Edited articles on the Chinese government's crackdown on the
Falun Gong movement.
AUGUST - OCTOBER 2000
november and december (2000) articles
_______________________
Sect members in muted protests
("South China Morning Post," October 31, 20000)
A few Falun Gong followers protested in Tiananmen Square yesterday but plans for a mass demonstration and petition on the second last day of a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress appeared to have fallen through. Despite several large Falun Gong protests last week to mark the first anniversary of legislation outlawing the sect, security around the square was more relaxed than usual, with just one police mini-van patrolling among a few hundred tourists.
Plainclothes and uniformed officers detained about a dozen suspected Falun Gong members, most of whom walked quietly into the van. Two protesters tried to raise banners, while another started to perform Falun Gong breathing exercises, witnesses said.
Adherents of Falun Gong, which contains Taoist and Buddhist elements and involves traditional Chinese physical exercises, have protested almost daily in Tiananmen Square since the movement was banned in July last year.
Yesterday's protests coincided with reports that five more Falun Gong followers had died of ill treatment in police custody, taking the total number of reported deaths to 65.
Xie Guiying, 32, was beaten to death this month after struggling with police who took her from her home in Huainan city in Anhui province, the SAR-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.
Liu Yucai, 60, a private doctor from Jilin province, was beaten to death after being detained during another Falun Gong protest on Tiananmen Square on October 1st, it said.
Separately, a Falun Gong member in Dalian claimed that three followers there had died in detention, one as a result of police maltreatment.
Zou Wenzhi, 54, a worker at a chemical plant under the Dalian Dahua Group, died soon after being taken into custody and held at the factory's security department on October 16, said the Falun Gong member, who lives in Dalian.
Dong Yongwei, 50, from a village near Dalian, died just hours after being released from 12 days of detention in late July and early August, according to the Falun Gong member.
The third fatality, Wang Youju, 64, was a former principal of a public health school in Wafangdian, a city about 75km north of Dalian, the sect member said.
Wang was detained on July 22 and died of a heart attack nine days later in a Wafangdian detention centre.
According to the Falun Gong member, police have offered to pay 3,000 yuan (HK$2,820) in compensation to Wang's son, but he has refused and plans to file a lawsuit against the authorities.
_______________________
3 Falun Gong Members Die in Custody
(AP, October 30, 2000)
BEIJING (AP) - A human rights group said Monday that three followers of Falun Gong died in police custody, including one man who the group said was beaten to death after refusing to renounce his membership in the meditation sect.
Wang Bin, a 47-year-old computer specialist, was beaten for three hours by guards at the Dongfeng labor camp, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported. He died Oct. 5, the Hong Kong-based group said.
The group also said Xie Guiying, 32, died of a beating at a police station on Oct. 18 in the eastern city of Zhunan. Liu Yucai, 60, a private doctor from northeastern Jilin province, died in a Beijing police station on Oct. 6, the report said.
The deaths raise to 62 the number of sect followers who have died in detention since China banned the Falun Gong in July 1999.
Chinese officials have declined to discuss individual reports of police abuse against Falun Gong members, but deny that any followers have died from police mistreatment.
Wang's former colleagues at an oil field management institute in the northern city of Daching are demanding that his killers be prosecuted, and sent a representative to discuss the case with police on Monday, the human rights group said.
A Communist Party official at the institute, who would only give his surname, Cui, said he had heard of Wang's death and the protests, but declined to provide details. He said he did not know how police responded to the representative's visit.
Arrests of Falun Gong members in Beijing's Tiananmen Square have become increasingly violent. On Thursday, police pummeled and dragged Falun Gong members to waiting vans, kicking one man in the stomach and head until blood ran from his mouth. ...
_______________________
Police wade into sect followers as protests continue
(AFP, October 30, 2000)
Protesters from the banned Falun Gong movement trying to distribute leaflets in Tiananmen Square yesterday were kicked and beaten by police and dragged off in a police van.
Five women and two men were taken away after some shouted "Falun Gong is good". Several refused arrest and had to be carried struggling into the van, while one police officer hit their backs with a baton.
The protesters were hurling leaflets into the air as police frantically tried to collect them before they were picked up by onlookers.
The leaflets were carrying anti-government news, including a report saying Premier Zhu Rongji was opposed to the crackdown on Falun Gong, a Bhuddist-inspired religious movement.
According to the leaflet, the Prime Minister on Monday visited the Beijing police force's fifth department, which is in charge of handling anti-government protests, urging the officers "to stop putting pressure on Falun Gong practitioners".
The leaflet claimed that the crackdown on the movement had been decided unilaterally by President Jiang Zemin and that other leaders such as Mr Zhu and Vice-President Hu Jintao had not been in favour of taking such a tough line.
An elderly man who appeared to be an innocent bystander was taken for a Falun Gong member and beaten on the back of the head. He was saved from arrest at the last minute by his wife.
The incident took place as crowds of local and foreign tourists looked on, prompting police to strip films from their cameras after the incident.
Loudspeakers in the square started blaring patriotic and military songs, while male and female officers urged onlookers to disperse. Security was tight, with police vans criss-crossing the square.
Police have been on the watch after two days of protests late last week when about 150 sect members were detained.
The mainland's Draconian crackdown on the Falun Gong began after 10,000 followers stunned the leadership by demonstrating in central Beijing in April last year.
_______________________
Falun Gong protests fade on China law anniversary
by Jeremy Page (Reuters, October 30, 2000)
BEIJING, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A handful of members of the Falun Gong spiritual group staged sporadic protests in Tiananmen Square on Monday a year after Beijing passed new legislation outlawing the group.
Plans for a mass demonstration and a petition on the penultimate day of a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) -- China's parliament -- appeared to have fallen through.
Despite several large Falun Gong protests last week, security around the square was more relaxed than usual with just one police minivan patrolling among a few hundred tourists, witnesses said.
Plainclothes and uniformed officers detained about a dozen suspected Falun Gong members, most of whom walked quietly into the van. Two protesters tried to raise banners, while another man started to perform Falun Gong breathing exercises, they said.
Falun Gong members had been expected to issue a petition on Monday to mark the latest in a string of sensitive dates -- the first anniversary of a resolution passed by the NPC Standing Committee which outlawed all "heretic cults."
That allowed tougher sentences on Falun Gong organisers. ...
MORE DEATHS IN CUSTODY
Monday's protests also coincided with a report that three more Falun Gong followers had died of ill treatment in police custody, taking the total number of such deaths to 62.
One of the latest victims was Wang Bin, 47, a computer technician in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.
Wang died on October 5 after being beaten for three hours for refusing to write a statement promising not to practise Falun Gong again, the centre said.
Another, Xie Guiying, 32, was beaten to death this month after struggling with police who took her from her home in Huainan city in the eastern province of Anhui, it said.
Liu Yucai, 60, a private doctor from the northeastern province of Jilin, was beaten to death after being detained during another Falun Gong protest on Tiananmen Square on China's October 1 National Day, it said.
Authorities have acknowledged several deaths in custody, but say most resulted from suicide or illnesses.
POOR TURNOUT
Falun Gong representatives said Monday's turnout could have been thinned by a security crackdown over the weekend, but insisted that protests were not centrally organised or politically motivated.
"There have never been any banners and slogans against the government," said Sophie Xiao, a spokeswoman for Falun Gong in Hong Kong. "We just want the freedom to practise. We have no political agenda at all."
In Hong Kong, about 80 Falun Gong members meditated outside Beijing's Central Liaison Office to urge China to release their bretheren jailed on the mainland.
Wearing yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the words "China Stop Persecuting Falun Gong," the followers went through their slow-motion exercises in the busy Causeway Bay district.
Around them were blown up pictures of bruised limbs, which the group said were photographs of injuries sustained by fellow practitioners while in custody or in jail on mainland China.
Beijing has accused Falun Gong of trying to overthrow the government, detained thousands of adherents, and jailed some 150 prominent members for "using a cult to obstruct justice."
The movement says some 50,000 followers have been detained. Many are sent for "reform through labour," a punishment which does not require a trial.
_______________________
Falun Gong demonstrates in Tiananmen Square
by Jeremy Page (Reuters, Oct. 27, 2000)
BEIJING, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Dozens of members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement demonstrated in Tiananmen Square on Friday and were hustled away by waiting police, a year after the Communist Party declared the group an "evil cult."
Police sprinted backwards and forwards around the vast plaza as small groups of protesters simultaneously pulled out red or yellow banners proclaiming support for the outlawed movement.
"Falun Gong is good," shouted one elderly man before seven plainclothes officers wrestled him to the ground, punched and kicked him, and carried him to a police minivan.
Seconds later, a group of three elderly women tried to unfurl a red banner, but police ripped it from them and bundled them into a van, pulling one by the hair and punching another.
Police have tightened security in Beijing as Falun Gong members are expected to mark the anniversary of their cult status with a petition, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said on Thursday.
Adherents of Falun Gong, a mixture of Daoism and Buddhism and traditional Chinese physical exercises, have protested almost daily in Tiananmen Square, China's political heart, since the movement was banned in July last year.
But they have staged larger, better-organised protests around key dates, like Saturday's first anniversary of an editorial in the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, which first declared Falun Gong an "evil cult."
TOUGH SENTENCES
Monday marks the anniversary of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, outlawing "heretic" cults, including the already banned Falun Gong.
That allowed tougher sentences on Falun Gong organisers.
Beijing has since demonised the group in state media and accused it of trying to overthrow the government. Thousands of adherents have been detained and some 150 prominent members jailed for "using a cult to obstruct justice."
But recent protests, including a large demonstration on the October 1 National Day, show Beijing has failed to stamp out allegiance to the group and its U.S.-based leader Li Hongzhi.
Such sustained protest is rare in China and Frank Lu, a spokesman for the Hong Kong rights group, said "that's because a lot of Falun Gong members are not afraid of being sent to jail or even being killed."
He said there were also protests outside Beijing.
His rights group had received reports on Friday from Changchun in Jilin province that some 100 Falun Gong adherents had been on a protest hunger strike for five days, he said.
"Many hunger strikers have died from being force-fed in the past," Lu said.
The centre says 59 people have died of abusive treatment in detention since Falun Gong was outlawed.
Authorities have acknowledged several deaths in custody, but say most resulted from suicide or illnesses.
The movement, which denies any political aim, says some 50,000 followers have been detained. Many are sent for "reform through labour," a punishment which does not require a trial.
Beijing accuses the group of causing 1,500 deaths through a belief that faith can heal illnesses and 600 cases of mental illness.
Friday's protests were spread over several hours and appeared to attract greater attention than usual from the thousands of mainly Chinese tourists milling around the square.
They rushed from one incident to the next in large crowds to watch the action and several argued angrily with police when their identification cards and bags were checked.
A foreign tourist who took photographs of one incident had the film ripped from his camera by a policeman.
_______________________
Taiwan embraces the spiritual movement that terrifies Peking
by Calum MacLeod ("UK-Independent," October 27, 2000)
About two hundred followers of China's spiritual movement, Falun Gong, were manhandled away from Tiananmen Square in Peking yesterday as they marked the first anniversary of the criminalisation of the movement.
On 30 October last year the parliament rushed through an "anti-cult" law to criminalise retroactively Falun Gong and several groups it was feared were becoming too popular.
But one year on there is still no shortage of supporters prepared to risk arrest, torture and death by protesting in Tiananmen Square.
Ironically, the Chinese crackdown has pushed membership of the Taiwan Falun Gong Research Society to new heights. The Taiwanese branch, run by Tsao Huei-Ling and her husband, now has 30,000 members. While Peking wages war on the "evil sect" it accuses of subversion, Taipei happily condones the activities of the Falun Gong faithful.
Their slogans beckon the curious on buses, between adverts for ways to a better life business studies in the United States on one side, and a range of cosmetics on the other.
Believers are undisturbed as they perform their slow-motion exercises. The memorial hall that looms over their daily ritual houses not Chairman Mao, but an exhibition to his arch enemy Chiang Kai-shek.
"I thought Falun Gong must be good after I saw television news of the mainland authorities arresting people in Tiananmen," said Han Lee-chuan, whocomes to Taipei's Forest Park to meditate with a group ranging from students to great-grandmothers.
Ms Tsao said the Chinese government "has created trouble for itself" with the crackdown, under which thousands have been imprisoned. "We are not plotting to overthrow the Communist Party, that's ridiculous. Falun Gong practitioners should not be concerned with politics. But once millions of practitioners outnumbered the Communist Party, they were frightened we would unite and protest against them."
Ms Han, 59 and retired, said: "People who knew me before say 'how come you have such spirit now?' I used to feel tired all the time, every day was passing and I was getting old. I felt pains in my legs, back and waist. But after practising Falun Gong all my ailments have gone. Now I have a purpose in life."
The feeling of rejuvenation is common among adherents. As Ms Han sat oblivious to the world in deep cultivation of the all-important "mind-nature", her stall of leaflets attracts a few onlookers. But unlike their mainland cousins, the 23 million citizens of Taiwan are somewhat spoilt for choice.
"There is religious freedom here," said Huang Ke-chang, director of Taiwan's Religious Affairs Department. "More than 11 million people follow one of 16 different religions.
"As long as people obey the law, they can believe what they like. But we don't even think of Falun Gong as a religion. They registered as a sports organisation, and we have had no trouble from them," said Mr Huang.
_______________________
Two more Falungong followers die in Chinese police custody: rights body
(AFP, October 26, 200)
Two more followers of the outlawed Falungong mystical group have died in police custody, a Hong Kong-based rights group said Thursday.
