Supression of Falun Gong

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1 The beginning of Chinese government and Falun Gong conflict
2 Background
3 The media war
4 The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident
5 Allegations of organ harvesting
6 Asylum Cases
7 Related Legal cases
8 References
9 External links

[edit] The beginning of Chinese government and Falun Gong conflict

On the morning of April 25, 1999, ten thousand plus Falun Gong practitioners surrounded Zhongnanhai, where top Chinese leaders both live and work. This protest immediately made the Falun Gong and its leader, Li Hongzhi an instant hit around the world. Just three months later, on July 22, 1999 the Falun Gong was officially banned by the government, again bringing the Falun Gong and its leader to the attention of the world.

Falun Gong practitioners have claimed that the Zhongnanhai protest was their response to government suppression but evidence shows that this claim is questionable. As late as November 10, 1998 one major newspaper in southern China, Yangcheng Evening News, published a favorable report of the Falun Gong titled “The Old and the Young All Practice Falun Gong.” [1] On March 4, 1999, just one and a half months before the Zhongnanhai protest, the public safety bureau of Harbin City, the largest provincial capital in China, presented an award to the Falun Gong general assistant center in the city.[2] Examples like these, and others found on Falun Gong’s own website reveal an environment friendly to the Falun Gong.

The conflict between the Falun Gong and the Chinese government began in earnest when the Falun Gong escalated its suppression towards journalists and critics. Hundreds--and in some cases, thousands--of practitioners literally encircled media organizations demanding that they apologize and retract their reports. Master Li castigated critics as scoundrels and as early as 1996 encouraged his followers to confront them. But by July, 1998, Li felt the need for state support. He wanted state approval for his campaign to silence critics; he wanted encouragement for his obedient followers, who were intimidating critics through the use of public—and illegal—protests. In an important directive entitled “Digging Out the Roots,” Master Li began by saying:

Recently, a few scoundrels from literary, scientific, and qigong circles, who have been hoping to become famous through opposing qigong, have been constantly causing trouble, as though the last thing they want to see is a peaceful world. Some newspapers, radio stations and TV stations in various parts of the country have directly resorted to these propaganda tools to harm our Dafa, having a very bad impact on the public. This was deliberately harming Dafa and cannot be ignored. Under these very special circumstances, Dafa disciples in Beijing adopted a special approach to ask those people to stop harming Dafa—this actually was not wrong. [3]

This directive was written one month after the group had held a protest against a Beijing TV station; the “special approach” refers to the protest. On May 27, 1998—twelve days after the China Central TV, China's largest network, had aired a positive coverage of the group—the local Beijing TV station broadcast a critical report of the group. More than a thousand practitioners besieged the station for days until “the TV station's chief fired the 24-year-old reporter involved and broadcast a favorable report about the group a few days later.” [4]

The Falun Gong’s intolerance of critics has been reported by the media. One Asiaweek article reported: “What Falungong does do is besiege opponents, literally. Li Hongzhi's demand that followers "promote the law" and "protect the law" seems to foster intolerance of criticism. Believers encircled media organizations in China 77 times over the past few years (and once in Hong Kong) over what they said was unfair coverage.” [5]

The first arrest of Falun Gong practitioners occurred in April, 1999. On April 11, 1999 the Science and Technology for Youth magazine in Tianjin City published an article containing negative remarks about the Falun Gong written by Zuoxiu He, a theoretical physicist. Dr. He told the story of one of his colleagues who developed mental illness after practicing the Falun Gong. Starting on April 19, practitioners who were deeply offended by what they called an “extremely irresponsible article” besieged the magazine’s office. Three demands were made: 1) publicly apologize to the Falun Gong, 2) retrieve and destroy all magazines containing the article, 3) publish an announcement to stop anyone from reprinting the article.

By April 23rd, with “nearly 10,000 practitioners” now encircling its office and harassing its staff, the company called in the police. At 5 pm that afternoon, the chief of police ordered the practitioners who held the protest without a permit to leave the premises of the magazine. He also advised the leading practitioner representing the group that the lawful approach to deal with the magazine company was to “file a lawsuit.” At 8 pm that evening four hundred policemen had to force an evacuation and forty-five practitioners who refused to obey the order were arrested.

