people would be detained in those camps after the 
implementation of laws defining evil cults.
Professor Zhang Bingzhu of Beijing's University of Politics and Law suggested 
gradually dissolving the re-education system.

HK Leader Says Falun Gong a Cult, No Plans to Ban


(Reuters, June 14, 2001)

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa said on Thursday he had 
no immediate plans to propose legislation to ban the controversial Falun Gong 
spiritual group, which he called a well-organized cult with a political 
agenda.

The remarks were his bluntest yet on the group, which was banned in mainland 
China in mid-1999 but is still legal in this special administrative region of 
the communist country.

``Undoubtedly, Falun Gong is a cult, it is well-organized, it has lots of 
resources and it is an organization that has politics on its mind,'' he told 
legislators during a question and answer session.

But Tung, who has previously described the group as ``bearing more or less 
the characteristics of an evil cult,'' ruled out immediate measures to curb 
the group.

``I don't think that it is now the time to enact legislation. We are not at 
that stage yet but we will keep a close eye on their every move,'' he said.

China, which accuses Falun Gong of trying to topple its communist leadership, 
has intensified its crackdown on the group since an apparent suicide attempt 
by alleged members in Beijing in January. A mother and her 12-year-old 
daughter died after the self-immolation incident on Beijing's Tiananmen 
Square.

The group in Hong Kong, which has over 300 members, has irked Beijing with 
several protests this year against the crackdown, including demonstrations 
during a visit to the territory by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Tung and other senior officials have said they were studying how cults were 
handled in other countries and have not ruled out enacting laws at some point 
to curb the group.

The recent adoption of an anti-sect law in France prompted some religious and 
rights groups in Hong Kong to speak out strongly against any curbs on the 
Falun Gong, saying it would spell the death of religious freedoms in the 
territory.

The Falun Gong hit back quickly at Tung on Thursday.

``What Mr. Tung said is very prejudiced, wrong, unfair and irresponsible,'' 
said Tony Chan, a Hong Kong Falun Gong member.

``If he looks at other countries, he will see that all other governments have 
nothing against the Falun Gong. Even in France, which has legislated against 
sects, we are not regarded a cult.''

Hong Kong, a British colony for more than 150 years, reverted to Chinese rule 
in July 1997 with the pledge it would have a high degree of autonomy and 
enjoy broad freedoms within China.

China again tightens laws against banned Falun Gong group

by John Leicester (AP, June 10, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) -- China has again tightened its laws against the Falun Gong 
spiritual movement, highlighting the government's difficulties in stamping 
out the group after banning it nearly two years ago.

A legal directive issued by Chinese judicial authorities and announced Sunday 
by the official Xinhua News Agency marked a further hardening in the 
crackdown on Falun Gong, which the government considers a dangerous cult.

Under the directive, courts can prosecute Falun Gong practitioners for 
intentional wounding or murder, a death penalty offense in China, for 
organizing, encouraging or helping fellow followers commit suicide or injure 
themselves.

That clause was designed to prevent incidents like the group suicide attempt 
by five people who set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square in January, 
Xinhua reported.

China said the five -- two of whom died -- were Falun Gong adherents, a claim 
the group disputed.

The new legal directive also targeted Falun Gong practitioners who have 
defied the government by distributing pamphlets and information about the 
group and the crackdown.

Under the revisions, followers can be prosecuted under subversion laws if 
they produce or distribute anti-government materials, Xinhua reported. Laws 
against separatism can also be used to prosecute followers who advocate the 
break up of China or who disturb national unity, it said.

Secrecy laws -- which in China are vague and sweeping -- can be used to 
punish followers who leak or obtain state secrets, Xinhua added. It said that 
clause was aimed at Falun Gong members who have obtained secret documents 
about the crackdown.

The directive goes into effect Monday.

Public protests by Falun Gong practitioners have tailed off in recent months, 
possibly because so many followers have been sent to jails and labor camps or 
been forced by authorities to renounce the group.

But adherents continue to frustrate officials by surreptitiously distributing 
Falun Gong materials, sometimes shoving pamphlets into letter boxes.

Followers have also scrawled Falun Gong graffiti and hung banners in public 
places and posted information on the Internet, including the names and phone 
numbers of police and prison officers they accuse of beating and even killing 
detained practitioners.

Group founder Li Hongzhi, who now lives in the United States, and his 
followers "are constantly hatching new plots," Xinhua quoted an unidentified 
spokesman for China's top court and prosecutor's office as saying.

