Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2001

BEIJING (UPI) - Is that car following us? Excuse the paranoia, but in mainland China it is often justified. After one aborted meeting, a series of coded e-mails and several furtive phone calls, a simple tail will not foil my plans. I change taxis, one of thousands washed by Beijing's winter slush, and my tail, if such it was, passes into the night.

My heart is racing ahead of the secret rendezvous. To avoid my office wiretap, I call only from obscure phone boxes, or on handsets with freshly swapped SIM cards. It feels part 007, part "Mission Impossible." But this is no game. I am meeting some enemies of the state, and for them any slip could mean life or death.

They are prime targets in a very uncivil war the Chinese government is waging against its own citizens. The two-year engagement has claimed more than 100 victims and imprisoned thousands more. Their crime? Refusal to renounce Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned in China []

The rendezvous point is crowded with people, heavily bundled up against freezing temperatures. I am approached by a "bundle of clothes." We drop the right passwords into a brief exchange, and depart silently on foot for a nearby restaurant. Braving the elements and the security forces, seven followers of Falun Gong have gathered there to explain their beliefs, unshaken despite fearful intimidation.

In a private room, we unwrap our masks against the cold. Two members of the group reveal heavy bruising on their faces. All share the hunted look of people who have endured time in jail, and suffer many privations outside. Five are still on the run from the authorities. Sacked from their jobs, spurned by nervous friends and relatives, they survive on the spiritual sustenance of Falun Dafa and the physical charity of fellow believers.

At least they HAVE survived. A 46-year-old woman shows off her war wounds, thighs bruised black and blue, but she knows she was lucky.

"The policeman folded his belt in three, with the buckle on top, and hit my head and body," she says.

'We'll Make It Look Like a Suicide'

"He gripped my neck and kicked my shins. Then he shouted: 'I'm going to kill you, and throw your body away like a dead dog! We'll make it look like a suicide.'"

Detained and beaten on four occasions, she is a veteran of the grim struggle between China's Communist Party leaders and the [] they fear has infected millions of Chinese.

Her latest skirmish came in early January. After protesting peacefully against the government ban, she was dragged from Tiananmen Square to a detention center in Shijingshan, in southwestern Beijing.

"After police hit my head with a handgun, I went on hunger strike for seven days," she recalls. "They wouldn't let me sleep, and put me out in the yard, covered with snow. They threw water over me that turned to ice, but I refused to tell them my name."

She had learned better than to reveal her identity and home address in a southern Chinese province. The last time she did so, this woman was quickly returned to a hostile reception at her local police station - 45 days inside for "disturbing the social order."

Biggest Challenge to Communist Party

Defying almost two years of government suppression, the Falun Gong challenge remains the most sustained challenge to the Communist Party during its 51-year rule. Adherents stress apolitical motives, but their frequent forays into China's political heartland reinforce government paranoia that the movement is a "reactionary force" bent on sabotaging communist China.

Armed only with their faith, Falun Gong protesters have become a bizarre tourist attraction, playing almost daily on the vast plaza in central Beijing, with gala shows on public holidays or anniversaries of the official campaign against the movement. Evading police cordons that stretch back to their home provinces, disciples of Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi flock to Beijing's Tiananmen Square by bus, train, bicycle or foot.

Their journeys may have taken days, but their protests will last only seconds. Once they assume the lotus position, or other poses from the group's pseudo-Buddhist exercise regimen, the waiting policemen pounce.

Some demonstrators pull out banners proclaiming cherished principles - truth, compassion, or forbearance - or scatter leaflets to the same effect, before police beat them and drag them off by their hair. Tourists who can't resist taking a picture will find their film quickly removed from their camera.

There is no shortage of willing martyrs for the cause, and they are learning from bitter experience. On one woman's first protest trip to Beijing in September 1999, it was almost laughably easy for security forces to target these new arrivals, with their unfashionable clothes and earnest belief the government would reconsider its opposition. Her mission was thwarted in a cheap hotel just 10 minutes from the square.

She said: "A policeman asked, 'Do you practice Falun Gong?' We disciples cannot lie, so I said, 'Yes,' and was detained for 'breaking social order.' But I didn't even get to Tiananmen."