The arrest turned the city government of Tianjin into the new target for the practitioners. They protested that night and the next day. The mayor was presented with a threatening open letter with the signatory of “a few hundred thousand Falun Gong practitioners in Tianjin.” The letter declared: “We strongly protest the police brutality,… we demand that you uphold justice, release all innocent practitioners… to prevent the stability and unity of Tianjin city from being damaged.” [6] When their demand was not met, the Falun Gong organized its famous Zhongnanhai, Beijing protest on April 25, directly putting pressure on the central government until it ordered the release of the incarcerated practitioners. This illegal protest, challenging the government to accept the Falun Gong's attacks on critics, marked the beginning of the conflict between the Chinese government and the Falun Gong.

[edit] Background

Arrest of protestors in Beijing

Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, introduced the practice to the public in May 1992. For the first few years after introducing Falun Gong to the world, Li Hongzhi was granted several awards by Chinese governmental organizations to encourage him to continue promoting what was then considered by them to be a wholesome practice. Invited by qigong organizations from each area in China, during the period from 1992 to the end of 1994, Li traveled to almost all major Chinese cities to teach the practice. In the later part of that period, there were four to five thousand people attending each seminar. Its scale was unprecedented at that time. Since 1995, Li has been teaching outside China. The practice was popularized in mainland China for seven years, mainly by word of mouth and through the Internet.

Some practitioners were arrested and were beaten by the police according to at least one report.^[1] Several days later, for 12 hours on April 25, 1999, about 10,000 people lined up, in silence, along a 2 km stretch at the Central Appeal Office outside Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of Chinese government, in order to protest peacefully the hate propaganda against Falun Gong and the arrests. Premier Zhu Rongji met with some representatives of the practitioners and promised to resolve the situation within three days. The practitioners dispersed peacefully after they received word that Zhu had agreed to their requests.^[2] Nevertheless, it was reported that Falun Gong practitioners organizing a protest alarmed many senior leaders, particularly Jiang Zemin.^[1] According to some estimates, at this time there were more than 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing.^[1]

Julie Ching (2001) has stated: "The overseas Chinese-language press has suggested that the Zhongnanhai demonstrations were actually organized in part by the government, to help trump up charges against the Falun Gong, which it had observed and monitored for years through its infiltrators. It even gives the name of a high official, [Luo] Gan, as being the chief Communist organizer of the Zhongnanhai gathering. As secretary general of the State Council, [Luo] had been investigating Falun Gong and had wanted it banned since 1996 but could not find any legal basis for transgression. In that case, it is not certain where the Falun followers intended first to make their petition, but [Luo] had the police direct them to Zhongnanhai, in order to create an incident with which they afterwards could be charged."^[3]

On June 10, 1999, the government established the "6-10" office^[4], an extra-constitutional body, to facilitate the crackdown. Most political analysts believe that this was the direct result of events that occurred in April 1999.^{[citation needed]} (See paragraph above beginning "On April 11, 1999, He Zuoxiu published an article...")

In July 1999, the government declared the practice of Falun Gong illegal. The government had become especially concerned by reports that significant numbers of government officials, as well as military and police personnel, were practitioners. Another influence in the change in policy was the cultural memory of the 19th century Taiping Rebellion, when a religious cult had caused a civil war.

"By unleashing a Mao-style movement [against Falun Gong], Jiang is forcing senior cadres to pledge allegiance to his line," a Communist Party veteran later told CNN's Willy Lam. "This will boost Jiang's authority-and may give him enough momentum to enable him to dictate events at the pivotal 16th Communist Party congress next year."

The Falun Dafa Information Center claims that over 2300 Falun Gong practitioners have died while in police or government custody.^[5]

He Zuoxiu has also accused some Falun Gong practitioners of harassment because of the articles he wrote, and published a book entitled How Falun Gong Harassed Me and My Family. He Zuoxiu is a relative of Luo Gan, one of the chief perpetrators of the persecution, and he is said to have "become a national hero" for opposing Falun Gong. [7] Therefore, some sources have suspected him of politically motivated careerism (e.g. [8], p99).

The CPC has burned and destroyed books and other materials about Falun Gong, and blocked access to internet resources about the topic. Treatment of Falun Gong practitioners has been regarded by some in the West as a major international human rights issue affecting freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

[edit] The media war

The People's Republic of China (PRC), led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) on July 20, 1999, began a nation-wide suppression of Falun Gong, referring to the practice as an "evil cult" spreading superstition to deceive people. Jiang, the former leader of the CPC, condemned the group in the state-controlled media, stating a position the Chinese government promotes to this day.

CPC claims that the practice has deviated its focus from engaging in spiritual cultivation to engaging in politics, basing their opinions on the existence of numerous websites disparate from, yet in support of, Falun Gong (such as Friends of Falun Gong).