Falun Gong, which attracted millions of adherents in the 1990s, says it is a 
peaceful spiritual cultivation movement with no political agenda and 
teachings that forbid killing, including suicide. Followers say Li's 
Buddhist- and Taoist-influenced instructions promote health, moral living and 
even supernatural powers.

The legal directive, issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate and Supreme 
Court was not the first time China has broadened its laws against Falun Gong.

In October 1999, three months into the crackdown, China's legislature 
tightened anti-cult laws to quash Falun Gong and allow courts to sentence 
principal organizers to long prison terms and even death.

Beijing hunts for the 'evil ones'
Continues aggressive human-rights abuses, official crackdowns


by Anthony C. Lobaido ("World Net Daily," June 9, 2001)

Editor's note: WorldNetDaily international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido 
has been updating readers on China through his semi-regular report "China 
Watch." In this installment, LoBaido analyzes the plethora of human-rights 
abuses carried out recently by the dictators in Beijing.

In the wake of America's recent standoff with China over the U.S. 
surveillance plane incident, the communist rulers in Beijing have become 
increasingly belligerent in dealing with their own people.

According to a public statement released April 13, the unified plan of party 
committees details new plans for cracking down on dissent inside China. The 
statement reads that Shanghai police will regard the effort to "strike at 
sinister forces and eliminate evil ones" as their primary work in their 
efforts to ensure the sustained stability of public order in Shanghai.

The plan calls on China's police to carry out this operation across the 
entire city of Shaghai, wiping out "sinister and evil forces," striking at 
the "two types of robberies" and intensifying the effort to "rectify chaotic 
situations." At the same time, efforts will be made to implement long-term 
effective management measures to earnestly improve the ability of the public 
security organs at all levels to uphold and control public order.

The statement, reported by Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao media organization, stated 
that the government will seek to "thoroughly reverse the situation in some 
areas where the activities of hooligans and evil forces are prominent, 
effectively [stopping] the growing momentum of serious violent crimes, 
serious economic crimes and drug-related crimes." The statement said the 
government wants to "further increase the sense of security and satisfaction 
among the masses of the people."

The evil ones

But just who are the "evil ones" inside China?

Some of the "evil ones" likely include pro-democracy activists. According to 
the April 1 edition of the South China Morning Post, a prominent Hong Kong 
democracy activist was reportedly "watched" by PRC agents prior to his 
murder.

Hong Kong democracy activist Leung Wah was being watched by mainland state 
security agents before he was murdered in Shenzhen because of his work with 
Chinese dissidents, it has been claimed. The head of a New York-based 
pro-democracy group, Tang Baiqiao, says Leung, 44, was questioned by Shenzhen 
customs officers for two hours when he tried to take relief funds for the 
families of mainland dissidents into China in 1999.

Tang was quoted on a U.S.-based website as saying that the Ministry of State 
Security had been keeping an eye on Leung before his death. He said the group 
would investigate the killing with other pro-democracy groups because they 
feared it could signal the start of a series of major blows for the 
democratic movement on the mainland.

Leung, who also owned a bookstore, disappeared after being lured to Shenzhen 
on November 22. His charred body was dumped outside a hospital in the city 
the next day. The identity of the corpse was confirmed by Hong Kong police. 
Tang said Leung joined their group in early 1998 and was entrusted with a 
liaison role with the mainland.

Another group of "evil ones" include Chinese farmers who dared to leak state 
secrets by allegedly uncovering corrupt practices on the mammoth Three Gorges 
Dam project on the Yangtze River. Also in April, the Armed Forces Press 
reported that four farmers Ð He Kechang, Ran Chongxin, Jiang Qingshan and Wen 
Dingchun Ð were arrested for allegedly detailing the systematic embezzlement 
of resettlement funds for the huge project.

According to Human Rights Watch and Probe International, the four arrested 
farmers' "crimes" likely include making contact with the international and 
Hong Kong press. The farmers are among the over 1 million people expected to 
be relocated because of the project. They were arrested in March as they 
prepared to come to Beijing to formally petition the government over the 
alleged corruption. Yunyang County, the farmers' home, is in the middle of 
what will become the dam's huge reservoir area.

