A day before US President George W. Bush's visit to China, the US embassy in Beijing lodged an official complaint with the Chinese government regarding the inappropriate treatment suffered by American Falun Gung members when they were recently arrested by Beijing police.
Many Western Falun Gong members recently traveled to Tiananmen Square to demand that China respect basic human rights and stop its suppression of Falun Gong members. Perhaps because the number of the Westerners exceeded Chinese expectations, they suffered the same kind of abuse as their Chinese counterparts. Even when they weren't doing anything and were just in their hotel rooms, they were arrested.
Since the Chinese leadership started its all-out suppression of the Falun Gong movement in July 1999, merely practicing Falun Gong has resulted in expulsion from schools, party and public positions, discontinuation of retirement pensions, house raids, confiscation of property and arrests. Some have been sent to mental hospitals, labor reform camps and others have been persecuted to death.
Some reports say 369 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death in China, over 500 others have been illegally sentenced, more than 1,000 have been forced into mental hospitals, over 20,000 have been sent to labor camps without due process of law and more than 100,000 have been arrested or thrown into jail.
In addition, innumerable practitioners have been beaten by law-enforcement personnel and had their families separated and their family, friends and co-workers have been implicated in their "crime."
Yet sect members only have to sign a written guarantee that they will no longer practice Falun Gong and they are then let go. So what does practicing Falun Gong really mean? And how come it scares Chines authorities to such an extent?
Falun Gong was founded by Li Hongzhi (
Two years later, perhaps because membership had grown so fast, different levels of suppression began to take place in China. For example, beginning in 1996, the display and sale of Falun Gong books was banned.
Not until July 1999, however, did the Chinese government begin all-out suppression. Before this occurred, the Chinese public security system had sent out its people to investigate and infiltrate the group. According to Chinese statistics, there were between 70 million and 100 million Falun Gong members by the end of 1998. We guess that this is why the government decided to suppress the movement.
The Chinese Communist Party started out by organizing mass movements, so the masses are what they fear most. The fact that the number of Falun Gong practitioners today actually has surpassed total Communist Party membership (estimated at 40 million to 50 million members) may have made the party uneasy.
Falun Gong sees "truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance" as the highest universal principles, teaching practitioners that they should start out by being good people and that they should not get involved in state politics. Aren't such practitioners good for any nation or society? How come the Chinese government instead wants to use its state propaganda and public security systems to crack down on and even try to eliminate the Falun Gong?
After the Chinese government started all-out suppression of the Falun Gong in July 1999, they immediately arrested four main contacts and gave them heavy sentences, the longest being 18 years. Perhaps the government thought that using the full power of the state to defeat a Falun Gong that it knew as well as the inside of its own hand would be as easy as a turn of that hand. Never did it expect that it after almost three years not only would its attempts at domestic suppression fail, but that it would also cause more foreign Falun Gong members to travel to the Tiananmen Square to practice and make demands.
The reason the Chinese government has been unsuccessful in its suppression of Falun Gong is that the movement is loosely managed, so there is no organizational structure to break up. Falun Gong doesn't talk about rituals, so there are no rituals to ban. Falun Gong practitioners make the teachings their master, so there are no responsible leaders to arrest. Falun Gong has no assets or property, so there are no churches to close down. Unless every single Falun Gong member is arrested, there is no way to ban it. But how does one arrest 100 million practitioners?
There really is no way to accomplish such a feat. On the eve of Lunar New Year 2001, China cooked up a self-immolation farce on Tiananmen Square. A girl by the name Liu Chunling (劉春伶) reportedly died in the incident. However, if the footage shown by Chinese Central TV is viewed in slow motion, we can see that someone kills Liu by a blow of a heavy object to the back of her head -- and she did not burn to death.
There are many other doubtful issues. For example, there is no historic precedent of self-immolation on Tiananmen Square and the incident was over in a few hurried minutes. But despite this the footage shows several police officers holding fire extinguishers waiting for a burning person to approach and spraying her -- in unison -- with foam and extinguishing the fire. Furthermore, the whole incident was shot very clearly. How could this be possible if it wasn't planned in advance? The Taiwan Falun Gong Research Society is willing to show this slow-motion analysis of the footage to any interested party.
If such a farce can take place on Tiananmen Square solely to smear the Falun Gong, then what takes place where other people see nothing? And even if it wasn't a farce, wouldn't the fact that people use self-immolation to protest mean that the government has forced its own people to the point of despair?
Please show your concern for the plight of Falun Gong members in China. They are hoping for the understanding and support of all peace-loving and human rights-respecting people around the world.
Chang Ching-hsi is a professor of economics at National Taiwan University and a member of the Taiwan Association of Univer-sity Professors.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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