UK Independent: Inside the Falun Gong

23 February 2001

Is that car following us? After one aborted meeting, a series of coded e-mails and several phone calls, I don't want to abandon my journey. I change taxis, one of thousands washed by Beijing's winter slush, and my tail, if such it was, passes into the night. To avoid my office wiretap, I use phone boxes or handsets with freshly swapped SIM cards. I am meeting some "enemies of the state", and for them any slip-up could be fatal.

They are prime targets in a very uncivil war the Chinese government is waging against its own citizens. The two-year engagement has claimed more than 100 victims, and imprisoned thousands more. Their crime? Their refusal to renounce Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that is banned in China as an "[Chinese government's slanderous word]".

[...]

The rendezvous point is crowded with people, muffled up against the freezing cold. I am approached by a bundle of clothes. We drop the right passwords, and walk silently to a nearby restaurant. Braving the elements and the security forces, seven followers of Falun Gong have gathered there to explain their beliefs, unshaken despite fearful intimidation. In a private room, we unwrap our masks against the cold. Two of the group reveal heavy bruising on their faces. All share the hunted look of people who have endured time inside, and suffer many privations outside. Five are still on the run from the authorities. Sacked from their jobs, spurned by nervous friends and relatives, they survive on the spiritual sustenance of Falun Dafa, and the physical charity of fellow believers.

At least they have survived. Though they disown the people who attempted suicide, maintaining that no true follower would take a life, their own bitter experiences offer insight into the desperation, and depth of belief, that could ignite the ultimate protest. A 46 year-old woman shows off her wounds, thighs bruised black and blue, but she was lucky. "The policeman folded his belt in three, with the buckle on top, and hit my head and body. He gripped my neck and kicked my shins. Then he shouted, 'I'm going to kill you, and throw your body away like a dead dog! We'll make it look like a suicide.'"

Detained and beaten on four separate occasions, she is a veteran of the grim struggle between China's Communist Party leaders and the "[Chinese government's slanderous words]". Her latest skirmish came in early January. After protesting peacefully against the government ban, she was dragged from Tiananmen Square to a detention centre in south-west Beijing.

"After the police hit my head with a handgun, I went on hunger strike for seven days," she recalls. "They wouldn't let me sleep, and put me out in the yard, covered with snow. They threw water over me that turned to ice, but I refused to tell them my name." She had learned better than to reveal her identity and home address in a southern Chinese province. The last time she did so, she was quickly returned to a hostile reception at her local police station 45 days inside for "disturbing social order".

Defying almost two years of suppression, the Falun Gong challenge remains the most sustained affront to the Communist Party in its 51-year rule. Adherents stress apolitical motives, but their frequent forays into China's political heartland reinforce government paranoia that the movement is a "reactionary force", bent on sabotaging socialist China in league with various "foreign enemies".

"We have done nothing wrong," says the vet. "Justice is on our side. We only want the right to practise Falun Gong. The ban breaks China's constitution and international human rights covenants. I don't oppose the government, but I will protect Falun Dafa with my life."

Armed only with their faith, Falun Gong protesters have become a tourist attraction, playing almost daily on the vast plaza in central Beijing, with gala shows on public holidays or anniversaries of the official campaign against the movement. Evading police cordons, disciples of the founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, flock to Tiananmen.

Their journeys may have taken days, but their protests will last only seconds. Once they assume the lotus position, or other poses from the group's pseudo-Buddhist exercise regime, the waiting policemen pounce. Some pull out banners proclaiming the cherished principles, "truth, compassion, forbearance", or scatter leaflets, before police beat them and drag them off. Tourists who can't resist a snap will find their film quickly removed.

There is no shortage of willing martyrs for the cause, and they are learning from bitter experience. On the vet's first protest trip to Beijing in September 1999, it was almost laughably easy for security forces to target these new arrivals, with their unfashionable clothes, and earnest belief that the government would reconsider its decision. Her mission was thwarted in a cheap hotel 10 minutes from the square. "A policeman asked me, 'Do you practise Falun Gong?' We disciples cannot lie, so I said 'yes' and was detained for 'breaking social order'. But I didn't even get to Tiananmen!"

