History of Falun Gong

On July 20, 1999, the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) banned Falun Gong and began a nationwide crackdown, except in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. This followed seven years of widespread popularity and rapid growth of the practice within mainland China; a New York Times article reported a Chinese government figure of 70 million practitioners in 1998. Certain high-level Party officials had wanted to crackdown on the practice for some years, but lacked sufficient pretext and support--until a number of appeals and petitions to the authorities in 1999, in particular, the 10,000 person gathering at Zhongnanhai on April 25. The nature of Communist Party rule is seen as a cause for the crackdown; Falun Gong's popularity, traditional roots, and ideological distinction from communism was seen as a challenge. Though support was not unanimous, Jiang Zemin is considered to be personally responsible for the final decision. Suspected motives include personal jealously of Li Hongzhi, anger, and ideological struggle. Officially, the authorities cracked down on Falun Gong for "jeopardising social stability" and "engag[ing] in illegal activities." In late 1999 legislation was created to outlaw "heterodox religions," and applied to Falun Gong retroactively.

Every aspect of society was mobilized against Falun Gong, including the media apparatus, police force, army, education system, families, and workplaces. An extra-constitutional body, the 6-10 Office was created to "oversee the terror campaign," driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and internet. Families and workplaces were urged to actively assist in the campaign, and practitioners were subject to severe coercion to have them recant. Amnesty International asserted the persecution to be politically motivated and a restriction of fundamental freedoms. There are acute concerns over reports of torture, illegal imprisonment, forced labour, and psychiatric abuses. Falun Gong comprise 66% of all reported torture cases in China, and at least half of the labour camp population. Since early 2006, allegations of systematic organ harvesting from living practitioners have been made, althought it has been dismissed by the US Department of State, , but David Matas and David Kilgour claimed that they found the evidence credible.

Protests in Beijing were frequent for the first few years following the 1999 edict, though were later largely eradicated. Practitioners' presence in mainland China has become more low-profile, as they opt for other methods of informing the populace about the persecution, such as through overnight letterbox drops of CD-ROMs; they have also occasionally hacked into state television to broadcast their material. Falun Gong practitioners are globally active in appealing to the governments, media, and people of their respective countries about the situation in China. Lawsuits have been initiated against Chinese officials alleged to be chiefly responsible for the crackdown, in particular Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan. Reports also circulate of attempts to interfere with overseas practitioners' activities through violence, intimidation, and other coercive measures.

Background

See further: Founding of Falun Gong and pre-persecution

Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, introduced the practice to the public in May 1992. During the early years, Li was granted several awards by Chinese governmental organizations to encourage him to continue promoting what was then considered to be a wholesome practice. From 1992 to the end of 1994, Li traveled to most major Chinese cities to teach at the invitation of qigong organizations. Li's lectures were organised by the China Qigong Science Research Society (CQSRS), an official government body which profited the most from the lecture fees. Li later began offering free lectures. After refusing a request to raise his tuition due to complaints from other qigong masters, Li withdrew from the CQSRS, claiming that it only tried to make money off the qigong masters, without doing any research on qigong. Falun Gong sources claim that some of the individuals from the CQSRS began spreading rumours about Li Hongzhi to the government, also urging the government to curtail its growth

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Typical group practice in China, 1992Template:Puic

David Ownby contends that opposition to Falun Gong from within the Party began in around 1994, and increased over the following years. Falun Gong alleges a few "atheist Party vanguards" were ideologically opposed to Falun Gong and were affronted by its popularity, particularly among Communist Party members. However, Ownby says that there is not conclusive evidence on the motivation of the Party's initial resistance.

On June 17 1996, the Guangming Daily, one of the Chinese government's official newspapers, often seen as the voice of establishment intellectuals, published an editorial article titled, "A Loud and Long Alarm Must Be Sounded Against Pseudo-Science", which claimed Falun Gong promoted superstition. Falun Gong claims this was the beginning of a "concerted media campaign." A small protest was held outside the journal, but the government claimed that Falun Gong supporters surrounded its offices. Soon after, several dozen other newspapers followed with their own critiques.

Six months later, police agencies launched a nationwide investigation into Falun Gong at the behest of certain highly-ranked Party officials--among them Luo Gan--with the purpose of finding fault with Falun Gong.

Another official investigation under the same pretext was launched in 1998, and police surveillance of practitioners increased. Though it reported that Falun Gong "only benefits, and does no harm to the Politburo and the nation," a circular was distributed to police offices throughout the country which labelled Falun Gong as a "sect." Falun Gong materials could no longer be published through official channels, and faced confiscation. Falun Gong claims that many of the agents involved in these investigations later took up the practice.

At the end of May 1998, He Zuoxiu, a physicist from the Chinese Academy of Science and a "crusader" against supernatural and "unscientific thinking," denounced Falun Gong in an interview on Beijing Television. The program showed a video of one of the practice sites, and called Falun a "feudalistic superstition." The station received letters of protest from Falun Gong practitioners, and some-- perhaps up to 1000--conducted silent sit-ins in front of its offices. They succeeded in obtaining a retraction and a "eulogy" of Falun Gong.

On April 11, 1999, He Zuoxiu published an article in an obscure, small circulation journal, Tianjin College of Education’s Youth Reader magazine, entitled "I Do Not Agree with Youth Practicing Qigong," which alleged that a post-graduate student in his institute had "two relapses of mental disorder" after practising Falun Gong. Practitioners considered the article an "inaccurate, even slanderous attack, unfairly maligning the practice." Noah Porter suggests that He's critiques may have been intentional provocation to Falun Gong practitioners. However, the publication refused a right of reply to He's claims in this case, practitioners went to Tianjin College of Education and related governmental agencies to hold appeals from April 18 to April 24. Patsy Rahn, a Falun Gong critic, says that some 6,000 practitioners staged a sit-in at He's university on April 19 2000. Riot police were dispatched, scuffles broke out, practitioners were beaten and 45 were arrested according to at least one report. Perceiving unfair treatment, shocked practitioners complained to local authorities, who told them that the imprisoned practitioners would only be released with central government approval.

