October 10, 2000

(U-WIRE) COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A student organization at Ohio State University is asking the Chinese government to lift its ban on Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned in China since July of 1999.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was developed in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. The practice has three principles: truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance. These are combined with meditation and special exercises. The principles are applied to daily life and improve moral values.

According to the Falun Dafa Web site, Chinese officials were alarmed by the speed at which more than 10,000 practitioners were able to gather in Beijing in April 1999. Three months later, hundreds of practitioners were arrested and Falun Gong was declared illegal.

Falun Gong has 100 million members in 40 countries, said Yan Sun, a graduate student in consumer and textile science.

The number of deaths related to Falun Gong practice is unknown, and 56 people are reported to be in jail or on house arrest.

"We cannot sit and watch all of these tragedies continue," Sun said.

Sun said the Chinese government, through its consulates in the United States, has spread lies about Falun Gong to isolate the practitioners from the public. On its Web site, the Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China in New York calls Falun Gong a [ ]. Sun, who has been practicing Falun Gong with his wife for one and a half years, said the Chinese government is also trying to gather information on practitioners in the United States and use the information to harass them.

Wenjing Ma, a graduate student in electrical engineering, also practices with her husband. Ma said that she and her husband receive thousands of e-mails from China each day in an attempt to keep them from communicating electronically. The e-mails contained random combinations of letters and symbols, and some were blank. They were being sent automatically at the rate of several per minute, Ma said.

Letters and photographs sent to family members in China by her husband have been opened, Ma said. Her mother has also been harassed at the hospital where she works.

"An officer of the security department wanted to talk to her because of me," Ma said. Only after the intervention of a hospital official was she left alone.

"My mother is frightened," Ma said.

The Falun Gong practitioners in the United States are calling for a peaceful dialogue with the Chinese government in regards to the persecution, Sun said. The United States government has given them support concerning the persecution, he said. In the meantime, the practitioners have exhausted much of their financial resources trying to communicate with people about their practice, Sun said.

"We hope that our voice could be heard by the people of the state of Ohio," Sun said.

(C) 2000 The Lantern via U-WIRE