Last week, she escaped her tormentors in Shijingshan, when police grew exasperated at her lack of cooperation. She was transferred to another district, where she says officers took pity and released her. Now, she sleeps with difficulty and moves between safe houses with help from a network of believers, communicating through pagers and public phones to avoid detection.

Like others seated around the table, her next protest could label her a "hard-core element," earning her time in a "reform through labor" camp. Police are entitled to send suspects to such camps for up to three years without trial. "Ringleaders" get 18 years.

Human rights organizations estimate that at least 10,000 Falun Gong members are still detained nationwide in labor camps, detention centers or other penal facilities. Reports suggest overcrowding in Beijing's holding cells, as police are unable to discover where to return their detainees.

No Action Is Excessive

There is good reason to fear deportation. If their treatment in Beijing is horrific, away from the capital anything goes. The central government has told local officials that no action is excessive if it stops them from coming to Beijing. Local officials can lose their jobs or promotions if too many people from their area come to the capital.

Human rights organizations have documented more than 100 deaths in custody of Falun Gong believers in recent years. The United Nations has criticized China for specific cases of torture, like the beating to death of Chen Zixiu, a 58-year-old grandmother, in Weifang in east China. Beijing rejects these "false accusations" and maintains all deaths in custody have been either natural or suicides.

Instead, the Chinese regime points to more than 1,500 deaths it blames on Li Hongzhi's mystical concepts such as advocating meditation over medicine.

Li's "books do not prohibit taking medicine," says a member of tonight's group, a former policeman from southwest China. "But, we simply don't need it! We cultivate ourselves, do good deeds for other people, and we don't get sick. We save China so much money on medical bills."

The slow-motion moves and breathing exercises of Qigong have been a Chinese staple for centuries. The perceived health benefits of Falun Gong, an eclectic blend of Qigong, Buddhism and Taoism, partly explain the group's popular surge in the mid-1990s, particularly among elderly supporters.

The Communist Party denounces the [group]'s claims as "anti-science," the same kind of feudalistic thinking the 1949 revolution was designed to eradicate. For 30 years, the party inspired an often blind faith in Maoism, but the last two decades of cutthroat capitalist reforms have left gaping ideological holes.

China is changing so quickly, explains another follower, formerly a student at elite Qinghua University in Beijing. He said: "People used to help each other, but now they compete all the time. They do everything for themselves and harm others. I lost hope in society."

A friend lent him one of Li Hongzhi's tracts in 1997. Within two days, he was hooked. "Every morning, 300 to 400 students and professors practiced Falun Going at nine separate sites on campus. Nobody bothered us," he said.

Until some 10,000 Falun Gong protestors surrounded the Chinese leadership's compound in April 1999. Angered at critical magazine articles, members of Falun Gong were lobbying for retractions and for legal recognition of their movement. The peaceful protest showed breathtaking audacity and organization. It was the largest demonstration since the Beijing Spring a decade earlier.

And it would provoke a similar response. For seven years the government had preferred to ignore the rise of Falun Gong. But it could not condone such insolence at the gates of power. The result was a crackdown that continues to this day.

President Jiang Zemin is well aware of the disruptive role popular movements, and their charismatic leaders, have played throughout Chinese history. Last week, the government stepped up its purge of die-hard elements with a mass campaign to collect 1 million signatures denouncing the group.

The petition drive began in universities like Qinghua, alma mater to two of the followers before me. One of them, a 24-year-old graduate whose beliefs condemn him to piecemeal employment, still cannot comprehend the government's reaction. Falun Gong teaches you to eliminate bad thoughts and think only of others, he says.

The government disagrees, especially on the latter claim. Official pressure to renounce [] has forced many followers to make painful decisions. One 36-year-old woman tells of her regret she has not seen her 10-year-old daughter for 18 months, since her husband asked her to choose between Falun Gong and a "normal" family life. He quickly won a divorce.

None of the believers I interviewed would reveal whether protests are planned to disrupt the International Olympic Committee inspection starting Feb. 20. Beijing's brutal response to the civil disobedience of the Falun Gong might jeopardize its dreams of hosting the 2008 Olympics.

Written by UPI's Calum MacLeod.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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