Other academics and members of the scientific community, including the head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, came out to denounce Falun Gong. He Zuoxiu, brother-in-law of Luo Gan, one of the chief taskmasters of the persecution, is said to have "become a national hero" for opposing Falun Gong. Porter therefore suspects He Zuoxiu of politically motivated careerism. He also later accused some Falun Gong practitioners of harassment because of the articles he wrote: Rahn quotes He saying that seven groups came to his home to debate with him, that his answering machine was flooded with calls, and that he received over 200 letters "of abuse." He published a book entitled How Falun Gong Harassed Me and My Family, which described Falun Gong as a "heretical cult". The rhetoric was "quickly co-opted" by the government in its campaign, and was reprinted in government propaganda pamphlets. Zuoxiu was gratified by the central government's actions against Falun Gong, and later went on to found the China Anti-Cult Association, which spearheaded the campaign to vilify Falun Gong as an "evil cult."

Zhongnanhai demonstration and aftermath

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Practitioners at Zhongnanhai on April 25

Several days after the initial protests in Tianjin, on the morning of April 25 1999, an estimated ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners and sympathisers surrounded the Zhongnanhai compound where top Chinese leaders both live and work. They stayed in silence for 12 hours, reading and meditating in the quest for legal recognition as a religion, redress against He Zuoxiu, the release of imprisoned practitioners, and protection of the practice. Premier Zhu Rongji, or perhaps only his secretary, met with representatives and the crowd dispersed after the arrested practitioners were released.

The Asia Times reported that Li Hongzhi arrived in Beijing on April 22 to finalize plans for the April demonstration. The party claimed that Li hurriedly left Beijing for Hong Kong at 1:30 p.m. on April 24, just prior to the demonstration, and that he stayed in Hong Kong until 10:15 p.m. on April 27.. Li maintains that he merely stopped off on transit to Australia and had no knowledge of the gathering. The Party claimed that exercise points around Beijing had received notices for practitioners to go to Zhongnanhai for a large "group practice.". However, Li denies there was any organization: "one person would trigger another person's heart, and that's why everyone came... No one mobilized them..." A World Journal article asserts that the Zhongnanhai demonstrations might have been organized in part by the government to "trump up charges against Falun Gong which it had observed and monitored for years through its infiltrators." Luo Gan had allegedly wanted the practice banned since 1996 but lacked the legal basis. Credited as the chief Communist organizer of the Zhongnanhai gathering, Luo is alleged to have had the police direct them there in order to create an incident that could later be held against Falun Gong. The practitioners are said to have wanted to make a peaceful appeal at the citizens' appeal office, located at Fuyou street, near Zhongnanhai. A 74-year-old retired general, Yu Changxin, was arrested for organising the gathering, and sentenced to 17 years in jail in January 2000.

The government was alarmed after the gathering of April 25 at the possibility of such a large number of people to amass so close to the seat of power without police intervention. According to some estimates, there were more than 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing at this time, and it was reported that the scale of practitioners' protest pointed to the Communist Party losing its grip on the people while it tinkered with political and economic reforms. Robert Thurman, Buddhism scholar at Columbia University, said the regime, frightened by Falun Gong, "went nuts, revealing its weakness and self-doubt for all the world to see." President Jiang Zemin in particular became obsessed with Falun Gong, and drove around Zhongnanhai to observe the protesters through the smoked glass of his limousine. That night, "seemingly in the grip of a spiritual crisis," he wrote to the Politburo: "I believe Marxism can triumph over Falun Gong." He "mutters incessantly" to Western envoys about the "troublesome movement."

The suppression of Falun Gong may be directly related to political suspicions, and a generalized intolerance on the part of the Communist state to any group which shows dissent. Falun Gong's large body of supporters, proliferation of exercise sites across the world, and the presence of Li Hongzhi's religious writings on the internet filled with comments about health, demons, aliens, and other ideas diametrical to Communism, fit the profile of a challenge to the Party. In response, the Government embarked on a Stalinist/Maoist drive to neutralise the threat.

Ban and crackdown

On July 22, 1999, Xinhua issued a statement on behalf of the government which read:

China today banned the Research Society of Falun Dafa and the Falun Gong organization under its control after deeming them to be illegal. In its decision on this matter issued today, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said that according to investigations, the Research Society of Falun Dafa had not been registered according to law and had been engaged in illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardizing social stability. The decision said that therefore, in accordance with the Regulations on the Registration and Management of Mass Organizations, the Research Society of Falun Dafa and the Falun Gong organization under its control are held to be illegal and are therefore banned.

The Washington Post reported sources saying that not all shared Jiang Zemin's view that Falun Gong should be eradicated, and that the crackdown was not unanimously endorsed by the standing committee of the Politburo. Julia Ching from the University of Toronto has suggested it was the Zhongnanhai demonstration of April 25 that led to "fear, animosity and suppression". Jiang Zemin had allegedly received a letter from the former director of the 301 Military Hospital, "a doctor with considerable standing among the political elite", endorsing Falun Gong and advising high-level cadres to start practicing it. Jiang also found out that Li's book, Zhuan Falun, had been published by People's Liberation Navy, and that possibly seven hundred thousand Communist party members were practitioners. Ching alleges that "Jiang accepts the threat of Falun Gong as an ideological one: spiritual beliefs against militant atheism and historical materialism. He wishes to purge the government and the military of such beliefs". Through a Mao-style purge of Falun Gong, Jiang forced senior cadres "to pledge allegiance to his line", thus boosting Jiang's authority to enable him to dictate events at the pivotal 16th Communist Party congress, a Communist Party veteran later told CNN's Willy Lam. Tony Saich agrees that the campaign was used by Jiang to serve as a loyalty test to his individual leadership.

