"China's crackdown on Falungong sect rooted in fear and ignorance: members"

(AFP, March 15, 2001)

STOCKHOLM - Persecuted practitioners of Falungong now living abroad said Wednesday that China's crackdown on the banned spiritual movement was rooted in the Communist Party's ignorance and fear.
"The major reason (for the crackdown) is the Communist Party. They've never understood Falungong practices. There are no political messages, just spiritual exercises," said Jimmy Zou, a Chinese-born American who spent six days in a Beijing jail last year for performing Falungong exercises.
"The government sees so many people thinking differently than the Communist Party, and they are scared that too many people will have a different ideology," he said, adding: "The Communist Party wants to control people's minds."
Jimmy Zou was one of four Chinese guests who spoke Wednesday in Stockholm to help raise awareness about the mistreatment of Falungong supporters and other human rights violations in China.
Beijing views Falungong, which claims more than 70 million adherents in China alone and combines exercise with meditation, 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.
Since then, the government has sentenced hundreds of followers to prison terms of up to 18 years and sent tens of thousands to labour camps without trial, while more than 160 have died while in police custody, according to human rights groups.
But Kunlung Zhang, a 60-year-old Chinese-Canadian practitioner, stressed that the crackdown was not supported by the whole government. Rather, he said, the persecution was led mainly by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
"Not everyone in the government agrees with the persecution. It is Jiang Zemin himself (who is leading it), because of his own fears," said Zhang, who was released from a Chinese labor camp in January after the Canadian government put pressure on Beijing.
The Falungong members said that despite the regular mistreatment, they would not call for sanctions against Beijing.
Such measures were "totally ruled out", said Mimmi Svensson, a practitioner in Sweden, adding: "Anyone who follows the teachings knows that there is no room for that in Falungong. Instead we appeal to people's hearts to see the truth."

"Tianjin court jails 13 sect followers "

("Hong Kong Mail," March 15, 2001)

BEIJING - A court in the northern city of Tianjin had jailed 13 members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement for up to six years for protesting and distributing sect pamphlets, a local newspaper said.
The sentences reported in Tianjin's Jinwan Bao evening newspaper on Monday bring to 50 the number of Falun Gong members jailed this month in Beijing and Tianjin alone.
The Tianjin verdicts included a six-year sentence on Cao Chengming, 53, for unfolding a banner at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in a protest with other adherents last October 1, China's National Day, the newspaper said.
Cao, whose banner read ``Falun Gong is not an evil cult'', was convicted or ``using a cult to obstruct the law'', the newspaper said. Fellow protester Hao Nianxiang was jailed for four years.
In a separate Tianjin case, Yang Cuilan, 42, was jailed for six years on the same charges for reproducing and disseminating Falun Gong fliers, audiotapes and video cassettes last October, the newspaper said.
On March 1, courts in Beijing jailed 37 Falun Gong followers for up to 10 years for disseminating statements downloaded from the spiritual group's websites.
The defendants had distributed fliers opposing the ban imposed on the group in July 1999.

"Falun Gong wins 'religious freedom' award"

("CNN News," March 15, 2001)

WASHINGTON -- A United States human rights organization has given China's Falun Gong group a religious freedom award.
Falun Gong won the Freedom House International Religious Award, as "defenders of religious rights", along with several other Chinese religious groups and independence movements.
Freedom House, co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt 60 years ago, says it is a non-partisan and non-profit organization, and it believes that "American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and freedom".
Other winners of the Freedom House award also include Friends of the Christian Unregistered Churches, the International Campaign for Tibet, the Uighur-American Association, and the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which supports China's underground Roman Catholic church.
Games decision ahead.

"Falungong leader savages "wicked" Chinese leadership"

(AFP, March 15, 2001)

WASHINGTON - The leader of China's banned Falungong spiritual movement used a rare public statement to taunt communist leaders in Beijing he accused of presiding over a "wicked dictatorship."
Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in New York, defended his group in the statement read by a spokesman Wednesday at a meeting in the US Congress, and bemoaned the fate of followers subjected to a crackdown by the authorities.
Practitioners had used the teachings of his movement, which meshes Buddhist-based philosophy and meditation exercises, to become "physically healthy," Li said.
"All of this severely threatens the weak nature of the party," Li said through the spokesman at a ceremony organized by the Freedom House rights group honoring religious organizations in China it said were persecuted.
"The goodness challenges their evil nature," Li said and branded China's political system a "wicked dictatorship."
The statement came three days before Chinese vice-premier Qian Qichen is due in the United States for talks on Beijing's already rocky relations with the new administration of President George W. Bush.
China has implemented a 20-month crackdown on Falungong, which analysts say has emerged as the most potent threat to the Communist party's control over the country.
Thousands of practitioners have been detained in labor camps, jails or mental hospitals since the movement was banned in July 1999.
Human rights groups say more than 100 followers have been beaten to death in police custody.
In January, five people China says were Falungong practitioners set themselves on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Since the movement was outlawed, tens of thousands of followers have flocked to the square in almost daily protests. The movement claims 70 million members in China, although Beijing says it only ever had two million.
Li thanked the US government and the American people for supporting Falungong in his statement.
The State Department frequently calls on Beijing to release all group members detained for peacefully exercising rights to "freedom of religion, freedom of belief and freedom of conscience."
The Freedom House event was called to honor Falungong and four other groups it said were battling religious repression in China.
Groups also honored were the Cardinal Kung Foundation, Friends of the Christian Unregistered Churches, the International Campaign for Tibet and the American Uighur Foundation.
Each recipient of the Freedom House Center for Religious Freedom award had shown "extraordinary dedication to the advancement of fundamental principles of religious freedom," the rights group said.
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom said that despite China's claims to support religious pluralism and acceptance of several international agreements on the issue, it had failed to observe human rights norms.
"How can we not single out China," she said.
"We will not be fooled when the facts on the ground point in the opposite direction," she said at a reception held in the rooms of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Committee chairman Jesse Helms, a Republican senator and noted China hawk, called on the world to target China's human rights record at the upcoming session of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
He also urged the International Olympic Committee not to grant China its wish to host the 2008 Olympics.
"The nations of the world will be obliged to decide whether they will stand with the people of China or whether they will stand with communist oppressors," he said.

