Edited articles on the Chinese government

We can decide for ourselves

("Bangkok Post," (Editorials) February 26, 2001)

We've read a lot of reports about the opposition of some Thais to the 
Falungong meeting for reasons of national security and Buddhism.

I am suspicious of what national security really means. I also find Thais 
calling Falungong an evil sect, a term used by the Chinese government, 
without anyone in authority in Thailand ruling that this is the case.

We are Thais and we are in Thailand. These people must remember that their 
loyalty must be to here and not China, no matter what their background.

They also must understand that doing business with China or investing in 
China is a good thing, but they should never do anything to hurt this 
country's long-term interests just to protect their own interests.

As for Buddhism, I think it would be better to leave this to senior monks and 
religious experts. They should have the final say on whether Falungong's 
teachings are wrong and, if so, how they are wrong. This concerns religion. 
It should not be used as an excuse to protect certain people's business.

The Falungong issue might be converted into something threatening national 
security; but this should not involve Falungong itself but the way we handle 
it, especially the consequences of tolerating selfish and near-sighted but 
wealthy and influential people.

Thailand is a democratic country. We do not want to interfere in anyone 
else's domestic affairs. But at the same time, we also need to mention that 
others should not interfere in Thailand. Only we have the right to decide our 
affairs.

Y. Abdullah
Narathiwat

Is self-immolation a religious act?
I disagree strongly with the writer in support of Falungong (Postbag, Feb 23) 
and believe Thailand has made the correct choice in banning this dangerous 
"cult" here.

I say "cult" because Falungong is not a religion. When members kill 
themselves by setting themselves on fire, this is not a religion.

Yes, members individually made a choice to set themselves on fire, but I 
would disagree with you in that the other members never persuaded them to 
stop. In a way, Falungong is promoting self-sacrifice.

I have never heard of any religion that promotes killing oneself, but I have 
heard of many mass suicides around the world associated with cults. Sweden, 
France and America have all seen cult members kill themselves. For what? A 
belief? A way of life?

No life is worth giving up.

Falungong destroys the ability of individuals to think for themselves. It 
takes advantage of those who are looking desperately for guidance and hope. I 
praise China's government for banning this cult around the world.

Don't compare China's policy on religious sects with that of Japan. There are 
more people who are in a desperate and vulnerable position living in China 
than in Japan. If this cult is not controlled, China may have a problem of 
revolt. Japan does not.

Stafford Lau

It's basic freedoms which are at risk.
I live in the United States and have been following the Falungong situation 
in Thailand with great interest. I agree wholeheartedly with the editorial of 
Feb 23 and wanted to add a couple of points.

When you compare the behaviour of China and the Falungong group, it is clear 
that the oppressive rule in Tibet and the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 
1989 (to name just two examples) are far more deserving of the pejorative 
term "evil" than the actions of a group of people who want to practise a 
hybrid form of meditation.

It is also clear, as Pastor Martin Niemoller pointed out a long time ago, 
that Thailand bowing to China's whims will simply lead to a slippery slope 
where any expression of speech can be threatened:

"First they came for the Jews. But I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. 
Then they came for the communists. But I didn't speak up because I was not a 
communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. But I didn't speak up 
because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics. But I 
didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me. And by 
that time no one was left to speak up."

At issue here isn't whether one likes what Falungong has to say but that no 
one is safe when free speech and expression is not permitted based on blind 
ideological grounds. It is a path that any freedom-loving individual should 
avoid at all costs.

Ram Samudrala
Seattle, Washington

China Hosts U.N. Rights Chief, Vows to Wipe Out Sect

by Paul Eckert (Reuters, February 26, 2001)

(Reuters) - U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson Monday urged China at 
landmark talks on sensitive penal system reforms to scrap the ``re-education 
through labor'' system it has used to lock away dissidents.

But only hours later the Communist Party called for the ''complete 
elimination'' of the Falun Gong (news - web sites) spiritual movement which 
it banned as a cult in 1999 and against which ''re-education through labor'' 
has been a key weapon.

``If the cult is not removed...the process of China's reform, opening-up and 
socialist modernization drive will be affected,'' said an editorial in 
Tuesday's People's Daily, issued through Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua said the government gave citations to 110 organizations and 271 
individuals for anti-Falun Gong work in a move underscoring national resolve 
``to wipe out the cancer of Falun Gong from society.''

The official media statements did not unveil new policies in China's 
19-month-long battle against Falun Gong, a ruthless campaign which has 
provoked strong international concern about violations of religious freedom 
and civil rights.

Earlier Monday Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, opened 
a two-day seminar on punishment of minor crimes in Beijing, calling for ``a 
serious review leading to the abolition'' of the extrajudicial labor camp 
program.

``The concept of using forced labor as a punishment is against the accepted 
international human rights principles embodied in many international 
instruments,'' Robinson told Chinese officials and legal experts.

Falun Gong spokespeople say 5,000 members of the spiritual group are 
undergoing re-education labor in harsh conditions.

REFORM OR ABOLITION?

Robinson's remarks echoed demands by Western human rights activists and some 
Chinese legal experts who say the 45-year-old practice of sending people to 
labor camps without trial or due process spawns widespread abuses, including 
arbitrary detention.

``We're very happy that Mary Robinson made this strong statement at the 
workshop and is standing with the people inside China who are looking at this 
issue,'' said Sophia Woodman, research director for the New York-based Human 
Rights in China.

Calls to abolish labor camps go beyond China's official recommendation of 
reforms that would add judicial review to the process.

Woodman cautioned that academic talk of reform ``doesn't mean that the 
security ministries have changed their point of view.''

Human Rights in China issued a report last week which quoted Chinese sources 
as saying 260,000 people were in labor camps, 60 percent of them for the 
catch-all offence of ''disturbing public order.''

There was no direct Chinese reaction to Robinson's call.

Addressing the seminar, Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Guangya said: ``No 
country's human rights record is 100 percent perfect.

``We hope not only to work hard to improve our record, but to learn from the 
experience of other countries,'' he said.

Olympics, Geneva Spotlight Rights

China, which insisted last week sports and politics should be kept separate 
as International Olympics Committee (IOC (news - web sites)) inspectors 
evaluated Beijing's 2008 bid, freed Wei and Wang to help its unsuccessful bid 
for the 2000 Games, which went to Sydney. They were jailed again later.

Several dissidents were detained during the Olympic inspection and a woman 
who wrote to the IOC asking it to press Beijing to free political prisoners 
was sent to a labor camp for two years.

The visit by Robinson, who arrived Sunday, also comes as Beijing is steeling 
for its annual fight to avoid formal censure at the annual U.N. rights 
meeting in Geneva next month.

And while she is in Beijing, the State Department will publish its annual 
global human rights report -- an event that has sparked furious reaction from 
China in previous years.

The report, due to be released at 1700 GMT Monday, is expected to raise 
concerns about China's crackdown on Falun Gong, its tough policies in the 
Buddhist region of Tibet and curbs on the Internet.

Pressure mounts on Hong Kong as Jiang visit looms

by Tan Ee Lyn (Reuters, Feb. 26, 2001)

HONG KONG, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa is under intense 
pressure to control the Falun Gong spiritual movement before Chinese 
President Jiang Zemin visits the territory in May.

The Falun Gong, outlawed in mainland China as an "evil cult" but legal in 
Hong Kong, is becoming the most severe test to date of the freedoms that 
China granted this territory when Britain pulled out of its former colony in 
1997.

Jiang is due to open an economic forum in Hong Kong on May 8, and Tung is 
under pressure from pro-Beijing politicians to ensure Falun Gong protests do 
not overshadow the visit.

Pressure on Tung has mounted since 1,000 Falun Gong members held a two-day 
conference at Hong Kong's City Hall in January. They denounced Jiang and 
China's draconian policies towards the meditation group.

Hong Kong's pro-democracy forces have said that should Tung yield and ban the 
Falun Gong, it would be a severe blow to the city's largely autonomous status 
and to its local freedoms.

Apart from petitioning Jiang to stop the mainland crackdown, overseas Falun 
Gong members are expected to converge on Hong Kong to celebrate the May 13 
anniversary of the group's founding by Li Hongzhi nine years ago.

Beijing sees such actions as extremely provocative and, in essence, abusing 
the city's special status to denounce China from its own doorstep.

Pro-Beijing politicians have raised the tone of their attacks on the Falun 
Gong as the May events loom.

Tung, put in his post by China, will be hard pressed to find a middle ground 
between Beijing and the Falun Gong, analysts said. He must prevent the Falun 
Gong from embarrassing Jiang on Chinese soil but also give the group freedom 
of expression under the "one country, two systems" concept set out at the 
handover.

LINES BEING DRAWN

"The government is under tremendous pressure to control the group, especially 
now that Jiang is visiting in May," Ma Lik, a local delegate to China's 
National People's Congress (NPC), or parliament, told Reuters.

"Mr Tung has been procrastinating making a decision," Ma said, adding that 
Beijing was closely watching how Tung handles the problem.

Lines are being drawn, and Ma and another NPC delegate warned Falun Gong 
members at a recent public meeting not to associate with mainland Falun Gong 
members.

Beijing's recent renewed attack on the Falun Gong has had Chinese officials 
and pro-China circles in Hong Kong baying for blood.

Ye Xiaowen, director of China's State Bureau of Religious Affairs, told a 
recent Hong Kong forum that Beijing would never allow evil cults and repeated 
an earlier warning that the Falun Gong would not be allowed to use Hong Kong 
as an anti-China base.

Some pro-Beijing politicians in the territory have called for the Falun Gong 
to be banned in Hong Kong while others have urged the enactment of a sedition 
law to deal with the group.

Tung this month echoed Beijing's description of Falun Gong as evil and vowed 
he would monitor its activities closely.

That sparked an outcry from Hong Kong's vocal pro-democracy camp and 
religious leaders, who warned Tung against banning the group which they said 
would set a dangerous precedent.

With the rising heat, Falun Gong members in Hong Kong appear to have toned 
down their activities and petitions in recent days.

"We have not made any concrete plans (for Jiang's visit) and if we do 
anything at all, it will probably be just to petition Jiang to ask him to 
stop the crackdown," Falun Gong spokeswoman Hui Yee-han told Reuters.

On May 13, the group will exercise in a public park, though detailed 
celebration plans have yet to be confirmed. In the past such exercise 
sessions have included banners denouncing Beijing.

"But whatever we do, it will be legal," Hui said.

Political analyst Sonny Lo said the outcome may come down to bargaining 
between Tung's government and the Falun Gong group.

"The Hong Kong government will probably have to give a warning to the group 
to keep its activities low-key," Lo said.

Falun Gong taking root among Utahns 
Exercises are a small part of the spiritual practice

by Elaine Jarvik ("Deseret News," Feb. 23, 2001)

