Monday, April 15, 2002

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute postdoctoral student Wu doesn't know where her mother is.

Zeng was arrested Feb. 9 by Chinese authorities and hasn't been heard from since. Her crime: practicing Falun Dafa. Falun Dafa -- or Falun Gong, as it also is known -- is a spiritual practice in China, where a government [persecution] has led to the deaths of hundreds and the imprisonment and torture of thousands, according to human rights activists.

All Wu knows about her mother is that she had been taken to a "brainwashing'' class and later transferred to a prison, where gang rape and torture are not uncommon.

"The government tries to re-educate them and give them their beliefs with so-called brainwashing,'' Wu said.

Wu spoke Sunday at the north lobby of Empire State Plaza, where a photo exhibit depicting the history for Falun Dafa and the human rights abuses in China opens today.

[Practitioners] say Falun Dafa opens energy channels through stretching, relieves body ailments and strengthens spiritual powers through meditation, not the kinds of things a rigidly atheist government condones.

While those who practice it say Falun Dafa is a traditional way to improve the mind and body through exercises and meditation, the Chinese government has denounced it as "dangerous.''

Wu and Chen, a Falun Dafa practitioner for more than four years, say they are so indignant at the government's depiction of Falun Dafa [Jiang regime's slanderous words omitted] that they cannot even bring themselves to use the words when describing the Chinese government's claims.

Falun Dafa traces its roots to ancient Chinese beliefs, Chen said, but it didn't become widely known until 1992 when now-exiled leader Li Hongzhi -- Master Li -- publicized the long-secret practice. Before then it secretly was passed on from master to disciple, Chen said.

At first, Chen said, the Chinese government praised Falun Dafa, which has the basic tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, as health care costs decreased in the general population. But Falun Dafa gained popularity too quickly, attracting as many as 100 million followers, Chen said.

The rapid popularization of Falun Dafa, which posits that an energy called the falun in a person's gut, though in a different dimension, is part of what has invoked fear in the Chinese government, Chen said. So in July 1999, the government began a [persecution] on Falun Dafa and its practitioners.

"They just drag them from work and homes and take them to a mental hospital and heavily drug them,'' Chen said.

As of Sunday, 396 have died under torture, Amnesty International believes that 2,000 have been killed and 100,000 have been imprisoned or sent to labor camps, Chen and Wu said. Another 1,000 have been hospitalized in mental institutions, said Phil Randell, a Falun Dafa follower who lives in Kingston.

The Chinese government has even gone so far as to block Internet access to non-Chinese Falun Dafa Web sites and produce propaganda films showing Falun Dafa followers going insane and committing suicide.

But on March 5 of this year, some Falun Dafa practitioners in Changchun, China, took over the local cable network and broadcast programs that showed the government's persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners.

Though some, such as Wu and Chen, claim to be in much better health since taking up Falun Dafa, Master Li has claimed that he is simply trying to help people to live a better life.

Sam Cheng, a 65-year-old retired physicist now living in Delmar, was supposed to be dead by now. In 1996, he was diagnosed with primary amyloidosis, a rare disease that afflicts eight in a million people, according to to Cheng. Cheng was told he would be dead in five years because his body was losing proteins.

Cheng said that his doctors put him on a painful regimen of steroids to control the disease, because they couldn't cure it. He reached 165 pounds, was always bloated, couldn't sit and was in constant pain.

Now just a little more than two years after starting Falun Dafa, he is back down to 130 pounds and can sit in the lotus position.

"I really was sitting at home waiting for my death to come,'' he said.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyKey=80993&category=C