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Practitioners on Tiananmen Square, performing the second exercise in protest.

In 1999, the government established an extra-constitutional body, the 6-10 Office, specifically to facilitate a crackdown on Falun Gong. There are representatives in every province, city, county, university, government department and state-owned business in China. In the Kilgour-Matas report, a Party official is quoted recounting that in 1999, the leaders of the 6-10 Office united more than 3,000 officials at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to discuss the campaign, which was “not going well,” with constant demonstrations and appeals in Tiananmen Square. Li Lanqing, then head of the 6-10 Office, is said to have verbally announced the Party's new policy on Falun Gong, "defaming their reputations, bankrupting them financially and destroying them physically". Kilgour and Matas contend that it was only after this meeting that practitioners' deaths at police hands were recorded as “suicides.”

On July 20 1999, the Party officially began to crack down on Falun Gong. Under orders from the Public Security Bureau, churches, temples, mosques, newspapers, media, courts and police were all quickly mobilized to follow the Party line, to crush Falun Gong, “no measures too excessive.” Falun Gong was “condemned” in the media, with books shredded and videotapes bulldozed for TV cameras. Within days a “wave of arrests” swept across China. Falun Gong's four Beijing "arch-leaders" were arrested, given hasty trials and sentences between 8 and 18 years. The arrest of other Falun Gong "leaders" across the country began, and police broke into the homes of hundreds of practitioners and took them to prison during the middle of the night. By the end of 1999, practitioners were dying in custody, and by February 2000, 5,000 followers were detained across China.

The government campaign began to lay ostensible emphasis on rule by law: a statute was passed in October of 1999 with retrospective application to suppress "heterodox religions", thus legitimising the persecution of Falun Gong and any other spiritual groups deemed "dangerous to the state". Other groups, such as Zhong Gong, were similarly forced to disband. Beatrice Leung states that Falun Gong had "obtained legal status as one of China's many qigong groups", since it had been registered with the China Qigong Science Research Society in 1992; its literature had been approved by the Ministry of Culture and its books were printed through a state-license. She suggests that this retroactive application of law, which saw the press which printed Falun Gong's books punished and the bookshop-owners arrested for acts which were not illegal at that time, "defies normal concepts of legality". Amnesty states the official directives and legal documents issued for the purge "undermine rights set out in the Chinese constitution as well as international standards."

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In Tiananmen Square performing the sitting meditation.

Practitioners from around the country, many of them middle-aged women, kept streaming into Beijing to appeal the crackdown and would "court detention" by unfurling banners or meditating on Tiananmen Square. They would be quickly round up by police who bundled them into waiting vans "kicking, punching, dragging them by their clothes or their hair; and knocking them over if they did not move quickly or if they tried to get away". Falun Gong would attempt to ensure international media was on hand to witness and record the juxtaposition of peaceful protest and violent response; they would draw attention to arrests, detentions and suspicious deaths in custody; media alerts were issued and information posted on overseas Falun Gong websites.

Officials grew impatient with the constant flow of protesters from around China into Beijing, and decided that “drastic measures were needed.” Johnson describes internal bureaucratic mechanisms coming from officials in Beijing, which set up the framework that led to killings. This was a cascading responsibility system to push the responsibility for meeting central orders down onto those enforcing them: Central authorities would hold local officials personally responsible for stemming the flow of protesters to the capital. Johnson gives a typical example taking place in Weifang, where a “study session” of police and government officials was called; the central government's directive to limit protesters was read aloud, no questions were asked as to how it was to be achieved —“success was all that mattered.”

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Resistance on Tiananmen Square

Officials further began to extort money from Falun Gong practitioners when the central government upped the ante, and began implementing fines for protesters who would reach Beijing: the provincial government would fine mayors for each Falun Gong practitioner from their district who made it to Beijing; the mayors would in turn fine the heads of the Political and Legal commissions, who would in turn fine village chiefs, who fined police officers who administered the punishment. The fines were illegal, as no law or regulation had officially been issued. Johnson writes that the order was only relayed orally at meetings, “because they didn't want it made public.” He recounts that a chief feature in the testimony of practitioners who were victims of torture was that they were “constantly being asked for money to compensate for the fines.”

The Party used a variety of legal and extra-legal mechanisms to stamp out public practice and demonstrations by practitioners. Some work units would summarily fire people identified as practitioners. Job loss often meant lost housing, schooling, pensions, and a report to the police. Whereas places remote from Beijing once overlooked solitary exercise and meditation, restrictions were tightened in 2001 after the self-immolation incident, and this treatment spread across the country. If brought to the attention of police or Party officials, doing the Falun Gong exercises at home proved dangerous. Local officials would detain active practitioners and those unwilling to formally recant, and were expected to "make certain" that families and employers keep them isolated.

Falun Gong claims to have proof that over 3000 practitioners have died through torture or beating while in police or government custody.