Human Rights Watch is a New York-based rights group, while Probe 
International is a Canadian-based group that has closely monitored 
environmental and human-rights abuses brought on by the construction of the 
$27 billion dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project. The government 
has earmarked a total of 22.5 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) to relocate 1.3 
million people whose homes will be swamped by the dam, in a process that has 
been plagued by corruption.

Chinese officials, while conceding embezzlement is a problem, have given 
mixed signals about the amount of money involved. In late October, the Three 
Gorges Project Construction Committee said only 28 million yuan ($3.4 
million), or little more than 0.1 percent of all relocation funds, had been 
embezzled. The figure was a fraction of the $600 million reported missing 
from the resettlement budget by the National Audit Office in January.

Family control

On April 23, the South China Morning Post reported that birth-control 
officers locked up Chinese families in Guangzhou. According to the report, 
the Chinese police have incarcerated the relatives of migrant workers who 
failed to return home for family-planning checks. According to residents in 
Zhenlong, 40 kilometers northeast of Guangzhou, some of the detained 
relatives are elderly and all are being held in cramped conditions.

Residents said groups of between two and four people had been locked in rooms 
with less than six square meters of space and no toilet.

"More than 30 people are being detained in the township government compound," 
one resident said. "Some have already been held for three months."

The repression in Zhenlong is yet another sign that enforcement of China's 
strict family planning policy is becoming increasingly difficult, as the 
country's large rural population becomes more mobile. While experiments with 
more liberal approaches to family planning, which emphasize contraceptive 
choice over coercion, have increased markedly over recent years, most local 
officials remain under tremendous pressure to keep population growth rates 
low. This led officials in Zhenlong and elsewhere to take extreme measures.

Police in Guangzhou, Zengcheng and Zhenlong have told residents they can do 
nothing about the detentions, as family planning is the government's 
responsibility.

Public security officers detained a South China Morning Post reporter who 
tried to visit the detained relatives and interview Zhenlong's party 
secretary, the mayor and the vice-party secretary responsible for family 
planning. They also confiscated his film and notes, yet claimed to be unaware 
of any detentions. The incarcerated relatives were subsequently threatened by 
township officials, who told them if they or their family members talked to 
the press, it would only make their situation worse.

To ensure that Zhenlong's migrants do not have more than one child Ð or two 
if the first-born is a girl Ð residents say township officials require the 
migrants to return for regular family-planning inspections.

"All [migrant] women who have given birth to one baby are required to come 
back for inspections," said one resident, who added that they were also 
supposed to have intra-uterine devices fitted to prevent another pregnancy.

But residents say that in recent months officials have become increasingly 
angry at the number of migrants who fail to return home and have begun 
imprisoning their relatives in retribution.

China is facing a population crisis not so much in numbers but in gender. The 
country is running out of females as Chinese families seek sons to carry on 
their family name. The ratio of baby girls to baby boys in China has dropped 
further below the international standard Ð the result, critics say, of its 
controversial "one-child policy," which in some cases has led to 
sex-selective abortion, infanticide and the abandonment of baby girls.

According to the latest figures released by the Chinese authorities this 
week, the gender imbalance has reached 117 boys for every 100 girls, up from 
111:100 about ten years ago. The international norm is 106 boys to 100 girls.

China's population has reached 1.26 billion, below the government's target 
and U.N. projections, and Beijing said that proves its one-child policy is 
working.

As previously reported by WorldNetDaily, girls up to the age of three years 
of age are routinely drowned if parents have a baby boy after a girl's birth. 
Additionally, a 1999 report on the International Planned Parenthood 
Federation website claims that between 500,000 and 750,000 unborn Chinese 
girls are aborted every year after gender screening.

Sterilization, one of the principal forms of birth control, may also be 
performed when parents suffer from alleged "genetic disorders," a practice 
justified by Beijing in pursuit of the goal of 'improving the quality of the 
population."

'Evil ones' studying overseas

Other groups of "evil ones" include Chinese citizens who went to the United 
States to study in the 1980s and '90s and are now returning in large numbers 
to work, often armed with liberal ideas and a foreign passport or green card. 
According to a May 2 Straits Times report, the dictators in Beijing have put 
together a state blacklist of undesirable foreigners. The list, which 
recently featured only a few dozen names, has been expanded to 273. Most of 
the additions were people born in China who now lived overseas. Several of 
those on the list have been detained of late. Those detained had a history of 
contacts with Taiwan or people who were suspected of publicly discussing 
delicate information about political or military affairs in China.

