July 16, 2004

Local practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement gathered outside Mountain View City Hall July 9 to display the torture methods the Chinese government uses to persecute their peers.

Demonstrators confined themselves in small cages, smeared fake blood on their faces and bound their arms and legs in an effort to educate passersby of the ongoing persecution of devotees of Falun Gong. These displays represented only a few of the more than 100 torture methods that refugees from China have described as employed by the government there, said event organizer Mary Qian.

"We want to raise awareness because people in China don't have a chance to raise up their voices," added Chiawei Lin, a software engineer from San Jose who volunteered at the event during her lunch break.

According to the movement's literature, Falun Gong is a "traditional self-cultivation practice to improve mind and body." It flourished in China in the mid-1990s, but was abruptly banned in 1999 [...]. Since then, more than 1,000 practitioners have been killed and countless more imprisoned, the literature states.

Americans are not immune to this persecution either, said Qian. The Chinese government regularly harasses Falun Gong activists in the United States, she said. Mountain View resident Alejandro Centurion was beaten and briefly detained in November 2001 when he and others traveled to Beijing to protest the Chinese government's policy on Falun Gong.

About 50 people stopped to watch the protest, said Qian, many of whom knew little about the spiritual movement and the struggles of its followers. Event organizers want the demonstration to spark grassroots political action.

"We hope Mountain View residents will go to city council meetings and raise this issue and that they will then raise the issues with Congress," Lin said.

Qian echoed this sentiment.

"This torture doesn't just concern Falun Gong practitioners. It concerns the entire world."

Source http://www.mv-voice.com/morgue/2004/2004_07_16.falun.shtml