      On a Saturday afternoon that is surprisingly warm for the middle of 
February, Beverly Clark and seven other people are standing on the lawn of 
Washington Square, in front of the City-County Building. Chinese music from a 
small tape player wobbles through the air and is nearly drowned out by cars 
moving past on 500 South, but the men and women move serenely through their 
Falun Gong exercises: Buddha Showing a Thousand Hands, Penetrating Two Cosmic 
Extremes, Falun Heavenly Circuit.
      Washington Square is 6,000 miles from Tiananmen Square, where five 
alleged members set themselves on fire in January to protest the government's 
crackdown on Falun Gong. In Beijing, as in the rest of China, Falun Gong has 
been outlawed, labeled as an "evil cult." Practitioners have been jailed. 
There are reports of torture and deaths in prison. The Wall Street Journal 
reported recently that when Beijing students returned to classes after the 
Chinese New Year break they were given course schedules emblazoned with 
slogans such as "Reject Cults in the Schoolyard."
      Worldwide, Falun Gong is reportedly practiced by 100 million people, 
although like many reports about Falun Gong, the figure may or may not be 
accurate. There are no membership rolls, so there is no real way to gauge the 
numbers. And because of the tension between the Chinese government and 
practitioners of Falun Gong, there are claims and counterclaims on both sides.
      At the very least, the practice has become pervasive enough in China to 
panic the government Ñ and to provide one more human rights headache that 
could keep Beijing from getting the Olympics in 2008.
      The Chinese government's discomfort with Falun Gong has spilled over to 
Hong Kong and, most recently, to Pasadena, Calif., where last weekend the 
consulate general of the People's Republic of China "lobbied vigorously" to 
prevent a Falun Gong "experience-sharing conference," according to the 
Pasadena Star News.
      In Utah, the Falun Gong movement is tiny but gaining attention. In 
January, Mayor Rocky Anderson proclaimed "Falun Dafa Week."
      Falun Gong Ñ sometimes also called Falun Dafa (Falun means "law wheel," 
Dafa means "great way") Ñ is often referred to by the media as a religion or 
a sect, but it worships no deity. The practice includes traditional qi gong 
exercises, designed to move healing energy (qi or chi) through the body. 
Although this is the most visible part of Falun Gong Ñ the exercises are done 
in public parks in European cities, for example Ñ the exercises are only a 
small part of the practice of Falun Gong.
      The heart of Falun Gong is xinxing (pronounced shin-shing), the 
cultivation of moral character.
      "The gong that truly determines the level of one's energy potency is 
not developed through practicing exercises," writes Li Hongzhi. "It is 
developed through the transformation of the substance de (virtue), and 
through the cultivation of xinxing."
      Li, referred to as Master Li by practitioners, introduced Falun Gong to 
the Chinese people in 1992, bringing together what he says are ancient 
teachings that combine elements of the Buddha School and Tao, plus qi gong 
and various other ideas that the Chinese government considers "superstition." 
Li is now in exile in New York.
      "Spiritual practice" is perhaps the best way to describe Falun Gong, 
says Salt Laker Beverly Clark, who began to practice Falun Gong about a year 
ago. Clark, who grew up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of 
Latter-day Saints, says she was drawn to Falun Gong after exploring Buddhism, 
Hinduism, Judaism, Catholicism, New Age books, tai chi and yoga.
      "I wanted answers to things that didn't make sense," Clark says.
      When she heard about Falun Gong she figured that, like everything else 
she had tried, it would be a spiritual dead end. But "I checked out (Falun 
Gong) books from the library and I'm like, whoa, all the answers I've been 
searching for were there right before my eyes."
      Through the practice of Falun Gong, according to Li, a person 
cultivates truthfulness, compassion and forbearance (zhen, shan and ren). 
Like Buddhist schools, it advocates the relinquishment of ego, jealousy and 
"attachments" Ñ not material possessions or relationships themselves but the 
desire for them. Like other Buddha schools, Falun Gong believes in karma 
(basically, what goes around comes around), although Li takes it one step 
further. "Karma," he writes, "is the primary factor that causes sickness in 
people."
      Through the practice of Falun Gong, he says, people can change the 
molecular composition of their bodies. Eventually, he says, "metabolism no 
longer occurs. A person thus transcends the five elements, turning his body 
into one composed of substances from other dimensions. No longer restrained 
by our space and time, this person will forever be young."
      For every organic and inorganic thing that exists in the dimension we 
can see, says Li, there exists "an intelligent being" in another dimension. 
      In Utah, where Falun Gong practitioners meet every Saturday at noon in 
the Downtown Library (and in good weather at Liberty Park), practitioners 
such as Clark struggle to understand and explain some of Li's metaphysical 
concepts.
      But all say it has made a difference in their lives. Lin-Chu, who 
travels to the Salt Lake Falun Gong sessions each week from Ogden, says the 
practice has made her a more patient, decent person, and has rid her of 
carpal tunnel syndrome and an ulcer. Sheng Mei, who has practiced Falun Gong 
since he was a high school student, says that in the four years since then he 
has not caught one cold.
      Although the Chinese government has labeled Falun Gong a "doomsday 
cult," charging that Li has predicted the world will end in 20 years and only 
Falun Gong members will survive, "that's propaganda," says Sheng. And the 
much-publicized reports of the suicide immolation of five people in Tiananmen 
Square are also propaganda, say practitioners and others.
      Washington Post reporter Philip P. Pan recently questioned the 
allegations of Chinese officials about the Tiananmen immolations. According 
to Pan, one of the women said to have set fire to herself had not been known 
to practice Falun Gong, and Falun Gong beliefs discourage suicide. In 
addition there are other inconsistencies in the government's account, 
according to American journalist Danny Schechter, author of "Falun Gong's 
Challenge to China." Schechter is not a Falun Gong practitioner.
      "Now, as new questions are raised and doubts expressed, it may turn out 
that the world media have been misled into becoming an uncritical 
transmission belt for Beijing's bullying," wrote Schechter earlier this week 
in an article posted on the Falun Gong clearwisdom.net Web site.
      The controversy seems half a world away from the handful of 
practitioners slowly and calmly moving through the Strengthening Divine 
Powers exercise in downtown Salt Lake City. But don't use her name, says 
Clark, pointing to a young Chinese woman gracefully moving her arms above her 
head. "Her family still lives in China."

Beijing's neuroses should not sway us

("Bangkok Post," (Editorial) Feb. 23, 2001)

Should Thailand ban Falungong members from holding an international meeting 
in Bangkok in April? Should Thailand risk souring relations with China for 
the sake of a marginal group that seeks to combine physical exercise with 
Buddhist and Taoist spiritual principles? There are only an estimated 1,000 
practitioners of Falungong in Thailand, so why should their interest override 
those of the whole country?It's a given, right? That is what Beijing would 
like us to believe. It has already succeeded in convincing some Thai Chinese 
business groups of this and they are now toeing the Beijing line that 
Falungong is an "evil cult", on a par with Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult 
responsible for the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway which 
killed 10 people. The businessmen have called on the Thaksin Shinawatra 
government to ban the Falungong meeting to safeguard national security and 
Buddhism.

The new administration has yet to respond. But before it does, it should 
think hard about all the issues involved here-issues like sovereignty and 
freedom of belief, free speech and free expression, things intrinsic to the 
democracy we have fought so hard to become.

Every time China gets in trouble with the world community for crushing its 
own people, whether it be in Tibet, the horror of Tiananmen Square in 1989, 
or now Falungong-Beijing recites the dogma of sovereignty and interference in 
its domestic affairs. But when the Dalai Lama wants to visit Bangkok or when 
members of Falungong want to gather, Beijing objects loudly, even threatening 
a deterioration in relations. Is this not interference in the domestic 
affairs of Thailand? Does China not recognise the principle of reciprocity? 
Other countries cannot interfere in what it sees as its internal affairs, but 
China can interfere anywhere it pleases. It does seem China recognises only 
her own sovereignty.

Mr Thaksin and Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai cannot afford to allow 
their fledgling government to be dictated to by China. They must abide by the 
constitution, our highest law, which guarantees freedom of assembly, freedom 
of thought, and free speech and expression. Thailand cannot yield to 
Beijing's every whim. We are a sovereign, democratic nation and we must abide 
by those principles. Folding at its first test will brand the Thaksin 
government a milksop in the eyes of the world community.

Beijing has failed to show how Falungong is a threat to anyone other than its 
own members in China, who regularly face arrest, persecution and harassment. 
The movement has not engaged in sabotage or terrorism anywhere in the world. 
Beijing claims its followers set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square to 
protest against the authorities, but the movement denies this saying suicide 
or any other act of violence are against its teachings.

The Chinese authorities fear Falungong because it competes for the loyalty of 
the people. For doctrinaire Maoists, the people can have no loyalty other 
than to the Communist party. Falungong claims a following of 70 million 
inside China and another 30 million elsewhere. Beijing was spooked in 1999 
when 10,000 Falungong practitioners held a peaceful demonstration. It was the 
largest such gathering in Beijing since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. Three 
months later Falungong was banned in China.

The movement may be nothing more than an eccentric fad. But it is important 
that Thailand allows its members to meet. They have promised not to say 
anything political or which will upset China, but they should be free to say 
anything they wish. Nothing is more sacred in a free society than the freedom 
to say what you think. Once you start forbidding anybody from expressing his 
opinion, pretty soon the authorities will be coming after you next.

The Fires This Time:
Immolation Or Deception In Beijing?

 by Danny Schechter ("Media Channel," February 22, 2001)

What could be more dramatic? People are setting themselves on fire in 
Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. CNN is there. The police just 
happen to have fire extinguishers on hand, and the victims are rushed to a 
hospital after their agonies are thoroughly photographed for state 
television. While the government-controlled media uncharacteristically 
releases the story at once, it takes a week of production before video 
footage is aired.

Soon, horrific images are rocketed around the world, seeming to confirm 
China's charges that an evil cult is ordering brainwashed members to commit 
suicide. Citing this new "evidence," the government insists that what it has 
been saying all along about those "fanatical" Falun Gongers is true, and 
these people must be banned as a threat to themselves and the nation. On 
February 16 another suicide is attributed to Falun Gong. Alongside a charred 
body an uncharred note is found allegedly claiming the victim did it to 
support Li Hongzhi's spiritual practice.

The Wall Street Journal's Ian Johnson, one of the most insightful journalists 
following this story, had his suspicions aroused by the speed with which this 
story was covered, observing that the state media "reported [the victim's] 
death with unusual alacrity, implying that either the death took place 
earlier than reported or the usually cautious media had top-level approval to 
rush out electronic reports and a televised dispatch. The 7 p.m. local 
evening news, for example, had a filmed report from Mr. Tan's hometown of 
Changde, a small city in Hunan province. Most reports for the evening news 
are vetted by noon, so the daily broadcast rarely carries reports from the 
same day, let alone an event that happened at noon and involved satellite 
feeds from relatively remote parts of the country."

For news readers and media consumers, perception often trumps unclear 
realities. In a world where dramatic images overshadow complex issues, Falun 
Gong stands convicted of crazed cult behavior. Case closed!

Score a big one for Chinese President Jiang Zemin's crusade to "crush" and 
discredit a growing spiritual movement that continues to resist a 
state-ordered ban despite the detention of an estimated 50,000 practitioners 
and over a hundred dead in police custody. Already, on the strength of this 
one incident, The Financial Times proclaimed a "winner," as in, "Beijing Wins 
Propaganda War Against Falun Gong." Note the headline. It doesn't refer 
merely to one skirmish in a protracted media war that has gone on for 19 
months, but to the war itself.

Many other respected news organizations disseminated the same story the same 
way even though they were unable to verify it independently, instead using 
accounts from Communist Party-controlled state media, especially the Xinua 
news agency. Now, as new questions are raised and doubts expressed, it may 
turn out that the world media have been misled into becoming an uncritical 
transmission belt for Beijing's bullying.

Firing Line
The first incident happened on January 23, days after Jiang intensified his 
official, nationwide, anti-cult media campaign. CNN was in the Square and 
reported on the suicides but its tapes were confiscated, so we never saw 
them. Seven days later, China's official TV shocked the nation with footage 
of five people engulfed in flames, pictures said to be from nearby 
surveillance cameras. Now a tragically disfigured victim of the incident, 
12-year-old Liu Siying, says that her own mother told her to set herself on 
fire to reach the "heavenly golden kingdom" in some accounts, or "nirvana" in 
others. She has become a sympathetic symbol, even a poster child for alleged
abuses by the "evil cult." Her image is everywhere; her tragedy has outraged 
all China. (In this respect she is the Elian Gonzalez of China!) Yet only 
approved media outlets there have been permitted access to her. Western 
reporters have been barred from direct contact.

Was she a Falun Gong practitioner? That seems doubtful, after The Washington 
Post's Phillip Pan traced her to her home in Kaifeng (a town that experienced 
an even more tragic disco fire recently, killing hundreds and scarring many 
others). Pan discovered that the young girl's mother, who died in the 
Tiananmen fire, was not known locally as a practitioner, but was depressed, 
mentally unstable and accused of beating her daughter and mother.

Significantly, one of the CNN producers on the scene, just 50 feet away, says 
she did not even see a child there. The government says doctors performed a 
tracheotomy on the victim, but a pediatric surgeon said that, if that were 
true, the child wouldn't be speaking right away.

Falun Gong spokespeople have been quoted as denying that they ordered, 
orchestrated and participated in this incident. But in their statement, which 
has not been carried in full anywhere, they go further and indict the Western 
press: "It is troubling to us that the party line from the PRC [People's 
Republic of China] mouthpieces, Xinhua News Agency and CCTV, is being given 
so much airtime and so much credibility by the foreign press. Xinhua and 
other state-run media outlets are generally never considered credible 
sources, as even they openly admit that their function is to disseminate 
propaganda for the Chinese regime. In fact, Xinhua is the Party line.

"There is so much that remains unclear and unknown about the circumstances 
surrounding the incident. And no one knows what occurred in the week after 
the actual event and before the Chinese media outlets finally released their 
fully engineered news articles and television programs. We must remember that 
the Chinese regime is so tightly controlling every aspect of this case that 
none of Xinhua's claims have been corroborated by independent sources."

And why would Falun Gong deny its role in the incident if it was a protest? 
The Longhai Foundation, which monitors Chinese prisons, had similar questions 
in the National Review: "Was this event staged or allowed to happen by 
China's government in order to discredit the Falun Gong? It is hardly a 
farfetched hypothesis. China's government has promised to extinguish all 
problems connected with the Falun Gong in advance of the 80th anniversary of 
Chinese Communism, which Beijing plans on celebrating this July. ... Justin 
Yu, a journalist for World Journal, the Chinese-language daily, reflected on 
the confusion faced by many Chinese over what to believe. The PRC's 
propaganda coup against the Falun Gong relies upon people's understanding of 
events in recent Asian history, such as the 73-year-old Buddhist monk in 
Saigon whose self-immolation was a form of protest to fulfill his beliefs, 
[like] Koreans cutting off their fingers and the Japanese ritual of 
hari-kari. But this situation is not clear. Who do we believe Ñ the 
Communists? They have lied to us so many times, another lie for them is 
nothing."

I asked Beatrice Turpin who covered Falun Gong in China for Associated Press 
TV and wrote about her experiences for MediaChannel what her suspicion was. 
She responded from her home in Thailand: "There was a big brouhaha with Falun 
Gong protests and footage of police beating practitioners last Chinese New 
Year and it would certainly fit in with typical China strategy to stage an 
event this year and make the show their own."