One of those detained is Miss Gao Zhan, a green-card holder who has been 
charged with espionage. Zhan is a sociologist affiliated with an American 
university and who specializes in women's issues. She has attended 
conferences in Taiwan. Another detainee is businessman Qin Guangguang, a 
green-card holder who has been charged by State Security with leaking state 
secrets. Also in detention are Li Shaomin, a professor of marketing at the 
City University of Hongkong, and Wu Jianmin, a freelance journalist.

The American response

China's crackdown has not escaped scrutiny in the United States.

"The situation in China has grown worse in the past year," said Elliott 
Abrams, chairman of the Commission on International Religious Freedom, which 
released its second annual report. The commission report, presented to 
President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and congressional 
leaders, had a list of non-binding recommendations, such as censuring China 
over human rights and opposing Beijing's bid to host the Olympic Games.

The 188-page report said Beijing has expanded its repression of unregistered 
religious groups, tightened control on official religious organizations, 
intensified its campaign against the Falun Gong movement and increased 
control over official Protestant and Catholic churches. It said the official 
crackdown on the Falun Gong had been extended to Hong Kong residents and 
foreign citizens.

One excerpt of the report read: "In September 2000, a Hong Kong resident 
Falun Gong practitioner, along with a Chinese mainlander, reportedly were 
arrested nine days after they filed a legal complaint in Beijing against 
Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other high-ranking government officials. 
... In November, a U.S. resident Falun Gong practitioner reportedly was 
arrested on charges of providing national security information to foreigners. 
In December, she was sentenced to three years in prison. Also in November, a 
Canadian citizen was sentenced to three years of re-education through labor 
for practicing Falun Gong. He was reportedly tortured by police officials 
while in custody and was released in January 2001."

The report concluded that China interferes in the training and selection of 
religious leaders and maintains tight control over Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan 
Buddhists. The report urged the U.S. government to try to persuade China to 
ease its grip on religious freedom. Also, the panel urged Washington to work 
at keeping the International Olympic Committee from staging its games in 
China's capital until it improves its record.

The U.S. government, Abrams said, should make freedom of religion in China a 
higher priority. "I think we would like to see a link between religious 
freedom and the bilateral relations with China."

Most in HK sees no need for anti-cult law - survey


(Reuters, June 6)

HONG KONG, June 6 (Reuters) - A majority of Hong Kong citizens see no need to 
legislate against cults, as the territory's administration has suggested it 
might, an opinion poll conducted by an opposition party showed on Wednesday.

The Democratic Party survey also found 56 percent of respondents feared that 
such laws, which could be used against the Falun Gong spiritual movement, 
would curtail freedoms.

The poll of 620 people was taken after Hong Kong Chief Secretary Donald Tsang 
said the government would consider all options including legislation, when 
dealing with cults, and would also study the approaches taken by mainland 
China and France.

In the survey, taken between May 30 and June 2, 57 percent of respondents 
thought Hong Kong did not need anti-cult legislation.

The French National Assembly recently adopted a controversial bill that will 
allow courts to ban groups regarded as sects.

Falun Gong is banned in mainland China as an "evil cult" but is presently 
legal in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, 
had taken a relaxed stance towards the Falun Gong, until the group held a 
high profile conference condemning Chinese President Jiang Zemin in January.

That prompted Beijing to issue stern warnings that any attempts to turn Hong 
Kong into a centre for Falun Gong, or an anti-China base, would not be 
tolerated.

HK Critics Urge Govt Not To Follow French Anti-Cult Law

(AP, June 1, 2001)

HONG KONG (AP)--Passage of a new anti-cult law in France sparked fears Friday 
that Hong Kong's freedoms could be under threat if the government here uses a 
similar measure to thwart the Falun Gong meditation sect. 
The Hong Kong government has taken note of France's law, but said it is too 
early to say whether similar legislation is necessary here.

Falun Gong, local pro-democracy activists, and mainstream religions have all 
expressed worries that any government action against Falun Gong could 
threaten people of other beliefs, too.

The Rev. Fung Chi-wood, a veteran civil rights campaigner, said he fears the 
government will use its political power to clamp down on religious groups.

"I'm highly concerned about the whole thing," said Fung. "France is dealing 
with a religious issue, but we're dealing with a political issue here."

"I hope the government will not act hastily," said opposition lawmaker Emily 
Lau. "There is enough legislation to protect the community. We have to make 
sure we don't overprotect and in the process undermine the people's human 
rights."