H. Con. Resolution 188 ^[6] unanimously Passed by the United States Congress states:

"Falun Gong is a peaceful and nonviolent form of personal belief and practice with millions of adherents in the People's Republic of China and elsewhere"

"Jiang Zemin's regime has created notorious government '610' offices throughout the People's Republic of China with the special task of overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong members through organized brainwashing, torture, and murder;"

"Propaganda from state-controlled media in the People's Republic of China has inundated the public in an attempt to breed hatred and discrimination."

In China, the CPC has blocked access to certain sites on the Internet (including this article, see History of Wikipedia), all Falun Gong Websites[9] and burned Falun Gong's books and materials. In addition, some junk mail filters are targeting [10] emails related to the Falun Gong spiritual movement and other dissidents[11].

On the other hand, there have been incidents in which China's state-owned television networks were jammed with reports on the persecution of Falun Gong. In addition, a syndicated Chinese language newspaper with worldwide circulation, The Epoch Times, is accused of having a pro-Falun Gong platform, mainly because it has been the mouthpiece of much of Falun Gong's claims of suppression and torture, but also partly because it has published articles suggesting a declining state in the CPC. These articles include Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party of China(jiuping), New Zealand to Celebrate 7 Million Renouncing Communist Party of China, and others [12].

According to ClearWisdom.net, eight Falun Gong practitioners were arrested after one of the jamming incidents in Changchun city, including Liu Chengjun, who was allegedly tortured to death after 21 months incarceration in Jilin Prison.

[edit] The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

From July 22, 1999 to the end of 2002, tens of thousand of Falun Gong practitioners had protested in the center of Beijing--Tiananmen Square. None of these protests was more shocking, revealing, controversial, or tragic than the incident on January 23, 2001. At 2:30 in the afternoon, a CNN film crew witnessed the following scene:

“A man sit [SIC] down on the pavement just northeast of the Peoples' Heroes Monument at the center of the square. After pouring gasoline on his clothes he set himself on fire. Police ran to the man and extinguished the flames. Moments later four more people set themselves alight as military police detained the CNN crew, which had been taping the events. As flames spread through their clothing the four raised their hands above their heads and staggered about. One of the four, a man, was detained and driven away in a police van. He appeared to have serious burns on his face, and CNN producer Lisa Weaver said she could smell burning flesh as the van slowly passed.”[13]

While the four policemen were frantically trying to put out the fire on the burning man, he shouted: “Falun Dafa is the fundamental law of all.”[14] The other four protesters were women; one of them died on the scene.

Within 24 hours of the incident, the Falun Gong leadership issued a press statement denying any of its members were involved in the incident: “The Xinhua News Agency’s report that five members of the Falun Gong meditation group set themselves on fire Tuesday in China's Tiananmen Square is yet another attempt by the PRC regime to defame the practice of Falun Gong…. This so-called suicide attempt on Tiananmen Square has nothing to do with Falun Gong practitioners because the teachings of Falun Gong prohibit any form of killing. Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of the practice, has explicitly stated that suicide is a sin.”[15] It has been called a staged incident to smear the group.[16]

Chinese media reported these practitioners came from Kaifeng city. The male was Wang Jindong whose wife and daughter’s reform story was introduced in the previous section. The four females were two mother-and-daughter pairs: Chen Guo, a nineteen-year-old college student and her mother Hao Huijun; Liu Siying, a twelve-year-old girl, and her mother Liu Chunling. Liu died and her daughter died of her injuries two months later. Two more practitioners, Liu Baorong and Liu Yunfang were stopped before they could set fire to themselves. All but the twelve-year-old girl had protested the ban in Tiananmen Square previously, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.[17]

Liu Yunfang was the chief instigator and organizer of the incident. In August, 2000 he saw a holy scene during meditation: his “Buddha body” appeared after he set himself on fire at Tiananmen Square. Wang Jindong, the secondary organizer, also was enlightened in December, 2000. He told others that only by self-immolation on Tiananmen Square on New Year’s Eve could consummation be reached. They went to Beijing seven days before the incident. Chen Guo, who was studying music, once asked whether it hurts when one is on fire. Wang assured her that “pain is the feeling of ordinary people. Cultivators will not feel pain, and it will only take a second for them to rise into heaven.”[18]

A year after the incident, an interview with the foreign press was organized in April, 2002, after the survivors had somewhat recovered. Jeremy Page from Reuters met the two surviving females, who were still being cared for in a hospital. Their injuries were horrific: Chen Guo, now only 20, had a face of blotchy grafted skin with no nose and no ears, one eye was covered by a flap of skin. She had lost both her hands. Her mother had also lost her ears and nose, and both eyes were covered with skin grafts. She too had no hands. When asked why they set themselves on fire she said: “We wanted to show the government that Falun Gong was good.”[19] Wang Jindong was interviewed in jail. The fire had left him with scarred, leathery cheeks and blackened fingers.

