National Post

Saturday, March 20, 2004

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Since Falun Gong was outlawed in 1999 by Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president, China has waged against its practitioners a determined campaign that the U.S. Congress says is "carried out by government officials and police at all levels, and has permeated every segment of [Chinese] society." Falun Gong is targeted not only in China, it is also the subject of a propaganda campaign in Canada, one that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned Ottawa about years ago. It is waged by China's diplomatic and consular officials, who rely on help from some quarters of the Canadian Chinese media, which serve roughly one million ethnically Chinese Canadians.

A week had hardly passed after Sept. 11, 2001, when Canada's Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily, owned in part by TorStar, which publishes the Toronto Star, printed an inflammatory article entitled "Radical Religions Advocate Destroying the World," which parroted Beijing's equating of Falun Gong with the Branch Davidians, the American group that David Koresh indoctrinated in Waco, Tex., until his clash with police in February, 1993, led to the death of 86 people, 17 of whom were children. Les Presses Chinoises in Quebec published a series of articles between November, 2001, and February, 2002, saying Falun Gong was "an evil" cult and an "enemy to the state" and continued to print such articles after a Quebec court ordered the paper to stop.

In August, 2002, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found that a Vancouver-based, Chinese-language television station, Talentvision, had violated four articles of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Code of Ethics as well as journalistic ethics by rebroadcasting anti-Falun Gong propaganda produced by Beijing's state-controlled media.

In a more recent example of this campaign, Pan Xinchun, China's consul in Toronto, was found by an Ontario court to have libeled Joel Chipkar, a Canadian Falun Gong practitioner, in a letter to the Toronto Star. Pan's letter said Chipkar was the member of a "sinister cult" seeking to "instigate hate."

Keith Landy, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, believes if "Jew" were substituted for Falun Gong in the letter Pan wrote to the Star "you would have an uproar in the community."

That the hypersensitive, politically correct to a fault Toronto Star published Pan's letter indicates how little is understood about the Chinese government's aggressive campaign against Canadians who practice Falun Gong and our government's indifference to China's hate-mongering in Canada.

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Ownby (who is not a member of Falun Gong) [David Ownby is a professor of Chinese history at the University of Montreal and the author of a forthcoming book on Falun Gong] believes that while some of their beliefs are eccentric, the group does not exhibit any of the classic tendencies of what, for a lack of a better word, are often described as "cults." Li urges his followers to remain in the world, not to isolate themselves. He and his followers do not believe in any utopia. Adherents of Falun Gong are not asked to give money to Li, and he does not intervene in their personal lives. In fact, Ownby thinks the moral grounding of Li's teachings is likely to make Falun Gong practitioners "more responsible citizens."

That is not what the Chinese government wants Canadians to think about their fellow citizens who practice Falun Gong or about the thousands now in labor camps in China and others who have died in the custody of Chinese police after being arrested for practicing Falun Gong.

Mei Ping, China's ambassador to Canada, made that plain a few years ago when we met. Mei came to the National Post to extol the virtues of Communist China and the evils of Falun Gong, leaving behind a book that purported to show how Falun Gong had driven people to suicide, murder and madness, a claim without foundation and one that no other government has ever made about its own citizens who have taken up Li's teachings.

China's diplomats also spend much of their time trying to persuade Canadian politicians to discriminate against Falun Gong under the threat that failing to do so could jeopardize Canada-China trade relations.

Writing in March, 2003, to Jim Peterson, a Liberal MP and now a member of Paul Martin's Cabinet, Chu Guangyou, China's charge d'affaires in Canada, warned that China has "advised the Canadian government of the sensitivity of the issue [of Falun Gong] in the overall bilateral relations. I hope you and your government will understand our position and be vigilant against any attempt of Falun Gong to jeopardize our bilateral relations." With the letter came the now standard package of anti-Falun Gong propaganda.

Such pressure reaches beyond federal government officials. Countless similar letters have been sent to provincial politicians as well as city councilors and mayors across Canada.

Toronto city council has experienced this first-hand. Councilor Michael Walker recently introduced a motion to have a Falun Gong day and a resolution calling on China to stop persecuting Falun Gong, but other councilors have not been so strong-willed in the face of Chinese threats that if the motion is passed it "will have a very negative effect on our future beneficial exchanges and cooperation." Citing foreign trade, councilor Giorgio Mammoliti held up the motion and appears to want it buried in the process.

But in August, 2001, Andy Wells, Mayor of St. John's, Nfld., responded to a letter from Ambassador Mei attacking Falun Gong saying: "Your persecution of this innocent group exemplifies your government's moral and ethical bankruptcy."

Within Canada's Chinese community, the Falun Gong is often shunned and those who do business with the Chinese government are warned off employing Canadians who practice Falun Gong.

An Ontario Human Rights Commission case has arisen from this conflict. Andie Shih was a member of the board of the Chamber of Chinese Herbal Medicine of Canada, starting in 1988. According to Shih's statements filed with the commission, a colleague on the board asked him two years ago not to attend a dinner that was welcoming a Chinese delegation because of his association with Falun Gong. When Shih refused, he was pressured to withdraw from the board. He alleges that he was eventually removed because of his Falun Gong practice.

In another complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Cathy Liu says she has suffered similarly at the hands of her former employer, Bond International College. Liu alleges that her peaceful protests in front of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, which she did on her own time, were not acceptable to the school because the consulate was an important client. Liu's case went to mediation; the school offered her money and an apology on the condition that it be kept confidential. She refused.

Ottawa has shown little resolve to stop the attempt by China to spread hate in Canada. Pan, who slandered a Canadian in the Toronto Star, is now pressuring the Canadian government to overturn the libel judgment. But why is Pan still in Canada, and why are China's other diplomats and consular officials still allowed to spread propaganda against Canadians? In February, 2003, Irwin Cotler was chairman of Canada's Human Rights Commission and described the persecution of Falun Gong in China as "the criminalization of innocence that finds expression in the intimidation, harassment, arrest, detention, coercive interrogation, torture, beatings and imprisonment for doing nothing more than espousing ancient Chinese values."

Today, Cotler is the Minister of Justice and Falun Gong is being persecuted in his own backyard.

Source: http://www.canada.com/search/story.html?id=c195d888-af7c-441b-b735-1c14067582a3

Notes From Clearwisdom:

We commend the author for helping to expose the worldwide persecution of practitioners and supporters of Falun Gong. This article details how pervasive persecution has reached Canada.

We chose not to reprint a section of the article that we did not feel was appropriate for this website. Here, we would like to clarify a few aspects mentioned in those passages:

Falun Gong's founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, enduring great hardships, traveled throughout China lecturing about Falun Dafa from 1992 through 1994. Through word of mouth, the practice quickly spread to tens of millions throughout China. Beginning in 1996, he traveled the world to spread the Falun Dafa. It was also in that year he first came to the United States. By the time Jiang Zemin launched the brutal persecution of Falun Dafa in July 1999, Mr. Li was a permanent resident of the U.S.

Worldwide, all Falun Dafa activities and instruction are free of charge. Teacher Li's lectures, books and exercise instructions are available for free download at: www.falundafa.org