Le Temps: The Peaceful Quest of "Model Demonstrators"

Le Temps , Geneva, 22 March 2001

• Geneva: For three days Li Hongzhi's disciples have been denouncing the repression of which they believe themselves to be the victims in China on the Place des Nations

• Distancing themselves from the methods of the WTO militants, the demonstrators have followed the police guidelines to the letter ...

Sitting cross-legged on a bus stop bench on the Place des Nations, Yuan Feng closes her eyes and stretches her arms out on each side of her body. She is a young computer expert, a Harvard graduate, living and working in the United States. She has come to Geneva to demonstrate against the repression Falun Gong practitioners are experiencing in China. "It's genuinely a matter of human rights." Yuan Feng was born in the suburbs of Beijing but it was in America that she discovered Falun Gong and subsequently initiated her family in China. Today, she says, her mother is in a labour camp because she practised the qigong exercises advocated by Li Hongzhi, the founder of the method. "I've a lot of respect for the people here," she says, pointing at her companions doing their exercises in unison, sitting in the mud in the rain. "Some of them gave up their holidays to come."

Zhang Erping, the movement's New York spokesman, calculates that 1500 Falun Gong practitioners have travelled to Geneva for the opening of the session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and he lists the countries from which they come: Australia, Canada, United States, Germany, France, Taiwan, Sweden, United Kingdom and Switzerland of course. "Many of the American practitioners have managerial-level jobs in companies or universities. They are able to take time off and pay for the trip."

There were a thousand of them demonstrating on Monday morning in front of the UN buildings, about 200 on Tuesday and approximately 300 on Wednesday, according to the cantonal police. They are model demonstrators: "They have always followed our instructions," says Eric Grandjean, the police spokesman. "Peaceful action like this doesn't cause problems." André Hediger, administrative adviser to the City of Geneva sums up the three days of peaceful protest as "completely positive," despite the presence of a Chinese delegation who have come to unroll a huge petition against the "diabolical [Chinese government's slanderous word]" in front of the UN.

China brands Falun Gong as the repository of all possible vices and has been conducting a fierce fight against the movement ever since more than ten thousand practitioners assembled silently in front of Zhongnanhai, the Chinese seat of power in Beijing, on 25 April 1999. "Their amazing capacity to mobilise certainly frightened the Chinese authorities very much," notes Antoine Kernen, a contemporary China researcher at the University of Lausanne. In Geneva, too, the way the movement has set up its demonstrations has impressed the authorities. André Hediger admits he is surprised. "It's an organisation with international and worldwide ramifications which transmits information widely. We get an avalanche of Falun Gong faxes practically every day."

Too early to say

The capacity of mobilisation and of making powerful use of information -- these are also the characteristics of Falun Gong stressed by Ma tre Fran ois Béranger, an expert on sectarian excesses in the Department of Justice and the Police. "The general public has a lot of questions about what kind of a movement it is. What is certain is that the attitude of the practitioners in Switzerland is very level-headed, very calm. We also note the severity of the repression by the Chinese authorities. But as to whether or not it is a sectarian movement as the Chinese Government asserts, most observers consider that it is too early to say."

For Zhang Erping, there is nothing mysterious about the practitioners' capacity to mobilise. "We use the Internet to keep our members informed. They themselves decide about coming." Richard Legrand, a Frenchman from the Caribbean, who came to Geneva from Guadeloupe, confirms this: "Nobody told me to come from this date to that date. They didn't tell me how to manage either. I got on a plane for Paris, then a bus the Falun Gong people chartered to here. We shared the cost. We're staying at the Youth Hostel. I'm going back on Thursday." The trip is over for Richard Legrand, but other practitioners are going to meet up in Stockholm where there will be a major European Union Summit from Friday onwards. Falun Gong is one of the organisations which have applied to demonstrate on the fringe of the meeting.