The deaths bring to 59 the number of group members who are known to have died in suspicious circumstances in police custody since Falungong was banned in July last year, according to the Information Center on Human Rights and Democracy.
Qi Fengqin, 43, a former official in Liaocheng city, eastern Shandong province died on October 11 after police in the detention center where she was incarcerated tried to force feed her following a hunger strike, the center said.
Police attempted to force liquified food down her throat via tubes, but she died when the liquid got into her lungs, it said.
It was not immediately possible to confirm Qi's death with local authorities or her former employer, the local forestry department.
The center said she was arrested on September 10 for passing out materials documenting the government's "persecution" of Falungong.
Also dead was Zong Hengjie, 34, arrested by police in Shengyang city, northern Liaoning province in September and who was believed by his family to have died after repeated beatings in prison, the center said.
Tiexi district police confirmed to AFP that Zong had died, but denied he was beaten to death.
"He committed suicide because he wanted to escape punishment," an unnamed policeman at the Tiexi station told AFP.
Zong jumped from a fourth-storey window at the detention center where he was locked up. He was being held for passing out materials opposing the government crackdown on the group, the policeman said. ...
Since the ban, some 450 members have received prison sentences of up to 18 years, more than 600 have been sent to mental hospitals, 10,000 have been placed in labor camps and another 20,000 locked up in temporary detention centers, the center said.
_______________________
UAB researcher, wife return from detainment in China
by Tom Gordon ("Birmingham News," 10/24/00)
After being unable to leave China for nearly two months largely because of authorities' concerns over their Falun Gong beliefs, UAB AIDS researcher Shean Lin and his wife, Xiaohua Du, are happily back on American soil.
But their happiness is tempered by concerns about many of their fellow Falun Gong practitioners in China who lack the support that Lin and his wife had in America.
"We're still ... very, very worried about our practitioners in Beijing and other parts of China," Lin said Monday in a telephone interview. "... They all depend on themselves."
Lin a 30-year-old Ph.D. candidate in microbiology at UAB, and his wife, who has a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech and is an employee of Siemens Corp. in Atlanta, landed in New York late Sunday night. The couple flew to the southern Chinese city of Fouzhou in early September to be with Lin's dying father. But the two Chinese citizens were temporarily detained by authorities after Falun Gong material was found in their possession.
Over the next 40 days, Lin said, Fouzhou police interviewed him and his wife five times, told them to be available whenever they wanted to talk to them and, initially at least, told them they could put them in jail. While Lin and his wife could not tell if police had them under surveillance, "they were fully aware of what we were doing every day," Lin said. ...
Lin said official Chinese hostility toward Falun Gong was evident in the types of questions police asked him and his wife.
"They wanted to know if Falun Gong is a big organization," Lin said. "... They wanted to know if our trip was carefully arranged. They had the wrong impression that Falun Gong is an organization that is trying to overthrow the government. They have this impression because of the Chinese government propaganda."
Lin said the way in which he and his wife responded to police questions was in keeping with their Falun Gong faith.
"They have a lot of impressions that Falun Gong practitioners are crazy," Lin said. "... We very calmly and peacefully talked with them every time. We never argued with them. We never criticized them ... and we told them we understood they were just following orders."
As they talked with police and wondered what awaited them, efforts were being made on their behalf at home. Those efforts took the form of petition drives, news media articles and lobbying by the State Department and federal lawmakers including U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills. Lin said those efforts bore fruit, because police seemed "shocked so many people ... were helping us."
Because of the overseas interest in the case, and his and Xiaohua's efforts to show the nonthreatening nature of Falun Gong, the authorities' attitude softened somewhat over time, Lin said. By late September, he and his wife had their passports back and their airline tickets. All that remained was getting U.S. visas.
On Saturday morning, when they expected to leave Beijing's airport on the first leg of a flight back to the United States, customs police took Xiaohua's passport and detained the two of them for questioning. After about three hours and what Lin believes to have been some conversations with higher authorities, police let them go to take a later flight.
"I think the police in Beijing customs, they have met Falun Gong practitioners in the past," Lin said. "They know Falun Gong practitioners are good people and they can't force us to give up our beliefs."
Lin said that unwillingness to give up their beliefs - and to share them with family and friends who may have had a propaganda-influenced view of Falun Gong - was what prompted him and Xiaohua to bring the Falun Gong material into China in the first place.
"This risk was worth taking," he said.
The couple was slated to fly into Atlanta on Monday night and attend a reception there tonight at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.
_______________________
CHINA: Sect leader appears in public
("South China Morning Post," October 23, 2000)
After staying away from the limelight for more than a year, Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi made a public appearance in San Francisco on Saturday. The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said Mr Li made the surprise appearance during a Falun Gong conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco on Saturday afternoon.
He gave a half-hour speech to the 500 adherents at the conference and left in the company of several bodyguards.
The human rights group said Mr Li avoided public appearances because he feared assassination. It was rumoured, the group said, that Beijing had been considering hiring triad members in the US to carry out the killing.
The Falun Gong movement, which combines breathing exercises with Buddhist beliefs, has been banned by the mainland Government and branded an "evil cult". It has defied a crackdown with almost daily protests in Tiananmen Square since it was outlawed. Large numbers of followers were arrested at National Day celebrations this year
_______________________
China casts banned sect as political subversion Danger Increases as Exiled Founder Hints at Martyrdom
by Michael Dorgan ("San Jose Mercury News," October 21, 2000)
BEIJING -- On Tiananmen Square, it has become nearly as common a sight as throngs of tourists lined up for a glimpse of Mao Tse-tung's preserved body.
Almost every day, members of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, often middle-aged women from the countryside, are roughly rounded up by police, shoved into vans or buses waiting nearby and hauled off to undisclosed locations.
More than a year after China's government vowed to crush Falun Gong, which claims tens of millions of members across China, the casualties continue to mount. By the sect's count, 65 followers have died from abuse in police custody and more than 50,000 others have been detained, many ending up in labor camps, prisons or psychiatric hospitals.
Now, both sides have recently shown signs of escalating the conflict to a dangerous new level.
The People's Daily, the Communist Party's main newspaper, recently elevated Falun Gong -- a mix of meditative exercise, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi -- to the highest tier of Communist Party condemnation.
Chinese leaders initially denounced Falun Gong as an ``evil cult'' when it banned the sect in July 1999 and launched a crackdown. The People's Daily, a means of proclaiming the top leaders' views, went further, calling Falun Gong ``a virtual reactionary political force,'' saying, ``Its aim is to overturn the People's Republic of China and to subvert the socialist system.''
The publication of the commentary followed a major show of defiance by Falun Gong members. Several hundred of them turned up for a protest during celebrations in Tiananmen Square on Oct. 1, the 51st anniversary of the founding of communist China. Police pounced on them and hauled them away.
Meanwhile, the sect's founder, who lives in exile in New York, has started using the Internet to urge other followers in China, who have been practicing the sect's disciplines quietly at home, to defend their faith publicly no matter what risks they face.
Non-political origins
But while some may be willing to martyr themselves for the cause, many are not. Falun Gong originally became popular not as a political movement but as a way to stay healthy in a country with little medical coverage.
A 60-year-old retired engineer from Jiangxi province said she started practicing Falun Gong three years ago because her health was poor. The beneficial results were so striking that her husband also began practicing it, she said.
``He's a Communist and did not believe in it at all when I first tried it,'' she said. ``We just practice it for health reasons -- we have never done anything against the Communist Party. If it's banned outside, can't we practice at home? I will not drop it, but I will not do anything to bring troubles to my family.''
A Falun Gong representative in the United States, Gail Rachlin, said she was worried about what the new condemnation would mean for followers in China.
Rachlin, who lobbies for Falun Gong in Washington, said in a press release that the government's recasting of her sect as a political organization might herald an even fiercer crackdown by President Jiang Zemin.
``If we are now to be considered traitors or `enemies' of the state, will he now authorize even more illegal force, including the brutal tactics usually deployed against such threats: assassinations and executions?'' she asked.
In a telephone interview, Rachlin denied that the sect was plotting to topple China's government. But she acknowledged that Falun Gong had been politicized by the government's crackdown, which she characterized as Jiang's ``reign of terror.''
Rachlin said it was a misinterpretation to think that reclusive Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi was urging his followers to become martyrs. Li, she insisted, simply speaks truth and ``doesn't direct anything.''
Li, who left China several years ago and settled in New York, previously told his followers to avoid any involvement in politics.
A Falun Gong practitioner ``should neither interfere with the political affairs of the country nor get involved in any kind of political disputes or activities,'' Li wrote in a 1994 book.
But Li's teachings have changed. He now tells them they must actively oppose China's government to restore cosmic order, or ``rectify the fa'' in Falun Gong lingo.
On the sect's official North American Internet site (http:// clearwisdom.net), Li aims tirades at China's president, whom he denounces as a ``world-class monster.'' One commentary posted there, titled ``Why Do We Shine the Light Directly on Jiang Zemin?'' said China's president is ``the highest representation of the evil force in the world.''
Li also has issued an appeal to his followers that reads like a call for martyrs.
In ``Serious Teachings,'' an article posted on the sect's Web site, Li promises great spiritual rewards if one stands up for Falun Gong, even if doing so costs followers their ``human lives.''
``I'm happy for those disciples who have stepped forward -- future great enlightened beings -- to validate Dafa'' -- Li's name for his teachings -- ``during this time that's been over a year,'' he said.
``Whether they are imprisoned or lose their human lives for persevering in Dafa cultivation, they achieve Consummation.''
`Master' disappointed
While praising those who have been beaten and jailed in China, Li expresses disappointment in followers who have failed to show a willingness to die for the Dafa.
``While their Master is being slandered, what are they doing?'' he asks. ``Are they waiting for something good to just fall from the sky? Are they waiting to reach Consummation once the tribulation ends? I'm really worried about them. They have no idea how dangerous the situation is for their true beings!''
It's difficult to predict what results Li's words may have.
Falun Gong followers in China are not an easy group to poll. Except for those who offer themselves up for arrest on Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong practitioners tend to keep a low profile.
A 65-year-old retired food-factory worker said he likes Falun Gong because it is ``free and keeps us healthy.''
``I worked for the food factory all my life and received little pay,'' he said.
He said he would go to Beijing as many had done to protest the ban, but refrained out of fear that his son would suffer recrimination.
``I have nothing to lose now,'' he said, ``but I have to think of my family.''
_______________________
Falun Gong man missing
("South China Morning Post," October 20, 2000)
A Hong Kong Falun Gong follower who was jailed on the mainland after trying to sue President Jiang Zemin for cracking down on the sect has disappeared, fellow members said yesterday. Furniture dealer Chu O-ming, 43, has not been seen since mainland authorities told his family he had been released from Beijing's Fangshan No 2 Detention Centre. He had been detained for more than a month.
"Over 60 practitioners have been tortured to death on the mainland," said Hui Yee-han, spokesman for the Hong Kong Association of Falun Dafa. "I am worried that he might be like them."
Last Saturday, Mr Chu's family was told by police that he had been released at about 10pm the night before. They were also asked to pick up his personal belongings left at the detention centre. However, Mr Chu did not contact his family and his whereabouts are unknown.
When his family went to the centre and demanded information, the officer on duty said he had been released and was no longer there.
Ms Hui said the group had not been able to contact Mr Chu's family since his disappearance.
The businessman was arrested on September 7 with fellow adherent Wang Jie, 37, days after they filed a case against Mr Jiang and other senior officials at the Supreme People's Procuratorate. Other followers do not know the fate of Mr Wang, a mainlander.
Ms Hui said there were other Hong Kong residents being held on the mainland, "but usually they are released after being detained for one or two days, or they would be sent immediately to Hong Kong. It is terrible what [the authorities] did. According to the law, they should notify the family within 24 hours after the arrest, but the first notification they gave was on October 13".
Mr Chu is a Hong Kong permanent resident and holds an SAR passport. He spends most of the time in Beijing and does not have any family in Hong Kong. An official at the detention centre declined to comment on Mr Chu's whereabouts, saying: "It is not a simple issue. You have to ask the government department in charge of Falun Gong affairs."
The Security Bureau said Mr Chu was under "residential surveillance" in Beijing.
_______________________
Casualties mount in crackdown on China sect
Falun Gong followers becoming martyrs as they defy condemnation as an 'evil cult'
Micahel Dorgan ("Detroit Free Press," October 19, 2000)
BEIJING -- On Tiananmen Square, it has become nearly as common a sight as throngs of tourists lined up for a glimpse of Mao Tse-tung's preserved body.
Almost every day, members of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, often middle-age women from the countryside, are roughly rounded up by police, quickly shoved into vans or buses waiting nearby, and hauled to undisclosed locations.
More than a year after China's government vowed to crush Falun Gong, which claims tens of millions of members across the country, the casualties continue to mount. By the sect's count, 61 followers have died from abuse in police custody and more than 50,000 others have been detained. Many end up in labor camps, prisons or psychiatric hospitals.
Now both sides have recently shown signs of escalating the conflict.
The People's Daily, the Communist Party's main newspaper, recently elevated Falun Gong -- a mix of meditative exercise, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi -- to the highest tier of condemnation.
Chinese leaders initially denounced Falun Gong as an "evil cult" when it banned the sect in July 1999 and launched a crackdown. The People's Daily commentary, a means of proclaiming the top leaders' views, went further, calling Falun Gong "a virtual reactionary political force." It added, "Its aim is to overturn the People's Republic of China and to subvert the socialist system."