Media & education campaign

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A "Communists against Falun Gong" poster as part of the Chinese government's propaganda campaign. It reads "Firmly support the decision of the Central Committee to deal with the illegal organization of “Falun Gong”"

Since the nation-wide crackdown began on July 20, 1999, the state-controlled media apparatus constantly drummed the Party line of Falun Gong as an "evil cult" spreading superstition to deceive people. By July 30, Xinhua was reporting confiscations of over one million Falun Gong books and other materials, hundreds of thousands burned and destroyed.
Elizabeth J. Perry described Beijing's use of media at the early stages of the crackdown: "For weeks...each night, pictures were broadcast of huge piles of Falun Gong materials that had been either voluntarily turned over by practitioners or confiscated in police raids on bookstores and publishing houses," including the People’s Liberation Army Press. "Some were disposed of in gigantic bonfires, others were recycled..." Perry writes that media reports would focus on the testimonies of relatives of Falun Gong "victims", who would talk about the "terrible tragedies" that had befallen their loved ones. Reports also featured former practitioners confessing how they had been "hoodwinked by Li Hongzhi and to expressing regret at their gullibility." Physical education instructors would suggest healthy alternatives to Falun Gong practice, including badminton, ballroom dancing, bowling, etc. Perry wrote that the basic pattern of the government’s offensive was similar to "the anti-rightist campaign of the 1950s [and] the anti-spiritual pollution campaigns of the 1980s." The authorities began inundating the evening news with reports and "happy pictures of those who had kicked the Falun Gong habit" and were now pursuing more benign pass-times.

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According to a report compiled by Falun Gong, authorities seized and publicly destroyed hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong books and materials

Circulars were issued to women's and youth organisations encouraging members to support the crackdown. Both the Youth League and the All-China Women's Federation trumpeted the greater use of science education to combat "feudalistic superstition": a Youth League official said: "This reminds us of the importance and urgency of strengthening our political and ideological work among the younger generation, educating them with Marxist materialism and atheism, and making greater efforts to popularize scientific knowledge". The Women's Federation stated the need to "arm our sisters with scientific knowledge and help improve their capability to recognize and resist feudal superstition" Indeed, after having "earnestly studied" Jiang's speeches on Falun Gong, the PLA also recognised that "Only Marxism can save China and only the Chinese Communist Party can lead us to accomplish the great cause of reinvigorating the Chinese nation."

The campaign against Falun Gong entered educational institutions, with anti-Falun Gong propaganda incorporated into high-school and primary school textbooks. WOIPFG claimed that students who practiced Falun Gong were barred from schools and universities and from sitting exams; a policy of "guilt by association" was adopted, such that direct family members of known practitioners were also denied entry; anti-Falun Gong petitions were organised on a mass scale; professors, lecturers and students who refused to renounce or denounce Falun Gong were expelled and faced consequences such as arrest, forced labour, rape, and torture, sometimes resulting in death; students were forced to watch videos or attend seminars attacking Falun Gong; banners and posters of defamation would be placed around schools and universities, reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution; viewing Falun Gong websites could result in arrest; examinations contained questions with anti-Falun Gong contents--incorrect answers would result in reportedly violent repercussions.

According to analyst James Mulvenon of the Rand Corporation, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security uses cyber-warfare to attack Falun Gong websites in the United States, Australia, Canada and England, and blocks access to internet resources about the topic. In July 2001, as part of House Concurrent Resolution 188, the U.S. House of Representatives denounced the "notorious" '6-10' offices which oversee the persecution through "organized brainwashing, torture and murder", and stated that propaganda from state-controlled media "inundated the public in an attempt to breed hatred and discrimination." The Resolution was passed by a 420:0 vote, calling on China to "cease its persecution and harassment of Falun Gong practitioners in the United States; to release from detention all Falun Gong practitioners and put an end to the practices of torture and other cruel, inhumane treatment against them and to abide by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights"

The "cult" label

See further: Falun Gong and the anticult movement

The Party claimed that the practice had exploited spiritual cultivation to engage its practitioners in seditious politics. In exposés with titles such as "Falun Gong is a Cult", "Exposing the Lies of the 'Falun Gong' Cult", and "Cult of Evil", the Party alleged that Falun Gong engaged in mind control and manipulation via "lies and fallacies," causing "needless deaths of large numbers of practitioners." State media claimed that over 1,000 deaths because practitioners followed Li's teachings and refused to seek medical treatment for their illnesses; several hundred practitioners had cut their stomachs open "looking for the Dharma Wheel" or committed suicide; over 30 innocent people had been killed by "mentally deranged practitioners of Falun Gong."

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The words on the steamroller read “Smash Falun Gong’s printed materials to pieces.”Template:Puic

Ian Johnson writes that declaring Falun Gong a cult was a "brilliant" move: the Party quickly erected websites with "overnight experts" likening Li Hongzhi to Jim Jones, the head of the Peoples Temple, or L. Ron Hubbard of the Church of Scientology, effectively putting Falun Gong on the defensive, cloaking the crackdown with the "legitimacy of the West's anti-cult movement," and forcing practitioners to prove their innocence. Li was portrayed as a charlatan, while snapshots of accounting records were shown on television, "purporting to prove that Master Li made huge amounts of money off his books and videos."

Johnson expressed his great scepticism at the nature of government claims: the "victims" were never allowed to be interviewed independently, making their claims "almost impossible to verify"; the number of supposed mentally disturbed Falun Gong adherents was never properly correlated to a general sample of the populace; during the greatest period of Falun Gong merchandise sales in China, Li Hongzhi received no royalties because all publications were bootleg; and that fundamentally, "the group didn't meet many common definitions of a cult," since Falun Gong practitioners do not live isolated from society, marry outside the group, have non-practitioner friends, hold normal jobs, do not believe that "the world's end is imminent," do not give over large amounts of money for Falun Gong, and most importantly, that "suicide is not accepted, nor is physical violence."

Julia Ching opines that by accusing Falun Gong of being an "evil cult" after the crackdown had already begun made previous arrests and imprisonments constitutional. She states that "evil cult" was defined by an atheist government "on political premises, not by any religious authority" , and that the pronouncement was made without defining what a good cult, or a good religion would be.

