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Falun Gong also known as Falun Dafa, is a movement founded by Li Hongzhi from the People's Republic of China in 1992. Since 1999 this movement has been banned in China. According to the Chinese government, the Falun Gong was banned for causing “more than 1,400 deaths,” and that its large-scale "illegal harassments" against critics “seriously disrupted the public order.” [2] In addition, Li was accused of "evading taxes".[3] In its response the Falun Gong argues that the ban was ordered by Jiang Zemin, the former president of China, out of his personal jealousy over the popularity of the group. [4]

Beginning of the 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 brought Falun Gong and its founder, Li Hongzhi, to the attention of the world. Just three months later, on July 22 1999, Falun Gong was officially banned by the Chinese government, again attracting a great deal of media attention around the world.

According to Falun Gong practitioners the Zhongnanhai protest was their response to government suppression, but evidence shows that this claim is not true. As late as November 10 1998 one major newspaper in southern China, Yangcheng Evening News, published a favorable report on 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 reveal an environment friendly to the Falun Gong.

While receiving positive coverage Falun Gong practitioners had protested in large groups against what they considered unfair coverage by journalists and critics. 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.”^[3] Li castigated critics as scoundrels and as early as 1996 encouraged his followers to confront them. In one of his directives entitled “Digging Out the Roots,” Li Hongzhi stated:

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. This was done when there was no other way (other regions should not copy their approach). But when students voluntarily approach those uninformed and irresponsible media agencies and explain to them our true situation, this should not be considered wrong.

What I would like to tell you is not whether this incident itself was right or wrong. Instead, I want to point out that this event has exposed some people. They still have not fundamentally changed their human notions, and they still perceive problems with the human mentality wherein human beings protect human beings. I have said that Dafa absolutely should not get involved in politics. The purpose of this event itself was to help the media understand our actual situation and learn about us positively so that they would not drag us into politics. Speaking from another perspective, Dafa can teach the human heart to be good and it can stabilize society. But you must be clear that Dafa certainly is not taught for these purposes, but rather for cultivation practice.

Dafa has created a way of existence for the lowest level, mankind. Then, among various types of human behavior within the human form of existence at this level, which include collectively presenting facts to someone, and so forth, aren’t these one of the numerous forms of existence that Dafa gives to mankind at the lowest level? It is just that when humans do things, good and evil coexist. Thus, there are struggles and politics. Under extremely special circumstances, however, Dafa disciples adopted that approach from the Fa at the lowest level, and they completely applied their good side. Wasn’t this an act that harmonized the Fa at the level of mankind? Except under special extreme circumstances, this type of approach is not to be adopted.^[4]

This directive was written one month after the group had held a protest against the 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 program in which a professor of China's Academy of Science told the story that one of his colleagues became mentally ill after picking up the Falun Gong practice. Under pressure, the TV station fired the 24-year-old reporter involved and broadcast a favorable report about the group a few days later^[5]

Demonstration against Science and Technology for Youth magazine in Tianjin city

The first arrest of Falun Gong practitioners occurred in April 1999. On April 11, 1999 the Science and Technology for Youth magazine in the city of Tianjin published an article containing negative remarks about the Falun Gong written by He Zuoxiu,^[6] a theoretical physicist who advocated against "youth practicing Qigong". He also asserted that he did not wish to see the young practice qigong, urging rather that they take up as many athletic sports as possible to help their bodies develop properly.^[7] He also told the story of one of his colleagues who, according to his claims, developed mental illness after practicing Falun Gong. Starting on April 19, practitioners who were deeply offended by what they called an “extremely irresponsible article” besieged the magazine's office.[5] Three demands were made:

publicly apologize to Falun Gong,
retrieve and destroy all magazines containing the article,
publish an announcement to stop anyone from reprinting the article.^{[citation needed]}

By April 23, with 6,000 plus practitioners encircling its office and harassing its staff,[6] the company called in the police. At 5PM that afternoon, the chief of police ordered the practitioners who held the protest without a permit to leave the premises of the magazine offices. 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 8PM that evening four hundred policemen forced an evacuation and forty-five practitioners who refused to obey the order were arrested.[7]

The arrest turned the municipal government of Tianjin into a new focus for the practitioners. They continued protesting into the night and on to the next day. The Tianjin government was presented with an open letter with the signatory of “a few hundred thousand Falun Gong practitioners in Tianjin.” The letter, addressed directly to Tianjin Party Secretary Zhang Lichang and Mayor Li Shenglin 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.”^{[unreliable source?]}^[8] The Municipal government subsequently rejected the demands. Falun Gong practitioners organized their famous Zhongnanhai, Beijing protest on April 25 directly putting pressure on the central government, asking it to order the release of those incarcerated. This protest brought the group to the attention of the Chinese government.

