Boston Globe: In show of solidarity, Falun Gong members head for D.C.

7/4/2001

Walking eight hours straight might make Mengyang Jian too tired to watch the fireworks tonight in Orange, Conn.

While her friends gobble up hamburgers in Boston, Jian and three other Falun Gong practitioners are in the middle of a march to Washington, D.C., to express solidarity with the spiritual group human rights activists say is persecuted in its native China.

Seven days into the 450-mile walk, Jian is finding she has little time to study the SAT book she tucked in her backpack. Usually, she gets to a hotel exhausted.

But Jian, 16, who left China with her family 12 years ago for Cambridge, sees the march and its purpose as an ideal chance to travel and learn simultaneously.

''People ask me what this has to do with me,'' Jian she said. ''But if we all mind our own business, then we will have people killed on our own front lawn.''

The four demonstrators will meet 100 others - including Falun Gong practitioners from New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco - in Washington on July 18. The Boston group set out June 25 and has covered about 140 miles. It plans to walk about 20 miles a day and is distributing pamphlets along the way to raise awareness about Falun Gong and its tribulations.

There are more than 2 million Falun Gong practitioners in China, according to government officials. Human rights groups say some 200 have been killed in police custody, and that others are regularly abused by plainclothes police officers.

Falun Gong advocates a mix of meditative exercises and moral precepts and has been banned in China as a [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted] since 1999. Founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992, the spiritual group was drawn into the international spotlight after 10,000 members marched on Beijing demanding official recognition. Officials later called the 1999 demonstration an attempt to overthrow the government.

Chinese officials are ''only trying to destroy something that is good for so many people,'' said Michael Tsang, a Falun Gong organizer who helped send off Jian and the other marchers last week. ''We cannot fight with violence, so this is our only means of action.''

Boston Common is a daily gathering place for some of the 200 local Falun Gong practitioners who exercise and study together. Most joined the group after immigrating to the United States from China.

Marcher Pen Li, 32, had never heard of Falun Gong when she moved from Shanxi Province 21/2 years ago with her husband, a graduate student at the University of Connecticut. In China, the group was not publicized and nobody talked about it, she said.

Even when she returns to China after her husband earns his degree, she said, she will continue to be a Falun Gong practitioner.

''I don't know anyone who could give this up anywhere,'' Li said. ''The Chinese government tries to scare us, but I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.''

As she spoke in Copley Square last week, about a dozen people completed their daily exercises to see the group off.

''There are people who are tortured to death and students expelled from school simply because they adhere to our principles,'' said marcher Hao Wang, 16, of Roslindale. ''I am here in a free country, and I know I have to do something to speak out.''

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