Times-Picayune (New Orleans, La.): Peaceful Protest -- Protesters decry mistreatment

Tuesday August 19, 2003

By Joan Treadway
Staff writer

In the middle of a demonstration Monday in front of City Hall, Sunny Sun laid down a small mat, neatly folded her legs under her and proceeded to meditate.

For this simple practice, fellow demonstrators said, she could be arrested in China.

Not because of the demonstration, but because she was practicing Falun Gong, a system of moral instruction and exercise that combines Eastern philosophy with meditation, yoga and stretching to promote physical and mental health.

The practice is outlawed in China. [...]The group demonstrating Monday at City Hall was trying to draw attention to the persecution that they say many practitioners of Falun Gong face, including imprisonment, torture and death.

The group, and another demonstrating in California, are trying to bring attention specifically to the case of Dr. Charles Lee, a Menlo Park, Calif., physician and U.S. citizen of Chinese heritage who went to China this year and was arrested because the government said he was trying to sabotage state-owned broadcast facilities. He is still imprisoned.

The group said Lee was just trying to "tap into the television in China" to inform its citizens about the wrongs being done to Falun Gong practitioners.

Sun, 69, a retired electrical engineer from Beijing, said relatives have told her she too would be arrested if she returned because she was an active part of the movement. She has been in Houston four years, spending most of her time with her children and grandchildren who have migrated to the United States.

Other demonstrators had personal stories to tell as well.

In 2000, Jason Wang, 39, of Houston, left his studies in the United States and returned to his native China to help his mother who had been put in a mental hospital in Nanjing.

At the hospital, he said a doctor told him and other family members that she didn't have any psychiatric problems but that police had pressured the staff to take her because she practiced Falun Gong.

He and his relatives pressed for her release and finally obtained it, but only after she had been institutionalized four months, during which she was given daily shots that impaired her ability to talk and walk, he said.

Both Wang and Sun said they have received many health benefits from practicing Falun Gong.

Wang said his eyes, which were easily tired after all his studies, have improved and the stress he once felt has dissipated.

Sun said that it has helped her bad back and legs and lowered her high blood pressure[..]

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