Falun Gong has been making international headlines as the peaceful teaching that is being persecuted in China. But why would a teaching geared to raising moral quality warrant Chinese president Jiang Zemin's rule of law that states: "No means are too excessive to exterminate Falun Gong." What is it about Falun Gong that frightens the Chinese regime so much? Why after 7 years of praise and support did the Chinese government's favour changefrom embracing Falun Gong, awarding its founder the Frontier Science Award and Qigong Master Most Acclaimed By the Masses and praising Falun Gong for saving "100 billion yuan" in annual medical expenses (US News and World Report February 1999), to the current brutal persecution and smear campaign?

This week in Stockholm Falun Gong practitioners addressed the Swedish Parliament.

"They've never understood Falun Gong practices. There are no political messages, just spiritual exercises," said Jimmy Zou, a Chinese-born American who spent six days in a Beijing jail last year for performing Falun Gong exercises. "The government sees so many people thinking differently than the Communist Party, and they are scared that too many people will have a different ideology."

So does Falun Gong warrant the brutal crackdown that the Chinese Government says it deserves? Does it warrant the brutal torture and killing of over 170 normal everyday people like Chen Zixiu, a 58-year-old grandmother who was beaten to death in police custody for practicing Falun Gong, or Zhao Xin, a 33-year-old university lecturer who had her spine broken in police custody and later died from her injuries? Does it warrant the estimated 50 thousand practitioners jailed across China, as documented by Amnesty International? Or is this just another attempt to cover up a big mistake?

Last week we all heard the tragic death of nearly 40 school children in Fanglin, China, where they had been forced to make fireworks to fund their teacher's reduced wages. However, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji went on Chinese national television to say that a mad man had set off a suicide bomb, killing the children as well as himself.

In this era of high speed communication and true investigative reporting it seems that the Chinese Government can no longer hide it's deadly manipulation and human rights abuses behind it's own borders.

The faces of these innocent practitioners and the atrocities they suffer in China have started to touch Torontonians. Steve Ang, a local Chinese community leader, founded Friends of Falun Gong, an organization of supporters for Falun Gong. At a press conference during the IOC's visit in Toronto, Janet Futerman, a Jewish teacher of Law and English, spoke on behalf of Friends of Falun Gong. She recalled how in 1936 countries downplayed the repression of Jews in Germany and participated in the summer Games which glorified Hitler's Nazi regime.

Futerman stated: "We must not allow Jiang Zemin to rape the spirit of the Olympic Games as Hitler did in 1936. We must not allow Jiang Zemin to paint over his crimes as he painted the grass green in Tiananmen Square. We must not allow the deadly lessons of 1936 to repeat themselves."

The UN Declaration on Human Rights affirmed fifty-two years ago that "basic human rights are not cultural, but universal; what a country does to people within its own borders is not its business alone, but the business of all of us."

Will we learn from our past mistakes of silence in the face of persecution? Only time will tell.