Pittsburgh Post Gazette: They ride to protest persecutions in China (Photo)

Monday, May 17, 2004

By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Jessica Quach, of Silver Spring, Md., and other members of "Pedals of Peace" practice falun dafa outside of the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, Downtown, yesterday afternoon. Click photo for larger image.

Yale University freshman Hao Wang says the 700-mile bike ride that brought him to Pittsburgh yesterday is not the most difficult thing about his trek from Washington, D.C., to Chicago.

Jessica Quach, of Silver Spring, Md., and other members of "Pedals of Peace" practice falun dafa outside of the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, Downtown, yesterday afternoon.

"Harder is convincing people there are people being tortured in China for doing meditation," he said.

Hao was one of about 15 bicyclists, most of them teenagers, who gathered at Point State Park yesterday to bring this nation's attention to what Hao called "systematically ordered persecution and genocide" of practitioners of a meditative regimen called falun dafa.

The group left Washington Thursday on the anniversary of the day in 1992 when falun dafa went public. Some practitioners estimate that the ancient discipline has since been embraced by 100 million people in more than 60 countries. In its first public years, Li Hongzhi, its founder, taught it freely and was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 2001.

But in 1999, the numbers of practitioners in China had outnumbered members of the Communist Party. Police began seizing people who were standing in parks, moving their arms in slow, controlled motions. The Falun Dafa Information Center claims that almost 900 people have been confirmed killed, another 100,000 imprisoned.

Sheldon Lu, a dental student at the University of Pittsburgh, said the government has spread propaganda, saying falun dafa practitioners abuse their families and are prone to suicide. On the contrary, he said, falun dafa makes one feel happier.

The routine takes two hours, but many in the group said they break up the exercises, working them into gaps in their schedules.

Once passed from masters to students in an almost monastic way, falun dafa is related to yoga and tai chi but its adherents say work is also required of the mind.

"Its effectiveness lies as much in its moral principles," said Erik Meltzer, a Philadelphian who attends Emerson College in Boston.

He pointed at a falun dafa banner he had had helped tie in the park, and said: "These words, truthfulness, compassion and forebearance, have so much depth. There is inner meaning in each of them. It's not just about not lying or not being mean to people but being a true person, to be kind to the person who hurts you because that person must be hurting."

Meltzer emphasized that falun dafa is neither religious nor political.

"From everything I've heard, it's peaceful," said Lynne Sunderman, who teaches English as a Second Language at Pitt. She had stopped to inspect the posters, some of which depicted results of torture on bodies. "Why' Why would you outlaw something peaceful'"

Lu offered a guess: "Maybe they thought it was a threat to their power, that all these people find their own power" beyond the state's authority. "It's strange that one day you are a normal person practicing meditation and the next you are a state enemy."

Keith Ware, a manager of a gymnasium in Washington, D.C., organized the "Pedals of Peace" bike ride specifically to let people know that children are among the thousands of people who have been tortured. Ware has his own child, a 1-year-old who is riding in the cyclists' back-up van with his wife.

"My wife and I were on the Mall when someone handed me a brochure" on falun dafa several years ago, he said. "I looked at it and I knew I was going to do it. I'd been living with chronic leg problems for years, and after three months of diligent practice, I had two new legs."

Hao, the Yale student, was born in China and said a Chinese student's torture inspired him to get involved. That student had been released in part because of support from the Irish government, Hao said.

"He was a student at Trinity and professors were protesting in the streets of Dublin," he said. "I try to relate as much as possible and I still have friends in China."

For more information, visit the Web site www.faluninfo.net.

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04138/317504.stm