Liu Yunfang was sentenced to life in prison, Wang Jindong received a fifteen-year sentence and a Beijing practitioner who provided them lodging and helped in the preparation received a seven-year sentence. The unimaginable tragedy of two mothers setting their young daughters on fire, the death of the twelve-year-old and the gruesome permanent injuries on the survivors unleashed an emotional outpouring. The Chinese media used this incident to start another round of attacks on the Falun Gong.^{[citation needed]}

Ever since the immolation was reported, the Falun Gong has denied that these people were practitioners. When reporting the incident many Western media have presented the claims of both sides. Here is a report by CNN.com, for example: “Beijing has intensified its clamp-down on the group after the incident despite Falun Gong leaders denying its members were involved in the incident.”[20]However, according to a Time article[21], "A Beijing arm of the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong strongly suggested the protesters, one of whom died, were devotees. "We heeded a call from our master to strengthen our fight against evil," said a member of the group based in the Chinese capital."

[edit] Allegations of organ harvesting

Main article: Organ harvesting in China

On 9 March 2006, allegations were made of deaths and organ harvesting at the Sujiatun detention compound, an alleged labor camp and part of the China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center located in Shenyang City, Liaoning province. According to at least two witnesses interviewed by The Epoch Times, internal organs of living Falun Gong practitioners have been harvested and sold to the black market, and the bodies have been cremated in the hospital's boiler room. The witnesses make allegations of nobody coming out of the camp alive, as well as six thousand practitioners being held captive at the hospital since 2001, two-thirds of them have died to date. According to these sources, removed organs include hearts, kidneys, livers and cornea. The news were quickly covered by some minor media outlets, including the Metro newspaper in Spain and Holland's APS.

On 12 March 2006, Harry Wu of DC dissident group China Information Center and Laogai Research Foundation, started an investigation at Sujiatun:

"From March 12, the investigators canvassed the entire Sujiatun area. On March 17, the investigators visited two military barracks in Sujiatun. On March 27, the investigators secretly visited the Chinese Medical Blood Clotting Treatment Center in Sujiatun. On March 29, the investigators went to the Kongjiashan prison near Sujiatun. None of the aforementioned investigations revealed any trace of the concentration camp. The investigators provided me with photographs and written reports on their investigation and results on March 15, 17, 27, 29, 30 and April 4."

According to The Epoch Times, Timothy Cooper, the executive director of Worldrights, said in a Washington D.C. rally against alleged Chinese human rights violations on March 12^[7]: "If what has been reported is accurate, then Shenyang has become the Auschwitz of China. But this time, unlike the situation during the Second World War in Nazi Germany, America must not fail to act. America must not fail to confront these atrocities — unimaginable in any civilized society" and "A whole new level of depravity is being practiced by the CPC." Also, Nina Shea from Freedom House has called for investigation of the case ^[8]. Guido Tastenhoye, a member of the Belgian parliament, has questioned Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel De Gucht about the imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners in Sujiatun. ^[9] Worldrights and Freedom House themselves have not covered any of the above in their websites and press releases.

On 14 March 2006, US State Department started its own investigation of the Sujiatun allegation. Subsquent to government researcher's initial investigation, official visits also took place by personnel from Beijin embassy and Shenyang consulate. This investigation concluded with the Shenyang consulate visit on March 21.

the State Department investigation was made offical on April 14, the Friday afternoon before Chinese leader's scheduled stateside visit:

"U.S. representatives have found no evidence to support allegations that a site in northeast China has been used as a concentration camp to jail Falun Gong practitioners and harvest their organs, according to the U.S. Department of State."

The Washington Times covered the allegations on 24 March 2006 in an article by Bill Gertz. According to the article, Jin Zhong (a pseudonym for the journalist who fled China recently) said he first learned of the harvesting operation between October and December. Mr Jin, who in the past has been a contributor to a Japanese news agency, calls Sujiatun "a murder sponsored by a state". Jin came across the underground detention center while researching the Chinese government's response to SARS. The article claims that several other hospital workers have also revealed details about the prisoner organ harvesting. Jin Zhong has had to hide his true identity after being threatened by Chinese government agents. He was arrested twice for his reporting and recently fled to the United States, where he hopes to seek political asylum. Jin also professes that the bodies of prisoners were burned in the boiler room of the hospital and that boiler room workers had taken jewelry and watches from the dead and sold them.^[10]

