History of Falun Gong

Falun Gong, officially known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual movement based on the teachings of Li Hongzhi from the People's Republic of China. Since 1999 the Chinese government, alleging Falun Gong to be a "fraudulent, commercial cult organization", had suppressed and banned the movement inside China, using the mass media to discredit Falun Gong and employing various measures to "rehabilitate" Falun Gong practitioners who are reluctant to renounce their faith. The suppression has generated controversy and raises many human rights concerns about the Chinese government. As a result, the suppression of the movement has gained more attention in the Western media than the movement itself, whose legitimacy (independent of the Chinese government's claims) has been seriously questioned upon by academics and religious experts.

The reasons behind the ban are inconclusive, although several theories seem to have gathered common ground in the various academic studies related to Falun Gong. The dominant theory holds that Falun Gong's religious elements and offers of salvation became a challenge to the orthodox communist ideologies on which the Communist Party of China(CPC)'s power is rested upon, and as Falun Gong's members looked to exceed the number of CPC members, the central leadership under President Jiang Zemin began to fear the extent of Falun Gong's political and social influence. Another theory puts Jiang Zemin squarely to blame as he became jealous of the popularity of Falun Gong's founder Li Hongzhi.

Julia Ching from the University of Toronto, writing for the American Asian Review, has suggested it was the Zhongnanhai demonstration of April 25 that led to "fear, animosity and suppression". In addition, Jiang Zemin had 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 opines 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." She also says that "the accusation of Falun Gong's being an "evil cult" made previous arrests and imprisonments "constitutional." Of course, the accusation was made after the government already had started to crack down on Falun Gong [practitioners]. The enumeration of features of an "evil cult" was done by political officials on political premises, not by any religious authority. It was an atheistic, Communist government, handing down an executive decision by the pronouncement of an "evil cult," without an explanation of what would be its opposite: a good cult, or a good religion." Similar theories about the fundamental reasons are also supported by Elizabeth J. Perry in Critical Asian Studies, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal.

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.

Falun Gong practitioners have claimed that the Zhongnanhai protest was their response to government suppression, but critics allege that this claim is questionable. As late as November 10 1998 one major newspaper in southern China, Yangcheng Evening News, published a favorable report of the Falun Gong titled “The Old and the Young All Practice Falun Gong.” [3] 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.[4] Examples like these, and others found on Falun Gong’s own website reveal an environment friendly to the Falun Gong.

The conflict between the Falun Gong and the Chinese government began to be serious when Falun Gong practitioners started protesting in large groups against what they considered unfair treatment 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. But by July, 1998, Li felt the need for state support. He wanted state approval for his campaign to silence critics; he wanted encouragement for his obedient followers, who were intimidating critics through the use of public—and illegal—protests. In an important directive entitled “Digging Out the Roots,” Falun Gong's founder Li Hongzhi began by saying:

Recently, a few scoundrels from literary, scientific, and qigong circles, who have been hoping to become famous through opposing qigong, have been constantly causing trouble, as though the last thing they want to see is a peaceful world. Some newspapers, radio stations and TV stations in various parts of the country have directly resorted to these propaganda tools to harm our Dafa, having a very bad impact on the public. This was deliberately harming Dafa and cannot be ignored. Under these very special circumstances, Dafa disciples in Beijing adopted a special approach to ask those people to stop harming Dafa—this actually was not wrong. 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 a Beijing TV station; the “special approach” refers to the protest. On May 27, 1998 — twelve days after the China Central TV, China's largest network, had aired a positive coverage of the group — the local Beijing TV station broadcast a program in which a professor of China's Academy of Science disparaged the group, calling it a "cult." Under pressure to resolve the crisis before the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the TV station's chief fired the 24-year-old reporter involved and broadcast a favorable report about the group a few days later.

Falun Gong’s intolerance of critics has been reported by the media long before the ban. 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. 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 “nearly 10,000 practitioners” encircling its office and harassing its staff, 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, many of them also beaten up.