Falun Gong is outlawed as an "evil cult" in mainland China, where the 
government is fighting a fierce campaign to eliminate the group.

Falun Gong remains legal in Hong Kong, where citizens continue to enjoy 
Western-style freedoms that are a holdover from British colonial days, but 
pro-Beijing forces have been infuriated by Falun Gong's protests here against 
Beijing's suppression.

They want Falun Gong stopped and Hong Kong's government has said it will 
closely monitor the group out of worries it could harm citizens here. Hong 
Kong's No. 2 official, Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang, has 
said Hong Kong will study anti-cult laws elsewhere.

Critics and opposition lawmakers say a similar move in Hong Kong would be 
unnecessary as Hong Kong hasn't experienced the mass suicides committed by 
cults seen in France.

The French Parliament Wednesday adopted an anti-cult bill which makes it an 
offense to "fraudulently abuse the state of ignorance or a situation of 
weakness (resulting from) serious or repeated pressures or techniques to 
alter judgment."

The law, most notably, provides the means to dissolve groups which have been 
convicted several times.

Three More Falun Gong Members Die

(Associated Press, May 31, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) - Two more members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement 
have died in Chinese labor camps, and another follower committed suicide, 
police and government officials said Thursday.

Gao Xiufeng died in a labor camp in the northern province of Heilongjiang 
after going on a hunger strike, a police officer said. Camp medical staff 
tried to force feed her intravenously, but failed to prevent her death, said 
the officer reached by telephone in Xingsheng, Gao's home village.

The officer, who declined to give his name, didn't say when she died. In a 
statement, U.S.-based Falun Gong practitioners said Gao died May 12.

Lai Zhijun, arrested last year for protesting in Beijing against the 
government's ban on Falun Gong, died last year in a labor camp in Sanshui, in 
the southern province of Guangdong, a government official said.

Lai was a government office manager in the Guangdong town of Fenggang, said 
the official, who also works in Fenggang. He said he did not know the cause 
of Lai's death. Falun Gong said Lai died four days after being put in the 
camp on March 29, 2000.

Another Falun Gong practitioner, Zhao Xinnian, committed suicide by throwing 
himself before a train, said a government official in Ershilipu, Zhao's 
hometown in the northern province of Hebei.

The official, who declined to give his name, didn't say if Zhao had ever been 
sent to a labor camp. Falun Gong said Zhao went missing on May 5 but didn't 
say when he died.

Falun Gong says more than 200 followers have died in custody or from official 
persecution since the government banned the spiritual movement in July 1999 
as a threat to Communist Party rule and social order. Amnesty International, 
a London-based human rights group, has counted at least 93 deaths.

Amnesty said most deaths came from beatings, torture or suicides. Chinese 
government officials say practitioners have committed suicide or died of 
natural causes in custody but maintain that no one has been killed.

China has sent thousands of practitioners to labor camps - a punishment 
imposed without trial - in the course of the crackdown.

Patten warns SAR against crackdown on Falun Gong

by Laura Winter ("Hong Kong Mail," May 26, 2001)

FORMER governor Chris Patten, now a top European Union (EU) official, warned 
Hong Kong yesterday of international concern if it follows the mainland and 
bans the Falun Gong sect. 
Mr Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, told RTHK Radio 3: ``There 
would be a great deal of international interest, if anything was done about 
the Falun Gong because there would be some concerns in Europe and North 
America. 
``There are bound to be international concerns because of events and 
developments outside Hong Kong and not inside Hong Kong.''
Mr Patten was in Beijing for a meeting of East Asian and EU foreign ministers.
In an interview this week, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa compared the Falun 
Gong to the notorious Jonestown sect that committed mass suicide in Guyana in 
1978. More than 900 sect members died. 
His comments reinforced speculation that authorities are considering banning 
the group, which was outlawed on the mainland almost two years ago. 
Mr Tung was comparing the Jonestown suicide to an incident in Beijing's 
Tiananmen Square earlier this year in which two people said by the mainland 
to be members of the group died after setting themselves on fire. 
Earlier, officials said the government was studying overseas experiences in 
legislating against cults. 
The Chief Executive's office said yesterday the government would monitor 
Falun Gong activities and would not allow the abuse of local freedoms to 
disturb the peace in Hong Kong or the mainland. ``Mr Patten should be aware 
that the HKSAR government is able to deal with issues which fall within the 
autonomy of Hong Kong under the Basic Law,'' it said.
Tsang Yok-sing, chairman of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the 
Betterment of Hong Kong, said Mr Patten's comments should have been more 
constructive than critical.
``Each country has its own way to deal with cults,'' Mr Tsang said. 
``If Chris Patten is really concerned about Hong Kong affairs, I think it 
would be better for him to provide some suggestions to the SAR government on 
how to deal with this matter rather than to quarrel with it.''
Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming said: ``I feel it's perfectly 
appropriate for Chris Patten, in his capacity inside the European Commission, 
to make comments about Hong Kong on a Hong Kong radio station.''
Meanwhile, the Bar Association issued a statement yesterday warning that 
``any proposal to legislate against `cults' will invariably threaten freedoms 
of conscience and religion guaranteed to residents of the HKSAR by our 
constitution''.
``The expressions `religion' and `religious belief' are to be broadly 
construed. They should not apply only to the traditional religions,'' it said.
Chinese University sociology professor Lau Siu-kai said Mr Patten's 
assessment was essentially correct, especially in light of the recent souring 
of the relationship between Washington and Beijing.
``If the Hong Kong government is going to take action against the Falun Gong, 
I anticipate some kind of international reaction,'' he said.
Western countries would interpret any move against the group as being the 
product of pressure from Beijing.