Grounds for Skepticism
Falun Gong practitioners initially told me their suspicions were aroused for 
three reasons:

the people in the Square, said to be long-time practitioners, didn't do the 
Falun Gong exercises correctly; 
authorities did not show any pictures or Falun Gong signs or books (which 
prohibit suicide) that protesters usually bring with them into the Square; 
and 
a school one of the victims was said to have graduated from was in fact 
closed at the time. They also say that there is no concept of "nirvana" in 
their beliefs.
These are perhaps small details, but they may be telling.

In a press release, Falun Gong pointed to other inconsistencies: "Xinhua News 
Agency claims that within a minute of the man setting himself ablaze, police 
had dashed over to him with four fire extinguishers and quickly put out the 
flames. A European journalist based in Beijing, however, told us: "I have 
never seen policemen patrolling on Tiananmen Square carrying fire 
extinguishers. How come they all showed up today? The location of the 
incident is at least 20 minutes roundtrip from the nearest building Ñ the 
People's Great Hall. If they were to have dashed over there to get the 
equipment, it would have been too late." Is it even possible that the police 
could have responded with not one but four fire extinguishers within the 
space of a minute if they didn't have prior knowledge that this was going to 
occur?

"In terms of response time, another foreign journalist in Beijing expressed 
shock that Xinhua was able to release the first report on the incident almost 
immediately and in English, no less. Every Chinese citizen knows that every 
report from Xinhua usually has to first go through several rounds of approval 
by higher-ups and is generally 'old news' by the time it is published. 
Moreover, state-run media have never released any photos or video of Falun 
Gong protests in the course of 18 months of persecution to the foreign press, 
so why now and with so little hesitation? And why only in English and not in 
Chinese?"

The issue was raised with me again and again during a recent four-city tour 
speaking about my new book on the Falun Gong. Some people told me Falun Gong 
must be crazy if it does crazy things. When I challenged the assumption that 
we in fact know all the details, eyes glazed over. Perhaps that's because 
once people hear "facts" that seem to confirm their own assumptions, they 
don't want to hear more, even if the original "facts" may be wrong or 
misleading.

Hot images sear themselves into the brain; retractions and clarifications 
rarely do. In the newly published Tiananmen Papers, on how the Communist 
Party handled the student protests in 1989, journalist Orville Schell, dean 
of the Journalism School at Berkeley, discusses the many forgeries and 
falsehoods the Chinese government and others have concocted and circulated 
over the years. Disinformation and misinformation are the trade craft of 
intelligence agencies in many countries, especially China. It is not 
surprising that Beijing is denouncing these new documents as fake. Clearly, 
their publication is embarrassing to the secretive rulers of China, 
especially President Jiang Zemin, whose hard-line role in those events has 
been revived in the official persecution of Falun Gong.

Where Are The Skeptics?
Why did the deeply ingrained, institutionalized skepticism of our own media 
crumble so quickly in the face of what smells like a stage-managed incident 
that's being blatantly exploited for political reasons? Why would so many 
American news outlets be so gullible? Is it because the whiff of spirituality 
and mysticism in a culture few of us understand makes some of us 
uncomfortable in our journalistic practice?

In my investigation into Falun Gong, I document a disturbing pattern of U.S. 
media outlets echoing China's charges, including the frequent use of 
pejorative words like "cult" and "sect" and even "mishmash." In some respects 
the media in our own country also reflect a one-dimensional, stereotyped 
perspective, downplaying and denigrating a force that doesn't fit into simple 
left-right political categories and which they may have trouble relating to 
because of its Asian character and roots in a mix of a Buddhist cultivation 
practice, Taoism and traditional qigong. Falun Gong is too often treated like 
the classic "other," too weird to be taken seriously or show sympathy toward. 
(Incidentally, I am not a Falun Gong practitioner, but our company has 
produced videos for Falun Gong, which gave me access and information I used 
to write and produce a film and a book on the subject.")

At one of my bookstore appearances in Chicago, someone compared Falun Gong 
and the current situation in China to David Koresh's Branch Davidians and the 
51-day siege in 1993 by federal law enforcement officers in Waco, ostensibly 
to seize guns and protect children from abuse, a comparison China has invoked 
to make the case that it's only doing what the U.S. government did in 
combating its own dangerous cult. Someone jumped up to challenge the analogy, 
arguing that Koresh and company were violent and Falun Gong is not. He was 
right: There is no direct comparison, except in terms of the response to what 
happened. Only the hard right-wing in the United States criticized the 
government's brutal military intervention, which reminded me of the words of 
that American lieutenant in Vietnam: "We destroyed the village in order to 
save it."

The lack of empathy people felt for the families under Koresh's mad control 
led to many rationalizing or not speaking out against the bloody and illegal 
suppression that occurred in Waco. Once people are dehumanized in our eyes, 
we may lose compassion for them and turn the other way when their rights are 
violated, especially if we dislike their politics and consider them 
unsympathetic victims. If you want to know the details of where 
dehumanization leads in China, check out Amnesty International's recent 
report on the pervasive use of torture, which is often directed at nonviolent 
Falun Gong practitioners. Beijing, natch, calls that a forgery too.

On February 17, more than a thousand Falun Gong practitioners protested 
nonviolently in Los Angeles against the persecution going on in China. Few 
media outlets showed up at their press conference, even though this is a 
story making headlines worldwide. (I couldn't find any story about it the 
next day in The Los Angeles Times, although their book review carried a 
discussion of what happened in Tiananmen Square in l989.) Media indifference 
fans public indifference. China's media are doing what you would expect, but 
how to explain the attitude of the Western media, which has covered the story 
so episodically?

In light of the prominent media play this "mass suicide" story received, it 
is not too late to thoroughly investigate not only what happened but whether 
and why we were all taken in.

EU presses China on Falungong and human rights issues

(AFP, February 22, 2001)

STOCKHOLM, Feb 22 (AFP) - The European Union will press China to respect the 
rights of followers of Falungong and other religious and political movements 
in two days of EU-China talks that began here Thursday, Swedish officials 
said.

Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Bertil Jobeus told AFP the Falungong issue 
would come up in the meetings which were to focus on human rights, freedom of 
expression and religion, the death penalty and torture.

He said the basis for the discussions was a list of top priorities drawn up 
by EU foreign ministers in Brussels in January.

Those priorities included the need to press China to show "respect for the 
fundamental rights of all prisoners, including those arrested for membership 
of the political opposition, unofficial religious movements and other 
movements, such as the Falungong."

The Chinese government views the Falungong, which claims 70 million adherents 
in China alone, as the biggest threat to Communist Party rule since the 1989 
Tiananmen democracy protests.

It banned the movement as an "evil cult" in July 1999, three months after it 
gathered 10,000 followers for a silent protest at the Communist Party 
headquarters in Beijing.

Falungong members, who follow the Buddhist-inspired teachings of guru Li 
Hongzhi, who lives in exile in the United States, insist they have no 
political agenda and members are taught how to attain high moral standards 
and physical well-being through meditation.

At Thursday's talks, "the Chinese and EU delegations are expected to discuss 
China's cooperation with the United Nations, in particular regarding China's 
ratification of human rights conventions," Jobeus said.

The EU delegation was headed by ambassador Thomas Hammarberg of Sweden, which 
currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency, while the Chinese 
side was represented by Li Baodong, a foreign ministry official in charge of 
human rights.

The EU wanted to see ratification and implementation of the UN covenants on 
civil and political rights, Jobeus said, and cooperation with "human rights 
mechanisms" including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

It would also call for respect for the right to fair and impartial trials, 
and for the right of an accused to be defended, and was seeking "guarantees 
to strengthen legal protection with regard to the death penalty," he said.

Jobeus said he also expected the situation in the autonomous regions of 
China, which include Tibet and Xinjiang, to be discussed.

Such EU-China meetings are held every six months within the framework of the 
EU-China dialogue on human rights

Falungong under pressure over proposed Thailand meeting

  (AFP, February 21, 2001)

BANGKOK, Feb 21 (AFP) - 
Falungong followers in Thailand have come under pressure after the 
authorities warned the group that they must respect Thai law if they wish to 
hold a meeting here, organisers said Wednesday.

"At first we didn't know we had to ask for permission, and now that we know, 
there is some pressure," said local Falungong spokesman Nappadol Eakabutr.

The group had planned a meeting of some 500 Falungong practitioners for April 
before Thailand's foreign ministry urged caution Tuesday.

"We have not decided yet what we will do. We will have a meeting among 
members this week to consider the issue," Nappadol said.

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said the government would 
consider a request by members of the spiritual sect to meet here on the 
condition that they do not use it as an opportunity to attack China.

"We will tell them what kind of activities they can undertake and which ones 
they cannot," he told reporters Tuesday.

"But legal action will be taken if they violate the agreement," Surakiart 
added.

The Falungong has yet to make a formal request for permission to gather in 
Bangkok, he said.

Thai police chief General Pornsak Durongkaviboon said officers were keeping a 
close watch on the activities of Falungong members in Thailand.

Pornsak stressed that Thailand does not have a law banning the group from the 
country, but urged the sect not to hold a meeting in Thailand.

"They should not hold the meeting here if it is not necessary," he said.

"We want to keep good relations with China," Pornsak added.

The Thai-Chinese community and Buddhist associations recently called on the 
government to prevent such a meeting from going ahead here.

"Falungong is an evil cult. Their presence here will destabilise Thai 
society," said Norrarat Tangpakorn, president of the Thai-Chinese 
Journalists' Welfare Foundation.

The Thai foreign ministry said last week that China had lodged an official 
protest over the planned conference, which would be attended by both Thai and 
overseas Falungong practitioners.

Nappadol said the conference was organised in good faith, and that it would 
be open to the public, including the press and government officials.

"The theme of the meeting is an exchange of views and experiences among us 
and it will have nothing to do with politics at all," he said.

The group says there are about 1,000 Falungong followers in Thailand, who 
hold regular sessions in parks around Bangkok to practise the movement's 
trademark breathing and exercise routines.

The Chinese government views the Falungong, which claims 70 million adherents 
in China alone, as the biggest threat to Communist Party rule since the 1989 
Tiananmen democracy protests.

It banned the movement as an "evil cult" three months after it gathered 
10,000 followers for a silent protest at the Communist Party headquarters in 
Beijing.

Falungong members, who follow the Buddhist-inspired teachings of guru Li 
Hongzhi, who lives in exile in the United States, insist they have no 
political agenda and members are taught how to attain high moral standards 
and physical well-being through meditation.

China 're-educates' cult members

by John Gittings ("The Guardian," February 20, 2001)

China has admitted making extensive use of a much-criticised form of 
imprisonment without trial in its efforts to suppress the banned Falun Gong 
spiritual sect. 
The practice of sending people to labour camps for "re-education" has been 
condemned by human rights groups abroad. They say Beijing may also be 
employing it to clear the streets of undesirables during its bid to stage the 
2008 Olympic Games.

A team from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visits the city today 
to assess the bid. The police are on heightened alert against demonstrations, 
after another alleged Falun Gong supporter committed suicide in public on 
Friday.

A thousand women followers of Falun Gong have been "successfully re-educated" 
at a "re-education through labour institute" in Liaoning province, the 
official People's Daily reported at the weekend.

It said the "tutors" at the Masanjia camp provided "loving care", helping the 
inmates to overcome their resistance to reform. Claims by the Falun Gong 
organisation abroad that many members had been tortured by Masanjia were 
denied.

The figures quoted for one camp in one province give an idea of the magnitude 
of the operation against the Falun Gong. The People's Daily said more than 
300 inmates had returned home from Masanjia after finishing their 
"re-education terms". Another 300 had their terms reduced or were serving 
them "outside the facility".

The process of labour re-education appears similar to the "thought reform" 
methods used in Chinese labour camps during the Mao Zedong era.

In a typical case in Masanjia, a "former cult leader", Li Lina, says the 
prison "even provided the latest articles of Li Hongzhi and organised former 
practitioners to debate them".

The use of repentant inmates to persuade more stubborn prisoners to change 
their beliefs was a characteristic feature of the "thought reform" process.

Mr Li, the Falun Gong's spiritual "master", who issues his pronouncements 
from the US, has denounced unnamed Falun Gong members for working for the 
authorities after being persuaded to recant.

The Human Rights in China group in the US calculates that up to 2m people are 
picked up under some form of "administrative custody" every year, at least 5% 
of them children.

The system, used in the past mainly against marginalised groups - typically 
those without jobs or papers or fixed abode - allows detention of up to two 
years without trial.

In a letter to the IOC, the co-chairman of Human Rights in China, Robert 
Bernstein, says that it "cannot risk further shame by abetting Beijing's 
abuse of citizens." He urges the IOC to "insist that China pledge not to use 
these camps to make Beijing more presentable for the games".

Falun Gong sources abroad have published claims of alleged torture in the 
detention camps leading to more than 140 deaths since the Falun Gong was 
banned in July 1999.