The publication of the commentary followed a major show of defiance by Falun Gong members. Several hundred of them turned up for a protest during celebrations in Tiananmen Square on Oct. 1, the 51st anniversary of the founding of communist China. Police pounced on them and quickly hauled them off.
Exiled leader on Internet
Meanwhile, sect founder Li, who lives in exile in New York, has started using the Internet to urge other followers in China, who have been practicing the sect's disciplines quietly at home, to defend their faith publicly no matter what risks they face.
Though some may be willing to martyr themselves for the cause, many are not. Falun Gong gained popularity not as a political movement but as a way to stay healthy in a country where many lack medical coverage.
A 60-year-old retired engineer from Jiangxi province said she started practicing Falun Gong 3 years ago because her health was poor. The beneficial results were so striking that her husband also began practicing it, she said.
"He's a communist and did not believe in it at all when I first tried it," she said. "We just practice it for health reasons -- we have never done anything against the Communist Party. If it's banned outside, can't we practice at home? I will not drop it, but I will not do anything to bring troubles to my family."
A Falun Gong spokeswoman in the United States, Gail Rachlin, said she is worried about what the new condemnation will mean for followers in China.
Rachlin, who lobbies for Falun Gong in Washington, said in a press release that the government's recasting of her sect as a political organization might herald an even fiercer crackdown by President Jiang Zemin.
"If we are now to be considered traitors or 'enemies' of the state, will he now authorize even more illegal force, including the brutal tactics usually deployed against such threats: assassinations and executions?" she asked.
In a telephone interview, Rachlin denied that the sect is plotting to topple China's government. But she acknowledged that Falun Gong has been politicized by the government's crackdown, which she characterized as Jiang's "reign of terror."
Rachlin said it is a misinterpretation to think that reclusive Falun Gong founder Li is urging his followers to become martyrs. Li, she insisted, simply speaks truth and "doesn't direct anything."
Li, who left China several years ago and settled in New York, previously told his followers to avoid any involvement in politics.
A Falun Gong practitioner "should neither interfere with the political affairs of the country nor get involved in any kind of political disputes or activities," Li wrote in a 1994 book.
But Li's teachings have changed. He now tells them they must actively oppose China's government to restore cosmic order, or "rectify the fa" in Falun Gong lingo.
The sect's official Web site, www.clearwisdom.net, is filled with tirades against China's president, whom Li denounced as a "world-class monster." One commentary posted there -- titled "Why Do We Shine the Light Directly on Jiang Zemin?" -- said Jiang is "the highest representation of the evil force in the world."
Li also has issued an appeal to his followers that reads like a call for martyrs.
In "Serious Teachings," an article posted on the sect's Web site, Li promises great spiritual rewards if one stands up for Falun Gong, even if doing so costs followers their "human lives."
While praising those who have been beaten and jailed in China, Li expresses disappointment in followers who have failed to show a willingness to die for the Dafa.
"While their Master is being slandered, what are they doing?" he asks. "Are they waiting for something good to just fall from the sky? Are they waiting to reach Consummation once the tribulation ends? I'm really worried about them. They have no idea how dangerous the situation is for their true beings!"
Followers keep low profile
It's difficult to predict what results Li's words may have.
Falun Gong followers in China are not an easy group to poll. Except for those who offer themselves up for arrest on Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong practitioners tend to keep a low profile.
A 65-year-old retired food factory worker from Hebei province, speaking on condition that he not be named, said he likes Falun Gong because it is "free and keeps us healthy."
"I worked for the food factory all my life and received little pay," he said. "I have to live in fear because the factory has stopped paying the medical bills for us and I don't know when my pension will be stopped."
He said he would go to Beijing as many have done to protest the ban, but refrained out of fear that his son would suffer recrimination.
"I have nothing to lose now, but I have to think of my family," he said.
__________________________
Two Falun Gong Members Missing
by Dirk Beveridge (Associated Press, October 19, 2000)
HONG KONG (AP) - Two members of the Falun Gong spiritual sect who were detained after suing Chinese President Jiang Zemin for banning the group have mysteriously disappeared, followers in Hong Kong said Thursday.
The Falun Gong adherents said they don't know what happened to Chu O-ming or Wang Jie, who were missing in mainland China.
Falun Gong followers and human rights groups have made numerous allegations of other adherents dying while in custody in China. But Sharon Xu, a spokeswoman for Falun Gong in Hong Kong, said sect members were not immediately assuming the worst for Chu and Wang.
``We don't know, but it's possible,'' Xu said. ``It is not very favorable for Mr. Chu or Mr. Wang. We're very concerned.''
Falun Gong is banned in mainland China but remains legal in Hong Kong, where citizens enjoy considerably more freedom under a largely autonomous local government.
Falun Gong said Chu, a Hong Kong resident who worked as a furniture dealer in Beijing, and Wang, who worked in a mapmaking bureau there, were illegally detained more than a month ago after they mailed their lawsuit against Jiang and two aides to the Chinese courts.
Xu said Chu's relatives in Beijing were notified Saturday that he had been released at 10 p.m. the night before from the Fang Shan Detention Center in southwestern Beijing and that they should come to the detention center to pick up his personal belongings.
But Chu did not contact his family, and when relatives went to the detention center asking what had happened, they were told only that he was no longer there.
The Falun Gong followers said they obtained their information from reliable contacts on the mainland, although they refused to elaborate out of fear those people would suffer retaliation.
Wang is also no longer at the detention center in Beijing, according to the Falun Gong adherents in Hong Kong. They said they were unaware of any contacts between the Chinese authorities and any relatives of Wang.
Falun Gong followers have said Chu and Wang received no response to the lawsuit they filed through the mail in late August. But on Sept. 7, police raided a home where they were staying in the Chinese capital and took them into custody.
Falun Gong has attracted millions of followers, most of them in China, with its combination of slow-motion exercises and its philosophy drawn from Taoism, Buddhism and the often unorthodox ideas of founder Li Hongzhi.
The Beijing leadership outlawed the sect after being startled by the ability of its adherents to organize massive gatherings in China.
_______________________
Three Falun followers die in China custody-group
(Reuters, Oct. 18, 2000)
HONG KONG, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Three Chinese followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement have died in Chinese custody, a Hong Kong human-rights group said on Wednesday.
The three deaths in northern China took to at least 57 the number of Falun Gong practitioners to have perished during detention since the group was banned last July, the Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said in a statement.
It said 61-year-old Xuan Chengxi was beaten to death in the eastern province of Shandong. He was arrested on October 12 in Weifang city for distributing promotional materials for Falun Gong, the organisation said.
Town officials beat him up the same day and later cremated his body without first notifying his relatives, the Hong Kong group said.
Zhang Zhiyou, a 45-year-old Falun Gong adherent from the same town, was detained while visiting Beijing and jumped from a train and died as he was being escorted back to his home city, it said.
In the central province of Henan, 21-year-old Falun Gong follower Zhuang Guangxin plunged to his death from the seventh floor of a building where he had been beaten by police, it said.
There was no immediate comment on the reported deaths from the Chinese government.
It has acknowledged several deaths of Falun Gong supporters in custody, but said most resulted from pre-existing illnesses or were suicides.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, combines meditation and exercise with a doctrine loosely rooted in Buddhist and Taoist teachings. It first shocked Beijing with a 10,000-strong protest in April in 1999 and was banned in China later that year.
Overseas practitioners said on Monday that Chinese rhetoric branding Falun Gong an enemy of the state could presage an intensification of Beijing's harsh crackdown against it.
China responded last week to embarrassing protests by hundreds of Falun Gong followers on its October 1 National Day with an angry outburst calling the spiritual movement an anti-state force that must be destroyed.
_______________________
Group tells of persecution
by Paul Cowan ("Edmonton Sun," October 15, 2000)
Their emblem may be a swastika, but Edmonton followers of Falun Gong see it as a symbol of good luck against the oppression the group has suffered in China.
Around a dozen followers of the Chinese Falun Gong movement gathered yesterday at Gazebo Park, next to the Old Strathcona Farmer's Market, to publicize persecution against their fellow members in China.
"We get a few people who think we are associated with Hitler or white supremacists or something but that just doesn't make sense when you see how many Chinese people are involved," said movement member Tom Ozimek.
"We explain to them that the swastika is a very ancient symbol of good fortune and is held in high regard by Greeks, Persians, people in South America and the Japanese."
Followers of Falun Gong do their meditative exercises at Gazebo Park every Saturday morning, but yesterday put on an information display to highlight the plight of members in China.
"People are being tortured to death, persecuted and losing their jobs," said another member, Chi Yeh.
"The Communist government is afraid because Falun Gong people outnumber Communists in China 70 million to 60 million.
"The government says Falun Gong is evil and even a suicide cult."
Ozimek said Falun Gong is based on ancient Buddha school practices and teachings.
"The core principles are truthfulness, compassion and forbearance," he explained.
The group was collecting signatures yesterday for a petition expressing concern about the treatment of Falun Gong members in China.
They intend to send the petition to the House of Commons.
Their literature alleges more than 50 followers of the movement have been killed by the Chinese government and more than 5,000 are in jail or mental institutions.
They want Canadians to contact their Member of Parliament and Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and ask the federal government to publicly condemn what is happening in China.
_______________________
Falungong calls on world to stop alleged persecution in China
(AFP, October 13, 2000)
China's banned Falungong spritual movement on Friday accused Beijing of setting the stage for an intensified crackdown and urged the international community to intervene.
The group's appeal came days after China's state media accused the group of aiming to subvert the socialist system -- a move analysts feared could set the stage for authorities to invoke the draconian State Security Law to intensify its 14-month clampdown.
Falungong members in a news conference in Singapore, where they are registered as a legal organisation, took aim at Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
"Why has (Jiang) now accused our non-political spiritual practice of seeking to overthrow China's government and its socialist system?" the group said in a statement released at the news conference.
"Why is he further politicising a crisis that, as at its essence, is less about politics and more about constitutional rights of China's people and his own insecurity in power?" the group said.
"By accusing us of seeking to overthrow his rule, is he setting the stage for a new escalation in the use of state force against us?
"This is very serious. We are worried and appeal now to the international community to intervene to stop more viscious human rights crimes against us," it said.
At leat 59 Falungong followers have reportedly died while in police custody and 50,000 are in detention in China, where their organisation is illegal, according to the group.
The group presented a video tape showing members who displayed bruises allegedly due to beatings by police, as well as testimonies about how they had been maltreated.
On October 1, Chinese police rounded up close to 1,000 Falungong members who gathered at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on National Day.
An article in China's state-run media on Tuesday said: "The reactionary nature of the Falungong evil cult has been to create trouble aimed at subverting the socialist system."
It also accused the group of teaming up with "hostile foreign forces" to overthrow Chinese communism.
Analysts saw the anti-Falungong diatribe as the strongest sign yet that the government was preparing to use the State Security Law against the outlawed group.
China has mainly used the State Security Law to jail political dissidents while convicting Falungong followers of lesser crimes.
_______________________
'Reactionary' Falun Gong cannot escape fall: Beijing
("South China Morning Post," October 11, 2000)
Beijing yesterday called the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement a "reactionary political force" that must be destroyed. A commentary in state newspapers accused the group of poisoning the atmosphere of the October 1 National Day celebrations, when police detained hundreds of Falun Gong protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The commentary said: "They have completely transformed themselves into an out-and-out reactionary political force. Its aim is to overturn the People's Republic of China and to subvert the socialist system. They cause trouble and they fail. They continue to cause trouble and they will continue to fail right until their destruction. They cannot escape the destiny of their inevitable fall."
The new tirade seems to reflect Beijing's growing concern that the group has set a political precedent with its relentless campaign of civil disobedience. "If we do not see the political nature of Falun Gong and do not resolutely and properly set about resolving it, this would be an historical error," the commentary said.
The commentary claimed Falun Gong had tried to taint the victories of China's athletes at the Sydney Olympics. It said: "The gaily coloured five-star red flag was raised on high again and again, and the magnificent national anthem moved people's hearts. But as Chinese athletes busted their guts in the arena, and Chinese hearts swelled with pride, Falun Gong organised some people to come and make trouble in Sydney."
The commentary accused Falun Gong of being in league with a whole range of dissident forces, including separatists in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, supporters of Taiwan independence and democracy activists in exile. It alleged that "anti-China forces" in the United States were supporting the group to try to Westernise and break up China.
"To tell the truth, they don't want to see a strong China or a China with a stable environment for economic development," it said.
Relatives and Falun Gong sources yesterday charged that guards in a labour re-education farm organised the beating to death of Wang Bin, 44. A Falun Gong follower in Daqing city, Heilongjiang province, said Wang was severely beaten after he refused to write a confession retracting his belief in the group's teachings.
Prison guards at the Dongfeng reform through labour farm in Daqing ordered other prisoners to beat Wang and two other Falun Gong followers after they refused to sign written retractions of their beliefs, she said. Wang's beating was so severe he was eventually taken to hospital, where he died on October 6, she said.
Relatives at Wang's home in Daqing confirmed that Wang had died, but refused to comment on the case, other than to say Wang's wife had not returned home for several days.
After consultations with lawyers, Wang's family was seeking 500,000 yuan (HK$470,000) in compensation for Wang's death, the Falun Gong follower said, but refused to link the case to the disappearance of Wang's wife. Wang's death marked the 53rd documented Falun Gong death in police custody since the sect was banned as an "evil cult" in July last year.