Bryan Edelman and James T. Richardson have stated: "Over the years, the CCP has also become more sensitive to international criticisms concerning China's human rights record. In this context, the anti-cult movement and its ideology have served as useful tools, helping efforts by the party to try to maintain a delicate balance and create the illusion that the rule-of-law has been upheld, even as actions in violation of international customary law are being taken against the Falun Gong. The social construction of the cultic threat posed to Chinese society and the rest of the world, the subsequent government's response to that threat, and its lax definition of the term 'cult" has armed the CCP with the weapons necessary to attack any religious, qigong, or sectarian movement its sees as a potential threat to its authority. By applying the label and embracing theories that posit passive followers under the mental control of a dangerous leader, the government can aggressively destroy the group, all the while claiming to be protecting religious freedom. In this respect, the Western Anti-Cult Movement has served, unwittingly or not, as a lackey in the party's efforts to maintain its political dominance."

The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

Main article: Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

On the eve of Chinese new year, January 23, 2001, 7 people attempted to set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Footage was broadcast nationally in the People's Republic of China by China Central Television (CCTV). Western news organizations disseminated the story as given by Xinhua, without the possibility of verifying it independently, given the tight censorship exercised by the Chinese authorities.

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One of the self-immolators at the sceneTemplate:Puic

According to Time, the Government's media war against Falun Gong gained significant traction following the act. The six-month campaign successfully portrayed Falun Gong as an "evil cult" which could unhinge its followers. By repeatedly broadcasting images of a girl’s burning body and interviews with the others saying they believed self-immolation would lead them to paradise, many Chinese were convinced that Falun Gong was evil. The campaign is thought to be the government's first effort to gain public support for the crackdown of Falun Gong, and is "reminiscent of communist political movements -- from the 1950-53 Korean War to the radical Cultural Revolution in the 1960s."

There is controversy as to whether the protagonists were Falun Gong practitioners in reality. The state-owned broadcaster claimed the self-immolators as Falun Gong practitioners. A Time magazine article suggests that it was possible for misguided practitioners to have taken it upon themselves to demonstrate in this manner, handing a propaganda opportunity to the Chinese authorities. Falun Gong headquarters in New York emphatically deny that these people could have been practitioners, on grounds that their teachings explicitly forbid suicide and killing. Falun Gong and some third-party commentators claim that the event was staged by the Chinese government in order to build public support for the "persecution" of the group and turn public opinion against the practice.

Reeducation through labor

According to the Ministry of Public Security, "reform through compulsory education" is an administrative measure imposed on those guilty of committing minor offences, but who are not legally considered criminals. In late 2000, the Party began to use this method of punishment widely against Falun Gong practitioners in the hope of permanently "transforming recidivists," who would often be immediately sentenced to reeducation for up to three years. Terms can be extended by police. Practitioners may have ambiguous charges levied against them, such as "disrupting social order," "endangering national security," or "subverting the socialist system." Up to 99% of long term Falun Gong detainees are processed administratively through this system, and do not enter the formal criminal justice system. Outside access is not given to the camps, and conditions are reported to be poor. Prisoners are forced to do heavy work in mines, brick factories, and agriculture. Beatings, interrogations, inadequate food rations, and other human rights abuses take place. A figure from 2004 sets the number of Falun Gong deaths in these institutions at 700.

There are estimates of up to 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners having been sentenced administratively to reeducation from the beginning of the crackdown, and that at least half of the 250,000 total recorded inmates in China's reeducation camps are Falun Gong practitioners. Upon completion of their reeducation sentences, practitioners are sometimes then incarcerated in "legal education centers," another form of administrative punishment set up by provincial authorities to "educate and transform the minds of Falun Gong practitioners." While Beijing officials initially portrayed the process as "benign," a harder line was later adopted; "teams of education assistants and workers, leading cadres, and people from all walks of life" were drafted into the campaign. In early 2001 quotas were given for how many practitioners needed to be "transformed." Official records do not mention the methods employed to achieve this, though Falun Gong and third party accounts indicate that the mental and physical abuses could be "extraordinarily severe."

Alleged torture

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Wang Bin, allegedly tortured to death by Chinese authorities for practising Falun Gong.Template:Puic

Falun Gong, independent human rights organisations and other NGOs monitoring the treatment of Falun Gong by the Chinese government have published allegations of torture or mistreatment. Falun Gong has documented 44,000 cases of alleged torture which have resulted in 2,804 deaths. Since 2000, the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations reported 314 cases of alleged torture, representing more than 1,160 individuals, to the Government of China. Falun Gong comprise 66% of all such reported torture cases, 8% occurring within Ankangs. The US State Department cites estimates that practitioners may account for half of the labour camp population.

Amnesty International believes Falun Gong figures overstate the toll, but commented that independent verification would be impossible. Similarly, Human Rights Watch commented that most of the information available to it are from either official Chinese government or Falun Gong sources, both of which obviously have an interest in releasing data that supports their respective claims. "There is no sure way of checking the information from either source, making it impossible to fully assess competing claims about the numbers of judicial sentences, reeducation through labor terms, deaths in custody, and so on. "

The "United Nations Reports on China’s Persecution of Falun Gong" (2004), published by Falun Gong, alleges 31 different forms of torture, with multiple variations on each type, and that up to 100 different forms of torture are in use. The main purpose of the torture is ostensibly to have Falun Gong practitioners renounce or denounce the practice and the founder, Li Hongzhi. Kilgour and Matas also accused China of torturing prisoners to obtain their consent to have their organs removed for transplant. The Special Rapporteur refers to the torture scenarios as "harrowing" and writes that "The cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts... defy description." Torture may be by one or more of the methods listed below.

Electric shocks

Gao Rongrong, a Falun Gong practitioner who allegedly died in custody in June 2004 after being detained in Longshan Reeducation through Labour facility in Shenyang. Officials had reportedly beaten her, including by using electro-shock batons on her face and neck, which caused severe blistering and eyesight problems.