Beijing routinely denies that torture occurs, while admitting that Falun Gong 
members have died in detention.

"You have to ask how they died," a Chinese diplomat, Zhang Yuanyuan, told the 
BBC last week. "So there are some who are old, sick and they commit suicide.

"They throw themselves against the wall and got themselves fatally injured, 
and they refused to eat, refused to take medicine, refused medical attention, 
and people also died of natural causes."

Falun Gong confirms that members frequently resort to hunger strike as a form 
of protest, and say that this is dealt with brutality.

It publicised the case of Li Mei who died in Hefei detention centre on 
February 1 after going on hunger strike. Her family were allegedly not 
allowed to examine her body.

An Amnesty International report says the crackdown fits a pattern in which 
the government demands quick results from local officials who then use 
torture to obtain recantations or confessions.

It says that out of the 120 alleged Falun Gong deaths it has looked at, 17 
"jumped" to their death, according to official reports, and 15 "fell" while 
in detention.

It says there is evidence that force feeding was carried out by people with 
no medical training, resulting in damage to the windpipe and other reportedly 
fatal complications.

China rejected the report as based on "rumours and hearsay".

China 're-educates' cult members

by John Gittings ("The Guardian," February 20, 2001)

China has admitted making extensive use of a much-criticised form of 
imprisonment without trial in its efforts to suppress the banned Falun Gong 
spiritual sect. 
The practice of sending people to labour camps for "re-education" has been 
condemned by human rights groups abroad. They say Beijing may also be 
employing it to clear the streets of undesirables during its bid to stage the 
2008 Olympic Games.

A team from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visits the city today 
to assess the bid. The police are on heightened alert against demonstrations, 
after another alleged Falun Gong supporter committed suicide in public on 
Friday.

A thousand women followers of Falun Gong have been "successfully re-educated" 
at a "re-education through labour institute" in Liaoning province, the 
official People's Daily reported at the weekend.

It said the "tutors" at the Masanjia camp provided "loving care", helping the 
inmates to overcome their resistance to reform. Claims by the Falun Gong 
organisation abroad that many members had been tortured by Masanjia were 
denied.

The figures quoted for one camp in one province give an idea of the magnitude 
of the operation against the Falun Gong. The People's Daily said more than 
300 inmates had returned home from Masanjia after finishing their 
"re-education terms". Another 300 had their terms reduced or were serving 
them "outside the facility".

The process of labour re-education appears similar to the "thought reform" 
methods used in Chinese labour camps during the Mao Zedong era.

In a typical case in Masanjia, a "former cult leader", Li Lina, says the 
prison "even provided the latest articles of Li Hongzhi and organised former 
practitioners to debate them".

The use of repentant inmates to persuade more stubborn prisoners to change 
their beliefs was a characteristic feature of the "thought reform" process.

Mr Li, the Falun Gong's spiritual "master", who issues his pronouncements 
from the US, has denounced unnamed Falun Gong members for working for the 
authorities after being persuaded to recant.

The Human Rights in China group in the US calculates that up to 2m people are 
picked up under some form of "administrative custody" every year, at least 5% 
of them children.

The system, used in the past mainly against marginalised groups - typically 
those without jobs or papers or fixed abode - allows detention of up to two 
years without trial.

In a letter to the IOC, the co-chairman of Human Rights in China, Robert 
Bernstein, says that it "cannot risk further shame by abetting Beijing's 
abuse of citizens." He urges the IOC to "insist that China pledge not to use 
these camps to make Beijing more presentable for the games".

Falun Gong sources abroad have published claims of alleged torture in the 
detention camps leading to more than 140 deaths since the Falun Gong was 
banned in July 1999.

Beijing routinely denies that torture occurs, while admitting that Falun Gong 
members have died in detention.

"You have to ask how they died," a Chinese diplomat, Zhang Yuanyuan, told the 
BBC last week. "So there are some who are old, sick and they commit suicide.

"They throw themselves against the wall and got themselves fatally injured, 
and they refused to eat, refused to take medicine, refused medical attention, 
and people also died of natural causes."

Falun Gong confirms that members frequently resort to hunger strike as a form 
of protest, and say that this is dealt with brutality.

It publicised the case of Li Mei who died in Hefei detention centre on 
February 1 after going on hunger strike. Her family were allegedly not 
allowed to examine her body.

An Amnesty International report says the crackdown fits a pattern in which 
the government demands quick results from local officials who then use 
torture to obtain recantations or confessions.

It says that out of the 120 alleged Falun Gong deaths it has looked at, 17 
"jumped" to their death, according to official reports, and 15 "fell" while 
in detention.

It says there is evidence that force feeding was carried out by people with 
no medical training, resulting in damage to the windpipe and other reportedly 
fatal complications.

China rejected the report as based on "rumours and hearsay".

'Evil Cult' Raises Political Temperature

 by Ken Kamoche ("The Daily Nation," February 18, 2001)

There are those who believe religion and politics don't mix, or that they 
shouldn't be allowed to mix. On the other hand, religion can and does often 
assume political overtones which can have far-reaching ramifications for a 
society. Whether these ramifications are desirable or destructive often 
depends on what side you're on. We have seen religious organisations play a 
pivotal role in engineering social and political change, sometimes in 
collaboration with other segments of civil society.

Organised religion has, from time to time, emerged as a powerful force in 
society, particularly in highly religious countries like the Philippines 
where the Catholic church has a very visible presence. In China where 
religion does not quite thrive so well, the role of religion has been 
somewhat subdued. In the last couple of years, that picture has gradually 
changed as China woke up to the reality of an obscure sect known as Falun 
Gong.

According to Falun Gong followers, their purpose is merely to practise 
breathing exercises which are supposed to be beneficial to their health. 
Breathing exercises are not unusual in the East. They come in all forms and 
shapes. Qi gong exercises are based on the notion of qi, which refers to the 
cosmic forces in the body and the universe. The concept of qi is also central 
to much of traditional Chinese medicine. On any given day across Asia you'll 
encounter people doing exercises in the parks and other open spaces. These 
exercises combine body movements with meditation and controlled breathing 
techniques. They are particularly popular with the elderly.

The controversy that surrounds Falun Gong is that the authorities in China 
believe it to be more than just a religion. To them it is nothing but an 
"evil-cult". Up until 1999 many people in China did not even know about this 
sect whose leader lives in North America. It all came to light when one 
Professor He Zuoxiu wrote an article warning about their "deceitful lies". A 
theoretical physicist, Professor He spends his time exposing and ridiculing 
all forms of pseudo-science.

Ironically, the mainstream press took a dim view of Professor He's views and 
he was only able to publish his article in a little-known magazine. In the 
past his views had not generated much reaction. The Falun Gong expose opened 
a pandora's box. Angry Falun Gong followers quickly assembled outside the 
Beijing leaders' compound where they held a vigil demanding an apology. This 
was the first highly publicised protest by the hitherto unknown sect. It 
transpired, however, that they had on previous occasions held similar vigils 
around the homes or offices of people who had tried to portray them in a 
negative light. Their vigils are said to be peaceful, but when 10,000 people 
camp outside your premises for days or months, "peaceful" assumes a new 
complexion.

The authorities in China are leaving nothing to chance. They banned the sect 
and quickly undertook a systematic clampdown. In spite of a heavy security 
presence, sect members have, on numerous occasions, managed to hold meetings 
in high profile venues like Tiananmen Square where they insist on proceeding 
with their exercises even as the police rain blows on them and cart them away 
into custody.

The treatment of these sect members has intensified human rights attention on 
China with foreign observers criticising the authorities for their 
heavy-handedness in the police brutality which some claim has led to the 
death of many followers. The authorities in China are convinced that this 
"evil cult" is a threat to national security and must be crushed at all costs.

In trying to understand the full impact of this emergent social phenomenon, 
it is worth clarifying what constitutes a cult. Experts see two dimensions: 
the religious and the social. As for the religious, cults tend to deviate 
from mainstream religious beliefs and, in effect, set themselves in 
competition against such religions, offering themselves as a more viable 
alternative. They often tend to have charismatic leaders who assume god-like 
status with the claims they either make or encourage about their supernatural 
powers and the sheer power they seem to exercise on their followers. The 
teachings of the Falun Gong are considered to be a deviation from orthodox 
Buddhism.

The social dimension refers to their rejection of popular social practices 
and conventions. Members of cults are taught, for example, to abandon their 
families and all aspects of the material world. Cults are known to urge their 
members to destroy or otherwise dispose of their material possessions and 
even to eschew medical treatment. Herein lies the danger. There have been too 
many cases of doomsday cults leading their members into mass suicide or 
otherwise causing the deaths of innocent people. From the infamous Jonestown 
disaster in Guyana in 1978 to more recent cases like the Branch Davidians at 
Waco, Texas, Aum Shinri Kyo in Japan and the Restoration of the 10 
Commandments in Uganda.

It may well be that the majority of the Falun Gong are well-adjusted citizens 
who just want to get on with their breathing exercises - in which case their 
persecution is suspect. On the other hand there is always the risk that 
powerful leaders are manipulating innocent and ignorant followers for selfish 
political, spiritual or other ends. If that is the case, there is cause for 
alarm.

Opinion is sharply divided in Hong Kong. The Falun Gong recently held a 
highly-publicised international conference here. The central authorities in 
Beijing were none too pleased and they made their displeasure known in no 
uncertain terms. However, under the one-country two systems policy, the ban 
on the mainland does not hold in Hong Kong and the sect members are quite 
within their right to assemble as long as they respect Hong Kong laws.

However, Beijing has sternly warned about the possibility of the sect using 
Hong Kong as a base for anti-China political activities. This has in turn 
generated a lot of political heat with the Hong Kong government vowing to 
keep "a close watch" on the sect's activities and, more controversially, 
considering whether to invoke the Societies Ordinance against them. 
Pro-Beijing leaders have similarly been urging the government to rein the 
sect in. However, the pro-democracy lobby and human rights activists have 
spoken vehemently against these proposals, claiming they are an unacceptable 
restriction on civil liberties.

The Hong Kong authorities appear to understand that any effort to enforce the 
ordinance to rein in the sect would further escalate the controversy and have 
far-reaching consequences. Yet, they have to be seen to be sensitive to the 
concerns on the mainland. It is not an easy balance to strike.

Beijing has reason enough to be concerned. Religious activities, though rare, 
have had pretty dramatic effects on the political landscape in the past. 
There have been many religious and quasi-religious uprisings in China in the 
past, of which some of the most memorable are the Boxers, the White Lotus and 
Tai Ping which rebelled against the Qing dynasty.

When Beijing warns that efforts to turn Hong Kong into a base for subversive 
activities would not be tolerated, they mean it. Hong Kong authorities are 
paying heed. A few weeks ago when members of the sect set themselves alight 
in Tiananmen Square, it began to look as though the authorities' and indeed 
many ordinary people's worst fears were coming true. It seemed like a sign of 
things to come, the doomsday scenario in which mass suicide would lead to the 
death of millions. To many observers, such a scenario, while perhaps 
far-fetched, cannot altogether be discounted, especially when so little is 
known about the sect and its leadership.

Psychiatric Abuse by China Reported in Repressing Sect

by Erik Eckholm ("New York Times," Feb. 18, 2001)

BEIJING, Feb. 17:   China's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement is 
focusing new attention on Beijing's practice of imprisoning dissenters in 
psychiatric hospitals.

In the government's campaign to discredit Falun Gong, the official press here 
has openly suggested that believers are mentally disturbed and need 
treatment. Hundreds of defiant followers have been forcibly hospitalized and 
medicated, according to reports from Falun Gong and from human rights 
monitors.

A new report has further stoked alarm abroad by documenting an unexpectedly 
rich history of questionable psychiatric practices aimed at stifling 
political dissenters.

"But what's surprising now is the sharp increase in cases," said Robin Munro, 
a British researcher and author of the report, which appeared in the Columbia 
Journal of Asian Law. He said the rise was attributable to the government's 
18-month-old crackdown on Falun Gong, a widespread spiritual movement that 
the government has condemned as a dangerous cult.

The new attention on China's abuses comes as the country has been trying to 
burnish its human rights image, hoping to be chosen as the site for the 2008 
Olympics. Bush administration officials nonetheless said on Friday that they 
will condemn China's record at an annual United Nations forum in Geneva.

Apart from the wrenching decade of Mao's Cultural Revolution, which ended in 
1976, China has not been known for the systematic abuses of psychiatry that 
occurred in the Soviet Union, where hundreds of dissidents were spuriously 
diagnosed as schizophrenic and locked away. And Chinese and Western experts 
have praised the broader field of psychiatry here for advancing under 
difficult conditions and becoming more scientific.

But with the Falun Gong crackdown, concern over the political misuse of 
psychiatry is rising. And outside Falun Gong, political cases like that of 
Cao Maobing, a worker in a state-owned silk mill in Jiangsu Province, have 
attracted international attention.

Last year, Mr. Cao was in trouble with authorities after he protested against 
corruption and tried to organize fellow workers into an independent trade 
union. Then in December, one day after he spoke with foreign reporters about 
his complaints, the police took him to a psychiatric hospital, where he has 
been medicated and forced to undergo electroshock therapy, said relatives and 
friends who insist he is not insane but a determined advocate.

