Het Parool (Dutch Newspaper): 85 year-old grandmother sent to jail for practicing Falun Gong

September 30, 2002

(Clearwisdom.net) Amsterdam -- Practitioners say it is not an organisation or political movement. Neither is it a religion. It's free and it makes you feel better. What practitioners of Falun Gong stand for are three fundamental values: truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. What can be wrong about that? asks Wang Xianghe to herself at the Dam, where a demonstration was being held last Sunday. "We want to become good people. Happier and more healthy."

Adherents of Falun Gong in China are persecuted. The regime sees Falun Gong as a threat, even if it's only because there are more practitioners than the fifty million Chinese communist party members. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the Dutch government too, condemn the imprisonment and persecution of the practitioners.

The brother of Wang Xianghe is being held in a Chinese prison as well. "He was being hung by his thumbs the whole night long in a temperature of minus 3^o Celcius. My 85 year old mother was arrested when she visited China because she did her practice there. More than 300,000 practitioners are in prison, 7,000 have been killed [Note: To date, 487 are confirmed dead, but the actual number is believed to be much higher]."

Last week 15 adherents of the persecuted spiritual movement in the Northern Chinese city of Changchun were sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison, the official Chinese press agency reported. The convicted people were charged with tapping into the Chinese cable network last March, which caused programs to be seen in two cities in which a stance was taken against the ban of the movement and wherein the policy of the regime was criticized.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a combination of physical exercises and meditation. Besides physical fitness -- to be achieved through 5 simple exercises-- Falun Gong has the goal of attaining wisdom and enlightenment.

Falun Gong has become immensely popular since its introduction in 1992 by Master Li Hongzhi. But in the summer of 1999 it was banned, though among the leadership there were also many practitioners. Books were burned, exercises disrupted.

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Doing Falun Gong every day for one and a half hours makes one a completely different person. "Some people want to jog or ride a bike. We do Falun Gong." Xianghe has been living in Holland for 16 years. Her brother told her about Falun Gong. "I had problems in my heart and stomach. Now I haven't needed any medicine for over 5 years." Her sister adds, "I had asthma, and could hardly get off the couch. Now I feel good."

Holland already has hundreds of practitioners, says Xianghe who gives lessons-free, because all [Falun Gong] activities are free. "It's about health and compassion."