August 1, 2000

One of the first things the Chinese government did as part of its crackdown was to shut down all Falun Gong websites inside China because they were being used to attract new followers.

Next, authorities installed filtering software to prevent its citizens accessing Falun Gong websites in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Falun Gong webmasters in the US and Europe have reported their websites being hacked using denial of service and smurf E-mail contacts listed are being spammed with thousands of junk messages.

The Australian website, which was started in March 1997, has been attacked a number of times over the past year. The most serious was on May 21 when the site was brought down at 3am. When the server was rebooted late in the morning, it was brought down within an hour. Nobody was able to access the website until 7pm.

The attacks have also targeted Falun Gong members in New Zealand.

Nathan Fernandez, a computer systems engineer and security specialist in Auckland, had his e-mail accounts at two different ISPs - World Net and XTRA - spammed with more than 30,000 junk e-mails in April this year.

Using his security skills, Fernandez located the origin of the attacks.

''I actually traced these e-mails back to two places, one a Hong Kong university and the other to China itself. I could have got through their firewalls and other protection but I did not want to break into anything, so I just left it there,'' he says.

There is a similar pattern of attacks throughout Europe and the US, with American websites being the worst hit.

However, despite all the circumstantial evidence, it seems that no government has made a concerted effort to get to the bottom of this issue.