10/03/2002

(Clearwisdom.net) Danielle Wang came to Dallas on Wednesday in hopes of saving her father.

Wang Zhiwen was sentenced to 16 years in prison for practicing Falun Gong in China.

"I have not heard from my father in three years," the 22-year-old University of Texas at Austin student said during a rally for the Falun Gong Family Rescue Campaign in Texas. "No one knows if he is dead or alive. I fear that he may have been tortured to death."

Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa as it is also called, is a form of qigong (pronounced gee-gong), an ancient practice of cultivating one's mind and body through exercise and meditation. In the Chinese language, qi means universal life or energy, and gong means exercise.

According to Sherry Zhang, a national spokeswoman for the rescue campaign, 70 million to 100 million people in China were practicing Falun Gong by 1998, and many Chinese leaders were applauding its health benefits.

"But Communist Party head Jiang Zemin grew fearful of such a large number of people doing something outside the boundaries of Communist ideology, and banned the practice in 1999," she said from her office in California.

"For the first 18 years of my life, I lived with my father in China," Ms. Wang said. "We practiced Falun Gong together until I moved to the United States in 1998 to live with my mother."

Ms. Wang said she got the shock of her life a year later, when she saw her father on a CNN broadcast about people in China being sent to prison for practicing Falun Gong. Ms. Wang said that her father appeared to have been badly beaten and that most of his teeth were missing -- a far cry from the robust man she left behind.

The Chinese government will not release official information about practitioners. But Jason Wang, who came from Houston for the rally, cited figures from the Falun Gong Information Center that list 487 people who died after being tortured and 1,600 incarcerated because of the practice. Mr. Wang, who is not related to Ms. Wang, said the center bases its figures on informal surveys, reports from family members and information from missing-persons reports.

Mr. Wang's 60-year-old mother was admitted to a mental hospital after voicing support for Falun Gong. She was being given daily injections that made her sick. Mr. Wang said a doctor told the family that she did not have any mental health problems but that she would have to stay until she agreed to denounce Falun Gong.

Ms. Zhang said the national campaign would culminate Oct. 25, when followers from coast to coast will gather in Crawford, Texas, for another rally.

Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and president of the People's Republic of China, is scheduled to visit President Bush that day, adding importance to the Texas campaign.

"We are hoping to get President Bush to bring up the subject with President Zemin in a public forum," Ms. Zhang said. "Then we want President Bush to intervene and secure the release from prison of those family members of U.S. residents."

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http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/columnists/ewu/stories/100302dnmetwucol.a711e.html