Now she sleeps rough, or moves between safe houses with help from a network of believers, communicating through pagers and public phones to avoid detection.

Like others here, her next protest could label her a "hard-core element", earning time in a "reform through labor" camp. Police can send suspects to labor camps for up to three years without trial. "Ringleaders" get 18 years. Human rights organizations estimate that at least 10,000 Falun Gong members are detained in Chinese labor camps and "transformation" or detention centres.

There is good reason to fear deportation. If their treatment in Beijing is horrific, away from the capital anything goes. "The central government has told local officials 'however you stop them coming to Beijing, nothing is too excessive','' claims a 27-year-old practitioner. "Local officials can lose their jobs or promotions if too many people from their area come, so they try and destroy us."

Human rights organizations have documented more than 100 deaths in custody of Falun Gong believers. The UN has criticized China for specific cases of torture, such as the beating to death of Chen Zixiu, a 58-year-old grandmother, in Weifang, east China. Beijing rejects these "false accusations", and maintains that all deaths in custody have been either natural or suicides. Instead, the government points to [Chinese government's slanderous words].

"The Master's books do not prohibit taking medicine," retorts one of the group, a former policeman from south-west China. "But we don't need it! We cultivate ourselves, do good deeds for other people, and we don't get sick. We save China so much money on medical bills!"

The communists denounce the sect's claims as "anti-science", the kind of feudalistic thinking the 1949 revolution tried to eradicate. For 30 years, the party inspired an often blind faith in Maoism, but the last two decades of cut-throat capitalist reforms have left gaping ideological holes.

"China is changing so quickly," says one follower, formerly a student at the Qinghua University in Beijing. "People used to help each other, but now they compete all the time. They do everything for themselves, and harm others. I lost hope in society." A friend lent him one of Li Hongzhi's tracts and within two days, he was hooked. "Every morning, three to four hundred students and professors practiced Falun Going at nine separate sites on campus. Nobody bothered us."

Until, that is, 10,000 Falun Gong protesters surrounded the Chinese leadership's compound in April 1999. It was the largest demonstration since the Beijing Spring a decade earlier. Angered at a series of critical magazine articles, Falun Gong members demanded retractions and legal recognition. The peaceful protest revealed breathtaking audacity, networking, and miscalculation.

President Jiang Zemin is well aware of the disruptive role that popular movements, and their charismatic leaders, have played in Chinese history. Last week, the Communist Party vowed to "fight the war to the end" against die-hard elements of Falun Gong.

Many followers still cannot comprehend the government's reaction. "Falun Gong teaches you to eliminate bad thoughts and think only of others," says a 24-year-old Qinghua University graduate. "We are good citizens in society, good workers in our jobs and good family people at home."

The government disagrees, especially on the latter claim. Official pressure to renounce the "[Chinese government's slanderous word]" has forced many followers into painful tests [...]. One 36-year-old woman tells of her regret that she has not seen her 10-year-old daughter for 18 months, since her husband asked her to choose between Falun Gong and a "normal" family life. He quickly won a divorce. The former policeman from south-west China admits that he left his fiancée behind, as well as his job, to fight to clear his Master's name.

None of the believers would reveal whether protests are planned to disrupt the International Olympic Committee inspection taking place this week.

The worsening war of attrition between the government and Falun Gong followers may jeopardize Beijing's dreams of hosting the 2008 Olympics. "We are not political," says the Qinghua graduate. "But if China cannot solve the human rights problem, it cannot solve any of its problems."

The waitresses are growing suspicious. They check on our progress, to find that we have barely touched a dish in three hours. I leave first, slipping down a side-street. Some of my guests will soon hit the frontline again. Others will co-ordinate the networks of support that keep this dissident movement alive. They promise to keep protesting until the Chinese government relents, or their bodies succumb to torture. It is hardly a fair contest.