"Falun Gong seek Missourians' support for practice"

by Bob Watson ("Jefferson City News Tribune," March 14, 2001)

News Tribune Since July 1999, the government of the People's Republic of China has banned its practice.Tuesday afternoon, about 20 people who practice Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) in Missouri staged a Capitol news conference seeking support for their right to follow their five-level physical and spiritual exercise program anywhere in the world, including China.Since its introduction in 1992, more than 100 million people around the world have begun following Falun Dafa's system of personal exercises.Sharon Kilarski of Kansas City said she began practicing Falun Dafa in June 1999, and it changed the way she reacted to others, including her husband and college professors."Falun Dafa has given me some peace of mind," she said.
"The thoughts I now think are different."Kilarski, 41, said the practice also improved her health and helped with her first baby six months ago.But the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs has labeled Falun Dafa an "illegal organization ... engaging in illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies (and) jeopardizing social stability," according to a report from the group, Human Rights Watch."I think the main reason why the Chinese government persecutes us is, the number of Falun Gong practitioners outnumbers the number of Communist Party members," said Larry Liu of St. Louis, who helped organize Tuesday's Capitol event. "Also, Falun Gong is rooted from ancient Chinese culture, which is not related to the Communists' athiest ideology.Yi Liu of St. Louis said during the Chinese government's "20 months of brutal persecution" against Falun Dafa, "at least 162 practitioners have been tortured to death in police custody and more than 50,000 practitioners have been illegally detained."Sue Jiang, a Chinese citizen who currently lives in Columbia, was arrested in Beijing last summer and held for 24 days at a detention center, because she practiced Falun Dafa in Tiananmen Square while on a visit to her family for the first time in five years."It's my home country, and it's very hard to think they would arrest me only because I'm a Falun Gong practitioner," she said. "It was a chance for me to stand up and speak for my belief, for such a good thing as Falun Gong."

"Maine towns’ support sought for Falun Dafa"

by Diana Bowley ("Bangor Daily News," March 14, 2001)

DOVER-FOXCROFT- Maine communities are being asked to support Falun Dafa, a Chinese-backed movement that emphasizes the principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.
Letters have been sent to communities across the state asking that town officials proclaim a “Falun Dafa Day.”
“The proclamation is just to have a more formal introduction in the community,” Nancy Ortego of St. Albans, a practitioner in the ancient self-cultivation method, said Tuesday.
However, not all communities are embracing Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, an ancient method introduced in China to improve the mind, body and spirit through five simple exercises.
Dover-Foxcroft officials, who received such a letter this week from Ortego, took no action Monday on the request.
“I just think it’s inappropriate,” Dover-Foxcroft Selectman Tom Lizotte said at the board meeting.
But Ortego believes the method is appropriate for Maine communities and cites support from Gov. Angus King and Lewiston Mayor Kaileigh Tara. In a letter dated Dec. 21, 2000, King congratulated Falun Dafa followers on their success of bringing the method to Maine.
“This practice, based on the universal principle of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, has a following worldwide and is enlisting more followers from Maine all the time. The work that your group does to encourage a better understanding of Falun Dafa in Maine through workshops and demonstrations will only help to make the practice more widespread and popular with our citizens,” the governor wrote in his letter.
Lewiston officials proclaimed a Falun Dafa Day in February when demonstrations were given on the exercises at the local library.
Ortego said there are about a dozen Falun Dafa practitioners in the state who show individuals how to do the simple exercises similar to tai chi, an exercise used in martial arts. She said the practice involves slow, gentle movements and meditation, which helps relieve stress.
Falun Gong is neither a religion nor a sect, according to information distributed by the followers. No temples, rituals, clergy, priests or ranks are involved with the method. Nor is there a political agenda or affiliation, according to the written material.
The practice is an individual choice and is centered on the improvement of one’s self, according to Ortego.
In China, however, the group is perceived as a threat because it is not directly related to Communist ideology.
Since July 1999, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained, and many of them have been beaten, forced from their jobs, homes and schools and sent to labor camps, according to news reports.

