The Record (Troy, New York): Tale of Oppression, Persecution

The Record

Monday, December 23, 2002

A 34-year-old Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student from China is at the height of academic success doing post-doctoral work in branches of science that most people have never heard of, but behind all of her success, there is a disturbing story.

Xueyuan Wu, a petite Chinese woman whose childlike features and sanguine way conceal the wealth of information and insights, some of them grave, that lie within her, will tell you matter-of-factly about persecution in her homeland.

She'll tell you that between 1992 and 1999 close to 100 million people in China began practicing a cultivation exercise called Falun Dafa or falun gong, which its followers claim has the power to heal everything from heart trouble to insomnia.

Practitioners of Falun Dafa do five exercises or motions, which look similar to yoga or tai chi, but they also live by three principles: truth, compassion and forbearance, which add a more spiritual element,

Wu will also say that in 1999, just months after the government praised the practice for bettering the country's public health, China's president, Jiang Zemin grew wary of the practice, fearing that it would touch the souls of the Chinese deeper than the communist party, so he ordered all practitioners to cease. If they resisted, they would be sent to prison, mental hospitals or rehabilitation centers where they would be beaten, occasionally to death.

Then she'll tell you that her mother, Lingwen Zeng, a 67-year-old physics professor, is at a forced labor camp that is notorious for beating and torturing its prisoners. Her family is allowed to visit once a month, but when they do, discussion of the camp conditions is prohibited. The only indication of life inside the camp is Zeng's rapid weight loss which her family has begun to notice. Zeng was never given a trial.

"That followed no law, but that is China," Wu said. "It's the only way I can explain it."

Zeng was sentenced to the camp for two years in February, but at her age, even that short amount of time could prove perilous. Even if she can sustain her health for the length of the sentence, Zeng's freedom is uncertain. Before this sentence, Zeng served two shorter ones with no trials.

During one sentence Wu said she was held in a detention center in a cell originally made to hold 30, with 100 people, including children, elderly and pregnant women.

Wu said, in China, detention centers like that have been known to use electric prods and other instruments, including inmates incarcerated for violent crimes, to torture the Falun Dafa captives.

Amnesty International makes many of the same assertions and verifies some cases of torture as well.

Wu said each time her mother was arrested or transferred to a harsher detention center or camp, it was because she simply refused to stop practicing.

So why not forsake the practice in favor of freedom?

Wu, who also practices, said that the three principles of Falun Dafa run contrary to submitting to the government's desires.

However, Wu said the benefits of Falun Dafa are so great, true practitioners would never give it up.

Wu said soon after the ancient practice was made public in 1992, she went home to visit her parents and noticed something amazing about her mother. Zeng, who suffered with arthritis, was moving around the house briskly with no problems.

"I couldn't believe it, she always used to use hot water bottles for the pain, but this time, she climbed the stairs faster than I did," Wu said.

Her mother's blood pressure, which was also problematic, also lowered to a safe level after she began practicing Falun Dafa. Stories and experiences like these are what lead to the rapid spread of Falun Dafa not only through China, but around the world, where people in dozens of countries practice.

Yu Chen, a 32-year-old from China who has lived in Albany for six years, is the [contact person] for those wishing to practice Falun Dafa in the area, and she too began practicing after hearing about the changes it reportedly brought about for others.

Chen, who was working toward her master's degree in computer science when she first began Falun Dafa, said she saw some physical benefits from the practice, such as cured insomnia and athlete foot, but what she found more impressive were the mental and emotional changes that took place.

"The school work I was doing was very stressful, and after practicing, I found I could do the work well and the stress went away. I was very peaceful," she said. "My relationships with friends and relatives also became very harmonious, I became a much nicer person."

Testimony like this bounds forth from Falun Dafa practitioners, and if one questions its authenticity, perhaps the answer lies in the Zeng's and thousands of others' willingness to suffer.

People in free countries, including the United States, and groups like Amnesty International have condemned the oppression of Falun Dafa practitioners.

Compassion, an international journal of Falun Dafa, reported this year that more than 100,000 practitioners in China have been detained, 20,000 have been sentenced to forced labor camps without trial and 420 deaths have been verified.

The majority of those detained, sent to labor camps or killed are Chinese, but citizens from other countries including the United States have also met those fates while protesting or practicing in China.

Neither Chen nor Wu will travel to China to visit family, claiming that they would be detained as soon as they arrived.

While the U.S. government has condemned the persecution, Chen feels that there needs to be a more proactive campaign by other countries in order to stop the persecution. She said if the United States requested the release of the captives, China would at least release some of them.

"The Chinese government denies the persecution," Chen said. "They claim this is the best human rights period in Chinese history, which is a lie, if it is exposed, they will do something in response."

Chen said the best way to act out against the persecution is to write letters to congressmen urging them to pass legislation to request the release of captives or to contact representatives at the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C.

Locally, Chen and other Falun Dafa practitioners have written enough letters to earn the support of several politicians, including Senators Bob Prentis, Neil Breslin and U.S. Rep. Michael McNulty. The legislators have spoken at press conferences and co-signed letters to the president with the hope that their support will aid the end of the oppression.

Breslin agreed with Chen about contacting local and national political leaders to voice their concern on the issue but also said that publicizing the problem is another key step to making progress.

Breslin said that when Americans are aware of persecution, they act out and pressure the government not to do business with countries that are violating human rights. However, he also called on the American people to become more watchful of America's foreign dealings.

"People have to become more interested in countries that we do business with, China being the largest in the world," he said. "The persecution in China is crying out for a response and we have made some progress, but we have a long way to go."