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, trying to bring attention to the treatment of the practitioners in Tianjin and appealing to the central government, asking it to order the release of those incarcerated. This peaceful protest rang alarm bells for China's central leadership and escalated the conflict between the Chinese government and Falun Gong.

Zhongnanhai demonstration and beginning of the crackdown

File:Tianamen beating.jpg

Arrest of Falun Gong protestors in Beijing

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

National Review wrote in September 1999: "After April 25, the government went into a panic. As Robert Thurman, the renowned Buddhism scholar at Columbia University, says, Falun Gong had "scared the hell out of them." So the regime "went nuts," revealing its weakness and self-doubt for all the world to see. According to reports, President Jiang Zemin in particular is worried about Falun Gong, even obsessed with it. On the fateful day, he asked to be driven around the Zhongnanhai in his limousine, to stare at the throng through tinted windows. 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."

Julia Ching refers to an article that was published in World Journal in July 1999, stating that the Zhongnanhai demonstrations might have been organized in part by the government "to help trump up charges against Falun Gong which it had observed and monitored for years through its infiltrators. It even gives the name of a high official, [Luo] Gan, as being the chief Communist organizer of the Zhongnanhai gathering. As secretary general of the State Council, [Luo] had been investigating Falun Gong and had wanted it banned since 1996 but could not find any legal basis for transgression. In that case, it is not certain where the Falun followers intended first to make their petition, but [Luo] had the police direct them to Zhongnanhai, in order to create an incident with which they afterwards could be charged." The practitioners have said that they wanted to make a peaceful appeal at the citizens' appeal office, located at Fuyou street, near Zhongnanhai.

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

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

Elizabeth J. Perry, writing for Critical Asian Studies, has described the crackdown: "For weeks after the campaign began, 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. (Interestingly, the People’s Liberation Army Press was responsible for a number of Falun Gong publications.) Some were disposed of in gigantic bonfires, others were recycled. Relatives of Falun Gong victims testified about the terrible tragedies that had befallen their loved ones. Former adherents also began to come forward to explain how they had been hoodwinked by Li Hongzhi and to express regret at their gullibility. Physical education teachers pointed to healthy alternatives to Falun Gong in the form of badminton, ballroom dancing, bowling, and the like. Happy pictures of those who had kicked the Falun Gong habit and were now pursuing more benign varieties of exercise began to flood the evening news. The basic patterns of the government’s offensive were familiar from decades of previous such mobilized suppression efforts, from the anti-rightist campaign of the 1950s to the anti-spiritual pollution campaigns of the 1980s."

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

The Minghui/Clearwisdom website claims that over 3000 Falun Gong practitioners have verifiably died while in police or government custody.

He Zuoxiu has also accused some Falun Gong practitioners of harassment because of the articles he wrote, and published a book entitled How Falun Gong Harassed Me and My Family. He Zuoxiu is a relative of Luo Gan, one of the chief perpetrators of the persecution, and he is said to have "become a national hero" for opposing Falun Gong. [5] Therefore, some sources have suspected him of politically motivated careerism (e.g. [6], p99).

The CPC has blocked access to Internet resources about the topic. Treatment of Falun Gong practitioners has been regarded by many in the West as a major international human rights issue affecting freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

The media war

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

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

H. Con. Resolution 188 unanimously Passed by the United States Congress states:

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

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

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

In China, the CPC has blocked access to certain sites on the Internet (including this article, see History of Wikipedia), all Falun Gong Websites[7] and burned Falun Gong's books and materials. In addition, some junk mail filters are targeting [8] emails related to the Falun Gong spiritual movement and other dissidents[9].

On the other hand, there have been incidents in which China's state-owned television networks were jammed with reports on the persecution of Falun Gong. In addition, a syndicated Chinese language newspaper with worldwide circulation, The Epoch Times, is accused of having a pro-Falun Gong platform, mainly because it has been the mouthpiece of much of Falun Gong's claims of suppression and torture, but also partly because it has published articles suggesting a declining state in the CPC. These articles include Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party of China(jiuping), New Zealand to Celebrate 7 Million Renouncing Communist Party of China, and others [10].

