The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA): A spiritual stand - SSU student detained in China with other Falun Gong supporters

November 28, 2001

As most Sonoma State University students prepared for turkey and stuffing last week, Brad Carson was being shoved into a police van in Tiananmen Square.

Carson, 20, a theater/psychology major, was among 35 international protesters grabbed by Chinese police seconds into a quiet demonstration over the country's persecution of practitioners of the spiritual movement Falun Gong.

The brief Falun Gong protest was the first in Tiananmen Square mounted entirely by Westerners. Though Chinese defenders of Falun Gong have been killed, imprisoned or locked away in psychiatric hospitals since the movement was banned in China in mid-1999, officials in Beijing reacted to Carson and the other foreigners by detaining them for about 30 hours and then ejecting them from the country.

Carson said he was not hurt during the detention and subsequent interrogations, but he said the Chinese police struck, manhandled and injured some of the others in the group.

[...]

Carson, who practices Falun Gong and conducts workshops on the spiritual exercise in Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa, said he made his point during the few seconds between the moment he sat in a lotus position on the vast square and the moment plainclothes police muscled him into a van.

"I went over there to stand up for the truth," said the soft-spoken student, who taught and practiced the meditative martial art tai chi before learning about Falun Gong 18 months ago.

He said he went to China not to make trouble or play politics, but to demonstrate that Falun Gong is a positive practice that in no way warrants the Chinese government's attempts to crush it and to oppress its practitioners.

He and other followers claim that Chinese authorities have killed more than 300 people in its campaign against Falun Gong, and his only recourse "is to just keep telling the truth about what's happening in China."

[...]

He said the idea for a peaceful, pro-Falun Gong demonstration in Beijing grew from an international conference of practitioners in July in Washington, D.C.

Some Germans were the first to book flights, Carson said. He said a loose network formed among practitioners in several countries -- among them, the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Israel, Switzerland, Sweden, Britain and France.

Carson said they agreed to meet at 2 p.m. last Tuesday in Tiananmen Square, sit and meditate.

He said thousands of people were visiting the Tiananmen Square area when, at the appointed time, the 35 foreigners gathered near a flagpole. Most sat cross-legged, he said, and four held up a banner that read, "Truth, Compassion and Tolerance," the central values embraced by Falun Gong.

Carson said the Westerners had been watched by Chinese police, who immediately encircled them in seven or eight vans. He said some of the others were beaten before being shoved into the vans.

Carson said he knew he might be placing himself in danger by traveling to China to take a stand for spiritual freedom, but he hoped he would be OK and would make his point.

He said he has no plans to return to China, at least not until the country eases up on Falun Gong.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/local/news/28china.html