Falun Gong has defied a crackdown and media attacks with almost daily protests in Tiananmen Square since it was outlawed.Copyright (c) 2000. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
_______________________
China calls Falun Gong a reactionary political force
by Jeremy Page (Reuters, Oct. 10, 2000)
BEIJING, Oct 10 (Reuters) - In an angry outburst after embarrassing anti-government protests on its National Day, China on Tuesday called the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement a ``reactionary political force'' that must be destroyed.
A commentary printed in major state newspapers accused the group of poisoning the atmosphere of the October 1 celebrations, when police detained hundreds of Falun Gong protesters on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
``They have completely transformed themselves into an out and out reactionary political force,'' the commentary said. ``Its aim is to overturn the People's Republic of China and to subvert the socialist system.
``They cause trouble and they fail. They continue to cause trouble and they will continue to fail right until their destruction,'' it said.
``They cannot escape the destiny of their inevitable fall.''
Falun Gong, a combination of physical exercise with Daoist and Buddhist doctrines, has defied an intense crackdown and sustained media attacks with almost daily protests in Tiananmen Square since it was outlawed as an ``evil cult'' last year.
ALARMING PRECEDENT
Chinese media reports have accused the group repeatedly of deluding its members and causing 1,500 deaths and 600 cases of mental illness.
But the new tirade seems to reflect Beijing's growing concern that the group has set a political precedent with its relentless campaign of civil disobedience.
``If we do not see the political nature of Falun Gong and do not resolutely and properly set about resolving it, this would be a historical error,'' the commentary said.
Tapping into a wave of nationalism in the aftermath of China's record gold medal haul at the Sydney Olympics, the commentary also said Falun Gong had tried to taint Chinese athletes' victories.
``The gaily coloured five-star red flag was raised on high again and again, and the magnificent national anthem moved people's hearts,'' it said.
``But as Chinese athletes busted their guts in the arena, and Chinese hearts swelled with pride, Falun Gong organised some people to come and make trouble in Sydney.''
ANTI-CHINA FORCES
The commentary accused Falun Gong of being in league with a whole range of dissident forces, including separatists in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, supporters of Taiwan independence, and Chinese democracy activists.
It alleged that ``anti-China forces'' in the United States were supporting the group to try to Westernise and break up China.
``To tell the truth, they don't want to see a strong China or a China with a stable environment for economic development,'' it said.
Last week, the United States criticised Chinese police tactics against Falun Gong followers during the National Day protests.
Washington, partly in response to the crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, has named China as a ``country of particular concern'' under a law requiring the Clinton administration to report on religious persecution around the world.
Falun Gong followers in Hong Kong said on Monday China had detained two adherents after they sued President Jiang Zemin and two subordinates for cracking down on the group.
The two plaintiffs -- a Hong Kong resident and a mainland Chinese -- were the first Falun Gong members to take legal action against Beijing's suppression, the members said.
China says it has jailed about 150 core Falun Gong ring leaders.
But Falun Gong says thousands of adherents are in labour camps without trial and a Hong Kong-based human rights group has reported that at least 52 adherents have died in government custody since it was banned in July last year.
_______________________
Beijing turns up heat on banned Falun Gong
by John Leicester (Associated Press, October 10, 2000)
BEIJING: China yesterday accused the banned Falun Gong spiritual
movement of trying to bring down the government and of colluding with the
Communist regime's opponents.
The lengthy, acidly worded critique by the state-run Xinhua news agency
signaled the government's anger and frustration that its 14-month crackdown
on Falun Gong and the arrests of thousands of adherents have failed to crush
the group.
Xinhua labeled Falun Gong "reactionary," a politically charged term used
in China to tar the government's opponents. It accused the group of joining
forces with pro-democracy campaigners and supporters of independence for
Taiwan, Tibet and China's unruly Muslim far west.
Falun Gong "openly opposes the party and government and has transformed
completely from head to tail into a reactionary political organization with
the goal of overthrowing the People's Republic of China and the socialist
system," Xinhua said.
Falun Gong adherents deny that the group has political ambitions,
maintaining that their beliefs are an eclectic mix of Taoist and Buddhist
cosmology and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi [are to] promote health and
morality. They have called for an end to China's crackdown and for legal
recognition of the group as a school of "qigong," traditional Chinese health
and meditation exercises from which Falun Gong is partly derived.
The government outlawed the group last year as a threat to Communist
rule and a public menace. Government officials say Falun Gong cheats members
and has caused 1,500 deaths, including suicides and murders by group
followers.
Xinhua's attack, among the most vitriolic carried by the wholly
state-run media in recent months, appeared to have been prompted by a
dramatic protest by hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners on Tiananmen Square
during China's Oct. 1 National Day celebrations.
Police detained roughly 350 followers, beating most as they forced them
into vans. Adherents chanted slogans, unfurled banners and threw sheets of
printed paper in the air, forcing the brief closure of much of the hallowed
square in Beijing's heart.
Xinhua claimed that the demonstration provoked "great righteous
indignation" among common Chinese, who have since "demanded that the
government and judiciary severely punish the troublemakers."
It did not say whether punishments have been or will be handed down to
those detained. But it said "a considerable portion" of die-hard Falun Gong
supporters "tend to be quite strongly anti-government, anti-society in their
thinking" Ñ harsh language that could presage even tougher government action
against the group.
Falun Gong adherents have protested almost daily since the movement was
banned in July 1999. Xinhua did not say how many took part in the Oct. 1
demonstration but noted that some Falun Gong protests in Beijing and other
cities since May have involved more than 100 followers.
Elsewhere yesterday, two Falun Gong adherents were arrested after filing
a lawsuit in mainland China accusing President Jiang Zemin of carrying out
the brutal crackdown, local followers in Hong Kong said.
The Falun Gong practitioners, Chu O-ming, 43, and Wang Jie, 37, sent
their lawsuit through the mail on Aug. 29 to the Chinese court, according to
a Falun Gong spokesman in Hong Kong.
Spokesman Kan Hung-cheung told a news conference that Mr. Chu, a Hong
Kong businessman, and Mr. Wang, an editor with a survey and map publisher in
Beijing, were arrested in the Chinese capital on Sept. 7. Mr. Kan said the
two were being held at a Beijing jail.
Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong.
_______________________
Another Falungong follower beaten to death in prison
(AFP, October 10, 2000)
Guards in a northeast Chinese labor camp organized the beating to death of a follower of the banned Falungong spiritual group, relatives and Falungong sources charged Tuesday.
Wang Bin, 44, was severely beaten after he refused to write a confession retracting his belief in the group's teachings, a Falungong follower in Daqing city, Heilongjiang province told AFP.
Prison guards at the Dongfeng Reform Through Labor Camp in Daqing ordered other prisoners to beat Wang and two other Falungong followers after they refused to sign written retractions of their beliefs, she said.
Wang's beating was so severe he was finally sent to a local hospital where he died on October 6, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Relatives at Wang's home in Daqing confirmed that Wang had died, but refused to comment on the case, other than to say that Wang's wife had not returned home for several days.
After consultations with lawyers, Wang's family was seeking 500,000 yuan (60,000 dollars) in compensation for Wang's death, the Falungong follower said, but refused to link the case to the disappearance of Wang's wife.
The Dongfeng Reform Through Labor Camp already had an impressive record of getting Falungong followers to recant their beliefs, she said, a record that had been praised by Chinese leaders.
This summer China set up two labor camps to hold the hardened Falungong followers, in a further sign of the government's concern over the spiritual group, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said earlier.
Wang's death marked the 53rd documented Falungong death in police custody since the central government banned the group as an "illegal organization" and an "evil cult" in July 1999.
Members of the group who follow the Buddhist-inspired teachings of their exiled guru Li Hongzhi, believe the number of deaths could be far greater.
China's Communist government has called the group the biggest threat to its one party rule since the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.
Since the banning, some 450 members have received prison sentences of up to 18 years, more than 600 have been sent to mental hospitals, 10,000 have been placed in labor camps and another 20,000 locked up in temporary detention centers, the rights center said.
_______________________
CHINA: SAR man arrested over sect bid to sue Jiang
("South China Morning Post," October 10, 2000)
Two Falun Gong followers, including one from the SAR, have been arrested after attempting to sue President Jiang Zemin for cracking down on the banned sect. Hong Kong businessman Chu O-ming, 43, and fellow member Wang Jie, 37, a mainlander, were arrested at a friend's home in Beijing on September 7. The friend was not arrested.
The incident occurred nine days after they filed a case with the Supreme People's Procuratorate in Beijing on August 29 against Mr Jiang, his top aide Zeng Qinghong, and Luo Gan, who heads the Central Commission of Political Science and Law of the Communist Party.
It is thought that the pair are being held in a police bureau in Beijing's Fangshan district.
The sect in Hong Kong has appealed to the SAR Government to rescue Mr Chu, who is a Hong Kong permanent resident and holds an SAR passport.
The Security Bureau replied last night that the Immigration Department was seeking information and would follow up the case with the mainland authorities.
It is the first time the sect has resorted to legal means to challenge the ban on the group and to sue the country's leader for compensation and a public apology. Mr Jiang and the other two officials were accused of violating the constitution and other civil and criminal laws. The sect claimed the crackdown on the religion was groundless and illegal.
Kan Hung-cheung, spokesman for Falun Gong's SAR branch, said the Hong Kong Government had a responsibility to protect its residents, adding that Beijing planned to escalate the crackdown in a bid to "completely destroy" the sect within three months.
Mr Kan claimed at least 56 sect members had been tortured to death since last October, and that an estimated 34 million arrests had been made in the first half of the year as some members were arrested repeatedly. The Hong Kong-based Centre for Human Rights and Democracy puts the number in the tens of thousands.
The spokesman said Falun Gong followers on the mainland had received "brutal treatment", including electric shock torture. The association estimates that about 500 mainland followers have been jailed, with some serving sentences of up to 18 years, and that 600 have been sent to psychiatric centres and 50,000 detained without trial.
But another spokesman for the association, Hui Kwok-hung, warned that the figures reflected only the "tip of the iceberg".
Mr Kan said Mr Chu's arrest remained secret until last week, and he was worried that the Hong Kong man would suffer the same brutal treatment. He said about 30 Hong Kong sect members had been arrested on the mainland, but all except Mr Chu had been released.
Mr Hui said: "There is no Chinese law requiring citizens to apply for permission to bend their waists and flex their legs [the gesture for practising the religion].
_______________________
Reactionary Nature of Falun Gong Cult Exposed
[Anti-Falungong Editorial]
("People's Daily," October 10, 2000)
The Falun Gong cult has evolved into a reactionary political force that is doing everything possible against the Chinese government and people, said a Xinhua article, citing a series of illegal activities of the banned cult.
Since the Falun Gong cult was founded, it has carried out a steady stream of sabotage, created chaos, sought refuge with political forces hostile to China, and been a force behind outside interference in China's internal affairs, the article pointed out.
In the cult's latest unlawful act, a handful of Falun Gong cult members attempted to stir up trouble during a flag-raising ceremony attended by 200,000 Chinese at Tiananmen Square to mark the country's 51st founding anniversary on October 1.
The article also recalled the outlawed cult's destructive acts both in the past and in other countries, saying that the cult members' flagrant violations of China's state laws have been condemned not only by people in the fields of culture, education, science and technology, but also by former Falun Gong practitioners.
Jin Shuying, a reformed Falun Gong member, was quoted as saying, "Making trouble on National Day was their way of creating confusion. I have seen clearly that the cult does not help people improve their health. Its ulterior motive is to sabotage social order."
A great number of facts prove that the activities of Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi and his cult are no longer done for the purposes of improving health, seeking truth or for deepening philosophical beliefs; they are carefully organized, politically-motivated acts directed at the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China, the article said.
Li Hongzhi and his crowd fully abandoned national pride, threw themselves into the arms of overseas anti-China forces and were willingly used by international hostile forces as tools to interfere in China's internal affairs, it pointed out, adding that some hostile forces that do not want to see a stronger China have seized the opportunity to collude with the Falun Gong cult.
The article pointed out that the struggle against the Falun Gong cult is a serious political fight to maintain the leadership of the Communist Party of China and strengthen the socialist system.
It will be a mistake to go down in history if the Chinese cannot clearly understand the political nature of the cult and deal with it in a firm and just way, the article warned.
_______________________
China Fears Overthrow by Banned Sect
by John Leicester (Associated Press, Oct. 9, 2000)
BEIJING (AP) - China launched a scathing verbal attack Monday on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, accusing it of trying to bring down the government and of colluding with the communist regime's opponents.
The lengthy, acidly worded critique by the state-run Xinhua News Agency signaled the government's anger and frustration that its 14-month crackdown on Falun Gong and the arrests of thousands of adherents have failed to crush the group.
Xinhua labeled Falun Gong ``reactionary,'' a politically charged term used in China to tar the government's opponents. It accused the group of joining forces with pro-democracy campaigners and supporters of independence for Taiwan, Tibet and China's unruly Muslim far west.
Falun Gong ``openly opposes the party and government and has transformed completely from head to tail into a reactionary political organization with the goal of overthrowing the People's Republic of China and the socialist system,'' Xinhua said.
Falun Gong adherents deny that the group has political ambitions, maintaining that their beliefs - an eclectic mix of Taoist and Buddhist cosmology and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi - promote health and morality. They have called for an end to China's crackdown and for legal recognition of the group as a school of ``qigong,'' traditional Chinese health and meditation exercises from which Falun Gong is partly derived.