Zhongnanhai demonstration

For 12 hours on April 25 1999, about 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners lined up, in silence, along a 2 km stretch at the Central Appeal Office outside Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of Chinese government, protesting negative coverage the group received and the arrests of some practitioners in Tianjin city in a protest against a magazine company. Premier Zhu Rongji met with some representatives of the practitioners and after the arrested practitioners were released Falun Gong protesters dispersed. According to some estimates, at this time there were more than 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing.

Seth Faison from New York Times was at the scene. He describes the incident in his report:

Displaying remarkably good organization and discipline, with demonstrators remaining motionless and calm and seated on the sidewalk while organizers communicated by mobile telephones. Many protesters apparently tried to use meditation to persuade leaders to see them in a more favorable light…."We will stay as long as it takes," said a 52-year-old man in a tattered grey sweater. "A day, a week, a year. We are not in a hurry."...Sunday's protest, populated mostly by people from outside the capital, elicited much fascination but limited sympathy from Beijing residents, thousands of whom gathered to look on. "They're crazy," said Li Xiaoming, 27, who works for a transport company. "But there are a lot of them, so the government has to listen." …The police, apparently eager to avoid a confrontation, did not force the protesters to move, and the gathering dispersed peacefully by 10 p.m.”[8]

On April 28, 1999 in an interview with the state news agency Xinhua, a Chinese official called the protest “wrong.” He Stated: “This kind of gathering affects public order and people's normal life around the headquarters of the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council and is completely wrong.” And he warned: “Those who damage social stability under the pretext of practicing martial arts will be dealt with in accordance with the law.”[9]

On May 2, 1999 in Sydney, Australia in an interview with western media Li denied that the Zhongnanhai was organized by anyone. He stated: “there was no organization and no formalities, one person would trigger another person's heart, and that's why everyone came.…No one mobilized them, no one told them.”[10]

On August 19, 1999, one month into the ban of the sect, People's Daily issued a report accusing Li Hongzhi as the chief organizer of this demonstration.[11]

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. 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.” [12]

According to China's People's Daily, 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.” [13] The other four protesters were women; one of them died on the scene.

Within 24 hours of the incident, Falun Gong issued a press statement denying that any practitioners 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.”[14] It was called a staged incident to smear the group. [15]

According to the reports from Chinese media these practitioners came from Kaifeng city. The male self-immolator was Wang Jindong. 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 of her injuries and her daughter died two months later. Two more individuals, Liu Baorong and Liu Yunfang were stopped before they could set fire to themselves. As reported by the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, all but the twelve-year-old girl had protested the Falun Gong ban in Tiananmen Square previously. [16]

Ever since the immolation was reported, Falun Gong has denied that the involved people were practitioners. A video, False Fire, produced by New Tang Dynasty Television, one of Falun Gong’s three media outlets calls the incident as "the most highly publicized event" staged by the Chinese government to "persecute" Falun Gong and "turn public opinion against the practice." [17]

An article in People's Daily makes the following allegations: 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, in April 2002, an interview with the foreign press was organized. Jeremy Page from Reuters met the two surviving females, who were still being cared for in a hospital. Chen Guo, then 20, had a face of blotchy grafted skin with no nose and no ears and one eye 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.”^[9] Wang Jindong was interviewed in jail -- the fire had left him with scarred, leathery cheeks and blackened fingers.

Some Western human rights activists have criticized the Chinese Government for using the incident as an excuse to defame Falun Gong and escalate the persecution. For example, Chandra D Smith writes in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion,^[10] that "The propaganda capitalized on the alleged self-immolation of five Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001 in which a mother died and her 12-year-old daughter was severely burned." and that "By repeatedly broadcasting images of the girl’s burning body and interviews with the others saying they believed self-immolation would lead them to paradise, the government convinced many Chinese that Falun Gong was an ‘evil cult.’"

Psychiatry abuse accusation

On April 14, 2000 the Chinese government claimed that “The cult (Falun Gong) has led to more than 650 cases of psychological disorder, with 11 practitioners becoming homicides and 144 others physically disabled.” [19]

In January 2001, the Falun Gong issued a report claiming that roughly one thousand practitioners in China were detained and abused in psychiatric hospitals. The report claims: “Falun Gong practitioners have been sent to mental hospitals either because they did not give up Falun Gong, because they went to the government to appeal for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong, or because they refused to defame Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, as the authorities demanded.”[20]

Some China observers have also written about this psychiatric abuse by the Chinese government. Lu and Galli, in their study entitled Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong practitioners in China state that "The perversion of mental health facilities for the purpose of the torture of Falun Gong practitioners is widespread.”[21] The most vocal in condemning Beijing on this issue was Robin Munro whose report was issued in August, 2002 by the Human Rights Watch. Munro’s report, Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era, relies heavily on information from the Falun Gong. It states that “people are drugged with various unknown kinds of medication, tied with ropes to hospital beds or put under other forms of physical restraint…forced to write confessional statements renouncing their belief in Falun Gong as a precondition of their eventual release.” [22]

