Tribune staff reporter
June 24, 2001
With white flowers, solemn music and a long, slow march to the Chinese consulate at Clark and Erie Streets, about 400 Falun Gong practitioners from the U.S. and Canada on Saturday marked the second anniversary of China's crackdown on the spiritual [group].
"We want to call attention to how horrible the persecution in China is," said Stephen Gregory, a South Shore resident and Falun Gong practitioner who works as an administrator at the University of Chicago. "If people in the United States will speak out, then Chinese behavior will change."
[Coordinators] of the group, in Chicago for a two-day regional conference, accused Chinese government officials of killing seven [group] members last week in China, bringing to 229 the number of known deaths of practitioners in China since the group was outlawed in July 1999.
Another 10,000 may be held in labor camps, mental institutions and jails, Gregory said, echoing estimates from foreign governments and human-rights organizations that have monitored the [group] since it was founded in 1992.
China denies reports of mistreatment, though officials have acknowledged that some adherents have died of disease or committed suicide after being detained. [...]
"We have to expect that for the moment things will only get more violent and more brutal," Gregory said.
[...]
The practitioners in Chicago on Saturday, most of whom were born in China and are living in the U.S. as students, legal residents or naturalized citizens, described Falun Gong as a peaceful, inward-looking practice based on truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.
Many of the demonstrators wore yellow T-shirts and carried banners emblazoned with group slogans. They also carried white flowers to signify mourning for those killed or imprisoned.
For more than an hour, practitioners demonstrated their faith by meditating in Federal Plaza in the Loop. The people sat cross-legged in 15 long rows, eyes closed, their bodies still but for slow arm movements that separated positions held for long moments.
"It's a cultivation practice, a spiritual practice," said Warren H. Tai, an executive vice president at the International Bank of Chicago. "We meditate, we get healthier, we try to become better people."
http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/printedition/article/0,2669,SAV -0106240051,FF.html
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Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