The hospital director says a committee of 17 experts has declared Mr. Cao to 
suffer "paranoid psychosis."

Even given such cases, Mr. Munro said official data indicated that China's 
political use of psychiatric confinement had declined significantly in the 
1990's, before Falun Gong was banned a year and a half ago.

Now, he said, "the new repression of Falun Gong has sounded a loud warning 
bell."

"The mental-pathology model is being extended to religious nonconformists," 
Mr. Munro charged. He calls this a potentially ominous harbinger as China 
enters an era of rapid social change.

That fear is vehemently countered by leading Chinese psychiatrists, supported 
by some experts in the West, who say the fervent spiritual practices of Falun 
Gong present a special case.

Mr. Munro's report casts special attention on a secretive, police-managed 
system of 20 centers for the criminally insane. Critics say these hospitals 
may harbor the worst examples of political abuse, although they have not 
generally been used for Falun Gong believers.

Alarmed by the Falun Gong reports and by the evidence in Mr. Munro's article 
of a broader history of problems than many had realized, medical and rights
groups abroad are starting a global campaign to condemn psychiatric abuses in 
China and to push for access to suspect hospitals by outside experts.

"We hope that outside pressure can end this form of repression," said Robert 
van Voren, general secretary of the Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, a 
coalition of European and American doctors that drew world attention to 
Soviet misdeeds.

"With China's desire to host the 2008 Olympics, I don't think they'll want 
another scandal," Mr. van Voren said in an interview.

The group has started lobbying national psychiatric associations around the 
world to consider censuring or suspending China at next year's meeting of the 
World Psychological Association.

But many Chinese psychiatrists, supported by some Western experts, insist 
that comparisons with the former Soviet Union are misleading and that 
political malpractice by their profession is uncommon today.

"Our biggest problem is not that normal people are diagnosed as mentally ill, 
but that ill people are not getting the evaluation and treatment they need," 
said Dr. Tian Zu'en, chief of forensic psychiatry at Anding Psychiatric 
Hospital, run by the Bureau of Health in Beijing.

Dr. Tian said that while there might be a few examples around the country 
where people in the criminal system had been committed to hospitals without 
the required scientific evaluation, the problem "should not be wildly blown 
out of proportion."

Mr. Munro, the report author, said the problem was ultimately rooted outside 
psychiatry, in China's repression of independent political speech and 
organizing.

"Sane or insane, these people are not committing criminal offenses by 
international standards," he said. Those who have mental disorders should be 
treated in a medical rather than a criminal setting, he said.

Mr. Munro hazards a calculation that since 1980, at least 3,000 people who 
were arrested for some kind of "political" crime were referred for 
psychiatric evaluation, with many of them deemed mentally ill and confined 
for some period.

"We don't know how many of these people were mentally disordered," Mr. Munro 
said. "What we know is that the official threshold for doubting the sanity of 
these individuals is very low."

His review of official documents, Mr. Munro said, indicated that specific 
types of "political criminals" are most likely to be referred to 
psychiatrists. These include persistent petitioners, those who shout or post 
anti-Communist slogans and those who display what the police see as "a 
perplexing absence of any normal instinct for self-preservation" in the face 
of certain arrest.

Citing Chinese textbooks, Mr. Munro shows that diagnostic concepts like 
"political mania" and "litigious mania" have received mention here within the 
last decade. As a residue of such ideas, he argues, some people who are 
especially driven or eccentric in their actions may be improperly labeled as 
psychotic.

In Western societies, he said, many of these same people might be seen as odd 
or even as neurotic or suffering from personality disorders, but forced 
confinement would not be an issue.

In an example often cited by human rights groups, a politically independent 
worker in Beijing named Wang Wanxing was diagnosed as a "paranoid psychotic" 
after his arrest in 1992 for unfurling a pro-democracy banner in Tiananmen 
Square. He spent the next seven years in a police hospital for the criminally 
insane.

He was sent home in early 1999 and seemed perfectly lucid to acquaintances. 
But later that year Ñ after he said he intended to hold a news conference to 
denounce his treatment Ñ he was taken back to the center, where he remains.

In response to inquiries from the United Nations, Chinese authorities said an 
appraisal by hospital doctors "had determined that he was suffering from 
paranoia, that some of his actions were governed by wishful thinking, that he 
had lost his normal capacity for recognition and was irresponsible."

Dr. Yu Qingbo, deputy chief of forensic psychiatry at Anding Hospital, said 
Chinese psychiatrists, including those at the centers run by the police, 
use diagnostic criteria consistent with those in the West.

Both Dr. Yu and Dr. Tian said it was usually not hard to distinguish between 
a sane, committed political dissident and a person who is lost in delusions. 
"If true dissidents are sent to us and we falsely claim they are ill, then we 
can be accused of trying to protect them," Dr. Yu said.

Likewise, Dr. Tian said, it is usually not hard to distinguish between a 
religious believer in a hypnotic or "altered state" Ñ who is not considered 
ill Ñ and a person whose ego is shattered. "Around the world, all 
psychiatrists could agree on that," he said.

More difficult to discern, he said, were cases where a person joins a 
religious sect while in the early stages of developing psychosis, a common 
phenomenon that can require longer-term observation.

Another psychiatrist here said that abusive practices were more likely 
outside the major cities, where trained doctors are scarcer and the police 
may hold greater influence over doctors.

Like many experts here, this doctor asked why the authorities would need to 
resort to psychiatric commitments at all. "They have labor camps everywhere, 
and they've shown they aren't afraid to use them," the doctor said. "Why go 
to the trouble and expense of psychiatric confinement?"

A leading Western expert on Chinese psychiatry, Dr. Arthur Kleinman of 
Harvard University, said the abuses "are lodged mainly in the mental 
hospitals run by the police."

"Getting observers into that sector is important," he said. "But what I fear 
is that the entire profession will be unfairly tarnished in what will amount 
to a global witch hunt."

Another Falun Gong Member Reportedly Burns Himself in China

by Elisabeth Rosenthal ("New York Times," Feb. 17, 2001)

BEIJING, Feb. 16 Ñ Another member of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group 
committed suicide by setting himself on fire today, according to Chinese 
state media. It was the second time in less than a month that group members 
were reported to have resorted to self-immolation to bring attention to their 
cause.

Tonight, state television showed police officers covering the body with a 
sheet and quoted a witness as saying, "He poured gasoline over his head, lit 
it, and burst into flames."

Five people, including a 12-year- old girl, set themselves ablaze in 
Tiananmen Square on Jan. 23 while adopting the group's meditation poses. One 
person, the girl's mother, died.

Since then, clips from police videotapes of the incident have been widely 
broadcast on Chinese state television to justify the government's suppression 
of what it has called an "evil cult."

The earlier self-immolation was witnessed by a group of foreign journalists 
in Tiananmen Square, the scene of almost daily small nonviolent protests by 
individual Falun Gong members for the last 18 months. These mostly pass 
silently, in the blink of an eye, as members unfurl small banners and, in 
turn, are quickly whisked away in police vans.

There was no independent confirmation of today's suicide, which the official 
New China News Agency said took place around noon on a street in the western 
part of the capital.

Beijing is busily cleaning itself up for a visit by an inspection team from 
the International Olympic Committee next week. China desperately wants 
Beijing to play host to the 2008 summer Olympics. Protest suicides do not 
help that cause.

Since the five Falun Gong members set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square 
nearly a month ago, security in the square has been extremely tight, with 
police officers blocking the entrances and inspecting identification cards 
and packages to check for gasoline. But the group still has many followers in 
China and the incident today took place miles from the square, involving a 
man who is said to have practiced Falun Gong's blend of exercise and 
meditation since 1997.

The news agency identified the dead man as Tan Yihui, a shoeshiner from Hunan 
province, in central China. It said Mr. Tan, 25, was dead by the time the 
police arrived and extinguished the fire.

Officials said they discovered a six-page suicide note nearby that identified 
him as a member of Falun Gong and that said he wished to "forget about life 
and death and achieve perfection in Paradise."

Falun Gong officials have generally denied that those who set themselves on 
fire were genuine practitioners, noting that the teachings of its exiled 
leader, Li Hongzhi, specifically forbid suicide.

Still, Mr. Li Ñ who lives in the United States Ñ recently wrote an essay 
that seemed to encourage his followers in China to take more drastic actions 
than the silent protests that had characterized the group's resistance.

Also, after 18 months of persecution by the Chinese government, many group 
members have been almost continuously harassed by the police or have lost 
their jobs; they are apparently increasingly desperate and ready to act.

Man Burns Himself To Death in Beijing

 by Philip P. Pan ("Washington Post," February 17, 2001)

BEIJING, Feb. 16 -- A shoeshine man identified by Chinese authorities as a 
member of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group set himself on fire outside a 
military institute here today, prompting a fresh wave of government attacks 
against a movement that has withstood nearly two years of often brutal state 
repression.

The official Chinese media reported that Tan Yihui, 25, committed suicide by 
pouring gasoline over his body and igniting himself a few minutes past noon 
on a street in western Beijing. Residents confirmed the self-immolation and 
television reports showed police officers covering a charred, shriveled 
corpse with a white body bag and zipping it shut.

Tan is the sixth Chinese identified as a Falun Gong member to set himself on 
fire in the capital in the past month. Five others set themselves ablaze on 
Jan. 23 in Tiananmen Square. One woman died and the others, including a 
12-year-old girl, remain hospitalized.

That incident led the government to launch a vitriolic public relations 
campaign against Falun Gong featuring footage of the burned girl crying for 
her mother. It also drew international attention to China's crackdown on the 
group, which has had thousands of its members arrested and as many as 120 die 
in police custody, several allegedly after being tortured.

Falun Gong's refusal to yield despite such tactics has presented the ruling 
Communist Party with a challenge unlike any other it has faced. Judging by 
state news reports, today's suicide will lead the party to intensify what it 
described this week as a "war to the end."

The public suicide comes just four days before a delegation from the 
International Olympic Committee is scheduled to arrive in Beijing to evaluate 
the city's bid for the 2008 Summer Games. Human rights activists cite China's 
campaign against Falun Gong as one reason it should not be allowed to host 
the event.

Police cleared Tiananmen Square at least once today and officers searched 
trucks entering the city. Authorities at railway and bus stations across the 
country are also trying to prevent Falun Gong adherents from reaching 
Beijing, often demanding passengers denounce Li Hongzhi, the group's 
U.S.-based leader, before allowing them to travel.

The government considers Falun Gong an evil cult with ties to anti-Chinese 
forces in the West and blames it for the deaths of hundreds of practitioners. 
But for years, the group operated with some state support, attracting 
followers from a wide cross-section of society, including intellectuals, 
soldiers, old party members and millions of others searching for values in 
fast-changing China.

Falun Gong members, who practice a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and traditional 
Chinese breathing exercises, insist their movement is peaceful and 
nonpolitical. The group's leaders also say the people who set themselves on 
fire cannot be true Falun Gong followers because their faith forbids violence 
and suicide.

That has not stopped many human rights advocates from portraying the 
self-immolations as dramatic acts of protest against the Falun Gong 
crackdown. Others believe the individuals were adherents driven over the edge 
by a government forcing believers from their homes and taking away their 
jobs. But China's leaders -- and many of its citizens -- insist the people 
were cult victims deluded into trying to enter heaven.

The mystery only deepened with today's suicide, which occurred in a plain 
neighborhood dominated by military households. State news reports quoted 
Tan's neighbors describing him as a Falun Gong adherent from the city of 
Chengde in central China and said a six-page suicide note was discovered near 
his body.

Falun Gong Casts Doubt on Suicide

by John Leicester (Associated Press, Feb. 17, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) - Casting doubt on official Chinese claims that another of its 
followers set himself on fire, the Falun Gong spiritual movement called 
Saturday for an independent investigation into the incident.

In a statement, Falun Gong said it was ``extremely sad and shocked'' by news 
of Tan Yihui's death but could not verify reports by Chinese state media that 
he was a member of the meditation sect, which is banned in China.

The statement said China was using the 25-year-old shoe shiner's reported 
self-immolation Friday in Beijing to defame Falun Gong.

``In the past, there were many cases where police pushed Falun Gong 
practitioners out of the windows in high-rise buildings to fabricate scenes 
of suicides to gain international approval for their brutal crackdown,'' said 
the statement from Falun Gong representatives in the United States.

Chinese state media said that in a note found near his charred body, Tan 
wrote that followers must sacrifice themselves for the group. If true, the 
reported suicide is the latest indication that China's relentless 19-month 
crackdown on Falun Gong is pushing some practitioners to extremes.

Last month, a purported follower was killed and four others were seriously 
burned when they set themselves ablaze on Tiananmen Square in a radical 
departure from what had largely been a campaign of peaceful protests and 
civil disobedience by Falun Gong members against the government's ban on the 
group.

``I really can no longer be tolerant,'' Tan's note said, according to the 
state-run Xinhua News Agency. ``I must bravely stand up and be a warrior to 
protect the Fa!'' Tan allegedly wrote, using another name for the practice.

