"'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.

"Bishop condemns Hong Kong leader for comments on Falun Gong sect "

by Verna Yu (AP, February 18, 2001)

HONG KONG - Hong Kong's Roman Catholic Church on Sunday lashed out at the government's chief executive for referring to the spiritual group Falun Gong as a cult and voiced fears that the Catholic church itself could also come under attack.
In an article in the Sunday Examiner, an English-language Catholic diocese newspaper, Bishop Joseph Zen said Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's branding of the sect as "an evil cult was very alarming, not only for Falun Gong, but for all of us."
He warned that Christian organizations could become the next targets.
Speaking to lawmakers earlier this month, Tung expressed shock over reports that Falun Gong followers had set themselves on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square last month and said the group displays "more or less characteristics of a cult."
He also pledged that authorities here would closely monitor the group's activities.
Falun Gong, which has attracted millions of followers worldwide, is outlawed in mainland China as an "evil cult" but it remains legal in Hong Kong.
Bishop Zen said the suicides in Beijing by Falun Gong members "seem to be surrounded by question marks." The group says suicide is against its doctrine and has denied the people who set fire to themselves were members.
Zen said he has no relationship with Falun Gong and little knowledge of its activities.
But the bishop expressed concern that the Hong Kong government is attacking Falun Gong because of the sect's strong criticism of the Beijing government.
He warned that Christian churches and other organizations in Hong Kong may also be labeled cults if they criticize the government.
Tung's spokesman, Stephen Lam, said in a statement the Hong Kong government was fully committed to maintaining religious freedom in the territory and that all organizations are free to express their opinion.
The statement said Tung's remark on the Falun Gong was in connection with the self-immolation of sect members in Beijing and added that mainstream religious organizations do "not condone or promote suicide or self-destruction."
In recent months, pro-Beijing figures in Hong Kong have escalated their attacks on the sect in the territory, saying Falun Gong disrupts public order through their high-profile protests and have accused it of receiving backing from "anti-China subversive forces" in the West.
But Falun Gong representatives often stress their peaceful protests are legal and vow they would continue them until the suppression in mainland China stops.
Zen called on Tung to "amend his statement or at least accept that he owes us some reassurance."
Last October, Bishop Zen accused Beijing of meddling in Hong Kong's religious freedom, claiming Chinese officials told the Catholic church to remain silent over the Vatican's canonization of 120 Chinese and foreign missionary martyrs.

"Protest targets Chinese ban of ancient practice"

by Leslie Gornstein (AP, February 18, 2001)

LOS ANGELES -- Because of his belief in Falun Gong, Zhaohui Lu said he lost his government job in China and faces jail when he returns.
His wife is already in a labor camp because she passed out fliers promoting the meditation rituals embraced by the sect, he said.
To protest such treatment, Lu joined about 1,300 people who turned out Saturday to protest alleged human rights violations against the sect in China.
The peaceful demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles and Beverly Hills came as Falun Gong officials called for an independent investigation into Chinese government claims that one 25-year-old follower had set himself on fire in Beijing on Friday.
"The Chinese government has long seen the peaceful Falun Gong movement as a threat to its communist ideology and rule," said Sherry Zhang, an engineer who lives in Berkeley and practices Falun Gong.
A statement by international Falun Gong leaders read at the protests said they were "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.
The statement said China was using the 25-year-old shoe shiner's reported self-immolation to defame Falun Gong.
The death prompted renewed Chinese 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.
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.
During Saturday's protest in downtown Los Angeles, Lu said followers live in fear in China.
"The police may arrest you at any time," he said. "My wife is still in prison for trying to pass out fliers about the truth. They won't permit me to talk to her."
Jian Tang, who now lives in the United States, said she was arrested and tortured for 15 days last fall in her native China. Jian said she was shackled and forced to swallow salt mixed with a small amount of water.
"I thought I was dying," she told the crowd at the protest. "It took me more than 30 minutes to restore my normal breathing ... My throat was hurt so much by the salt that I lost my voice for a few days."
Lu said he was forced by his employers to choose between his beliefs and his job as a government tax officer in China. He chose to keep practicing Falun Gong and face the consequences.
He is visiting the United States to help draw attention to the situation in China.
Before the demonstration in downtown Los Angeles, hundreds of protesters sat in neat rows to meditate to music played over a public address system. Followers wore bright yellow shirts proclaiming the practice's three pillars of truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance.
The event came during a Falun Gong conference in Los Angeles that attracted members from China, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and other countries.

"Falun Gong Believers Stage Protest"

by Leslie Gornstein (Associated Press, February 18, 2001)

LOS ANGELES - Because of his belief in Falun Gong, Zhaohui Lu said he lost his government job in China and faces jail when he returns.
His wife is already in a labor camp because she passed out fliers promoting the meditation rituals embraced by the sect, he said.
Lu was one of about 1,300 people who turned out Saturday in Los Angeles to protest alleged human rights violations against the sect in China.
The peaceful demonstrations came as Falun Gong officials called for an independent investigation into Chinese government claims that a 25-year-old follower had set himself on fire in Beijing on Friday.
A statement by international Falun Gong leaders read at the protests said they were ``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.
``The Chinese government has long seen the peaceful Falun Gong movement as a threat to its communist ideology and rule,'' said Sherry Zhang, an engineer who lives in Berkeley and practices Falun Gong.
Chinese leaders, worried by Falun Gong's multimillion following and its 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.
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.
Lu said followers live in fear in China. ``The police may arrest you at any time,'' he said. ``My wife is still in prison for trying to pass out fliers about the truth. They won't permit me to talk to her.''

"Catholic bishop slams 'evil' label for Falun Gong"

(Reuters, February 18, 2001)

HONG KONG - Hong Kong's Catholic church has labelled as "alarming" chief executive Tung Chee-hwa's recent comments calling the Falun Gong movement an evil cult, the Sunday Morning Post reported.
"If Falun Gong is accused of causing disorder in Hong Kong society just because of peaceful protests, then such a label can easily be applied tomorrow to the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, to the diocese and to many Christian bodies," it quoted Bishop Joseph Zen as saying.
"The fact that Tung Chee-hwa has branded Falun Gong an 'evil cult' is very alarming not only for Falun Gong, but for all of us," he said in the report.
The bishop is deputy to Cardinal John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung, said the report.
Stephen Lam, information coordinator for Tung, was quoted in the report as saying the Hong Kong leader had been misunderstood.
"He said 'more or less a cult', not 'evil cult'. It is difficult with English and Chinese translations," Lam said.
Tung had been referring to the self-immolation of five Falung Gong members at Tiananmen Square in Beijing with his remarks, he added.
"Mainstream religions do not condone or promote suicide and self-destruction," said Lam. "We were just referring to Tiananmen Square."
China's leadership banned Falun Gong as an "evil cult" in 1999 and has launched a major campaign to denigrate it across the country.
Falun Gong, which is based on elements of Taoism, Buddhism, and traditional Chinese meditation and exercises, has denied China's accusations saying it is a non-political movement aimed only at improving people.
Earlier this month, Tung told legislators that Hong Kong authorities would closely watch the movement and prevent the group from exploiting Hong Kong's freedom and upsetting Beijing's communist leadership.
Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong, which was granted a high degree of autonomy under a "one country, two system" formula worked out between China and Britain.

"Psychiatric Abuse by China Reported in Repressing Sect"

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

BEIJING - 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 - after he said he intended to hold a news conference to denounce his treatment - 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" - who is not considered ill - 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."