UPI Chief Economics Correspondent
From the Business & Economics Desk
Published 10/27/2002 3:54 PM
LOS CABOS, BAJA CALIFORNIA, Mexico, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- It was terrorists most of
all and perhaps anti-globalization protesters who were feared.
The world's most powerful man, U.S. President George W. Bush, and the leaders of
China and Japan and numerous other countries are present: huge and attractive
targets to some.
But it would seem the only protesters in this unlikely spot for an international
conference, the sun-baked peninsula of sea-surrounded desert that is Baja
California, are the Falun Gong, practitioners of meditative exercises who have
become victims of repression in China.
They are there, at the roadside in the pitiless sun, standing in a line holding
a banner that says "Stop Repression of Falun Gong."
And they were there, too, in the van that took me from the airport, in the
surprising form of a Swedish family: Mr. and Mrs. Nordstrand traveling with a
baby of four months and a daughter of four years.
"Our protests are peaceful," Mrs. Nordstrand tells me, "People are tortured to
death in China. We want to find a peaceful solution." What she says is
documented.
According to Amnesty International, "many (Falun Gong) followers have been
tortured. Some have been detained in psychiatric hospitals and forced to take
drugs and at least 10 people have died in police custody in suspicious
circumstances."
What is it that provokes the government's hostility?
Nordstrand says that the three principles of the Falun Gong are truthfulness,
compassion and forbearance. The movement [...] is recent, formed only 10 years
ago by a master, Li Hongzhi. It claims to be neither political nor religious,
merely a "practice for improving mind, body and spirit."
Nordstrand says that the founder, now living [...] in New York, brought to
millions an art that had been known previously only to a few masters. The group,
she says, now has 70 million practitioners in China.
The Falun Gong movement was banned in China in July 1999. The Chinese government
is thought to have been become nervous and hostile after the Falun Gong
mobilized about 10,000 followers for a protest in front of the leadership
compound in Beijing in April 1999.
The government accuses the Falun Gong of "organizing illegal gatherings" and
"leaking state secrets."
Nordstrand blames Jiang Zemin above all for the crackdown.
"He is a dictator and he thinks everyone wants the same thing: power," she says.
When Jiang went to Iceland this year, Nordstrand tells me, the government there
prevented Falun Gong followers from entering the country, to prevent
demonstrations against the Chinese leader.
"The Icelandic people were shocked," Nordstrand says, "Jiang is a dictator who
makes demands on democratic governments."
What led the Nordstrands to become practitioners of Falun Gong?
"I became ill 10 years ago with rheumatoid arthritis," says the tanned and
attractive Nordstrand. "Four years ago I began to practice Falun Gong and I have
got better."
Also on the van heading from the airport to the hotels is a Chinese couple
living in Canada.
Mr. Wenzhen, 40, has a doctorate he earned in Germany and works as a computer
scientist. He and his wife are also Falun Gong practitioners, originally from
Shenzhen.
"Now we are on a blacklist," Mr. Wenzhen tells me. "We do not dare to go back to
China on holiday."
[...]
At the APEC summit dinner on Saturday night, a summit that has been dominated
by the question of how to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and how to combat Islamic
extremism, Jiang sits at the right hand of the summit's host, Mexican President
Vicente Fox.
These are good times for China's government. Its voice has been heard. The
voices of its victims have not.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021027-031411-5289r
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media