On 28 March, over two weeks after the allegations surfaced, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang stated: "This absurd lie is not worth refuting and no one will buy it." He also urged reporters to go to Shenyang's Sujiatun district to look into the claims.^[11] However, the official website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China made no mention of this in their coverage of the press conference.^[12]

On 30 March, Reuters released an article entitled "U.N. envoy looks at Falun Gong torture allegations". According to the report, the United Nations torture investigator Manfred Nowak shall be looking into the Sujiatun case. "I am presently in the process of investigating as far as I can these allegations ... If I come to the conclusion that it is a serious and well-founded allegation, then I will officially submit it to attention of the Chinese government," he told a news briefing.

On 30 March, Falun Gong's Epoch Times reported a new informant, identifying himself as a veteran military doctor in Shenyang military zone, has told about a system of similar concentration camps in China. The informant claims: "The reports from outside China about Sujiatun Concentration Camp imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners are true, although some of the details are incorrect." He says that more than 10,000 people were detained in Sujiatun in early 2005, but now the number of detainees is maintained at 600-750. Many detainees have been transferred to other camps, especially after the news on Sujiatun was publicized. The informant also asserts that the hospital in Sujiatun is only one of 36 similar camps all over China. Jilin camp, codenamed 672-S, holds over 120,000 people, not only Falun Gong practitioners. Specially dispatched freight trains can transfer 5,000-7,000 people in one night, and everyone on the trains is handcuffed to specially designed handrails on top of the ceiling, claims the informant.

On May 8, 2006, a press conference was held in Ottawa, Canada, in which Former chairman of Canada's Sub-Committee on Human Rights of the Committee of Foreign Affairs and former director of the Asian Pacific Division of Canada's Foreign Affairs Ministry, Mr. David Kilgour, and international human rights attorney Mr. David Matas, announced that they will jointly lead the efforts to investigate the organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners by the Communist Party of China. Mr. Kilgour stated that he wished the investigation to be completely independent. As of the press conference, the plan includes interviewing witnesses and telephone investigators from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, as well as going to China to conduct on-site investigations[22]

On July 6, 2006, David Kilgour, a former Liberal cabinet minister in Canada, and David Matas, an immigration lawyer^[13], after two months of interviewing people in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, announced that they had found "credible evidence that the organs of Falun Gong adherents in China are being harvested for paid transplants." ^[14] ^[15]^[16]^[17]

During the press conference on July 6, 2006, they presented their 68-page long report^[18]^[19] ^[20].

On April 1, 2006, The Australian published initial finding from US congressional researcher that the concentration camp allegation is substantially exaggerated.

Some human rights activists are also skeptical of Falun Gong's claims. Harry Wu, best known for his investigations of Laogai and alleged organ harvesting of executed prisoners, claimed that the allegations were just heresay. "No pictures, no witnesses, no paperwork, no detailed information at all, nothing." [23]

On April 13, 2006, the official from the hospital gave the following statement: “the hospital is lacking the required facilities to conduct organ transplants and has no basement to house the Falun Gong practitioners.” [24].

According to a document from Ministry of Health of Malaysia, this hospital--Liaoning Thrombus Medical Treatment Center--is not a state owned company but one partly invested by a Malaysian company (Country Heights Health Sanctuary). And in an official visit to China the Minister of Health of Malaysia visited the hospital in September, 2004.

On April 14, 2006, US State Department released a statement [25] [26] that "found no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital". The hospital itself was a joint venture with a Malaysian government-sponsored company[27], open to foreign visitors.

[edit] Asylum Cases

On June 9, 2005, former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin said he "would rather die" than "be forced" to return to China in his original letter pleading for political asylum^[21]. Mr Chen says his job of implementing the Chinese Government's policy of prosecuting Falun Gong practitioners is against his will^[22]. He said^[22]: "I am aware there are over 1000 Chinese secret agents and informants in Australia, who have played a role in persecuting the Falun Gong, and the number in the Unites States should be higher." His claim is backed by another Chinese CCP insider Hao, Fengjun ^[23]^[24]^[25] ^[26] ^[27] "I saw the reports about her activities - about everything she was doing in Sydney. It was all very clear - what she was doing, what kind of job she did - everything. That kind of information isn't given by the Chinese Consulate in Sydney. This is information for the Public Security Bureau or the National Security Bureau. This information was given by a specific person in Sydney. I don't have his or her name. They only use numbers."^[28] Both Chen and Hao were granted asylum later. ^[29]