July 21, 2000
Persistent Protesters From Banned Sect Keep Beijing Police on
Edge
By CRAIG S. SMITH
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CHINA AND HUMAN RIGHTS |
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Text
• 1999
Human Rights Report, published by the U.S. State Department
on Feb. 25, 2000.
Issue in Depth
• China:
Communism at 50
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• Eastern
China from Merriam-Webster's Atlas
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Western
China from Merriam-Webster's Atlas
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• China
Profile, from the U.S. State Department.
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Discussion on Chinese Politics
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EIJING, July 20 --
The police and Falun Gong followers played a grim game in Tiananmen
Square today, with lean young cadets dashing across the vast open
space to snatch down ocher banners briefly unfurled by middle-aged
members of the banned spiritual discipline.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the group's followers have been taken
into custody in recent days as protests increase to mark the first
anniversary of the government's crackdown on the movement that swept
the country in the late 1990's, gathering millions of adherents. The
arrests and a pervasive anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign may have
shrunk the group's numbers, but they have also hardened the will of
those followers who remain.
Meanwhile, exhortations by Falun Gong's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi,
have become increasingly urgent in recent weeks, as he praises
followers who "defend the practice" and warns of destruction for those
"evil beings" who stand in its way.
"The wicked and evil will soon be eliminated, the vile ones in the
human world will receive due retribution, and sins will no longer be
allowed to continue," he wrote recently on the group's official Web
site (www.minghui.org/eng.html). "Disciples are waiting to reach
consummation, and I can wait no more."
Mr. Li founded Falun Gong in the early 1990's, developing a series
of yogalike exercises based on the Chinese practice of qigong, a
discipline of breathing control and meditation intended to channel the
body's qi, or life force, to various ends.
His message of personal salvation from a morally degenerating world
struck a chord with millions of Chinese disillusioned with the
spiritual vacuum created by the collapse of the country's Communist
ideology and by rampant corruption.
But the Chinese government grew increasingly uneasy with Mr. Li's
growing popularity, and in early 1998 he left under pressure and moved
to the United States. He owns a house in New York.
China began arresting adherents of the sect a year ago in a
midnight raid on the group's most prominent members. Despite well
publicized prison terms of up to 18 years for the most active
followers and reports of torture and death among believers who have
been detained, Falun Gong adherents continue to arrive on Tiananmen
Square, China's symbolic center and most public space, to bear
fleeting witness to their faith.
The protests appear futile amid the crowds of tourists from across
China who fill the square each day. So huge is the square that the
small bands of protesters attract little attention in the few seconds
that it takes for the plainclothes police officers spread among the
crowds to subdue them. The protesters rarely manage to raise a banner
long enough for anyone to read it, and they are whisked away in the
blue-and-white police vans that cruise around the square for that
purpose.
Because China's state-run news media rarely mention the protests,
few Chinese are even aware of them.
"What was that?" asked one woman after a dozen young police
officers had dragged down a banner and bundled several Falun Gong
followers into a van that arrived within seconds.
"Some troublemaker," replied a man beside her.
The periodic scuffles, occasionally over elderly men or women who
sat in the lotus position and raised their arms in the opening gesture
of Falun Gong's meditative exercises, gave a bizarre edge today to the
square's otherwise festive atmosphere.
Tour groups marched around behind guides, and children flew
colorful kites. Occasionally bystanders gathered to watch silently as
the police pummeled a resistant protester. At one point, uniformed
police officers could be seen punching a man in the back of one of
their vans.
Falun Gong activists abroad have grown increasingly sophisticated
in their efforts to reach people inside China and keep the movement
alive.
Its members have established an expanding network of Internet sites
that occasionally circumvent China's efforts to block access. And the
group has begun daily Chinese-language broadcasts into China, though
the broadcasts were jammed soon after they started this month.
The group's message has taken on an increasingly apocalyptic cast
as China's effort to exterminate the movement grinds down its numbers.
This week, a message on Falun Gong's main Web site reported that Mr.
Li had been locked for nine months in a battle with evil forces that
damaged his body and turned his hair gray.
"Fellow cultivators, let us strive forward diligently and
courageously," the message said. "Let us cherish the repeated
opportunities that Master, through tremendous sacrifice, has created
for us to advance towards consummation!"
Mr. Li's writings do not explain the reference to "consummation,"
but the message suggested that it referred to a transcendent event of
the sort promised by many religions, old and new. "That humankind has
made it to the year 2000 is not to give humankind prosperity, and even
less is it to allow humankind to continue creating karma for their own
selfish interests," the message said.
It is that sort of talk that most worries Beijing's leaders. China
has a history of millenarian movements that have led to tens of
millions of deaths and marked the end of some dynastic governments.
Invisible as the Falun Gong protests are to most Chinese, they
represent the most coordinated and sustained challenge to Communist
Party rule since the pro-democracy movement of 1989.
"The cult will not voluntarily step down from the historical
stage," said an editorial today in People's Daily, the party's
official mouthpiece. The fight against Falun Gong, it said, would be a
"long-lasting, complicated and acute struggle."