Falun Gong Stages Protests as Jiang Visits Hong Kong


by Mark Landler ("New York Times," May 9, 2001)

HONG KONG, May 8:    President Jiang Zemin of China hailed the freedom in Hong 
Kong today, as protesters from the Falun Gong spiritual movement rallied 
throughout the city, accusing Mr. Jiang of imprisoning and torturing their 
members on the Chinese mainland.

Mr. Jiang was the main attraction at a business conference here held by AOL 
Time Warner, the media and publishing conglomerate. Time Warner's executives 
spent part of the gala dinner at which Mr. Jiang spoke trying to figure out 
among themselves how to persuade China to lift a ban on the company's 
flagship magazine, Time.

It was an awkward day for this former British colony and the American 
corporation, both of which have deep, complicated ties to China.

Hong Kong struggled to balance its commitment to civil liberties with its 
desire not to offend Mr. Jiang, who has led the campaign against Falun Gong. 
AOL Time Warner juggled its desire to cultivate Mr. Jiang and the Chinese 
government with its need to defend one of its most prominent magazines.

Only the Chinese president, who jauntily greeted a parade of well- wishers, 
seemed not to notice the conflicts.

"Hong Kong residents have enjoyed full freedom and more democratic rights 
than ever before," he declared, referring to the semiautonomous status 
Beijing granted Hong Kong after China resumed sovereignty here in 1997. "The 
Chinese government will never waver in or change this policy, come what may."

As Mr. Jiang spoke, adherents of Falun Gong tested his claim, mounting the 
first major protest against the president on Chinese soil since before the 
sect was banned on the mainland in July 1999. It is still permitted to 
operate here.

The police did not interfere in the protests, though Falun Gong members 
complained that they were kept far from where Mr. Jiang spoke. The group also 
said that nearly 100 members who had traveled to Hong Kong for the rallies 
were turned back at the airport yesterday and today.

The American Consulate here said American citizens had been among those 
refused entry. A spokeswoman, Barbara A. Zigli, said the consulate had sought 
an explanation from the Hong Kong government.

The editors of Time have been concerned about issues of freedom since early 
March, when the magazine stopped being available on newsstands in mainland 
China (it continues to be sold here). The ban came 10 days after Time 
published an article about the activities of Falun Gong in Hong Kong.

"We regret it appears Time's distribution in China has been restricted," said 
Walter Isaacson, the editorial director of Time Inc. and the former managing 
editor of Time. "We're making inquiries, but either way, Time's journalists 
in China will continue to do their jobs vigorously."

A delegation from the company met with Mr. Jiang this afternoon, but Time's 
status was not broached. As executives mingled with Chinese officials this 
evening, their understanding of the situation became murkier rather than 
clearer. Some officials told them that Time had not been formally banned.

But nobody was in the mood to play sleuth at what was supposed to be a 
conference about the opportunities for American business in China.

In his remarks, Mr. Levin described Mr. Jiang as a "man of honor" and called 
him "my good friend." He used the same phrase two years ago, when Time Warner 
held this conference, the Fortune Global Forum, in Shanghai.