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

The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

The campaign of government suppression of Falun Gong was considered by most observers to be largely ineffectual until January 2001, when persons whom the government claimed were Falun Gong practitioners, among them a 13-year-old girl named Liu Siying, set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Videos of the incident were widely broadcast on Chinese state television, as were interviews with Siying, who was horribly burned and whose mother, Liu Chunling, did not survive the incident.

Falun Gong practitioners emphatically denied that the people who set themselves on fire could have been actual practitioners, since suicide is against Falun Gong's principles.[11] Several third-party investigators have claimed that the self-immolation was an attempt by the Chinese government to win over public support in its campaign against Falun Gong, and to escalate the suppression.

A CNN report states 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.”[12]

Though there are questions surrounding the CNN reporting. At first, Xinhua claimed that video, widely shown on television, was from CNN. However, the CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan, is quoted in the Washington Post as saying “the footage used in the Chinese television reports could not have come from CNN videotape because the CNN cameraman was arrested almost immediately after the incident began.”[13] It is also reported that their equipment was confiscated.

In further Chinese media reports, the partipants were said to have come from Kaifeng city. The male, Wang Jindong, brought his wife and daughter, and there were four females of two mother-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. The media reported that Liu Chunling died from her injuries, and her daughter Siying died two months later. Two other participants, Liu Baorong and Liu Yunfang were stopped before they could set fire to themselves. In some reports it is alleged that all but the twelve-year-old girl had protested the PRC Government's severe treatment of Falun Gong in Tiananmen Square previously, however, major inconsistencies among one the main participants' history as a Falun Gong practitioner have been alleged, and other aspects of the participants behaviour and reference to the teachings of Falun Dafa have been claimed fallacious.[14] [15]

According to a Chinese media report, during the incident, while the four policemen were frantically trying to put out the fire on the burning men, one participant shouted: “Falun Dafa is the fundamental law of all.”[16] Though inconsistencies exist between different versions of state-run media reports of what Wang Jingong actually yelled. It is also claimed that his reported exclamations are not to be found within the teachings of Falun Dafa.[17]

Liu Yunfang was sentenced to life in prison, Wang Jindong received a fifteen-year sentence and a Beijing practitioner who provided them lodging and helped in the preparation received a seven-year sentence. The tragedy of two mothers setting their young daughters on fire, the death of the twelve-year-old and the gruesome permanent injuries on the survivors unleashed an emotional outpouring.

One year after the incident a small foreign press team was allowed to conduct interviews. Jeremy Page from Reuters met the two surviving females, who were still being cared for in a hospital. Their injuries were reported as horrific: Chen Guo, at that time 20, had a face of blotchy grafted skin with no nose and no ears, one eye was covered by a flap of skin. She had also 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.”[18] It is noted however, that the interviews were conducted only in the presence of CCP officials. A New York Times analysis of the report also states that "[w]ith propaganda streaming in from seemingly opposite ends of the universe, the conflicting claims are difficult to assess"

On the same day as the incident, the Falun Dafa Information Center made an announcement entitled, "China Staged Self-Immolation Act; Xinhua News Framed Falun Gong with Slanderous Lies, calling for a third-party independent investigation to uncover the truth.", stating “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.”[19]

Despite the Chinese government's reporting, some commentators decry that the incident was a calculated 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.’"

A video recording of the incident produced by New Tang Dynasty Television, a privately-owned Chinese television station, claims that the incident of 23 January 2001 was "the most highly publicized event", staged by the Chinese government to "persecute" Falun Gong and "turn public opinion against" the practice. The same recording contains analyses of several inconsistencies in the Chinese Government's version of the story:

• Police were carrying pieces of fire-fighting equipment on the day of the self-immolations, when they were not normally known to carry fire extinguishers on duty.