The government outlawed the group last year as a threat to communist rule and as a public menace. Government officials say Falun Gong cheats members and has caused 1,500 deaths, including suicides and murders by group followers.
Xinhua's attack, among the most vitriolic carried by the wholly state-run media in recent months, appeared to have been prompted by a dramatic protest by hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners on Tiananmen Square during China's Oct. 1 National Day celebrations.
Police detained roughly 350 followers, beating most as they forced them into vans. Adherents chanted slogans, unfurled banners and threw sheets of printed paper in the air, forcing the brief closure of much of the hallowed square in Beijing's heart.
Xinhua claimed that the demonstration provoked ``great righteous indignation'' among common Chinese, who have since ``demanded that the government and judiciary severely punish the troublemakers.''
It did not say whether punishments have or will be handed down to those detained. But it said ``a considerable portion'' of die-hard Falun Gong supporters ``tend to be quite strongly anti-government, anti-society in their thinking'' - harsh language that could presage even tougher government action against the group.
Falun Gong adherents have protested almost daily since the movement was banned in July 1999. Xinhua did not say how many took part in the Oct. 1 demonstration but noted that some Falun Gong protests in Beijing and other cities since May involved more than 100 followers.
Elsewhere Monday, two Falun Gong adherents were arrested after filing a lawsuit in mainland China accusing President Jiang Zemin of carrying out the brutal crackdown, local followers in Hong Kong said.
The Falun Gong practitioners, Chu O-ming, 43, and Wang Jie, 37, sent their lawsuit through the mail on Aug. 29 to the Chinese court, according to a Falun Gong spokesman in Hong Kong.
Spokesman Kan Hung-cheung told a news conference that Chu, a Hong Kong businessman, and Wang, an editor with a survey and map publisher in Beijing, were arrested in the Chinese capital on Sept. 7. Kan said the two were being held at a Beijing jail.
_______________________
Falun Gong Members Detained
by Margaret Wong (Associated Press, Oct. 9, 2000)
HONG KONG (AP) - Two Falun Gong adherents were arrested after filing a lawsuit in mainland China accusing President Jiang Zemin of carrying out a brutal crackdown against the spiritual group, local followers said Monday.
The Falun Gong practitioners, Chu O-ming, 43, and Wang Jie, 37, sent their lawsuit through the mail on Aug. 29 to the Chinese court, according to a Falun Gong spokesman in Hong Kong.
Spokesman Kan Hung-cheung told a news conference that Chu, a Hong Kong businessman, and Wang, an editor with a survey and map publisher in Beijing, were arrested in the Chinese capital on Sept. 7.
Kan said the two were being held at the Fangshan District Jail in Beijing, and none of their relatives has been officially informed about why they were arrested.
The meditation sect is banned on the mainland but legal in Hong Kong. ...
_______________________
Defiant sect 20 pulled from square
(AFP, October 6, 2000)
Police yesterday arrested more than 20 members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group trying to evade tight security to stage another protest at Tiananmen Square, four days after a huge demonstration. Foreign reporters saw two vans containing 20 Falun Gong members. The followers had been grabbed by police after trying to demonstrate their loyalty to the group by shouting slogans in the square. A police officer sitting in the front seat of one van beat a practitioner with his fists while trying to keep him from climbing to the front as the vehicle was driven off the square, reports said.
In the other van, police shoved followers back into their seats while trying to pull all the window shades down to keep foreign and domestic tourists from noticing the commotion.
Four middle-aged followers were dragged away as they used the alternative name for Falun Gong and shouted "Falun Dafa is good". Police slapped one man and grabbed him by his hair when he refused to stop shouting.
A US-based spokesman for the group, Dana Cheng, said a protest was planned for 10am yesterday but many practitioners could not get on the square due to a massive police presence. "I know there are still many practitioners in Beijing. They want to do something but the police are so prepared," she said.
Yesterday's arrests followed Sunday's protest when about 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners were rounded up in two hours as a small army of soldiers and police dragged protesters into buses and vans, while throngs of tourists watched in shock.
Sunday's protest stole the show during the National Day celebrations to mark 51 years of communist rule and humiliated authorities more than a year after they banned the group.
Police and People's Liberation Army soldiers were out in full force yesterday, with groups standing watch on the square, while undercover officers, some dressed as hip-looking youngsters in trendy jeans, roamed around.
Twenty city buses, some containing soldiers, were parked across the street, while eight tourist coaches sat on the square with soldiers and police in waiting.
Beijing considers the Falun Gong, which combines martial arts, Buddhism and sect founder Li Hongzhi's moral teachings, to be the biggest threat to its rule since the 1989 student pro-democracy demonstrations.
The Government banned the group, which claims to have 70 million members, in July last year after accusing it of seeking to overthrow the state and being an evil cult.
Since the ban, China has sentenced 450 followers to prison for up to 18 years, sent more than 600 to mental hospitals, placed 10,000 in labour camps and locked up a further 20,000 in temporary detention centres, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
_______________________
China detains more members of banned Falun Gong
by Bill Savadove (Reuters, Oct. 5, 2000)
BEIJING, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Chinese police detained more members of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong on Thursday as the group kept up protests in the heart of Beijing over the long National Day holiday, witnesses said.
Security forces hustled at least 18 people into police vans on Thursday morning, some struggling against their captors, they said.
Police detained several hundred Falun Gong members on Sunday, herding them onto buses after protests broke out in Tiananmen Square, which was crowded with tourists for the start of the week-long holiday.
The protests over the holiday for National Day, which marks the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, highlight Beijing's failure to stamp out the group since it was banned last year.
Scores of police in uniform and plainclothes as well as paramilitary units kept a watchful eye on the square on Thursday as several police vans and buses stood nearby, witnesses said.
Security forces mingled with throngs of tourists who took advantage of the holiday to walk on the vast plaza, China's political heart.
Falun Gong members have defied the heavy police presence with similar protests almost daily since the government banned the group in July last year and branded it an ``evil cult.''
CHINA SLAMS VATICAN
Meanwhile, China accused the Vatican on Thursday of interfering in Beijing's internal affairs by canonising 120 Catholic martyrs, saying the missionaries committed serious crimes against the Chinese people.
Pope John Paul canonised the martyrs, who the Vatican says died for their faith, at a ceremony in St Peter's Square on Sunday despite a barrage of protests from China.
The new saints -- 87 Chinese and 33 missionaries -- were killed between 1648 and 1930, most in the anti-foreign Boxer uprising, when roving bands of peasants slaughtered Western missionaries, their families and Chinese converts.
The official China Daily newspaper quoted Chinese Catholics as saying the move was a distortion of history by the Vatican.
``The canonisation seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and is also a severe provocation to the Chinese nation,'' the newspaper said.
It said the selection of the group was influenced by a religious organisation in Taiwan, which showed the Vatican was pandering to Taipei.
China and the Vatican do not have diplomatic ties. Beijing says normalisation is possible only if the Holy See cuts its diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province and regards what it perceives to be moves by the island towards independence as a threat to Beijing's sovereignty.
Catholics in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Hebei, Shanxi, Fujian and Guizhou provinces held meetings calling on the Vatican to repent for its wrongdoing, the newspaper said.
Beijing's communist government does not allow its Catholics to recognise the Pope or to worship outside state churches.
_______________________
Local Falungong followers plan protest: To stage demonstration during ASEM over China's crackdown
by Chang Jae-soon("Korea Herald," Oct. 4, 2000)
The South Korean followers of a Chinese spiritual movement, Falungong, are planning to stage demonstrations to protest Bejing's crackdown on the banned sect when a top Chinese leader visits Seoul later this month, police said yesterday.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, local Falungong practitioners plan to hold protest rallies in front of the Shilla Hotel in Seoul, where Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji will stay to attend the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) slated for Oct. 20-21.
Officials at the police agency predicted that the planned demonstrations would not turn violent, but said they would strengthen security measures for the top Chinese official to prevent the protests from touching off any diplomatic friction with the Chinese government.
The police agency is also contacting Falungong followers to dissuade them from the demonstration plan.
Protesting the Chinese government's harsh crackdown on the movement, local practitioners have staged silent demonstrations on several occasions since last year in front of the Chinese Embassy in downtown Seoul.
In addition, they attempted to deliver a protest letter to the embassy in late July on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Chinese government's declaration of an all-out ban on the sect.
Since the Chinese government outlawed the group, there have been frequent reports of Chinese authorities abusing Falungong members. At least 52 followers have reportedly died behind bars.
Before the crackdown, Falungong attracted millions with its eclectic mix of exercise, meditation, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy and the teachings of Li Hongzhi, a former government clerk who fled to the United States two years ago. Believers say the practice promotes health and morality.
Last month, Falungong followers staged demonstrations in front of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's accommodations in the U.S. during the U.N. Millennium Summit.
Meanwhile, Lee Yong-sop, 39, a Falungong follower who first promoted the sect here in 1996, told the Yonhap News Agency that his Falungong academic society was not organizing a demonstration. To the best of his knowledge, some individual practitioners are enlisting other believers to join protest rallies, he said.
An estimated 3,000 South Koreans are Falungong practitioners. They spread the spiritual movement at parks and other public recreation places.
_______________________
Police Alerted Over Potential Rallies by Falun Gong Followers During ASEM
by Park Yoon-bae ("Korea Times," October 4, 2000)
Police and Foreign Ministry officials are placed on alert as Falun Gong followers are reported to hold rallies to protest Beijing's crackdown on the China's spiritual movement during the Sept. 19-21 Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Seoul.
There are growing fears that hundreds of local Falun Gong followers will make use of a visit by Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to Korea to demonstrate against Beijing's 14-month ban on the sect.
Zhu is scheduled to visit Seoul on Sept. 17-22 to hold talks with President Kim Dae-jung and attend the ASEM summit.
A police officer at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said that it obtained some tips that some Korean members of the Chinese spiritual sect will hold picket rallies in front of Hotel Shilla, where Premier Zhu is expected to stay.
He said the police agency is hammering out measures to tighten security around the hotel and the venue of the ASEM assembly in southern Seoul.
Foreign Ministry officials are also afraid that the potential rallies might cause a ``diplomatic'' concern between the two neighboring countries. They expressed hope that the rallies, if realized, would not turn into violence.
Dozens of Falun Gong followers demonstrated twice this year and once last year in front of the Chinese Embassy in downtown Seoul to protest Beijing's bid to repress the meditation group.
Their protests have been peaceful. They just held a silent protest by practicing characteristic meditative exercises.
The sect members delivered a letter to the embassy on July 22, protesting China's brutal ban on the movement which was imposed on the same day a year ago.
The Chinese government outlawed the group, calling it a threat to communist rule and as a public menace that cheated members and caused 1,500 deaths.
Members maintain the group's beliefs _ an eclectic mix of traditional Chinese exercise, Taoist and Buddhist cosmology and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi _ promote health and morality.
Police officers at the Chungbu Police Station near the Chinese Embassy said there is a high possibility that local Falun Gong followers will stage protest rallies during Zhu's visit and the ASEM gathering.
They reminded that Falun Gong members in the United States demonstrated in New York on the occasion of the United Nations' Millennium Summit in September.
Police have reportedly strengthened surveillance on local followers in preparation of the scheduled international gathering.
Lee Yong-sop, who introduced the spiritual movement into Korea in 1996, said he had received phone calls from police five times since July. He added police had made inquiries on local followers activities.
Lee is now in the middle of establishing a society for the research of Falun Gong principles.
He denied some allegations that he and other representatives of the burgeoning society were planning rallies against the Chinese ban. But he admitted some followers could organize protests individually through the Internet.
There are about 3,000 Falun Gong followers in Korea. They are expanding their movement by practicing meditative exercises in the Lake Park in Ilsan, northwest of Seoul, and other places around the country.
_______________________
US tells China to ease off on Falungong
("Singapore Strait Times," October 4, 2000)
After the National Day crackdown on the spiritual movement, the US says it is disturbed by Chinese repression of the group's freedom of expression
WASHINGTON -- The United States said it was disturbed by China's latest crackdown on the Falungong spiritual movement, as US-based supporters of the banned group lashed out at President Jiang Zemin.
""We find very disturbing, reports of China's use of increasingly harsh tactics to repress the Falungong spiritual movement,'' said a State Department spokesman. His comment was in response to the crackdown by the Chinese authorities on Sunday against Falungong protests during National Day celebrations.
About 1,000 Falungong practitioners were allegedly arrested as a small army of soldiers and police dragged protesters into police buses.
Group members had unfurled banners, stealing the show during celebrations marking 51 years of communist rule in China and humiliating the government more than a year after the group was banned.
""To the best of our knowledge, those detained were engaging in internationally recognised rights to freedom of expression and freedom of conscience,'' the spokesman, Mr Philip Reeker, said.
""We will continue to call upon the Chinese government to uphold its obligations under international human rights instruments to respect those rights,'' he said.
Police clamped tight surveillance on Beijing's Tiananmen Square early on Monday after protests by the group marred celebrations.
US-based supporters of Falungong, meanwhile, lashed out at China's President.
Falungong spokesman Gail Rachlin accused Mr Jiang of launching a personal crusade against the banned movement, out of fears of political insecurity.
""We believe this is a personal vendetta on his part perhaps because his ban has not worked, and he has lost face in front of the leadership for the failure of his policy.''
""He is insecure -- and lashing out,'' she said.