The use of electric batons by police officers and prison guards to administer shocks of up to 300 000 volts is reported as the most widespread form of torture used against Falun Gong practitioners.

Often more than one baton is applied at one time. Police are reported to use homemade versions of these devices, which make the skin break open and bleed in every place of contact.Gang Chen, now a southern New Jersey resident who spent 17 months in labor camp, alleges being tortured in many ways, including being chained to a radiator and repeatedly electrocuted with electric batons

Stress positions

Subjects are forced to stand, sit or squat in stress positions “for many days”, and this is often combined with beatings, the deprivation of food, sleep, water and use of the toilet. Sometimes, convicted prisoners watch over practitioners during this type of torture. Failure to hold the positions is said to result in being beaten, kicked, slapped, or shocked. These stress positions, if prolonged, may result in muscle spasms, nerve damage, and necrosis of the buttocks.

Branding/burning

Tan Yongjie, reportedly tied to a pillar, had a red-hot iron rod pressed it against his legs while being asked if he still wanted to practice Falun Gong. “He was in so much pain that he lost control of his bowel functions.. He could neither walk nor sleep....” [1] [2] Template:Puic

Falun Gong alleges numerous cases of torture in the form of branding using instruments which include car lighters, irons, hot metal rods or cigarettes.

Falun Gong alleges that Wang Huajun, from Hubei, was seized for speaking publicly about the persecution, allegedly "beaten viciously" by police, and was "...dragged outside of the city hall, drenched in gasoline, and set ablaze."

Force-feeding

Falun Gong alleges that force-feeding torture is the number one cause of deaths, with over 10% of all confirmed deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in custody.

Force-feeding may cause excruciating pain and injury: the violent insertion and withdrawing of feeding tubes may lead to death through puncturing the lungs; leaving the feeding tubes in the stomach for prolonged periods; knocking out teeth with pliers and crowbars to enable force-feeding, or boring holes in the side of the mouth.

Chinaview, an independent website focused on human rights abuses in China, reveals that the Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp was the first to begin force-feeding Falun Gong practitioners with human urine and excrement in the summer of 2003, and that “…the Chinese government awarded them for this innovation, and sent labour camp staff from around the country to learn this procedure.”

Sexual abuses

Amnesty International's "Falun Gong Persecution Factsheet" lists sexual abuse among the forms of torture Falun Gong practitioners are subject to. Falun Gong claim that many incidents of torture involve sexual assault or rape and gang rape — sometimes by police officers directly, sometimes by throwing female Falun Gong practitioners into prison cells — including an instance where 18 female practitioners were stripped naked and thrown into prison cells with violent male criminals, who were encouraged to rape and abuse the women. Gao Zhisheng, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer, in his third open letter to the Beijing leadership stated his shock of the "unbelievable brutality, ...the immoral acts ...of 6-10 Office staff and the police. Almost every woman's genitals and breasts or every man's genitals have been sexually assaulted during the persecution in a most vulgar fashion. Almost all who have been persecuted, be they male or female, were first stripped naked before any torture."

There are reports of victims in the Dalian Labor Camp being tied up in a spread-eagle position as torturers repeatedly thrust foreign objects (toilet and shoe brushes, and long rods) into their vaginas causing severe inflammations and bleeding.

Miscellaneous

Some other forms of reported torture mentioned in the compilation report, human rights websites, or Falun Gong related websites include: suffocation with plastic bags, buckets, or thick soaked paper; ramming bamboo sticks through the fingernails; beating the buttocks with boards up to hundreds of times; exposure to hemp plants; being hand-cuffed or tied-up and hung up for prolonged periods; various forms of solitary confinement in a small cells or cages, tied to a board, or put in a water dungeon, all for prolonged periods of time; having icy or boiling water poured over the head (the compilation report states this is a “routine” form of torture); forced exposure to extreme weather; various types of deprivation of physiological needs.

Use of psychiatry and claims of abuse

Soon after the onset of the persecution, Falun Gong and human rights observers began making accusations of widespread psychiatric abuse of mentally-healthy practitioners. In defence, the Chinese government alleged that there had already been a sharp increase of practitioner detentions in psychiatric facilities since 1992: Ji Shi cites doctors at the Beijing University of Medical Science saying that "since 1992 the number of patients with psychiatric disorders caused by practicing Falun Gong accounted for 10.2 percent of all patients suffering from mental disorders caused by practicing various qigong exercises", and that the figure had risen to 42.1% by the first half of 1999. The Government maintains that all remedial actions have been taken in accordance with the law. In 2000, state-media reported that “The cult has led to more than 650 cases of psychological disorder, with 11 practitioners becoming homicides and 144 others physically disabled.” Falun Gong sources claim that there are illegal, systematic and widespread abuses of mentally healthy Falun Gong practitioners in psychiatric custody, with an estimated 1,000 healthy practitioners having been forcefully detained in mental hospitals, with reports of psychological medical and physical abuses, such as administration of sedatives or anti-psychotic drugs and torture by electrocution, force-feeding, beating or starvation. Clinicians Robin J. Munro, Sunny Y. Lu and Viviana B. Galli alleges the Chinese government claims are fabricated. However, the World Psychiatric Association argues against systematic abuse of psychiatry, but is prepared to believe it is merely due to "lack of training and professional skills of some psychiatrists".

Political abuse of psychiatry

Robin J. Munro was the first clinician to draw worldwide attention to the abuses of forensic psychiatry in China in general, and of Falun Gong practitioners in particular. Munro alleges that the most distinctive aspect of the government’s protracted campaign to "crush the Falun Gong" has been the many reports "that large numbers of.. practitioners were being forcibly sent to mental hospitals by the security authorities."

