Monday, June 30, 2003

By JOHN LeMAY

Staff Writer

BENNINGTON -- Shirley and Bei Gou, a Chinese-American couple from Troy, N.Y., came to the Four Corners this weekend protesting China's imprisonment of Shirley Gou's mother in a forced labor camp.

The Gous are followers of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement outlawed in communist China, where it started. Shirley Gou's mother, Lingwen Zeng, 68, a physicist, has been arrested three times for practicing her belief in Falun Gong and is currently doing forced labor and is denied family contact, the Gous said.

Followers say Falun Gong's central principles are truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. [...]

But no one disputes that the movement has many followers worldwide. In April 1999, 10,000 followers staged a silent protest in Beijing against media portrayal of Falun Gong [slanderous words omitted]. The protest may have triggered the crackdown that followed soon after.

The Gous support a lawsuit that has been filed in the U.S. by Falun Gong followers against former President Jiang Zemin of China, accusing him of viciously persecuting Falun Gong. Jiang started the [persecution of] Falun Gong in 1999.

The suit uses a 200-year-old statute allowing international lawsuits in certain cases, which has been applied in restitution claims by Holocaust victims, according to the New York City-based newspaper, Forward. [...]

The Gous, who moved to the U.S. in 1996, are in the process of moving to Dallas, Texas, where Bei Gou, an electrical engineer, has taken a new job, and they plan to stop in 10 cities along the way to voice their protest.

At the Four Corners, the Gous joined local practitioners of Falun Gong meditation and physical exercises. Local practitioners include Nathan and Anne Wallace-Senft of North Bennington and Dr. William Franklin McCoy of Cambridge, N.Y., a family physician.

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Bei Gou said the exercises enabled him to painlessly quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.

Shirley Gou holds a Ph.D. in physics and her husband holds one in electrical engineering. Ironically, Gou graduated from the same college attended by Jiang, the Gous said.

Twenty-five graduates of the college have been arrested since then, and one of them has died while imprisoned, they said.

Jiang, as head of the central military committee, remains a powerful figure in China, they said.

The Associated Press reported in April that "hundreds of the group's followers have been thrown in jail. Others have been tortured or sent to labor camps. [...]

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