Falun Gong called for an independent investigation into Tan's death. It said 
Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong's U.S.-based founder, has ``at no time and under no 
circumstances'' encouraged followers to burn themselves in order to ascend to 
heaven.

``It is strictly against the teachings of Falun Gong to take the life of a 
human being, which includes suicide,'' the statement said.

Xinhua blamed Tan's death on what it claimed were Li's calls for followers to 
``ascend to Heaven and achieve perfection.''

The suicide prompted renewed state media condemnation of Falun Gong and 
appeals to practitioners to sever ties with the group.

Chinese leaders, worried by Falun Gong's multimillion following and ability 
to mobilize protests, banned the group in July 1999. The government claims 
the group is an evil cult that has led nearly 1,700 followers to their 
deaths, mostly by encouraging spiritual healing over modern medicine.

Diplomat: Hong Kong Needs Scrutiny

by Dirk Beveridge (Associated Press, Feb. 17, 2001)

HONG KONG (AP) - The top U.S. diplomat in Hong Kong said Washington is 
watching recent controversies over free speech and politics to see whether 
they are ``bumps along its new path or portents of difficulty ahead'' under 
Chinese sovereignty.

In a speech in Texas that was posted on his official Internet site, 
Consul-General Michael Klosson cited warnings from Beijing about news 
reporting and local activities of the Falun Gong spiritual sect. He also 
noted the pending departure of the last high-ranking official to be appointed 
during British colonial days.

Hong Kong retains many of its Western ways, and Klosson said it can serve as 
a good example, showing mainland China ``its own potential future - a way 
toward prosperity that rests on openness, tolerance, the rule of law, sound 
management and transparent dealings.''

Klosson said Hong Kong has remained vibrant and free since returning to China 
in July 1997, but in a speech Thursday in Houston, he noted several incidents 
that raised concerns. The consulate has posted the speech on the Internet.

Some thorny local issues ``highlight that Hong Kong's situation merits 
continued attention from the United States and other major partners which 
have interests at stake,'' Klosson said.

Almost a year ago, a senior mainland official based in Hong Kong warned local 
media not to report the viewpoint of Taiwanese independence advocates as 
``normal news.'' Another mainland official told Hong Kong businessmen they 
should not trade with Taiwanese companies seen as supporting independence for 
the island.

China and Taiwan separated politically amid civil war in 1949, but Beijing 
says Taiwan must reunite with the mainland someday, even if that requires a 
war. Most Taiwanese are leery of accepting Beijing's terms.

Klosson also noted the recent controversy over Falun Gong's activities in 
Hong Kong.

Beijing has outlawed the meditation sect as an ``evil cult'' and is waging an 
often-violent crackdown on the mainland. Falun Gong remains legal in Hong 
Kong, but Beijing and local allies are furious at recent campaigns here 
attacking the suppression in China.

They are seeking a crackdown, and some observers say Hong Kong's response 
will be one of the most crucial tests of its freedoms.

Klosson said Washington also was concerned about the departure of Hong Kong's 
No. 2 government official, Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan.

Chan was appointed by the last British colonial governor, Chris Patten, and 
has been viewed as a stabilizing force throughout Hong Kong's political 
transition.

Chan says she is leaving to spend more time with her family, but analysts 
here believe her feuding with Hong Kong's Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa is 
the real reason.

``Her announcement generated lots of speculation, and time will tell whether 
the excessively pessimistic prognosis of some observers will be borne out,'' 
Klosson said.

On the Net:

U.S. consulate in Hong Kong http://www.usconsulate.org.hk/

China accuses Falun Gong of breaching human rights

(Reuters, Feb. 17, 2001)


BEIJING, Feb 17 (Reuters) - China, battling Western human rights criticism of 
its ruthless crackdown on the outlawed Falun Gong, said on Saturday another 
self-immolation by a purported adherent showed it was the movement which 
breached human rights.

The suicide showed Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi's alleged exhortation to 
followers "not to be afraid of dying in order to achieve 'nirvana' is 
absolute heresy that violates human rights," the People's Daily said.

"Cherish your life and don't be victims of Falun Gong any longer," the 
Communist Party newspaper said in a commentary.

State media said a member of the spiritual movement set himself ablaze on 
Friday in a Beijing neighbourhood that is home to several Communist Party 
leaders.

State television showed police lifting the charred body of a man it said set 
fire to his gasoline-soaked clothing. It said a six-page suicide note linked 
the man to Falun Gong.

It identified the dead man as Tan Yihui, a 25-year-old shoe-polisher from the 
central province of Hunan.

"He poured a container of gasoline on his head, flicked a lighter and burst 
into flames," it quoted a witness as saying.

Falun Gong said in a statement it could not verify if the man was a member.

"We are extremely sad and shocked to hear (of) the death of a Chinese citizen 
who was said to have set fire to himself in Beijing. So far, we have no way 
to verify this person's background," the group said.

It restated its tenet that it is against Falun Gong teachings to take human 
life, and that includes suicide.

The movement reacted similarly to the first self-immolation, by five 
purported Falun Gong adherents who included a 12-year-old girl, in Tiananmen 
Square last month. One woman, the girl's mother, died.

MAJOR CAMPAIGN

The Chinese leadership banned Falun Gong as an "evil cult" in 1999 and has 
launched a major campaign to denigrate it across the country.

It compares the Falun Gong to Japan's Aum Shinri Kyo, or Supreme Truth, 
accused of deadly gas attacks on a Tokyo subway, and the U.S. Branch Davidian 
sect whose stand-off with authorities ended in a deadly blaze in Waco, Texas.

"Self-immolation by burning oneself is one of the most notorious 
characteristics of the evil cults," the People's Daily said.

Falun Gong, which is based on elements of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional 
Chinese meditation and exercises, says none of the Chinese accusations is 
true, that it is a non-political movement aimed only at improving people.

The latest purported Falun Gong suicide took place four days before 
International Olympic Committee officials are due in Beijing to evaluate the 
city's bid for the 2008 Games.

Beijing narrowly lost out to Sydney in the race to stage the 2000 Games, in 
part because of its human rights record.

The pressure on China is likely to mount with the new U.S. administration of 
George W. Bush deciding to sponsor a U.N. resolution condemning China on 
human rights next month.

Administration officials said on Friday the formal paperwork authorising the 
resolution was still being completed, but the decision had been made to 
present it at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Falun Gong crackdown hits China's schools

by Willy Wo-Lap Lam (CNN News, February 15, 2001)

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Beijing has asked all school principals to ensure 
that their institutions are free from "infiltration" by the Falun Gong 
quasi-Buddhist sect.

And while calling on the nation to declare an all-out war on the spiritual 
movement, President Jiang Zemin has indicated failure to contain the 
"scourge" will amount to a defeat for the Communist Party.

A source close to security departments in Beijing said instructions had been 
given to heads of primary and secondary schools as well as college presidents 
to adopt a "personal responsibility system" in combating the Falun Gong.

The principal or college head is held personally responsible for ensuring 
that there are no Falun Gong members -- or at least no Falun Gong-related 
"crimes" -- on campus.

He or she is responsible for organizing ideological campaigns to educate 
students about the allegedly evil nature of sects and religious groups such 
as the Falun Gong.

"School authorities are asked to report all known Falun Gong members in their 
institutions, including students and teachers, to police and state security 
units," the source said.

"School principals and college presidents have been told they will be 
criticized and punished if Falun Gong-affiliated students from their units 
commit acts such as holding protests or distributing leaflets in public."

Dangers of cults

Official media in different provinces have reported that after students 
returned to class earlier this week for spring term, their first priority was 
to attend ideological classes on the dangers of cults.

It is understood that in an internal meeting, Jiang urged cadres of all 
levels to wage "the hardest struggle" against the Falun Gong.

"If we can't exterminate the cult soon, this will be seen as a major weakness 
of the Communist party," Jiang reportedly said. "The authority and prestige 
of the party is at stake."

Party sources said Jiang had also implemented a "social stability 
responsibility system" among provincial and municipal officials.

This meant that should law and order problems in any one province or city 
worsen, the responsible cadres would be subject to reprimand and punishments 
such as demotion.

And the extent to which a provincial governor or mayor can stamp out Falun 
Gong activities has been made the premier criterion of whether he can 
maintain order and stability.

The sources said the worst transgression for local cadres was failure to 
prevent Falun Gong activists from going to the capital and staging protests 
there.

China Warns Against Censure Effort

by John Leicester (Associated Press, Feb. 15, 2001)

BEIJING (AP) - Calling for dialogue instead of confrontation, China on 
Thursday kicked off its annual effort to fight off attempts to criticize its 
human rights record at an upcoming United Nations meeting.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said Western efforts to censure China 
at the U.N. Human Rights Commission had disrupted and ``seriously poisoned 
the atmosphere'' at previous commission meetings.

``This has met with strong opposition from the wide majority of developing 
countries, China included. It is natural that it ended in failure,'' Zhu said 
at a regular press briefing.

The U.S. government is still debating whether to back a resolution to censure 
China at the annual meeting next month of the U.N. rights commission in 
Switzerland. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 11 U.S. senators urged 
President Bush to sponsor such a resolution.

Last year, as in previous years, Beijing mobilized support from developing 
countries to prevent discussion of a U.S.-led attempt to censure Chinese 
repression. The European Union refused to co-sponsor the text after France 
and several other countries expressed concern that China might retaliate by 
cutting commercial ties.

Zhu said the only way for countries to resolve differences over human rights 
was through ``dialogue and exchange on the basis of equality and mutual 
respect'' and ``it is no use to engage in confrontation.''

China has refused to restart human rights talks with the United States while 
Washington supports censure efforts at the U.N. commission.

Zhu also warned against nominating Li Hongzhi, founder of the Falun Gong sect 
that China has banned as a cult, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Li, a former 
government grain clerk who lives in the United States, is among 126 people 
and groups known to have been nominated this year.

Since the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, Beijing has said the 
Nobel committee is biased against the communist government. The choice in 
October of exiled author Gao Xingjian as the literature winner appeared only 
to confirm those suspicions, although Beijing has largely ignored discussing 
his selection.

``If Li Hongzhi or the Falun Gong cult are nominated as candidates for the 
Nobel Peace Prize then it will make a great mockery of the prize,'' Zhu said. 
``We are strongly opposed to the use of the Nobel Peace Prize to achieve 
ulterior political motives.''

China has imprisoned thousands of Falun Gong followers in an often brutal, 
19-month-old crackdown. The government claims the sect has led nearly 1,700 
followers to their deaths - an accusation the group denies.

Falun Gong says 143 practitioners have been killed in the often brutal 
crackdown. A Hong Kong rights group has tallied 112 deaths.

Falun Gong followers believe the group's meditation exercises and Buddhist- 
and Taoist- influenced philosophies promote health, moral living and even 
supernatural powers for experienced practitioners.

Raids as China tracks Falun Gong worldwide

by Willy Wo-Lap Lam ("CNN," February 11, 2001)

BEIJING, China -- Police and security forces have raided the homes of more 
than a thousand grassroots leaders of the Falun Gong in yet another instance 
of Beijing's escalating battle against the quasi-Buddhist sect.

And the central government is collecting more evidence of the group's alleged 
links with cults in different parts of the world.

A Beijing source close to the security establishment said the authorities had 
identified the leaders of most of the sect's grassroots cells or liaison 
units, estimated to number several thousands. The homes of some of these 
leaders have recently been raided.

"Police and state security agents hope to uncover evidence of 'cult-like 
practice' and economic crime, or evidence that the sect leaders have done 
bodily and other harm to members," the source said.

The evidence would then be used in the on-going nationwide vilification 
campaign being waged against the "evil cult."

It is understood police and state propaganda units are studying evidence 
which might suggest personal links between overseas-based Falun Gong 
practitioners and quasi-religious groups generally branded as cults in 
foreign countries.

Beijing's foreign-based intelligence network has been told to work harder at 
putting together dossiers of Falun Gong veterans in different countries.

Meanwhile, pressure has been put on the police and state security apparatus 
to prevent Falun Gong-related mishaps in the capital.

Some of the nation's most important events, including the annual sessions of 
the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political 
Consultative Conference, are due to be convened in the Tiananmen Square area 
next month.

A Western diplomat who has studied the Falun Gong movement said security 
officers in provinces with large concentrations of sect practitioners had 
been told they would be penalized if "cultists" from their jurisdictions 
managed to go to the capital despite police surveillance.

"Morale among provincial police officers is not high," the diplomat said. 
"They have complained that once Falun Gong members from their areas end up as 
protesters in Tiananmen Square, their promotion prospects will be finished.''

Since early January, police have boosted check points in the outskirts of 
Beijing to prevent Falun Gong affiliates from getting into the capital.

 Anti-Falun Gong moves stoke fears in Hong Kong

by Tan Ee Lyn (Reuters, Feb. 10, 2001)

HONG KONG, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Religious and rights groups in Hong Kong spoke 
on Saturday of their fears for the fate of civil liberties in the territory 
as pro-Beijing forces stepped up a publicity blitz against the Falun Gong 
spiritual movement.