She said in a statement that reports from Falungong practitioners inside China spoke of a ""massive reign of terror, including a dramatic increase in brutality and illegal searches and seizures''.
The Chinese government considers Falungong, which combines martial arts, Buddhism and group founder Li Hongzhi's moral teachings, the biggest threat to its rule since pro-democracy demonstrations by students in 1989.
The group was banned last July, after about 10,000 followers surrounded the Zhongnanhai Chinese Communist Party headquarters in central Beijing on April 25.
The government has accused the group of cheating followers and causing 1,500 deaths, mostly of followers who, it said, refused medical treatment, according to the group's teachings.
Amid the year-long crackdown on Falungong, China also published rules prohibiting exercise groups from preaching religion and limited strictly their size and activities.
_______________________
Falungong urged to check its activities Beijing wants tabs kept on followers
("Bangkok Post," October 4, 2000)
Thailand has no objections to members of the visiting Falungong sect spreading academic knowledge about their cult, but would oppose any use of the country for political ends.
Oum Maolanond, deputy spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, said Thailand would not agree to members of the sect using the visit to shore up disciples. Thailand also would refuse to be used as a political tool to interfere in another country's affairs.
About 60 members of the sect banned in China have come to Thailand and some appeared at a public park in Bangkok over the weekend. Describing the group as a non-governmental organisation, Mr Oum said they notified authorities they were coming to the country for academic purposes.
Beijing, he confirmed, had asked Thai authorities to monitor the group because counterparts in China had engaged in illegal activities.
Mr Oum said there were only 30 active members of the group, 20 of which gathered at Lumpini Park, and the rest at Benjasiri Park. So far, they had engaged in no illegal activities.
Beijing considers Falungong, which combines martial arts, Buddhism and moral teachings, the biggest threat to its rule since 1989 student demonstrations. More than 1,000 Falungong practitioners were arrested in China on Sunday,
_______________________
Falun Gong Protest, Crackdown Mar China's National Day
by Martin Fackler (Associated Press, Oct. 1, 2000)
BEIJING (Oct. 1) - Police beat and dragged away hundreds of Falun Gong followers who emerged from crowds to chant and unfurl banners during China's National Day celebrations in a protest that forced the brief closure of much of Tiananmen Square.
The banned sect's protest in Beijing's main square, one of its biggest acts of civil disobedience, was an embarrassment to Chinese leaders, showing that the meditation group remains unbowed despite a brutal 14-month crackdown.
In the morning, small groups of Falun Gong sect members seemed to materialize suddenly from among the tens of thousands of Chinese tourists who gathered on the square to mark the 51st anniversary of communist rule.
In seconds, police zeroed in on them, shoving the protesters - mostly middle-aged women - into white minivans. As they were grabbed, some shouted ``Falun Gong is good! Falun Gong is good!'' while others threw sheets of printed paper into the air, which police immediately scooped up.
Police were seen beating most of the roughly 350 members of Falun Gong who were detained throughout the day. Most of the arrests came during the large morning protest that ended with police briefly closing more than half of Tiananmen, the square where Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949.
Thousands of Falun Gong followers have been arrested since Chinese leaders outlawed the group, calling it a threat to communist rule and as a public menace that cheated members and caused 1,500 deaths. ...
_______________________
Falun Gong stages large-scale protest, 1,000 detained
(Kyodo News Service, Oct. 1, 2000)
BEIJING, Oct. 1 (Kyodo) - The Falun Gong spiritual group on Sunday held a massive protest rally in a packed Tiananmen Square, its largest-ever in the square since it was banned in July last year, with some 1,000 practitioners detained as China celebrated its National Day. ...
Law enforcement authorities shut down part of the square after rounding up practitioners, some of whom witnesses said were assaulted by police. ...
_______________________
Cops Seek To Block Falun Gong Protest
(Associated Press, September 30, 2000)
BEIJING (AP) - Police checked vehicles entering China's capital to thwart a threatened protest by followers of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement on Sunday, the 51st anniversary of communist rule, a rights group reported.
Spot checks on major roads around Beijing began Friday and continued Saturday after two weeks of police sweeps that saw 600 Falun Gong members detained in nearby provinces, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democracy reported.
The report follows signs of government nervousness and dispatches in Hong Kong media that 10,000 sect followers were heading for Beijing.
A letter from ``All China's Falun Gong Students'' recently posted on the group's U.S. Web site warned of protests if police stepped up detentions ahead of the National Day holiday.
China's cabinet, the State Council, issued a directive, carried in state-run newspapers Saturday, ordering government offices to tighten security over the weeklong holiday.
The order focused on general safety and demanded particular attention be paid to explosives.
Although Falun Gong members have kept their protests against the communist government's ban on the group peaceful, other disaffected groups have not.
Turkic Muslims in China's Central Asian territory of Xinjiang have waged a sporadic bombing campaign against Chinese rule and three years ago bombed a bus in Beijing.
National Day is China's most public holiday for celebrating the Communist Party's takeover on Oct. 1, 1949.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other members of the communist and government elite gathered on the holiday's eve for a reception in the Great Hall of the People, next to Tiananmen Square.
Premier Zhu Rongji, in the traditional National Day address, made only a vague, passing reference to worries of unrest by unemployed workers, poor farmers and Falun Gong members.
He referred to ``difficulties of one kind or another in our way ahead'' to a prosperous future.
People's Daily was more blunt. In an editorial to be published Sunday, the party's flagship newspaper urged Chinese to rally around the leadership to safeguard hard-won economic gains.
``Stability is the guarantor of reform and development,'' it said.
Uniformed and plainclothes police in the large numbers usual for a holiday kept careful watch on Tiananmen.
Chinese by the thousands flooded into the broad square to admire colorfully lit fountains, floral displays and a 30-foot-tall sculpture of Beijing's 2008 Olympic bid logo.
Chinese leaders banned Falun Gong 14 months ago as a threat to communist rule and as a public menace that cheated followers and caused 1,500 deaths. Followers, however, maintain the group's slow-motion exercises, Taoist and Buddhist cosmology and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi promote health and morality.
While the Hong Kong-based rights group's report could not be immediately confirmed, the actions it describes fit previous police sweeps ahead of sensitive anniversaries. Police have previously set up checkpoints and ordered provincial governments to round up Falun Gong members to keep them out of Beijing.
Another group, New York-based Human Rights in China, said police in Beijing have over the past few weeks evicted rural migrants, street children, beggars and others from the city as part of an annual clean-up campaign.
Also on Saturday, French Foreign Ministry official Jean Felix-Paginon said that China plans to revise, but not abolish its greatly abused system allowing police to send criminal suspects to forced labor camps without trial.
Felix-Paginon led a European Union delegation that met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Friday as part of a twice-yearly EU-China human rights dialogue.
Reform of labor-camp detentions aside, China offered scant other evidence of progress on human rights in a one-day grilling, he said.
_______________________
China Says West Aiding Falun Gong Revolt
("Chicago Tribune Services," September 29, 2000)
BEIJING Waging a religious battle with the Vatican, meditation groups and human-rights critics, China said Thursday that the banned Falun Gong was scheming with political enemies bent on toppling the government.
"Falun Gong is not only ingratiating itself with Western anti-China forces, but also ganging up with overseas and domestic pro-democracy groups as well as Tibetan and Taiwanese separatists to form an anti-Communist Party united front that is plotting to overthrow the government," said a state media commentary.
The New China news agency commentary said China's various enemies gathered twice last March in support of America's "plot," once at U.S. congressional hearings and again at the annual United Nations human-rights debate in Geneva.
That Tibetans, Taiwanese, Falun Gong adherents and well-known exiled Chinese dissidents Wei Jingsheng and Harry Wu all came out together to back U.S. human-rights criticism "made perfectly clear their common stance," said the commentary in the People's Daily.
The attack on disparate groups united by their grievances against the Communist Party came amid a bitter dispute between Beijing and the Vatican over a Holy See plan to canonize 120 Chinese martyrs on Oct. 1, China's National Day.
The Vatican says those to be made saints died for their faith in anti-Christian massacres between 1648 and 1930. China says they were agents of Western colonialism who deserved death.
Oct. 1, the 51st anniversary of communist rule, is one of many "sensitive dates" in China; it is when those with complaints against the government try to stage public protests.
This month, exiled poet Huang Beiling called on China's intellectuals to follow the example of Falun Gong meditators by fighting government oppression with civil disobedience.
U.S. HAND SEEN
Falun Gong, which combines meditation and exercise with a doctrine rooted loosely in Buddhist and Taoist teachings, first rattled the ruling Communist Party with an unexpected 10,000-strong protest in Beijing in April 1999.
China sees U.S. statements of general support for freedom of belief and assembly as backing for Falun Gong. Beijing is angry that Washington rejected its extradition demand for the group's New York-based founder, Li Hongzhi, as politically motivated.
``America sees that Li Hongzhi still has value as a card to play when interfering in China's affairs under the pretext of human rights,'' the Xinhua commentary said.
Asked about numerous anti-U.S. reports in state media, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said: ``our policy of forging friendly ties with the United States must be viewed separately from our criticism of a small number of U.S. anti-China elements.''
Diplomats said China's recourse to rhetoric had more to do with an upcoming Communist Party plenum than with National Day worries.
"Such retro-rhetoric could be a backlash against the forces in favor of openness by conservative forces jockeying" ahead of the Oct. 9-11 plenum, said one Western diplomat.
Next month will also bring the first anniversary of the Chinese parliament's rubber-stamping a law against "evil cults." Beijing banned Falun Gong in July 1999 and says it has jailed about 150 organizers of the spiritual group.
Falun Gong, whose members continue to protest the ban, say thousands of adherents are in labor camps without trial. A Hong Kong-based human-rights group says that at least 52 adherents have died in custody since the July 1999 ban.
The news agency's commentary repeated China's assertion that the practice of Falun Gong meditation had caused 1,500 deaths and 600 cases of mental illness.
_______________________
China says foes, U.S. scheming to topple Communism
By Paul Eckert (Reuters, September 28, 2000)
BEIJING, Sept 28 (Reuters) - China, waging a multi-front religious battle with the Vatican, meditation groups and human rights critics, said on Thursday the banned Falun Gong was scheming with political enemies bent on toppling the government. ...
The lengthy Xinhua news agency commentary, printed in the People's Daily, said China's various enemies gathered twice last March in support of America's ``plot,'' at U.S. Congressional hearings and at the annual U.N. human rights debate in Geneva.
That Tibetans, Taiwanese, Falun Gong adherents and well-known exiled Chinese dissidents Wei Jingsheng and Harry Wu all came out together to back U.S. human rights criticism ``made perfectly clear their common stance,'' the commentary said. ...
SENSITIVE DATES
October 1, the 51st anniversary of Communist rule, is one of many ``sensitive dates'' in China, when those with gripes against the government try to stage public protests. ...
Next month will also bring the first anniversary of China's parliament rubber-stamping a draconian law against ``evil cults.'' Beijing banned Falun Gong in July 1999 and says it has jailed about 150 organisers of the spiritual group.
Falun Gong, whose members continue protests against the ban, say thousands of adherents are in labour camps without trial. A Hong Kong-based human rights group says at least 52 adherents have died in government custody since the July 1999 ban.
Xinhua's commentary repeated China's assertion that the practice of Falun Gong meditation had caused 1,500 deaths and 600 cases of mental illness. ...
Beijing found further grounds to attack Washington last week, when a court on the U.S.-administered island of Guam offered the leader of another banned meditation group the right to stay in America under ``protection status from cruel punishment.''
China has demanded angrily that Washington reverse the court decision and hand over Zhang Hongbao, Chinese founder of the Zhong Gong meditation group, saying he is wanted for rape. Zhong Gong, like Falun Gong, is banned as an ``evil cult.'' ...
_______________________
More Falun Gong members reportedly dead, two while in Chinese custody
(AP, September 27, 2000)
BEIJING, China (AP) -- Two members of the banned Falun Gong sect have died in custody, one in a labor camp, the other in a psychiatric ward, in the latest deaths in China's 14-month-long crackdown on the spiritual movement, a rights group reported Wednesday.
The deaths of Tao Hongsheng and Shi Bei bring to at least 52 the number of followers to have died while incarcerated in Beijing's campaign against the group, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democracy reported. ...
In the latest death of a member, state media reported that Liu Hongfeng, a 36-year-old elementary school vice principal, hanged himself at home in the northern city of Lingwu on Sept. 16.
Liu was put into a mental hospital in June after efforts to persuade him to leave the sect failed, and he was released in late July when his attitude "took a turn for the better," the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The writings of Falun Gong founder Li were found in the room with Liu's body, said a police officer who confirmed the state media account.
Of the two alleged deaths in police custody, Tao Hongsheng, a 46-year-old former agent in the plainclothes police force in Hebei province, died on Sept. 20 after suffering for two months from severe diarrhea and other illnesses, the Information Center said.
Sentenced to three years for protesting in Tiananmen Square in December, Tao was held in a small room with two other Falun Gong members in a detention center in Shijiazhuang, Hebei's capital, the group said. It added that Tao had been refused medical treatment until a week before he died.
Officials at the labor camp in Shijiazhuang were unavailable for comment.
Another sect follower, Shi Bei, died on Sept. 10 after being forcibly put into a mental hospital in eastern Hangzhou city. During her three months there, she was regularly denied food and given unspecified injections, the center said.
An official at the mental hospital refused to comment.