Munro says he is surprised by the "remarkable" rise in numbers of admissions of Falun Gong practitioners to psychiatric facilities (after Ji Shi) considering Falun Gong did not even exist before 1992; the 1999 assertion of an official spokesman that Falun Gong represented 30% of all mental patients in China Munro calls "absurd." He brings attention to the coincidence between the reportedly very sizeable increase in Falun Gong admissions to mental hospitals, and the fact that it was during this same period when the government began preparing its nationwide public crackdown. He remarks that this was "deemed unworthy of mention" by Chinese authorities in their publications.

Sunny Y. Lu and Viviana B. Galli credit Jiang Zemin with reversing the declining trend of using mental hospitals as places of government-directed torture in China, as part of a comprehensive and brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. They draw comparison with political abuse of psychiatry by the Soviet Union aimed at dissidents and nonconformists, but noted that Falun Gong practitioners were "neither political nor nonconformists."

Lu and Galli assert that the authorities, and sometimes family members, began forcing sane Falun Gong practitioners into psychiatric facilities not long after the crackdown began. In cases where hospitals express reluctance to admit persons who lack clear signs of any mental illness, the government often apply pressure through the police. Without formal legal procedures for commitment, local police officers and members of the 6-10 Office arbitrarily commit Falun Gong practitioners to psychiatric institutions, with lengths of detention ranging from days to years. Lu and Galli state that “the perversion of mental health facilities for the purpose of the torture of Falun Gong practitioners is widespread”; the targets are from all tiers of society, including physicians, nurses, judges, military personnel, police officers and school teachers.Their "crimes" were practising Falun Gong, passing out flyers against the government suppression, appealing and petitioning to the government, and refusing to renounce the practice. Diagnoses may include obsessive-compulsive disorder, “mental problems induced by superstition,” or “qigong-induced mental disorder.” The authorities even newly coined “evil cult-induced mental disorder” (斜教所致精神 zhang’ai) --which Munro describes as a “politically opportunistic.. hyperdiagnosis", and a throwback to the model found in Soviet forensic psychiatry. The Chinese government is effectively warning that “Spiritual or religious beliefs banned on political grounds can drive people mad.”

Munro alleges detained practitioners are tortured, and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy or painful forms of electrical acupuncture treatment, prolonged deprivation of light, food and water, and restricted access to toilet facilities in order to force confessional statements or renunciations of Falun Gong as a condition of eventual release. Fines of several thousand yuan may follow. Lu and Galli have also catalogued allegations of dosages of medication of up to five or six times the usual level, administered through nasogastric tubes as a form of torture or punishment, and physical torture including binding tightly with ropes in very painful positions. Some effects of this treatment, including drug or chemical toxicity are loss of memory, migraines, extreme weakness, protrusion of the tongue, rigidity, loss of consciousness, vomiting, nausea and seizures. They write that medical staff are reported to deal with practitioners violently, reported comments including phrases such as “Aren’t you practicing Falun Gong? Let us see, which is stronger, Falun Gong or our medicines?”

Lu and Galli claimed that the Chinese government uses extreme measures to prevent investigation of the alleged abuses: threats, bribes, summary cremation of victims' bodies, arbitrary detention of potential whistleblowers, censorship of the internet, restricted access for western media and humanitarian organisations, and detention, harassment, deportation of journalist or revoking their licenses etc.

Legitimate use of psychiatry and “Qigong Psychosis”

Some third party commentators sympathise with the Chinese government's perspective and actions. Dr. Sing Lee from Harvard Medical School studied the practice of psychiatry in China in 1997, and cites one case of a 54-year-old housewife who had practiced Falun Gong for two years, and was apparently "[enthralled by]... the trance state and the spontaneous bodily movement that the practice brought" which she could not control

Lee and Kleinman challenge Munro for use of indirect and unconfirmed accounts, allegations and reports from human rights groups "with their own axes to grind," and from Falun Gong, which is "engaged in a nasty political struggle with the Chinese state." They state that regular prisons would be much cheaper to detain Falun Gong practitioners in, and disagree that the Chinese government would use mental hospitals for reasons of ‘self-justificatory vanity’ and ‘international prestige’. They also deny that the modern Chinese psychiatric profession has become implicated in the Communist Party’s political agenda. Lee and Kleinman accused Munro of “…creating a witch hunt that attributed to the profession as a whole the misuses and abuses of what may well turn out to be only a small number of practitioners.”

In 2002, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) scheduled an investigation with the involvement of the Chinese Society of Psychiatrists' (CSP) to examine alleged abuses of Falun Gong practitioners who were sent to Chinese psychiatric hospitals and clinics as punishment. In April, several days before it was to start, the investigation was postponed indefinitely, at the Chinese government's insistence.

In August 2004, the WPA endorsed the CSP's explanation that there were unwitting abuses of human rights. "[I]nstances in which some Chinese psychiatrists failed to distinguish between spiritual-cultural beliefs and delusions, as a result of which persons were misdiagnosed and mistreated" were due to "lack of training and professional skills of some psychiatrists rather than [to] systematic abuse of psychiatry." Dr. Alan A. Stone, professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard and a member of the WPA delegation, concurred, adding that if Falun Gong practitioners had been misdiagnosed and mistreated in psychiatric hospitals across China.... "it was 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 suppression of the Falun Gong in the secure Ankang mental hospitals."

FoFG board member Dr. Abraham Halpern criticised the WPA statement for brushing aside psychiatric abuse of thousands as mere "failures in diagnosis". However, Arthur Kleinman, M.D., a professor of medical anthropology and psychiatry at Harvard University, contended that the allegations of Falun Gong were "exaggerated and distorted". They said that many Falun Gong adherents had obvious symptoms of psychosis, "and were put in psychiatric hospitals for good reasons".