• As seen in the above video clipping, one of the women involved in the immolations, Liu Chunling, appears to be hit on the head by a blunt object as police attempt to put out the fire. The recording argues that Liu died from a severe blow to the head.

• The camera zooms in on the scene as it unfolds; however, surveillance cameras in Tiananmen Square are usually fixed.

• The man involved in the self-immolation, Wang Jindong, shouts comments that do not form part of Falun Dafa teachings. His sitting position also does not reflect the full or half lotus position as in the Falun Dafa teachings.

• The hospital treatment of the victims, as recorded by Chinese state media, is inconsistent with proper care of severe burn victims: for instance, patients were not kept in sterile rooms; moreover, the girl who allegedly underwent a tracheotomy appeared to be able to speak and sing clearly mere days after the surgery

The video also states that prior to 23 January 2001, there had been no incidents of self-immolation among Falun Gong practitioners in the world.

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

Several third-party NGOs have been free in their condemnation of the incident as a government staged hoax to escalate the persecution of Falun Gong. For example, Karen Parker of the International Educational Development states at the 53rd session Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, United Nations:

"State terrorism in the form of Government terror against its own people produced far more gross violations of human rights than any other form of terrorism; an example was China's treatment of the Falun Gong. The Government had sought to justify its terrorism against Falun Gong by calling it an evil cult that had caused deaths and the break-up of families, but the organization's investigation showed that the only deaths and resulting family breakups had been at the hands of Chinese authorities, who had resorted to extreme torture and unacceptable detention of thousands of people. International Educational Development had discovered that a self-immolation cited by the Chinese Government as proof that the Falun Gong was an "evil cult" in fact had been staged. The international community and the Subcommission should urgently address this situation."[22]

And the United Nations' International Education Development (IED) at the UN Human Rights Commission in August 2001, furthermore stated:

"This government took out this so-called self-immolation incident that happened on January 23, 2001, in Tiananmen Square and used this as evidence against Falun Gong. We have reached the conclusion after watching a videotape on this incident, that this incident has however been completely orchestrated by the government.

Concurrent Resolution 188[23], unanimously passed by the United States Congress, states:

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

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

"The campaign of persecution [against Falun Gong] has been carried out by government officials and police at all levels, and has permeated every segment of society and every level of government in the People’s Republic of China."...

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 well-documented. In their study entitled Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong practitioners in China, 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 persecution began, agents of the Chinese government, 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 for this form of abuse come from all tiers of society, including physicians, nurses, a judge, 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 “patients”. These involuntary commitments are because the individuals practice Falun Gong, pass out flyers against the government suppression, otherwise appeal to the government, and refuse to renounce Falun Gong or write petition letters.

Lu and Galli describe the treatment that Falun Gong practitioners are reported to receive, including medications forcefully administered through nasogastric tubes in order to torture and punish practitioners, increases in medication dosage of up to five or six times, physical torture including being tightly bound with ropes in very painful positions, being beaten and shocked with high voltage through acupuncture needles, or deprivation of food and sleep. These are some of the tortures listed for practitioners who refuse to stop doing the exercises in hospitals or sign denunciation statements. 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, including reported comments 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 investigation at Sujiatun:

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

According to The Epoch Times, Timothy Cooper, the executive director of Worldrights, said in a Washington D.C. rally against alleged Chinese human rights violations on March 12: "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." [24]

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.” [25].

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 [26] [27] 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[28], 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 Hon. David Kilgour, former chairman of Canada's Sub-Committee on Human Rights of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, former director of the Asian Pacific Division of Canada's Foreign Affairs Ministry, former crown prosecutor, and member of the Canadian parliament, announced with international human rights and immigration lawyer Mr. David Matas 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. Mr. Kilgour stated that he wished the investigation to be completely independent. It was stated in the press conference that their plan includes interviewing witnesses and telephone investigators from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, as well as going to China to conduct on-site investigations. [29]

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/

Asylum cases

On June 9 2005, former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin said he "would rather die" than "be forced" to return to China in his original letter pleading for political asylum. 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