History of Falun Gong

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]

Background of 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 evidences show 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 of the Falun Gong titled “The Old and the Young All Practice Falun Gong.” 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. Examples like these, and others found on Falun Gong’s own website reveal an environment friendly to the Falun Gong.

While receiving positive coverage Falun Gong practitioners since 1998 protested in large groups against what they considered unfair coverage by 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 with the use of public—and illegal—protests. 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.

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

Some media have accused Falun Gong of intolerance of critics. One Asiaweek article reported: “What Falungong [sic] 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.”

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 , 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. 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:

1. publicly apologize to Falun Gong,
2. retrieve and destroy all magazines containing the article,
3. publish an announcement to stop anyone from reprinting the article.

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.

The arrest turned the municipal government of Tianjin into a new focus for the practitioners. They continued protesting into night and onto the next day. The Tianjin government was presented with a 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.” 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 coverages 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.”[7]

On August 19, 1999 People's Daily issued a report accusing Li Hongzhi as the chief organizer of this demonstration.[8]

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.”[9]

The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

Main article: Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident was an incident occurring on January 23, 2001, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing in which six people engaged in self-immolation. The Chinese government and media claimed the people to be Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong denied that those people could have been practitioners. It is disputed whether the event was actually staged by the Chinese government and Xinhua News Agency in order to discredit the practice.

A CNN report from January 23 reports the following: “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.” [10]

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.”[11] It was called a staged incident to smear the group. [12]

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. [13]

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." [14]

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.” Wang Jindong was interviewed in jail -- the fire had left him with scarred, leathery cheeks and blackened fingers.

Some human rights activists in the West have criticized the incident as an attempt to defame Falun Gong and escalate the persecution. For example, Chandra D Smith writes in her paper published in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, 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.’"

Psychiatric Abuses

The alleged psychiatric abuses by the Chinese Communist Party, of both Falun Gong practitioners and, as some commentators claim, the whole psychiatric profession, are documented by Lu and Galli, in their study entitled Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong practitioners in China, in which Lu and Galli give a brief appraisal of the psychiatric abuses Falun Gong practitioners are alleged to suffer in mainland China. Not long after the crackdown began, government agents, police, and sometimes family members of practitioners began forcing mentally healthy Falun Gong practitioners into psychiatric facilities. There are no formal legal procedures for commitment. Local police and members of the 610 office have the power to arbitrarily commit Falun Gong practitioners to psychiatric institutions, while lengths of detention may range 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 come from all tiers of society, including physicians, nurses, judges, military personnel, police officers and school teachers. Diagnoses range from obsessive-compulsive disorder, “mental problems induced by superstition”, “qigong-induced mental disorder”, or as Munro points out, the revised “hyperdiagnosis” of “evil cult-induced mental disorder” (xie-jiao suo zhi jingshen zhang’ai) – which he describes as a throwback to the model found in Soviet forensic psychiatry. Munro describes this as a “politically opportunistic new diagnosis,” with the Chinese government effectively issuing the “health warning”: “Spiritual or religious beliefs banned on political grounds can drive people mad.”

In cases where the hospitals know the persons to be committed do not have any mental illness and therefore are reluctant to admit them, the government, through police pressure, often forces them to commit the practitioners. These involuntary commitments are because the individuals practice Falun Gong, pass out flyers against the government suppression, otherwise appeal to the government, refuse to renounce Falun Gong, or write petition letters.

According to Lu and Galli, for practitioners who refuse to stop doing the exercises in hospitals or sign denunciation statements, the treatments reported includes medications forcefully administered through nasogastric tubes as a form of torture or punishment, increases in medication dosages of up to five or six times, physical torture including binding tightly with ropes in very painful positions, beatings and shockings with high voltages through acupuncture needles, as well as deprivation of food and sleep, among others. Some of the effects of this treatment, including the toxic effects of various drugs, chemicals or other unknown substances, include loss of memory, migraines, extreme weakness, protrusion of the tongue, rigidity, loss of consciousness, vomiting, nausea and seizures. 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?” .”

Allegations of organ harvesting

On 9 March2006, 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 March2006, Harry Wu of DC dissident group China Information Center and Laogai Research Foundation, started an :

"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: "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 . 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. Worldrights and Freedom House themselves have not covered any of the above in their websites and press releases.

On 14 March2006, 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.

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. 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.

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 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." [15]

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.” [16].

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 [17] [18] 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[19], open to foreign visitors.

Investigative report by David Kilgour and David Matas

On May 8 2006, a press conference was held in Ottawa, Canada, in which David Kilgour, a Canadian MP, and international human rights lawyer David Matas announced that they will jointly lead the efforts to investigate the allegations concerning organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners by the Communist Party of China. Kilgour stated that he wished the investigation to be completely independent. It was stated in the press conference that their plan included 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. [20]

On July 6 2006, Kilgour and Matas, 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." They presented their initial 68-page long report in a press conference. .

Kilgour and Matas released an updated version of the report on January 31 2007 that puts forth new pieces of circumstantial evidence supporting their stance and further concluding that the allegations are true. They also provide a 6-page rebuttal of Harry Wu's suspicions in the appendices of the report. http://organharvestinvestigation.net/

Further allegations

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. Mr Chen says his job of implementing the Chinese Government's policy of prosecuting Falun Gong practitioners is against his will. He said: "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 "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." Both Chen and Hao were granted asylum later.

Related legal cases

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

• Falun Gong files case against Jiang Zemin in Spain

• French court asks China to investigate as part of Falun Gong lawsuits

• Legal Actions in Chronological Order

• Global Coalition to bring Jiang to Justice

• United States Supreme Court denies Falun Gong's petition against Jiang Zemin (Case 04-1070, PDF File)

• Belgium throws out Falun Gong case against Jiang Zemin

• Falun Gong supporters fail in legal action against Chinese minister

References

External links

• On the Collusion of Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong
• Banning the Falun Gong In China By Samuel Luo, a Falun Gong critic
• China syndrome: the persecution of Falun Gong
• Stepped-Up Crackdown - China's persecution of the Falun Gong - Brief Article
• Falun Dafa Information Center
• World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
• Resolution Urges China to Cease Persecution of Falun Gong
• Poisonous Deceit ISBN 0-9731181-0-5 © 2002, Deep Six Publishing
• 2001 Pulitzer Prize Article (section 1): A Deadly Exercise: Practicing Falun Gong Was a Right, Ms. Chen Said, to Her Last Day,
• 2001 Pulitzer Prize Article (section 10): Death Trap: How One Chinese City Resorted to Atrocities To Control Falun Dafa