"China jails 13 more Falun Gong activists"

(Reuters, March 13, 2001)

BEIJING - A court in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin jailed 13 members of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement this week for up to six years for protesting and distributing sect pamphlets, a local newspaper said.
The sentences reported in Tianjin's Jinwan Bao evening newspaper on Monday bring to 50 the number of members of Falun Gong jailed this month in Beijing and Tianjin alone.
The Tianjin verdicts included a six-year sentence on Cao Chengming, 53, for unfolding a Falun Gong banner at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in a protest with other adherents last October 1, China's National Day, the newspaper said.
Cao, whose banner read "Falun Gong is not an evil cult," was convicted or "using a cult to obstruct the law," said the newspaper, seen in Beijing on Tuesday. Fellow protester Hao Nianxiang was jailed for four years.
In a separate Tianjin case, Yang Cuilan, 42, was jailed for six years on the same charges for reproducing and disseminating Falun Gong fliers, audiotapes and video cassettes last October, the newspaper said.
On March 1, courts in Beijing jailed 37 Falun Gong followers for up to 10 years for disseminating statements downloaded from the spiritual group's Websites. The defendants had distributed fliers opposing the ban China imposed on the group in July 1999.
Despite 19 months of an increasingly ruthless campaign to snuff out the Falun Gong and several Communist Party declarations of victory, the group has continued its protests.
Since Falun Gong was banned, tens of thousands of followers have been detained for protesting. Human rights groups say several thousand are in labour camps and that more than 100 have died of abuse in police custody.
Last week, exiled Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi issued a statement on the group's website saying China's crackdown was futile and that adherents who had recanted their beliefs under duress would resume their practices.
"Although many people have been beaten to death, beaten to disability, or sent to mental hospitals, this has not changed true cultivators' steadfast, righteous thoughts," Li wrote in a March 4 message on the website www.clearwisdom.net.
China, which asserts that Falun Gong is a brainwashing "evil cult," says it has arrested more than 150 protest organisers. But authorities deny allegations of abuse, saying they treat ordinary followers with lenience.
The United States, due to propose a resolution censuring Beijing at a U.N. rights meeting in Geneva this month, condemned alleged abuses of Falun Gong followers in a human rights report which said the rights situation in China had worsened in 2000.
Beijing has branded the homegrown spiritual group a weapon of Western countries hostile to China's Communist government.
Falun Gong is based on elements of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese meditation and exercises.

"HK Catholic Church Says Top Official Defamed Falun Gong"

(AP, March 12, 2001)

HONG KONG -- Fanning controversy over the Falun Gong, the local Catholic church has attacked Hong Kong's top security official for publicly criticizing the spiritual group, which is banned on the Chinese mainland. An editorial carried by this week's edition of the Catholic weekly Kung Kao Po said recent comments by Security Secretary Regina Ip criticizing the group may have defamed all religions.
"We think it is inappropriate for the government to use its power to make any comment on religious affairs, or to differentiate religions into different categories," said Father Louis Ha, editor of the Catholic publication.
The Chinese government banned the popular Falun Gong movement in July 1999, branding it a public menace and threat to Communist Party rule. The ban doesn't apply to Hong Kong residents, who enjoy special freedoms under a "one country, two systems" arrangement governing the former British colony's July 1997 return to Chinese rule.
The Hong Kong government, however, has recently begun speaking against Falun Gong, with Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa labeling the group a "cult" and Security Secretary Regina Ip calling it "devious."
Local Catholic leaders have objected. The Kung Kao Pao commentary said Ip's criticisms, made during a discussion with lawmakers two weeks ago, "not only libeled Falun Gong, but may also have defamed all religions in the world."
"If they start differentiating different religions as 'right' and 'wrong,' such judgments may gradually extend to other areas, such as the right arts, the right movies, and even right thinking," Ha said.
A spokesman for the Security Bureau, who only identified himself by his surname, Ho, said it had no comment.
Falun Gong members, who staged an international conference here in January intended to draw attention to Beijing's often brutal crackdown, praised the Catholics' response.
"We express our gratitude to the Catholics for speaking words of justice on behalf of Falun Gong," said a local spokesman, Kan Hung-cheung, himself labeled by China's state-run Xinhua News Agency as a "backbone member of the evil cult."
Despite Beijing's campaign of arrests and public vilification, many Falun Gong members in the mainland have defied the ban, arguing that their beliefs promote good health and morality.
Observers here say the government's response to Falun Gong could be a crucial test of Hong Kong's autonomy.
Falun Gong members often demonstrate against Beijing's suppression, much to the dismay of local Beijing allies who have been clamoring for some sort of clampdown.
After meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin last week, Chief Executive Tung said he wouldn't let the sect harm Hong Kong but insisted he wasn't under pressure to act against the group.