September 11, 2003

Azgar ISHKILDIN
Translated by Olge Sharp

Last weekend Chinese authorities announced that the crackdown on Falun Gong would continue until victorious end. [...]

[...]

It appears that [...] the authorities of the Peoples' Republic of China mean the courts in some Western countries who are dealing with law suits filed by the movement's followers, who became victims of persecution, against former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and those who were at the head of 1999 repression campaign against the [Falun Gong practitioners]. The latest of these legal actions was started on 8 September in Iceland by three Chinese men against Luo Gan, the present head of Office 610 -- a service specially created for the eradication of Falun Gong.

In the past four years Office 610, whose name refers to the date when it was founded -- 10 June 1999 -- has earned a reputation of a 'Chinese Gestapo' for [Falun Gong practitioners]'. Almost every village, every enterprise and every party committee has a special class for 're-education of [the practitioners]'. The re-education procedure consists of the following: the [practitioners] have to sign a declaration promising not to practice Falun Gong, as well as a document containing a list of accusations against Li Hongzhi, the founder of the breathing exercise school; they also have to write up a list of the persons known to them who practise Falun Gong. Those who refuse are deprived of sleep, beaten and tortured in many ways, including with electric shock and psychotropic substances.

It is remarkable that when in the early 1990s Li Hongzhi [...] demonstrated in Beijing his own version of a traditional Chinese breathing exercise Qigong, his initiative enjoyed enthusiastic support from Chinese leadership. Healing breathing exercises appeared as apolitical as an inert gas. "After suppressing student revolt in 1989, the authorities were desperate to find something that would fill an ideological void in the minds of the population. Falun Gong seemed like a suitable way to solve the problem," believes Harry Wu, a former Chinese political prisoner. "Let the masses meditate. But soon it turned out that the yellow book (Li Hongzhi's book on the breathing exercise Falun Gong) started to become more popular than the red one (quotes from Mao Zedong), and the number of those who practiced the exercise began to exceed the number of the Communist Party members in China. On top of that, they get on with one another remarkably well and demonstrate all the signs of discipline and organization. And this is not something that the Communists can allow."

Among other reasons why Falun Gong became so popular with the Chinese, was one that at first slipped the observers' attention. Most of the breathing exercise enthusiasts were of older age; for them medical services became inaccessible during the economic reform that as good as did away with free healthcare.

In spring 1999 one of Chinese scientific journals published a debate on different types of Qigong, whereby one of the academics described Falun Gong as a prejudice. For the older generation, who had learned how to live in the Socialist system, this was an unmistakable signal: the decision on the ban of Falun Gong had been made. On 25 April around 10,000 Falun Gong followers lined up outside the Communist Party Central Committee [Editor's note: It should be National Appeal Bureau] in Beijing. They stood on the square [There isn't a square - ed] in silence for several hours and at a particular moment dispersed in just a few minutes as if on command. Three months later head of the Chinese Security Service ordered to arrest 70 leaders of the movement; and Jiang Zemin called Falun Gong 'the most terrible threat to Socialism in China' since student uprise in 1989.

Apart from re-educational classes, Falun Gong followers are placed into psychiatric hospitals, labor camps and prisons. According to the movement's information, during the four years of the [persecution of Falun Gong practitioners], there have been around 780 deaths of those followers of the movement who didn't wish to 're-educate'. Many of them, according to the New China's tradition, didn't die in a camp or in a hospital, but in their own homes where they were discharged on 'medical grounds' soon after their release. Luo Gan, who is responsible for the [persecution of Falun Gong practitioners], is also one of the heads of the Chinese Ministry for Public Security.

"This man made his career in 1989. He was holding a rather modest post at the time. He worked in television and was responsible for a propaganda film that portrayed students who advocated democratic reform and demanded to curb the corruption, as vandals and thugs. He was noticed, and in 1999 was promoted to the position, whereby the Party entrusts him one of its ghastliest punitive campaigns," said Li Shao, a Falun Gong follower from Great Britain, to PRIMA correspondent.

http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/articles/2003/9/11/25853.html