Apr 27, 2005

Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners gather outside Zhongnanhai to silently appeal for justice and the freedom to practice their traditional exercises and meditation. (Goh Chai Hin/AFP)

April 25 marks an important date on the Australian calendar, when Australians express sorrow, remembrance and great pride for the Anzacs. Yet it is also a day of great significance in China, marking a spring day in Beijing when more than ten thousand practitioners of a popular meditation system called Falun Gong gathered without notice around Beijing's central government complex, Zhongnanhai.

Practitioners describe Falun Gong as a personal meditation practice that consists of five exercises and adhering to the principles of truthfulness-compassion-forbearance. It was released in to the public in 1992 and is now practiced around the world.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is no stranger to protests. Over the course of 2003 alone, at least 120,000 complainants from across China traveled to Beijing's supreme court, to legitimately air their grievances about corruption and miscarriage of justice.

But this appeal was different. It was massive, but entirely peaceful and quiet, with the practitioners of Falun Gong assembled neatly several rows deep. None shouted slogans or held banners. Traffic was never obstructed at any time. When the practitioners departed they left not so much as a scrap of paper behind them, and even picked up the cigarette butts of the policemen standing across the road.

Certainly the incident attracted international attention and was the first time many people outside of Mainland China heard of the Falun Gong spiritual practice. Jiang Zemin, then Chairperson of the CCP, labeled the appeal as a serious threat to the country's leadership, and seized the moment to unleash a brutal persecution on the group.

The truth of the incident is a little more mundane, yet no less profound.

Background: arrests and beatings in Tianjin

Since mid 1996 certain individuals within the CCP's Public Security Bureau had felt that Falun Gong's meteoric surge in popularity was not in the interests of the ruling party, which has a history of brutally repressing anything it does not directly control.

Over the following few years Luo Gan, a government official who would later play a leading role in the persecution of Falun Gong, spearheaded several attempts to undermine the popularity of the group. Books by the founder of the system, Li Hongzhi, were banned from being published in 1996. Morning meditation sessions in public parks were regularly harassed.

However, State-ordered adverse media reports were discredited, and Luo's undercover investigators simply failed to come up with anything that could be described as subversive, instead only producing positive reports about the effects of the spiritual practice.

One of Luo Gan's principle allies in trying to subvert Falun Gong was his brother in law, the physicist He Zuoxiu. On April 11 1999, Dr. He published an article in the Tianjin College of Education's Youth Reader magazine, which included a previously discredited story about an individual said to have committed suicide due to practicing Falun Gong. In reality that young man had neither practiced Falun Gong nor committed suicide. When the magazine refused requests to retract the article, practitioners of Falun Gong held an appeal outside its office over several days from April 18.

On April 23 the Public Security Bureau of Tianjin dispatched riot police to the scene, notwithstanding the fact that the appeal had been peaceful. Many were beaten up and forty-five were arrested. When local practitioners went to Tianjin City Hall to request their release, they were told that the orders had come from "high up" and all appeals on this issue must go to Beijing's Appeals Office near Zhongnanhai. So that is where they went.

A Mastermind Behind the Incident?

A major source of paranoia for incumbent Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin and his Public Security Bureau was the means by which so many practitioners managed to congregate at Zhongnanhai in such a short time. They felt there had to be a "mastermind" behind the scenes organizing everything and that this might well be a rival clique within the Party hierarchy.

In fact the message quickly spread simply by word of mouth, email and mobile phone. At this time government estimates cited the number of Falun Gong practitioners in China at between 70 and 100 million, and meditation sites in public parks were frequented by thousands each morning. Word traveled fast, and ten thousand appellants were in fact only a small phenomena for such a massive community.

Falun Gong practitioner Ms Liu, now living in Australia, says she personally saw the incident in Tianjin as a very urgent matter, and headed to Beijing as soon as she heard the news, only to find many already there. "Practitioners all over the country were very concerned over the event in Tianjin city. Many practitioners thought if such arrests weren't stopped, then similar arrests would spread throughout the country," she said.

"We had high expectations and trust. We just thought the central government didn't know the truth about Falun Gong and we thought it was just small officials causing the troubles."

Practitioners Manipulated by Police

When the majority of practitioners began to arrive early on the morning of the 25th, police were waiting for them in force. They refused to let practitioners approach the Appeals Office, and instead directed them opposite Zhongnanhai until the group wound entirely around the complex in neat, orderly rows.

Eventually Premier Zhu Rongji came out of the Zhongnanhai government compound and talked to a small group of representatives. After listening to their report, Zhu issued an order to release the arrested practitioners that same evening. After receiving confirmation that the practitioners in Tianjin would be released, the crowd quietly dispersed between 10.30 pm and 11.30 pm.

"Practitioners were rational and very reasonable. When we heard practitioners in Tianjin city had been released, we peacefully left," said Ms Liu.

Premier Zhu's Conciliation Overturned by Chairman Jiang

That same night Jiang Zemin embarked upon a completely different course of action from Premier Zhu. He wrote a letter which denounced Falun Gong, and made it clear that he would not tolerate "...a social group involving a large number of Party members, cadres, intellectuals, as well as army men, workers and peasants" who were not under the direct control of the Party.

During a high level meeting on 19th July Jiang Zemin unilaterally announced confirmation of a total ban on Falun Gong, ignoring China's constitution and the wishes of his fellow government officials. The following day saw the beginning of a wave of arrests of Falun Gong practitioners right across the nation. One of the worst crimes in history had begun, with thousands of deaths through torture to follow.

The Story Continues

The world has, since July 20, 1999, become accustomed to seeing these appeals by Falun Gong practitioners. A Law and Order episode dramatised one. Peaceful adherents of Falun Gong have been a fixture outside the meetings of the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights meetings in Geneva for six years. A group of over a hundred left flowers and letters at Prime Minister John Howard's doorstep last year.

Levi Browde of the Falun Dafa Information Center spoke about the act of appealing. "We want to bring the world's attention to terrible crimes being committed in China- the persecution of Falun Gong.

"Others sense that we are not opposing them. We don't oppose individuals. We are not fighting with anyone. We only oppose what is wrong. We believe the only real change that happens in the world occurs when people's hearts change. That is what appeals aim to do."

The persecution of Falun Gong has continued, but much has changed. Jiang Zemin has lost all of his titles and much of his power. The Communist Party that Jiang ordered to begin persecuting Falun Gong is in a rapidly deepening crisis, with over one million Chinese having renounced it. Throughout, the practitioners of Falun Gong have continued their appeals.

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-4-27/28221.html