Munro maintains both he and Lee & Kleinman, in their own published work, relied on the very same "copious documentation" drawn from facts, commentary, and "several decades" of survey material written and compiled by Chinese psychiatrists and law-enforcement officers published in China’s officially authorized professional literature on psychiatry and the law. He opines that since they do not make any substantive rebuttal of his evidence, they must have no answer to it. The four Falun Gong case notes he selected were typical of the “several hundred such accounts that have so far been compiled and published by the Falun Gong,” and that "[i]ndependent investigations by foreign journalists… have confirmed the Falun Gong’s version of events in the cases that have been examined."

Munro contends that decades-long political abuse of psychiatry by the Party, directly preceding the section on Falun Gong, transfers the burden of proof "squarely back onto the Chinese authorities."

Allegations of organ harvesting

Main article: Falun Gong and live organ harvesting

In March 2006, allegations were made in the Epoch Times of organ harvesting on living Falun Gong practitioners at the China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center, a Chinese joint-venture company in Sujiatun, Shenyang co-owned by Country Heights Health Sanctuary of Malaysia, and subject to oversight in Liaoning province.

According to two witnesses, internal organs of living Falun Gong practitioners have been harvested and sold, and the bodies have been cremated in the hospital's boiler room. The witnesses allege that no prisoner comes out of the Centre alive, and that six thousand practitioners have been held captive at the hospital since 2001, two-thirds of whom have died to date.

On April 14, 2006, the United States Department of State reported the findings of its investigation, stating that: "U.S. representatives have found no evidence to support allegations that [Sujiatun] has been used as a concentration camp to jail Falun Gong practitioners and harvest their organs." Dissident Harry Wu, who immediately sent in investigators, said that the allegations were just heresay from two witnesses.

The Chinese Government accused Falun Gong for fabricating the "Sujiatun concentration camp" issue, reiterating that as a WHO Member State, China resolutely abides by the WHO 1991 Guiding Principles on Human Organ Transplants and strictly forbids the sale of human organs. It added that Sujiatun District government carried out an investigation at the hospital and invited local and foreign media, including NHK and Phoenix Satellite Network; and two visits were paid by US consular personnel, who confirmed that the hospital was completely incapable of housing more than 6,000 persons; there was no basement for incarcerating practitioners, as alleged; there was simply no way to cremate corpses in secret, continuously, and in large volumes in the hospital's boiler/furnace room.

In July 2006, David Kilgour and David Matas, human rights lawyers, concluded an investigation on behalf of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China (CIPFG). Their report gave credence to the allegations of China's harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners. The Christian Science Monitor states that the report's evidence is circumstantial, but persuasive. On September 4, 2007, Matas said "..it’s a report that’s not been refuted by anyone."

Response from Falun Gong

See further: Falun Gong outside the People's Republic of China

Falun Gong groups outside of China responded to the crackdown by making films such as the anti-CCP "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party", and initiating a world-wide "Three Renunciations" Campaign, which was hosted by The Epoch Times. Since it began on Dec 3, 2004, over 22 million members of the Communist Party of China and its subordinate organizations (the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers of China) are alleged by Epoch Times to have resigned as at May 21, 2007. However, due to its anonymous nature of renunciations the figure cannot be verified.

The link between the Three Renunciations and Falun Gong is disputed, since the existence of Buddha and the Christian God is not mentioned in Falun Gong teachings. However, Fei Liangyong, Chairman of the Democratic China Front and senior member of Chinese Free Culture Movement, explicitly mentioned that the Three Renunciations campaign was indeed initiated by Falun Gong via its associated media in his speeches and his various interviews with Falun Gong related media.

Practitioners have been able to interfere with state televised broadcasts, but often with consequences: in March 2002, 15 Falun Gong practitioners hijacked a state-run cable TV station in Changchun and broadcast around 40 minutes of pro-Falun Gong material. Liu Chengjun, named as the instigator, was sentenced to 19 years in prison. He was allegedly tortured to death after 21 months in Jilin Prison, and his body cremated without autopsy..

In June 2002, Falun Gong tapped into transmissions of China's central and provincial networks via Sinosat, interrupting the final of the Football World Cup; the head of the state radio and television administration was reportedly so alarmed that he slept in his office to prevent recurrence. In September, Sinosat was reportedly twice hijacked, and Falun Gong feeds were transmitted. It was further claimed the hacked signals originated from "Taiwan province", and that hackers used instructions posted on Minghui. The authorities alleged that the September 9 interception seriously damaged the rights of 20,000 students across the country receiving long-distance CETV [education] broadcasts; on September 21, a "hijacking marathon" interrupted Mid-Autumn Festival programming from 19:00. In November 2004, a Hong Kong satellite broadcasting into China was hacked into, and pro-Falun Gong material reached the feeds of two stations, but no-one claimed responsibility.

Legal action

Chinese officials alleged to have taken part in human rights abuses against practitioners have become targets of legal action when they step upon foreign soil. Targets have included Jiang Zemin, trade minister Bo Xilai,, Vice Premier Li Lanqing, Culture Minister Sun Jiazheng and Luo Gan. The PRC has complained about a conspiracy to sue Zhao Zhifei, head of the PSB in Hubei province, when he visited the US in mid-July 2001. Charges include genocide and torture. Since 2001, there have been in excess of 70 legal cases launched by Falun Gong practitioners or sympathisers against the Government of the People's Republic of China, its leaders, and other officers.

• An Overview of Legal Cases Filed by Falun Gong Practitioners Around the World

External links

• Falun Dafa Information Center
• Poisonous Deceit ISBN 0-9731181-0-5 © 2002, Deep Six Publishing
• Articles on the Falun Gong, Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson, 2001, Wall Street Journal