_______________________
Falun Gong practitioners dying from maltreatment in jails
(AP-Kyodo, September 27, 2000)
BEIJING, Sept. 27 (Kyodo) - Practitioners of the outlawed Falun Gong group continue to die from the poor conditions they are subjected to in jails and mental hospitals, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said Wednesday.
Tao Hongsheng, a 46-year-old former air force serviceman, died in prison Sept. 20 from dysentery and oedema because jailers denied him proper medical treatment, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a report.
Tao had worked for the State Security Bureau of eastern Hebei Province since leaving the air force in 1994. He was arrested while demonstrating in Tiananmen Square in December 1999 and sentenced to three years in jail.
He contracted the sickness while being confined to a ''special chamber'' where he was served only dirty food because he had refused to renounce his beliefs, the group said.
Others are dying because of ''medical treatment'' forced on practitioners for incorrectly diagnosed mental illness.
Shi Bei, a 49-year-old woman, died Sept. 10 after being injected with drugs in the eastern province of Hangzhou's No. 7 Mental Hospital, the rights group said.
The hospital refused to serve regular food, but nonetheless forced ''medication'' on its reluctant patients. The hospital refused to confirm the death.
Shi was hospitalized for mental illness in June 1999 for refusing to abandon Falun Gong.
Her son, who lives in Canada, said that his mother had no record of mental disease. He said his father remains in jail for practicing Falun Gong.
The rights group said that 52 Falun Gong practitioners have died from maltreatment or torture since July 1999.
_______________________
Chinese Falun Gong policeman dies in jail-HK group
(Reuters, September 27, 2000)
HONG KONG, Sept 27 (Reuters) - A Chinese policeman who was also a follower of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement has died in a labour camp in northern Hebei province, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Wednesday.
Tao Hongsheng, 46, was moved to a cell with three other Falun Gong members in July after he refused to renounce his faith, the Information Centre for Human Rights & Democracy said.
The former public security officer, serving a three-year labour re-education term for protesting China's crackdown on the group since December of last year, suffered severe diarrhoea and died on September 20.
He was given medical treatment only on September 13, but by then it was too late, the centre said.
Separately, 49-year-old Si Pei, a senior member of the group in eastern Hangzhou city, died on September 10 after being sent to a psychiatric hospital, the centre said.
The centre said at least 52 Falun Gong followers have died because of persecution since July 1999.
__________________________
Clinton to Meet China's Jiang on Taiwan, Rights
by Steve Holland (Reuters, Sept. 8, 2000)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Clinton meets Chinese President Jiang Zemin for the first time in a year on Friday and is expected to renew U.S. appeals for China and Taiwan to open a peaceful dialogue.
Clinton and Jiang, both in town for the U.N. Millennium Summit, are also expected to discuss efforts by South Korea and North Korea toward reunification in the wake of an unprecedented summit in June in Pyongyang between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. ...
The criticism of Beijing's treatment of Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong spiritual practitioners and members of unregistered groups came in the second annual report on religious freedom written by the State Department by order of the U.S. Congress.
The report cited a crackdown on the Falun Gong -- including thousands of detentions and what it called credible estimates that at least 24 practitioners had died in custody -- as having a spillover effect on non-registered faiths.
The Chinese-American relationship was clouded by NATO's bombing in May 1999 of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the allied air war against Yugoslavia. ...
_______________________
Group links sect deaths to abuses by China police
(Associated Press, 9/7/2000)
BEIJING - Two members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement died from mistreatment in jail and a third plunged to his death while being interrogated by police, a rights group said yesterday.
The deaths bring to 30 the number of Falun Gong members who have died in custody or after police mistreatment since China banned the group in July 1999, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
One of the three reported to have died, 64-year-old Liu Yufeng, was detained July 18 while practicing Falun Gong meditation exercises near his home in eastern China's Shandong province, the Hong Kong-based center reported.
When Liu's family saw him in prison four days later, his body was covered in wounds and burn marks from an electric baton and three of his ribs were broken, the center said. He died a few hours after returning home.
Another sect member, Li Faming, 52, was picked up Aug. 10 on suspicion of distributing Falun Gong pamphlets in western Gansu province, the center said. Witnesses reported seeing him fall from his apartment window while three policemen searched his home, the center said.
Police ruled that Li ''committed suicide for fear of punishment,'' the report said.
Meanwhile, Zhang Tieyan, 29, died from respiratory problems caused by her imprisonment in a hot, airless cell with more than a dozen other people. Zhang had been arrested in April for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, the center said.
Falun Gong has attracted millions of followers with its philosophy of exercise, meditation, and beliefs drawn from Buddhism, Taoism, and the unorthodox ideas of its founder, Li Hongzhi, a former government clerk. While followers say Falun Gong promotes health and morality, China's officially atheistic communist government banned it as a cult and blamed it for leading 1,600 adherents to their deaths.
Despite the crackdown, followers have continued to publicly protest the ban. In a letter to China's president, Jiang Zemin, printed in yesterday's New York Times, US Falun Gong members protested against what they called the illegal arrest, imprisonment, and torture of the group's practitioners and asked for a meeting with Jiang, who is in New York to attend the UN summit.
_______________________
Falun Followers Die in China Detention -- Hong Kong Group
(Reuters, September 6, 2000)
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Three members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement have died after ill treatment during detention in China where the movement is banned, a Hong Kong-based human rights group said Wednesday.
At least 30 Falun Gong followers had died of ill treatment in custody since July last year, the Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy said in a statement.
One of the latest victims was Liu Yufeng, a 64-year-old retiree in the eastern Shandong province, the group said.
He was detained when taking part in a mass Falun Gong exercise. The detention center notified his family to take him back four days later, when Liu was already unconscious with three broken ribs and other injuries. Liu died on July 23.
In northwestern Gansu province, police detained 52-year-old worker Li Faming on Aug. 10 when Li was suspected of distributing Falun Gong propaganda leaflets.
Police then took Li back to his home for a search, during which they beat up Li who was then seen falling from a window of his apartment, the group said. Li died shortly after being taken to a hospital.
Police declared that Li committed suicide to escape punishment for his crimes, the human rights group said.
In northeastern Heilongjiang province, 29-year-old Zhang Tieyan was detained on April 21.
She was kept in a cramped, poorly ventilated and hot detention center, where she fainted many times. She died after fainting on Aug. 11, the Hong Kong group said.
_______________________
Falun Gong practitioners shout at Chinese leader
by Falasten M. Abdeljabbar("Jersey Journal," 09/05/00)
In a grassy area off Pavonia Avenue in Jersey City, a group of about 10 people sit, taking soft breaths and peacefully moving their arms in harmony with one another. They are practicing a discipline known as Falun Gong - a set of five exercises that have been banned in China, where it originated.
Falun Gong - also called Falun Dafa - translates as "law wheel great law" in Mandarin Chinese and is based on Buddhism. It resembles yoga and tai chi.
Chinese authorities have branded Falun Gong a cult, making it illegal to carry out the system of meditation there. Adherents have reportedly been sent to labor camps, mental institutions and prison for practicing the rituals, which many say have improved their health and spiritual well-being.
"In Eastern culture, body and mind are united as a whole," said Fenny Li, a 29-year-old Chinese immigrant from West Orange who has been a Falun Gong practitioner for two years.
"It (Falun Gong) is very relaxing and gives many health benefits," she said, adding that special music accompanies the rituals. "We do it in our spare time and many times people see us in local parks and are interested in what we do."
Master Li Hongzhi, a Chinese student of qigong (pronounced cheegong), which encompasses other systems of meditation and martial arts, introduced Falun Gong to China in 1992, and his writings and his teachings have become popular worldwide, with a small following in Hudson County.
"Seventy million people practice Falun Gong. The Chinese government doesn't want 70 million people doing anything. . .they're afraid people may rise up against them," said Jonathan Jaffe, spokesman for Friends of Falun Gong, a loosely organized group of followers, including nearly 30 people from Hudson County.
Jaffe said thousands of Falun Gong supporters plan to protest their Chinese counterparts' plight by rallying at the upcoming United Nations People's Summit, scheduled for today, tomorrow and Thursday at the United Nations on First Avenue in New York City. Chinese President Jiang Zemin is scheduled to attend the summit.
"We're planning dawn-to-dusk protests. We're going to follow Zemin to the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art), the Chinese Mission and his hotel. . .Forty-six practitioners have been murdered and these atrocities are continuing," said Jaffe, adding that 10,000 Chinese Falun Gong adherents have reportedly been detained in labor camps without trial.
"The (Chinese) government spews crazy lies, saying it's a cult that sucks people in, but it doesn't cost anything. People just gather and do these exercises," he said. "It has nothing to do with religion."
Mai He, a 29-year-old Falun Gong supporter and graduate student in pathology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has been practicing Falun Gong for almost four years, frequently gathering with other residents of his Kearny apartment building in the morning to meditate outside a nearby elementary school.
"I tried the exercise and I can feel the flow of energy," he said.
"Why does the (Chinese) government send mentally healthy people to hospitals for their personal beliefs?" he asked. "The people who do this are peaceful, but the government doesn't trust its people."
A spokesman for the Chinese Mission to the United Nations could not be reached for comment.
_______________________
151 Falun Gongs Said Convicted
(Associated Press, August 25, 2000)
BEIJING (AP) - Chinese courts have convicted 151 leading members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement since it was banned last year, a Chinese religious official was quoted as saying Friday.
The figure given by Ye Xiaowen, however, did not include as many as 5,000 Falun Gong adherents who human rights groups estimate have been sent to labor camps without trial during the government's 13-month crackdown on the group.
Ye, China's senior official in charge of religious affairs, said 22 of the 151 Falun Gong adherents were sentenced to up to five years imprisonment, the official newspaper China Daily reported. It did not say whether Ye detailed the punishments for the remaining 129 adherents.
Falun Gong organizers have been sentenced to up to 18 years in prison, Chinese official media have previously reported.
The newspaper said those convicted were ``hardcore'' members of the group. Ye said they ``either leaked state secrets, made use of Falun Gong to create social chaos or committed other crimes,'' the China Daily said.
Ye, who spoke Wednesday in Los Angeles, is part of a delegation visiting the United States ahead of the U.N. Millennium World Peace Summit, a gathering of religious leaders in New York Aug. 28-31. The U.N. Millennium Summit of world leaders will follow, Sept. 6-8.
Chinese authorities say Falun Gong is an evil cult that led more than 1,600 practitioners to their deaths. Alarmed by the group's popularity and organization, the Communist Party banned Falun Gong in July 1999. ...
Founded eight years ago, Falun Gong attracted millions of followers with its blend of slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's leader, Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk believed to be living in the United States.
_______________________
China convicts 151 Falun Gong-related criminals
("China Daily," 08/24/2000)
Chinese courts nationwide, by August 15, convicted and meted out criminal penalties to 151 hard-core Falun Gong practitioners who committed crimes, said Ye Xiaowen, director-general of China's State Administration of Religious Affairs, at a press conference in Los Angeles Wednesday.
Of the convicted, 22 were given sentences up to five years in prison, according to Ye, who also serves as an advisor to the visiting Chinese delegation of religious leaders.
He stressed that "the convicted are those who either leaked state secrets, or making use of Falun Gong to create social chaos, or committed other crimes."
Of the 2.1 million people practicing the Falun Gong cult in China, those prosecuted are only a tiny fraction, and the majority, or more than 98 percent, have been converted to normal life after persuasion and education for over a year, according to the most senior official in charge of religious affairs in China.
In response to local reporters' question on the stance of China 's religious circles on the government crackdown upon the Falun Gong cult, Buddhist master Sheng Hui said today that the Falun Gong cult is just as harmful as narcotics, who "has no difference from drug traffickers."
"Due to its strong capability to control the mind of practitioners, more than 1,600 have committed suicide or been killed as a result of indulging in practicing the Falun Gong cult, and 650 people have serious mental problems, of whom 14 perpetrated the felony of homicide," he said.
The Buddhist master, who is vice-president of the China Buddhist Association, said that Buddhists were the first who identified Falun Gong as an evil cult as early as 1996, three years ahead of government crackdown, because the cult "stole" many concepts of Buddhism and distorted them for evil purposes.
Both Ye and the Buddhist master warned the public that Falun Gong is so cunning that it usually takes on different cloaks to cheat people, which is why it fooled so many people both in China and the world at large.
"When the Chinese Qigong was popular, the master of Falun Gong Li Hongzhi said he was practicing Qigong for the good of health, and seeing that religions were respected in China, he said he was a religious leader," said master Sheng Hui.
"He is a wildcatter," he said.
Commenting on the big advertisements run by the Falun Gong group in major US newspapers, including the New York Times, saying that Falun Gong is Qigong again, Ye said that Li Hongzhi is just playing another trick to fool the public, Ye said.
_______________________
China's Steadfast Sect
by John Pomfret ("Washington Post," August 23, 2000)
QINGDAO, China: On the day last October when China's government issued a sweeping order declaring Falun Gong an "evil cult," the main state-run television station brought Wang Peisheng onto its nightly news and identified the 68-year-old retired hardware store worker as a reformed practitioner. "Falun Gong is dangerous," the nightly news quoted Wang as saying. "Banning it is a good move."
But in the wee hours of July 12, Wang died in a jail here in Shandong province, on the Yellow Sea about 200 miles south of Beijing. He had been arrested a few weeks before in Beijing, where he had gone to plead with the government to legalize the Buddhist-like spiritual movement. After rejecting Falun Gong on state-run TV, Wang had resumed practicing it. Two close associates say he never really abandoned the movement but was forced to appear on television by local police who threatened his children with unemployment if he did not play along.