Western psychiatrists have also reported cases where Falun Gong practitioner were mentally ill. Dr. Arthur Kleinman and Dr. Sing Lee from Harvard Medical School, long-time researchers on various psychiatric topics in China since 1978, both have had experience with patients suffering from Qigong-induced mental illness. According to them, in international psychiatry this illness would be recognized as “a specific type of brief reactive psychosis or as the precipitation of an underlying mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder.”[23] The Falun Gong is a form of Qigong and its practice could induce mental illnesses in some of its practitioners. One of the patients Dr. Lee interviewed in China in 1997 was a practitioner. Two years into practicing the Falun Gong, this 54-year-old housewife found that her body moved in ways that were no longer under her control. Dr. Lee recounted her case:

She thought that these movements “talked” to her, sometimes by writing through her hand, telling her that continuous practice of Falun Gong could transform her into a Buddha. That she was plump and had long earlobes, resembling the popular appearance of a Buddha, convinced her that this possibility was real. In due course, however, she was frightened because the movements began to tell her to die by not eating and by taking an overdose of pills. She believed she was possessed by a shapeless fox spirit a thousand years old that required her body to turn into a real Buddha. She became an insomniac, restless, and distressed. Her distraught family members took her to a psychiatric hospital where she initially resisted treatment because she did not think that she was mentally ill but was only having a paranormal experience… Subsequently, she stayed in the hospital for one month and gradually recovered with antipsychotic drug treatment. She accepted the advice of her doctor that she had a sensitive disposition that was not suited for practicing qigong and stopped the Falun Gong altogether. She knew of many middle-aged people who practiced and derived benefit from Falun Gong for health reasons and loneliness after retirement. But she also heard about some who died by self-induced starvation or suicide as they attempted to ascend to the Falun heaven.[24]

In responding to Munro’s report, Dr. Arthur Kleinman and Dr. Sing Lee state that “Much of his argument about the political abuse of psychiatry in China is based on unconfirmed allegations, many from human rights groups with their own axes to grind, and others from the Falun Gong religious cult, which, whatever we think of it, we must remember is engaged in a nasty political struggle with the Chinese state.”

In February, 2005, a World Psychiatric Association delegation visited China to investigate the allegation. Alan Stone, professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the international political abuse of psychiatry, later published his findings as a member of the delegation. He states: “The lack of qualified psychiatrists, the divergent standards of training, the intense economic pressures, and the absence of central government control and command regulation all suggest a quite different situation than that which existed in the Soviet Union. If Falun Gong practitioners have been misdiagnosed and mistreated in psychiatric hospitals across China (and there is no doubt in my mind that they have been) it is not because orders came down from the Ministry of Health or Security in Beijing. Nor is there any evidence that an influential group of forensic psychiatrists carried out this psychiatric persecution of the Falun Gong in the secure Ankang hospitals (mental hospital).”[25]

Allegations of organ harvesting

On March 10, 2006 the Falun Gong news paper Epoch Times reported a "heinous crime": six thousand practitioners were killed in a secret concentration camp in Sujiatun District, Shenyang City. “No detainees have managed to leave the concentration camp alive…[and their] internal organs are all removed from the bodies and sold,” said Mr. R, an anonymous person who broke the story to Epoch Times.[26]

The story developed further on March 17 when another anonymous person whose family members were allegedly involved in removing organs from Falun Gong practitioners gave further details that were published in the Epoch Times. According to this anonymous source, the concentration camp is located in the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine where she once worked. Since 2001, according to this source, the hospital has detained practitioners in a huge system of secret underground chambers. Then she made a horrifying accusation that topped all others ever made by the group: “Many Falun Gong practitioners were still alive when their organs were taken. After their organs were cut out, some of these people were thrown directly into the crematorium to be burnt, thus leaving no evidence.” [27]Claiming no connection with the Falun Gong, she said she had to speak up to save those still alive there. Similar claims were made by Mr. R.

On 12 March 2006, Harry Wu, the Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation and the China Information Center located in Washington, D.C. released a report stating that:"I arranged for people inside China to visit the Sujiatun scene. 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." [28]

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.^[11]

On 28 March, Chinese 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.^[12]

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

On April 13, 2006, an 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.”[29]

This hospital—the Liaoning Thrombus Medical Treatment Center—is partly owned by a Malaysian company, Country Heights Health Sanctuary, therefore subject to over sight beyond local Chinese government officials. [30] During an official visit to China in September, 2004 the Minister of Health of Malaysia visited the hospital and reported nothing unusual.

On April 14, 2006the U.S. State Department reported the findings of its investigation. The report states that: "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 report stuff from U.S. embassy in Beijing and the U.S. consulate in Shenyang have visited the area and the specific site on two separate occasions and that "the officers were allowed to tour the entire facility and grounds and found no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital."[31]

On July 6, 2006 Canadian David Matas and David Kilgour issued their report “Report into allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China.” In this report they claim to have found “credible evidence that the organs of Falun Gong adherents in China are being harvested for paid transplants.” [32] This report has been the subject of controversy and has been disputed by fellow anti-Chinese government activist Harry Wu.