Saturday, August 19, 2006

Weizhen Chen, 62, formerly of China, participates in a protest against the Chinese government Friday near Canton City Hall. Chen and four other participants in a car tour this week through Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania stopped in Stark County to protest the Chinese government's alleged mistreatment of the practitioners of Falun Gong, which includes slow-motion meditative exercises and is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline, based on the principles of truth, compassion and tolerance.

CANTON - Imagine practicing yoga or another form of meditative exercise, then being persecuted by the government, which removes and sells your internal organs.

Falun Gong practitioners claim that is happening in China. At a press conference Friday near City Hall, five Falun Gong practitioners convened to raise public awareness on the issue, participating in a car tour in Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania this week.

Participants of the four-day tour visited Akron, Youngstown, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, Lima, Mansfield and Cleveland.

Falun Gong includes slow-motion meditative exercises and is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline, based on the principles of truth, compassion and tolerance, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center. The Web site says it's practiced by more than 100 million people in more than 60 countries.

Becoming immensely popular in China in the 1990s, Falun Gong was banned by the communist government out of fear, according to organizers of the tour.

In Canton early Friday afternoon, the 45-minute protest at Second Street and Cleveland Avenue SW generated a minor buzz.

The group stopping in Canton charges that the Chinese government is sentencing practitioners of Falun Gong to concentration and labor camps, harvesting their organs -- hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas -- before they are killed.

The Chinese government has vigorously denied the allegations, according to media reports.

Two women stood along Cleveland Avenue, clutching two banners, one of which read: "Rescue Falun Gong Practitioners in China! Jailed For Their Belief, Killed For Their Organs." Mark Cnudde, a Falun Gong practitioner from Michigan, recited the allegations against the Chinese government through a megaphone while literature about Falun Gong was handed out.

Depending on where you were standing, Cnudde's message was muffled. A man walking on the sidewalk hollered from across the street that he couldn't make out a single word. Cnudde invited him to walk over and get some literature. The man turned and walked away.

Drivers craned their necks, sometimes wearing puzzled expressions. Some passers-by politely accepted the brochure and a newsletter called Falun Gong Today, with one of the articles headlined "Communist China's Quiet Genocide."

Others turned down the handouts. Some ignored the demonstrators.

Used to getting the cold shoulder, Cnudde estimated that two out of every 100 people he talks with are familiar with Falun Gong.

"We have to tell the world what's going on," he said earlier Friday.

Earlier this summer, the claims of atrocities gained more attention when a Canadian human-rights lawyer and a former Canadian cabinet member investigated the allegations and reported finding evidence of organ harvesting, according to The Christian Science Monitor and ABC News.

Falun Gong's philosophies incorporate ideas from Buddhism and Taosim, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

At the protest in Canton, Song Zhang, 67, formerly of China, said he was arrested because he was planning to travel to Beijing to protest the Chinese government's treatment of members of the Falun Gong movement. After 10 months in jail, Zhang said he was released when he signed a document agreeing not to practice Falun Gong. He said he feared for the safety of his family.

Zhang, who has suffered from heart problems, said Falun Gong has improved his health.

Cnudde said it improves your "mental and physical awareness."

Cheng-Yuan "Corey" Lee, assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Findlay and formerly of Taiwan, described Falun Gong as "spiritual," but not religious. But he said the Chinese government views it as "opposition."

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=302949