"I found him that morning, slumped over," said Kong Baiming, a 53-year-old construction worker who was in a jail cell with Wang when he died. "Just the night before he told me that he had planned to return to Beijing again to press the Falun Gong case. He had been meditating. His soul had left his body."
Wang's attachment to Falun Gong is not unusual. Thirteen months into the ban, the largest campaign of repression since the 1989 crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, China's attempts to crush the spiritual movement have still not succeeded. And now in several parts of China, practitioners of the set of breathing exercises say their campaign of civil disobedience, unprecedented in the history of Communist China, is yielding results.
In several regions, including Weifang, a middle-size city in central Shandong province, practitioners say they now can practice their faith at home. Public practice of Falun Gong still means jail time and an almost guaranteed beating. Other Chinese regions continue to enforce the ban with apparent brutality. But winning, at least in some places, a measure of freedom to follow their faith marks a major victory over the Communist Party, which declared earlier this year that Falun Gong constituted an unprecedented threat to Communist rule and that its members would be treated with a "firm hand."
The significance of the party's failure to crush Falun Gong is as simple as it is profound. It illustrates the increasing inability of China's party and government to carry out their will in the face of concerted and determined opposition. The campaign against Falun Gong has been particularly intense precisely because of the group's open challenge, which some Chinese sources have described as a test of President Jiang Zemin's authority.
Zeng Qinghong, head of the party's organization department, said early in the crackdown that it would constitute an important test of the party's mettle. If so, it appears the party has failed so far. Falun Gong's organization remains tight. Members communicate using e-mail, pre-paid phone cards and code. And they have not appeared fearful of police in interviews during the past few months.
Security forces have sometimes responded with brutality. At least 26 practitioners are believed to have died in police custody. An estimated 3,000 people have been sent by the police to labor camps. Chinese law allows the police to dispatch people for three years of "thought reform through labor" without using the courts. And the courts, controlled by the Communist Party, have sentenced dozens more to jail terms of 10 years or more.
But Falun Gong practitioners continue to protest in Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing, and they continue to arrive with petitions at the offices of the State Council, China's cabinet, just a few blocks away.
"In the beginning, the authorities even came into our homes, but slowly things have opened up," said Sun Xiaomei, a 37-year-old Falun Gong follower from Weifang. "We have won these rights by ourselves. No one gave them to us. But our stubbornness and faith are going to win."
Sun, who was a schoolteacher before she was fired from her job this summer because of her beliefs, is another example of someone who apparently accepted the crackdown only to return to Falun Gong's fold. She was arrested on July 20 last year, two days before China officially banned Falun Gong. Like thousands of her comrades across the country, she was taken to a stadium and then moved into a hotel. Police and government agents demanded that she sign a form saying she would stop practicing. Sun agreed.
On July 26, Sun was told that her mother and sister, who had practiced Falun Gong for about five years, had committed suicide together because they refused to accept Beijing's ban on the sect. Their deaths shocked her, she said, but convinced her that she must continue with Falun Gong.
"People are asking what kind of power can resist the power of the party," she said. "People who were not interested before are interested. In the beginning, they believed the TV propaganda. Now they are asking us."
Falun Gong has attracted people from a cross section of Chinese society: old party members, young Western-trained scientists, senior People's Liberation Army officers, bureaucrats, teachers and millions of people living on the margins of Chinese society. In all, at least 10 million people are believed to have practiced Falun Gong in China.
Falun Gong gained followers rapidly after Li Hongzhi, the movement's mastermind whose last known address was in Queens, N.Y., began proselytizing here in the early 1990s. At the time, the Chinese government, still worried about Western influence in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, backed movements such as Falun Gong because they embraced nativist elements in Chinese culture and appeared to reject the liberalism of the West. The Ministry of Education published a series of Falun Gong books; criticism of the movement was banned in China's press.
Part of Falun Gong involves practicing traditional Chinese breathing exercises, known as qigong, which seek to strengthen something Chinese call qi, the body's vital energy. Falun Gong preaches that people are born with a wheel of energy in their bellies. Falun Gong teaches its followers how to control and strengthen this "energy wheel."
But Falun Gong also has a supernatural and strongly ideological side. Li, the movement's mastermind, has claimed he can fly. He has said the earth is being infiltrated by aliens. He has preached that each race has its own paradise and that intermarriage is dangerous because mixed-race children would be without a paradise. He says women should serve their husbands like masters. And he has spiced his catechism with ancient Chinese animist deities, such as fox and weasel spirits, making it attractive to the Chinese.
Some in China blame a spiritual vacuum for the persistence of sects such as Falun Gong. Communism no longer holds any attraction for most Chinese, particularly the young. In the absence of communist ideals, many middle-aged Chinese "all of whom have been trained from a young age to believe passionately in Communism" have become a ripe breeding ground for religions of all persuasions.
Others have criticized the way in which the crackdown has been carried out. Last summer, many Chinese people said they supported the government's decision to ban Falun Gong, partly because its belief system "aliens, a third dimension, curing disease through meditation and the infallibility of Li" seemed outrageous. Now, many people express exasperation with the crackdown and sympathy for its victims.
Falun Gong followers say their successes in some regions have come at a horrible cost.
On March 2, for example, police arrested Zhang Zhenggang, a 36-year-old bank worker and Falun Gong organizer in the city of Huai'an in eastern Jiangsu province, shortly after he returned home from Beijing, where he had gone with a letter signed by 100 practitioners demanding that the sect be legalized.
On March 25, Zhang's wife, Zhang Zhaoyun, also a Falun Gong follower, was at home when a call came from a friend telling her she should hurry to the Huai'an No. 1 People's Hospital. According to an account from relatives, police had brought her husband there, and doctors were operating on him. A doctor came out and showed her a bandage soaked in blood from his head. Her husband had lapsed into a coma, the doctor said, but his blood pressure was stable so there was some hope.
Police at the hospital were surprised to see Zhang's wife and did not let her see her husband, but she pushed her way past an officer.
"His head was wrapped in bandages," one witness recounted. "There was blood soaking through them. His eyes looked like they were popping out of his head."
On March 30, Zhang's blood pressure began to slide. About 50 police officers came to his room, and Zhang's wife was called out to a meeting with a police official, relatives said. The police official told her that Zhang Zhenggang was already dead. She disagreed and struggled to leave the room to return to her husband's side. Police stopped her and took her husband away to the crematorium.
The relatives charged that the police ordered hospital workers to take Zhang off life support. Police officials in Huai'an have said they were not aware of the case.
Despite her husband's demise, Zhang Zhaoyun continues to practice Falun Gong, family members said. She is raising the couple's 12-year-old daughter by herself. Like her husband, she was fired from her job at the Bank of China. She sold his motorcycle to raise a little cash. Still, relatives said, Zhang is proud of belonging to Falun Gong.
"She puts it on her resume," one said, "so, of course, she can't find a job."
_______________________
Cult friction
("Sydney Morning Herald," August 19, 2000)
Believers like Dai Meiling feed the deep insecurities of the Chinese leadership. The 54-year-old electrical engineer says she used to be frightened of the police in her native Shanghai, but since she became a follower of the Falun Gong sect she is no longer afraid.
Now an Australian citizen, Dai has been arrested on each of the four times she has travelled back to China to support her fellow devotees.
On her most recent trip in February, it took a 23-day hunger strike to force the police to release her after 45 days in a detention centre and deport her to Australia.
"I am not scared," she says after demonstrating in Canberra this week while a visiting Chinese human rights delegation was in town. "I have done nothing wrong."
But for the authoritarians clinging to power in Beijing, this is the kind of defiance that threatens to undermine the foundations of Communist Party rule.
During more than 50 years with the communists in power, fear and cycles of outright terror have been the cement that binds the People's Republic together. This pattern of rule continues today. Human rights groups and many governments openly condemn Beijing's efforts to stamp out political and religious dissent and suppress groups like Falun Gong.
In its annual survey on China's human rights performance, the US State Department says China's record "deteriorated markedly" through 1999. ...
This extreme response to Falun Gong's apparently harmless and peaceful combination of Eastern philosophical teachings, meditation, exercise routines and deep breathing exercises shows how alarmed the communist Government feels about any challenge to its monopoly on power.
On the anniversary last month of the banning of the sect in China, determined Falun Gong practitioners gathered in Tiananmen Square to perform their tai chi-style exercise routines in the certain knowledge that they would be pounced on and unceremoniously dragged away. ...
It wasn't until the Herald reported on the harassment campaign this week that Downer acknowledged, against the advice of his senior officials, that these complaints had already been raised with the Chinese embassy in May and again at this week's talks.
It appears that one reason the Chinese authorities have extended their campaign of suppression offshore is that Falun Gong is one of the first mass movements of its ilk that has adopted the Internet to spread its message and co-ordinate its activities.
This means the sect's followers outside China, including the estimated 2,000 in Australia, can play an important role in reinforcing and supporting their fellow practitioners.
Some of the movement's Australian followers, mostly of Chinese descent, have been aggressive in their attempts to visit China to protest against the official crackdown. Two are in custody in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.
Local followers believe that they have been the target of a major campaign of intimidation that has included surveillance and monitoring, vandalism, phone tapping and direct pressure from Chinese diplomats.
A well-known Sydney Falun Gong follower, Michael Lam, says the heavy tyres of his new 4WD were slashed when it was parked outside his Surry Hills home. ...
The Herald has established that Chinese diplomats have contacted councils in Sydney and urged them to deny Falun Gong the use of community facilities for meetings or for demonstrations.
In response to the Howard Government's private complaints and the Herald's reports this week, the Chinese embassy has denied all claims of harassment. Yet it claims that the sect is damaging Sino-Australian ties through its protests and demonstrations outside Chinese diplomatic missions. ...
_______________________
Australia raises Falun Gong harassment in talks with China
(Kyodo News Service, August 17, 2000)
SYDNEY, Aug. 17 (Kyodo) - Australia raised concerns about China's treatment of Falun Gong practitioners and reports of harassment of the sect's followers in Australia during bilateral talks in Canberra this week, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Thursday.
Downer said the issue was raised during the fourth round of annual human rights talks that ended Wednesday night. ...
_______________________
China's religious leaders reject foreign criticism
("Radio Australia," August 17, 2000)
China's top religious leaders have warned foreign countries against meddling in domestic affairs on the pretext of upholding religious freedom.
The leaders are from the five major religions recognised by China Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestant.
They met in Beijing to prepare for the Millennium World Peace Summit, to be held from August 28-31 in the United States and of which China is a participant.
The leaders warned of the dangers of American "hegemony' and rejected international criticism that China lacked religious freedom.
Fu Tieshan, the Bishop of Beijing, who will lead the Chinese delegation at the Religious Summit, warned against the possble presence of the banned Falungong sect at the summit.
He says all of the religions and the conference, will be tarnished if they are given the authority to attend.
_______________________
Australian Falun Gong urges China to end harassment
by Belinda Goldsmith (Reuters, August 16, 2000)
CANBERRA, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Australian followers of China's outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group urged a visiting Chinese human rights delegation on Wednesday to stop what they say is harassment of its members in Australia.
Their allegations have been denied by the Chinese Embassy.
A spokesman for Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the issue of harassment of Australian followers had already been raised with the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. ...
About 100 of an estimated 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Australia staged a peaceful protest outside the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) where Australian and Chinese officials were holding their fourth annual human rights dialogue. ...
Dai said practitioners of Falun Gong in Australia had been harassed by Chinese officials stationed here, with strange telephone calls, stalking and even car break-ins. ...
_______________________
Falun Gong free in Hong Kong, but irks public
by Tan Ee Lyn (Reuters, August 14, 2000)
HONG KONG, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Outlawed in mainland China, the Falun Gong spiritual movement has been allowed to operate unhindered in Hong Kong but after a spate of publicity stunts the group is beginning to get on people's nerves.
Recent staged suicide attempts and a hunger strike, as well as a row within the fractious group over its leadership, are costing Falun Gong public sympathy, experts and commentators say. ...
On two occasions over the past month, members of the group orchestrated suicide attempts which threw one of the busiest districts in Hong Kong into traffic chaos and hurt local businesses.
In the first incident, three mainland Chinese Falun Gong followers who overstayed their visas threatened to jump from a 10th floor flat in the Happy Valley district after immigration officers tried to arrest them.
Less than a week later, another believer sat on the ledge of her 11th floor flat staring down at a large group of journalists and photographers when her landlord tried to evict her.
In both cases, the followers claimed they were being persecuted for their beliefs. No one was hurt. ...
SPLINTER GROUP CLAIMS NEW LEADER
The group is also waging an internal struggle in Hong Kong over its leadership, only contributing to the growing sense of unease about the movement in the territory.
A splinter group of about 20 members has claimed in recent months that Belinda Pang, one of the most outspoken followers since Beijing's ban, is now movement leader.
``It was revealed to us on May 11 that Belinda is now the leader,'' said Helen Tao, Pang's lieutenant.
``During our retreat on Lantau island in June, the Big Buddha statue transformed to look more and more like Belinda,'' Tao said.
Pang, who has been spokeswoman for the group, has not been accessible to the media in recent weeks.
Other members in Hong Kong, who vow allegiance to movement founder Li Hongzhi, slam Pang's leadership claim as heresy. One of China's most wanted people, Li lives in the United States.
_______________________
november and december (2000) articles