April 25, 2003 Friday Final Edition

By SUSAN MITCHELL

On Jan. 21, 2001 The Guelph Mercury published an article by staff reporter Joanne Shuttleworth of an Introduction to Falun Gong workshop I conducted at the Bookshelf Cafe. It was a great article titled "Falun Gong Practitioners Safe Here."

But on the other side of the world two days later, the unthinkable happened in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China: five people set themselves on fire (at least, CNN reporters on the scene said there were five. One week later, the Jiang regime's propaganda machine said there were seven). And the Jiang regime said they were Falun Gong practitioners, even though killing of any kind is strictly forbidden by the practice.

On Feb. 6, a couple of weeks later, Philip Pan of the Washington Post filed a comprehensive report for the world to see. He had traveled to the city of Kaifeng to interview neighbours of the only person who died on the Square that day. His article finished with the words, "No one ever saw them practice Falun Gong."

I've kept in touch with my friends in Guelph and I was sent a copy of the letter to the editor from Tao Liu. He said, "While in China, I heard two stories on the television news," and then he basically reiterated the Jiang regime's propaganda.

It is a perfect example of how one dictator has poisoned the minds of people around the world because of his paranoia about maintaining control.

Falun Gong cured my cancer and enabled me to return to full time office work after five years of sickness so I spend a great deal of my spare time writing, to mitigate Jiang's poison.

His regime initially used its propaganda machine to support Falun Gong, until a government survey concluded that the number of practitioners exceeded membership in the Communist Party. Then, in violation of the Chinese constitution, Jiang himself pushed through new legislation to persecute people who exercise their constitutional rights of belief, and freedom of peaceful assembly. Believe it or not, it is currently illegal in China to display the Chinese characters for truth, compassion and tolerance (Zhen, Shan, Ren).

But what Jiang never considered was that his victims who escaped from China would sue him for genocide and for the crimes against humanity he has inflicted on tens of millions of his citizens over the last four years.

Lawsuits have been filed in the U.S.A., France and Switzerland, and soon, an already formed coalition of human rights lawyers in many other countries will do the same. The lawsuits charge Jiang, and thousands of his police and authorities with crimes against humanity and genocide. The names were identified by victims who have endured torture, or relatives of those who were murdered. And the criminals will be brought to justice in international courts, just like former South American dictator Auguste Pinochet and the
former Yugoslavian leaders currently on trial at the International Court in The Hague. Soon, the people of China will again be free to live their lives according to the noble universal principles of truth, compassion and tolerance.

P.S. Tao Liu questioned the age of the practice. Originally called Falun Xulian Dafa (The Great Cultivation Way of the Law Wheel), it was handed down from a Master to only one disciple throughout the centuries. In his lecture in Guangzhou in 1992, Master Li Hongzhi said that he did not change the fifth exercise, but adapted the first four exercises a little, to make them more suitable for popularization and brought them out to help bring people to high spiritual levels. In that sense, one could say that it is a new practice, but its essence and its principles are ancient.

Susan Mitchell lives in Toronto.