"The concern to us is how the Hong Kong government seems to draw parameters 
for (religious groups) to operate within," Rose Wu of the Hong Kong Christian 
Institute told a news conference.

Questions about Hong Kong's freedoms and how much say it has in its own 
affairs have taken centre stage in recent weeks since Beijing lashed out at 
the Falun Gong group in Hong Kong, saying it will not allow it to make the 
territory an anti-China base.

Banned and vilified on mainland China, the Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong, 
which was granted a high degree of autonomy after returning to Chinese rule 
in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula worked out with Britain.

But Beijing's irritation with the Hong Kong group came to the boil in January 
when it hosted a two-day conference in the territory to criticise the 
crackdown by Beijing on the mainland.

In a move seen as toeing Beijing's line, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa called 
the group an "evil cult" on Thursday, using the very same words China uses to 
describe the movement, which promotes a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, 
meditation and traditional Chinese breathing exercises.

Tung said he would closely monitor the group and would not allow it to 
disturb the peace in Hong Kong or mainland China.

But Wu asked: "Does that mean they can only exercise but not criticise the 
Hong Kong or Chinese governments?

"A lot of Christian organisations are already doing that (criticising the 
government). Our religious freedom is not so narrow. If it (the government) 
wants us to know what our limits are, that will be similar to a 'kowtow' 
culture," Wu said.

PRO-BEIJING FORCES STEP UP ATTACK

Pro-Beijing forces in Hong Kong, quick to echo Beijing's views, stepped up 
their verbal attacks on the group on Saturday.

"Recognise the evil cult, and protect the tranquillity of our home," the 
pro-China Wen Hui Pao newspaper said in its headlines.

Inside, a full page was dedicated to articles by local pro-China figures 
vilifying the movement.

"Everyone should get rid of the evil cult and its diabolical theories," wrote 
Zhao Hong-wei, a local delegate to China's National People's Congress (NPC), 
or parliament.

The blitz follows a seminar attended by pro-China figures on Friday, when the 
local Falun Gong group was warned against continuing its high profile 
activities and told to dissociate itself from the mainland Chinese group.

TEST OF HONG KONG'S AUTONOMY

Pro-democracy legislator Emily Lau, who was part of the panel at the news 
conference, said the row over the Falun Gong presented a key test for "one 
country, two systems."

"The Falun Gong has been banned on the mainland and the test is now whether 
it can be allowed to operate here."

The Falun Gong had been made a public enemy because Beijing felt threatened 
by it, Lau said.

"If locally, I can get so many people to support me and they are so 
determined...I think I will be perceived as a big big threat too," she said.

Beijing Allies Warn Sect Members

by Verna Yu (Associated Press, Feb. 10, 2001)

HONG KONG (AP) - Two allies of the Beijing government met for the first time 
with Falun Gong followers and warned them to cut ties with mainland adherents 
and take a lower profile in Hong Kong, both sides said Saturday.

Falun Gong said it wanted to promote understanding by asking for the 
face-to-face session here with two representatives of China's National 
People's Congress - but there was no apparent shift in positions.

``If you keep pushing so hard, you'll just be hitting your head against a 
wall,'' Raymond Wu, one of the Congress representatives, told members of the 
meditation sect during the meeting.

Wu and colleague Ma Lik talked for 75 minutes with Falun Gong figures 
including Kan Hung-cheung, a local spokesman for the sect. China's Xinhua 
News Agency has singled out Kan as ``a backbone member of the evil cult.''

Kan called the meeting a ``good start'' to promoting understanding with 
Beijing's allies, who accuse Falun Gong of abusing Hong Kong's free speech 
rights to try to subvert the Chinese government.

In a videotape of the meeting, Kan urged the Beijing allies to help Falun 
Gong ``make this a start - a rational, well intended and peaceful 
communication channel.''

Wu and Ma said they were meeting with Falun Gong in their personal 
capacities. Ma said Saturday he would not be used as a conduit for Falun Gong 
to deliver its messages to the Chinese leadership in Beijing.

The adversaries met in the headquarters of the Democratic Alliance for the 
Betterment of Hong Kong, the biggest pro-Beijing party, where Ma serves as 
secretary general. Party workers used paper to cover up all party emblems so 
they could not be seen in the videotape.

Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong but outlawed in mainland China, where the 
authorities are engaged in an often-brutal crackdown. Followers in Hong Kong 
regularly protest against Beijing's suppression, calling for the right to 
practice freely and the end to alleged torture and killings by police.

Pro-Beijing forces are outraged to see what they view as anti-China 
activities on Chinese soil.

Hong Kong's political leader, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, labeled Falun 
Gong a ``cult'' on Thursday and said Hong Kong authorities will closely 
monitor its activities.

Pro-democracy politicians and human rights activists are worried the battle 
will end with Hong Kong clamping down on Falun Gong and eroding the 
territory's freedoms.

But some said they were encouraged to see the two sides meet.

``My worry is that criticizing the central government in a high-profile way 
is seen to be a sin here,'' said Law Yuk-kai, director of the Hong Kong Human 
Rights Monitor. ``That's something not very heartening, but it's good there's 
some type of dialogue.''

Wu told the Falun Gong followers they were carrying things too far and 
accused Falun Gong of pushing the limits of Hong Kong's ``one country, two 
systems'' form of government. The system was put in place at the end of the 
British colonial era and recognizes China's sovereignty while giving Hong 
Kong considerable local autonomy.

Kan said Saturday that Falun Gong would persist in its campaigning.

``Our thinking is same as ever,'' Kan said by telephone. ``We'll continue to 
appeal for a stop to the persecution in China. I can't see why we should cut 
the ties, especially when the Chinese members are being persecuted.''

Chinese tire of anti-cult media blitz

by John  Schauble  ("Melbourne Age,"February 10, 2001)

Beijing lays the blame on media messengers

In the long shadow of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Government's 
propaganda campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual movement is beginning to 
wilt.

A population stunned by the footage of Falun Gong disciples, including a 
12-year-old girl, consumed in a blaze of self-immolation in Tiananmen Square, 
is now wearying of a relentless media blitz. It is as if the Chinese 
Government, delivered this most damning evidence of cultish behavior, has 
been unable to contain itself.

The intensity and language of Beijing's official condemnation has been such 
that many ordinary Chinese are beginning to switch off. This is hardly 
surprising given language reminiscent of a past era.

The state-controlled media - which most Chinese have learnt to regard with at 
least a degree of scepticism - has been relentless. On top of this there have 
been lectures in workplaces and even on public transport denouncing the evils 
of Falun Gong.

The People's Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist Party, has run torrents of 
copy attacking Falun Gong in the 12 days since the official news blackout on 
the event was lifted. This week it gave vent to the thoughts of academics at 
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who proclaimed that the sect's leader, Li 
Hongzhi, and his cohorts were "acting as running dogs of international 
anti-China forces".

"Falun Gong has completely torn off its sham mask of so-called truthfulness, 
compassion and forbearance and revealed its true features of lies, evil and 
frenzy," the paper continued, adding: "The tiger is fierce, but does not 
devour its cubs, but the Falun Gong organisation has gone so far as to 
hoodwink, incite and even force its disciples and immature youngsters to 
embark on the road to ruin."

It is the sort of diatribe more likely to be associated these days with 
China's neighbor, North Korea, than with a China trying to embrace an 
international audience to garner support for its entry into the World Trade 
Organisation or the hosting of the 2008 Olympics.

Falun Gong itself has flatly denied those involved in the January 23 protest 
were followers of the movement. But it is clearly concerned at the fallout 
from the campaign. "Is this turning into a modern-day witch-hunt? Are Chinese 
citizens to relive the horrors of the Cultural Revolution?" it asked in a 
statement posted on its website this week.

Falun Gong has in official terms undergone a metamorphosis in China. 
Originally supported along with other qi gong movements in the early 1990s, 
its eclectic beliefs combine qi gong breathing exercises, elements of Taoism, 
Buddhism and the teachings of "Master" Li Hongzhi.

The sect found appeal in the disillusion that many older Chinese feel about 
the communist system, which has failed to provide in retirement to a 
generation who bore the burdens of the command economy in the 1950s, '60s and 
'70s. It flourished along with religions of all kinds in recent years.

A demonstration on April 25, 1999, by 10,000 Falun Gong followers claiming 
greater freedom to pursue their beliefs deeply shook the government, which 
has struggled to suppress the organisation since it banned it in July that 
year.

Convincing the masses - many of whom know someone involved in Falun Gong or 
have themselves tested the qi gong waters - that the sect is evil, has been 
difficult. After the burnings, to further illustrate and strengthen its case, 
the government has fallen back on trotting out other examples of the evil 
within. The official Xinhua news agency reported the case on Tuesday, for 
example, of a 36-year-old nurse and Falun Gong practitioner arrested on 
suspicion of selling psychotropic drugs.

Former Falun Gong members, including some who have spent time, without trial, 
in re-education-through-labor camps, have been enlisted to recant their 
beliefs. Organisations as diverse as state-sanctioned religious groups, 
regional governments and professional bodies have been enlisted to denounce 
the sect.

But one of the most disturbing twists to the campaign has been the 
heavy-handed pressure exerted on the government of the former British colony 
of Hong Kong to tow the Beijing line.

Falun Gong is a registered, legal organisation in Hong Kong, where adherents 
are free to pursue the exercises at the heart of their beliefs in public.

A week ago, Beijing let it be known that it "would not tolerate" Hong Kong 
becoming a beachhead for Falun Gong activity on the mainland.

The cancellation of an imminent visit to Beijing by the Dutch Foreign 
Minister, Jozias Van Aartsen, came amid thinly veiled Dutch anger at pressure 
for a Dutch delegation in Hong Kong to abort a meeting with Falun Gong 
representatives.

Whatever international ramifications Beijing's campaign may have, there are 
signs the Hong Kong administration has already buckled. Chief executive Tung 
Chee-hwa said on Thursday that his administration would "closely monitor 
Falun Gong activities in Hong Kong and will not allow anyone to make use of 
Hong Kong's freedoms and tolerance to affect Hong Kong's order and stability, 
nor the mainland's order and stability".

China says Falun Gong burn victims uphold beliefs

by Paul Eckert (Reuters, Feb. 9, 2001)

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters) - China said on Friday that self-immolation victims 
at the centre of a national drive to discredit Falun Gong were in stable 
condition, but that only one of four had renounced faith in the banned 
spiritual group.

The official Xinhua news agency said hospital bed interviews with four 
Chinese who survived a fiery group suicide attempt last month showed two 
adults were still "diehard" believers who clung to Falun Gong teachings.

"Hao Huijun and Wang Jindong, planners and organisers of the suicide case, 
still trusted in their 'master' Li Hongzhi by refusing to eat and receive 
medical treatment at the hospital," Xinhua said. Li is the U.S.-based leader 
of Falun Gong.

Liu Siying -- a 12-year-old girl who China says was led to douse herself in 
petrol and set it alight by her mother, the only self-immolation fatality -- 
was still "greatly influenced by Li Zhongzhi's malicious fallacies," Xinhua 
said.

The four set fire to themselves on January 23 and were identified as Falun 
Gong adherents by Chinese state media on January 30, when Beijing revved up 
the latest in a series of propaganda campaigns against the outlawed sect.

FAITH USED TO DISCREDIT SECT

By stressing the continued faith of the survivors -- one of whom Xinhua said 
no longer wished to talk about the the sect -- China appeared to be 
attempting to refute Falun Gong statements denying they had any link with the 
spiritual movement.

The apparently tenacious faith of the burn victims also buttresses China's 
assertion since it banned Falun Gong in July, 1999, that it is a brainwashing 
and manipulative cult.

"Although they are stubborn Falun Gong practitioners, our medical workers 
must try all out to save their lives and give best treatment to them," Xinhua 
quoted a nurse as saying.

International media have not been allowed to interview the burn patients, who 
were treated at Beijing's Jishuitan Hospital.

Wang had recovered to the point where he could be moved to a police hospital, 
Xinhua said, but did not indicate whether he was under detention.

Xinhua said the government had spent more than 236,000 yuan ($28,520) 
treating the patients and that they had received many letters each day 
wishing them well and "encouraging them to depart from the evil cult."

INTERNATIONAL RAMIFICATIONS MOUNT

China says its tough campaign to crush Falun Gong is necessary to protect 
Chinese from an "evil cult" that has plotted to overthrow the communist 
government.

But the crusade has started to hamper China's relations with Western 
countries and cast a cloud over Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics, with 
outsiders alarmed by the many reported abuses of the 19-month-old crackdown.

Falun Gong says 50,000 followers have been detained and many sent to labour 
camps without trial. Human rights groups estimate about 100 believers have 
died in detention.

This week Dutch Minister Jozias Van Aartsen scrapped a scheduled visit to 
China because Beijing publicly opposed a planned meeting between Dutch 
diplomats and members of the banned spiritual movement in Hong Kong.

And Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-hwa has come under fire from critics who say 
he sided too closely to China after he warned Falun Gong that it would be 
closely watched and prevented from harming stability in the territory or 
provoking Beijing.

Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong, which was granted a high degree of autonomy 
after returning to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" 
formula worked out with Britain.

Some critics fear Tung has opened the door to an erosion of that autonomy, 
which Beijing had pledged to uphold until 2047.

HK chief slammed for calling Falun Gong evil cult

by Tan Ee Lyn (Reuters, Feb. 9, 2001)

HONG KONG, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Human rights campaigners accused Hong Kong 
leader Tung Chee-hwa on Friday of siding with Beijing's communist leadership 
by joining in branding the Falun Gong spiritual movement an "evil cult."

Tung warned the Falun Gong on Thursday that it would be closely watched and 
prevented from exploiting Hong Kong's freedom to upset stability in the 
territory or provoke mainland China.

Tung told a session of Hong Kong's 60-member legislative council that the 
Falun Gong had some characteristics of "an evil cult," the words China uses 
to describe the movement which is banned on the mainland.

Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong, which was granted a high degree of autonomy 
after returning to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" 
formula worked out with Britain.

Falun Gong has taken an aggressive stand in Hong Kong this year, pushing its 
anti-Beijing protests.

Law Yuk-kai of the group the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor deplored Tung's 
echoing of Beijing in calling the group an "evil cult" and questioned what 
closer scrutiny meant.

"Describing it as an evil cult is irresponsible. Governments have to restrain 
themselves from calling any belief or group such names," he said.

"If Falun Gong is just voicing its views, it does not deserve such things 
(surveillance). Does that mean the government will tap their phones, 
intercept their mail?"

Martin Lee, leader of the Democratic Party, said: "If we carry on like this 
and the central government isn't nice to the Catholics, Protestants or 
Buddhists either, and seeks to brand all of them as cults, will Hong Kong 
call them cults too?"

An editorial in the mass-circulated Chinese-language Apple Daily called 
Tung's remarks "dangerous and unreasonable."

Beijing has stepped up its vilification campaign against the group and warned 
recently it would not allow Falun Gong to turn Hong Kong into an anti-China 
base.

TUNG WALKS FINE LINE

But political analysts said Tung, picked by Beijing for the post-colonial 
role of chief executive, was walking a tightrope between pleasing Beijing and 
defending Hong Kong's special status and freedoms within communist China.

Sonny Lo, a politics professor at the Hong Kong University, said: "Sandwiched 
between Beijing and the Falun Gong, that was the best Tung could do."

"By calling the group an 'evil cult', Tung was giving a clear signal to Falun 
Gong to tone down and understand the predicament of the Hong Kong 
government."

Political commentator Lau Siu-kai, a sociology professor at the Chinese 
University said the best approach was to persuade Falun Gong members in Hong 
Kong to assume a lower profile.

"The government must appeal to people's political pragmatism that high 
profile Falun Gong activities will hurt the relationship between Hong Kong 
and Beijing, and that will be detrimental to Hong Kong," Lau told Reuters.

Some analysts said Tung had been sensible in saying he was in no hurry to 
press for a sedition law that the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini constitution, 
requires the territory adopt.

"It seems to me Tung understands the virtue of keeping that law ambiguous for 
now. That grey area is beneficial for Hong Kong as it means the Falun Gong 
and other sensitive issues are up for bargain, negotiation, politicking and 
compromise," Lo said.

Despite the flap over Falun Gong, international rating agency Standard & 
Poor's upgraded Hong Kong's sovereign credit rating on Friday.

"Hong Kong's ability to administer its own affairs within the limited 
autonomy provided by the Basic Law has been tested by several economic and 
political challenges," the agency said.

 Hong Kong Leader Applauded on Sect

by Verna Yu (Associated Press, Feb. 9, 2001)

HONG KONG (AP) - Pro-Beijing forces on Friday applauded Hong Kong's chief 
executive for calling the Falun Gong sect a ``cult'' that needs to be closely 
watched by the authorities, but human rights groups were worried.

Falun Gong followers were outraged at what they called an unfair and 
inaccurate attack from Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa during a 
question-and-answer session with lawmakers on Thursday. His statements 
sharply raised the volume in the debate over the sect's activities in Hong 
Kong.

The meditation sect has made authorities in mainland China nervous because of 
its ability to summon thousands of followers to protests. It is banned in 
mainland China but remains legal in Hong Kong.

``We are always peaceful,'' said Wang Yaoqing, a Falun Gong adherent who 
takes her 8-year-old son to practice deep-breathing and meditation exercises 
opposite China's representative office in Hong Kong every morning.

``Tung has never communicated or tried to understand us. He's just taking the 
central government's command,'' Wang said during a break from her routine 
early Friday.

Beijing and its allies among local newspapers and politicians are demanding a 
crackdown on Falun Gong in Hong Kong. Although Tung stopped short of 
announcing any action, Beijing's side was clearly pleased to have seen him 
adopt so much of Beijing's line on Falun Gong.

Ma Lik, the secretary general of Hong Kong's biggest pro-Beijing political 
party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, said Tung was 
acting in Hong Kong's interests.

``Does one want to force him to say that everything is OK and we'll do 
nothing?'' said Ma, who is also a local representative of the mainland 
National People's Congress. ``It would be difficult for him to explain that 
to Beijing.''

Tung angered Falun Gong members by citing an incident last month in Beijing, 
when five purported followers of the sect set themselves on fire.

Falun Gong said the people who tried to kill themselves could not have been 
true believers, since the group opposes suicide. It accused Beijing of using 
the incident as part of a propaganda campaign.

``I thought his remarks were very irresponsible and incredibly unfair,'' said 
Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman.

She said she was worried about Tung's statement that Hong Kong will monitor 
Falun Gong ``very carefully.''

``I don't know what that means,'' asked Xu. ``Does that mean to have people 
following us?''

Hong Kong's handling of the Falun Gong controversy is seen as a key test of 
its freedoms of speech and religion, holdovers from British colonial days.

A joint statement made by 12 Christian organizations said any suppression of 
Falun Gong could also affect them. It urged the government to maintain its 
religious tolerance.

China May Charge Foreign Reporters Over Tiananmen Burning

 by Philip P. Pan ("Washington Post," February 9, 2001)

BEIJING, Feb. 8 -- Chinese police may seek homicide charges against foreign 
reporters who they claim had advance knowledge that five alleged members of 
the banned Falun Gong spiritual group would planning to set themselves afire 
in Tiananmen Square last month, according to an article published in two 
state-run newspapers.

The story, which also appeared on Chinese Internet sites today, said that 
police would consider charging the reporters with "abetting and assisting 
other people in committing suicide" if they could prove the reporters were 
involved in planning the Jan. 23 incident. One woman died of her burns and 
the other four people, including the woman's 12-year-old daughter, were 
hospitalized in critical condition.

Articles in the Chinese press, particularly on sensitive subjects, are 
generally approved by several Communist Party officials before publication. 
The newspapers that published the story Wednesday -- the Yangcheng Evening 
News and the Southern Daily -- refused to comment, and a spokesman for the 
Public Security Ministry did not respond to questions faxed to him.

The article was seen as the latest salvo in the government's escalating 
campaign to discredit Falun Gong as a dangerous cult supported by "Western 
anti-China forces" and to win support for its 18-month effort to crush the 
group. Graphic footage of the self-immolations, including a shot of the girl 
-- crying out for her mother with her face charred black -- has been 
broadcast regularly on state television, stirring anger against the sect.

Falun Gong leaders insist that the five people could not have been members of 
their movement, which promotes a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and traditional 
Chinese breathing exercises.

Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed leader, meanwhile, described Falun Gong as a 
cult whose members must be closely monitored, the Associated Press reported 
from Hong Kong. "Anyone who has watched the self-immolation on Tiananmen 
Square would be very shocked," Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa said in a 
legislative question-and-answer session that sharply escalated the war of 
words over the group's activities in Hong Kong. China is trying to pressure 
Hong Kong to ban Falun Gong, which exists legally in the former British 
colony.

"I certainly hope that such incidents will not happen in Hong Kong, and I 
believe the people of Hong Kong share this view," Tung said.

The display of concern coincides with preparations in Beijing to host a 
delegation that will evaluate the city's bid for the 2008 Summer Olympic 
Games. Protests against China's human rights record helped doom the city's 
bid for the 2000 Games, but Chinese officials say the Falun Gong crackdown 
should not be used as an excuse to deny the country again.

"Cults exist in every country," said Liu Jingmin, deputy mayor of Beijing. 
"The way governments deal with them differs due to different laws, but 
resistance against cults is a common practice."

Liu said the U.S. government's 1993 attack on the Branch Davidian compound in 
Waco, Tex., did not affect the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, and he added 
that the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, took place despite a poison gas 
attack on Tokyo subways in 1995 by the Aum Supreme Truth cult.

The newspaper reports said that surveillance videotapes showed six or seven 
reporters from CNN, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse arriving 10 
minutes before the burnings began and positioning themselves near the 
victims. It also said the harrowing, close-up shots of the incident broadcast 
on China Central Television were taken from videotape confiscated from CNN -- 
addressing for the first time questions by overseas Falun Gong leaders about 
why the government happened to have a camera crew in place to film the 
incident.

CNN, the AP and AFP denied having advance knowledge of the incident. The AP 
and AFP said their reporters were not in the square at the time. Eason 
Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, said a producer and cameraman witnessed 
the self-immolations because they were making a routine check of the square 
for Falun Gong protests on the day before the Chinese New Year, which was 
marked by protests a year ago.

He said the footage used in the Chinese television reports could not have 
come from CNN videotape because the CNN cameraman was arrested almost 
immediately after the incident began.

Hong Kong sect members say Jiang out to ruin China

 (Reuters, Feb. 3, 2001)

HONG KONG, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Falun Gong adherents in Hong Kong have stepped 
up their fight against Beijing with booklets condemning Chinese President 
Jiang Zemin as an "autocrat" acting to harm China.

This latest act of defiance by Falun Gong, which is outlawed in mainland 
China, is likely to attract further wrath from Beijing and pro-China figures 
in the territory, and put further pressure on the Hong Kong government to 
limit the spiritual movement's activities.

The 26-page colour booklet, carrying pictures and allegations of persecution 
against Falun Gong members by the Chinese authorities, has been distributed 
on Hong Kong streets.

"Jiang Zemin is the culprit responsible for oppressing Falun Gong," the 
booklet said.

It added that crackdowns on the group "comprehensively expose his (Jiang's) 
act to harm China and its nationals."

The group, which China labelled as an "evil cult" and banned in 1999, 
declined to say how many copies of the booklet had been printed.

Falun Gong remains legal in Hong Kong, which retained a high degree of 
autonomy after Britain handed its colony back to China in 1997.

On Thursday, Hong Kong's security chief Regina Ip said the Beijing-anointed 
government would closely monitor Falun Gong in the territory.

Ip's comment came just days after Beijing warned it would not allow Falun 
Gong to turn Hong Kong into a centre for operations or an anti-China base.

The security chief also said recent activities of the group had been targeted 
against Beijing.

But Kan Hung-cheung, spokesman for Falun Gong in Hong Kong, said they were 
trying to tell the truth about China's oppression to the territory's 6.8 
million people and did not expect the Hong Kong government to outlaw them 
because of it.

"Hong Kong is a free society and everyone has the rights to speak out," he 
said. "I believe a rational and an open government would not do such silly 
thing."

Last month, some 1,000 Falun Gong followers from around the world held 
protests and a conference in Hong Kong, a move widely seen as a snub to 
Beijing, which has stepped up its vilification campaign against the group.

The Falun Gong spiritual movement, which promotes a mixture of Buddhism, 
Taoism, meditation and traditional Chinese breathing exercises, says it has 
millions of followers in China and has shocked the Communist Party by its 
persistence and ability to organise mass protests.

Two Falungong members attacked in Hong Kong: report

 (AFP,  February 3, 2001)

HONG KONG - Two members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement were injured 
here in what is believed to be the first attack on the group in the 
territory, reports said today. 
A 40-year old suspect was arrested today after allegedly attacking the women 
who were handing out leaflets outside a popular temple. 
One of them, Chi Lai-wa, 55, told police the man slapped her in the face 
after she tried to give him a leaflet, the Hong Kong iMail said. 
"He knocked all my leaflets to the ground, saying, 'I've had it with you 
(Falun Gong members). I always wanted to beat you.' He took out an iron bar 
and tried to beat me," the daily quoted her as saying. 
The man then allegedly hit another sect member in the face with the iron bar 
when she tried to intervene. 
Members of the group called police and chased the man until he was arrested 
by a passing patrol officer. 
The suspect was later released on bail. He told police he attacked the sect 
members because they had forced him to accept their leaflets, the iMail said. 
Both women were treated in hospital for their injuries. 
The South China Morning Post reported witnesses as saying the group had been 
handing out fliers outside the Wong Tai Sin temple for the past month without 
problem. 
The incident comes as Hong Kong authorities are under mounting pressure from 
influential pro-Beijing channels to curb the Falun Gong, or even ban the sect 
here altogether. 
A spokesman for the group, Kan Hung-cheung, told the iMail they "did not 
exclude the possibility that some people wanted to instigate public unrest 
through such incidents".