February 11, 2006 

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 10 --Every year, throngs of revelers and television viewers here marvel at the glittering floats and writhing dragons in the largest and oldest Chinese New Year Parade in the country, the finale to a two-week festival that celebrates the unity and ancestry of Asians.

But this year the parade, which begins at sundown Saturday and celebrates the Year of the Dog, has been marred by a public battle over the organizers' decision to exclude practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement outlawed in China, where the government calls it an [slanderous words omitted] and routinely arrests and detains followers. 

The dispute over the parade, which mirrors disagreements over the group's participation in parades in Los Angeles and elsewhere, has exposed a longstanding rift among the San Francisco Bay Area's Chinese-Americans, one that pits those friendly toward China against those who complain about its human rights record or are aligned with Taiwan. 

The discord this year has spread beyond the narrow streets of Chinatown into the gilded chambers of San Francisco City Hall, the courts and the advertising pages of newspapers in the area and, some say, has touched nerves in Beijing. 

"The geopolitics of China are changing along with its role in world trade," 

said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, a nonpartisan group here. "Those changes are resonating on the shores here and particularly in San Francisco's Chinatown, considered by Asian leaders to be the most important of their communities in America." 

[Practitioners] of Falun Gong, which claims several thousand followers here and millions in Asia, accuse the parade's organizers of discrimination and violating their civil rights. For years they have requested a spot in the parade, with mixed results; last year, members were allowed to march "unofficially" behind the formal procession. Their unsuccessful proposal for Saturday's parade called for a float featuring members in ancestral garb and demonstrating meditative exercises. 

[...] 

Sherry Zhang, a practitioner and spokeswoman for Falun Gong, denied that parade participants had distributed political material, although she said she could not speak for people in the crowd who were not part of the parade contingent. Ms. Zhang said the group was being excluded because the chamber's leadership did not want to offend the Chinese government. 

"If they simply said they had too many people, we would have no problem," 

Ms. Zhang said. "But it is clear that we are banned because of the discrimination in China and the chamber's strong business ties to the mainland." 

Wayne Hu, president of the chamber and director of the parade, acknowledged that many members had business links to China, but he denied that the organization was taking its cue from the Chinese government. 

[...] 

But Chris Daly, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, recently sponsored a resolution condemning the persecution of Falun Gong. Mr. Daly said the chamber, while professing to spurn politics, had actually politicized the dispute by placing advertisements in newspapers, including one on Jan. 30 in The San Francisco Chronicle that characterized his resolution as "misguided." 

"Either they are doing the bidding of the Chinese government," Mr. Daly said, "or they are looking to curry favor, thinking they will be rewarded for doing so." 

Last week, Falun Gong filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against the chamber and the city, which provides $77,000 toward the $800,000 cost of the parade. Among other things, the lawsuit accuses the city of discrimination and violating a no-bias clause for city financing. 

"We don't want to have to do this all over again next year," said Joseph Breall, the lawyer for Falun Gong. "We want some clarification from the court." 

As for Saturday's parade, Falun Gong members met with the San Francisco police this week about holding a peaceful demonstration near the parade route.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/11/national/11parade.html