Compassion Magazine: Beijing Menace on New York City Streets

(Clearwisdom.net) Falun Gong adherents in Mainland China are no strangers to state-sanctioned violence. But their counterparts in the United States got an unwelcome taste of the Party's wrath when mobs instigated by the Chinese government started attacking them here ...

NYPD officers confront an angry mob in Flushing, New York, making several arrests of individuals assaulting Falun Gong adherents.

An elderly man is surrounded by an angry crowd, who chant "traitor" in unison and denounce him as a political enemy. He is accused of betraying the motherland, and for his alleged crime, he is punched, strangled, and spat on in a scene of public humiliation, as communist red flags wave in the background.

Anyone who doesn't join in the denouncement risks becoming a target themselves, and thus the crowd grows. No one in the mob knows the man. No one even knows his name. They only know that the Communist Party wants an example made of him. "Animal," they scream. "You aren't even human," they scold, as he stands there, stoic yet scared.

It's a scene reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution that wreaked chaos in China in the 60s and 70s. Yet this scene did not take place in China, nor in decades past. It occurred just weeks ago, in one of the most diverse and progressive places in the world--New York City.

Starting on May 17th, crowds of ethnic Chinese--on some days numbering in the hundreds--have amassed regularly in the predominantly ethnic Chinese neighborhood of Flushing, Queens. They have a singular purpose: to surround, heckle, threaten and assault anyone identified as an adherent of Falun Gong.

These attaax in New York have been accompanied by threats such as "I'll kill "Falun Gong is not human," and "eradicate Falun Gong."

In a phone conversation with an undercover reporter, the Chinese Consul- General in New York City admittedEd to orchestrating and supporting the event, and has implicated the Chinese Consulate, stating that they "had to be very careful with this kind of [event]" and that he "shook hands with them [the mob] one by one and thanked them."

A Falun Gong woman with her baby are encircled by a pro-Communist mob in Flushing, New York. More than a dozen members of the mob have been arrested on assault-related charges.

Exporting State-sanctioned Violence

Falun Gong adherents in Mainland China are no strangers to state-sanctioned violence. Once a popular and widely accepted system of meditation and moral self-improvement, Falun Gong was banned in China in July of 1999, after its popularity swelled to outnumber the membership of the Chinese Communist Party itself.

Resenting its popularity, or perhaps seeing it as an ideological threat, then- Communist Party boss Jiang Zemin initiated a campaign to wipe out Falun Gong, and within months the first reports of deaths from torture began leaking out of China. As of the time of this report, over 3,150 confirmed death cases have emerged. In 2006, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture stated that two-thirds of reported torture victims in custody were Falun Gong adherents, who by some estimates comprise as much as half of China's labor camp population.

Beijing's campaign against Falun Gong hasn't stopped at its own borders. In October 2000, top Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin issued orders to "intensify the campaign [against Falun Gong] overseas, collect more information and prevent protests," according to a leaked Party document. Since then, adherents of the Falun Gong outside China have seen their tires slashed, their homes vandalized, their e-mail accounts hacked and their phones tapped; they have received death threats, have been beaten and even shot.

In one incident in February 2006, a Falun Gong adherent who worked to override China's internet blockade had his Atlanta home broken into by assailants. His attackers beat him at gunpoint and left him needing multiple stitches to his forehead. All that was stolen was a laptop computer and files, but no valuables.

Supporters of Falun Gong--or would-be supporters, as is sometimes the case--are similarly targeted. Elected officials at all levels of government who have expressed support for Falun Gong have reported receiving lett ers from Chinese consulates or embassies warning them not to associate with the meditation practice, nor condemn its persecution, lest trade or diplomatic relations with China be tarnished.

Members of the Western media have also been approached; writing in a 2004 article for Canada's National Post, John Turley-Ewart recalled how a Chinese diplomat paid him a visit to trumpet the virtues of the Communist Party and instruct him on how to report on Falun Gong.

So persistent has been the Chinese government's overseas campaign against Falun Gong that in 2004, U.S. Congress unanimously passed House Concurrent Resolution 304, which demanded that Beij ing "cease using the diplomatic missions in the United States to spread falsehoods about the nature of Falun Gong" and discontinue the intimidation against Falun Gong adherents at home and abroad.

Yet the most insidious dimension to all of this is that the Chinese diplomatic missions do not act alone. As Gerard Smith's article "Unpeaceful Rise on Campus" on page 43 illustrates, China's diplomatic missions also employ front organizations in the Chinese community to act at their behest.

This was what the world witnessed during the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay, which was greeted in the United States, Australia, South Korea and elsewhere by massive crowds of fl ag-waving Chinese, many of whom were asked to att end by organizations to which they belonged.

During the torch's San Francisco leg, journalist Rodger Baker noted that that the meticulously organized pro-Beij ing crowd had been bussed in from all over California, and were being provided food, water and even pay (rumored as much as $300) to wave the communist flag and drown out protesters.

This is a pattern repeating in Flushing, where participants in the anti-Falun Gong mob carry identical green iPhone casings, and some speak of receiving $90/day to berate Falun Gong adherents.

There is now talk of expelling the Chinese Consul-General in New York who confessed to encouraging or even instigating the events there, his actions having extend beyond his duties as outlined in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

But even then, a far larger problem remains.

It is now clear that the Chinese Communist Party has the resources in place to extend its agenda to the United States through coercive, and oft en illegal, means.

Shouldn't we be asking ourselves, then: for now they're targeting Falun Gong, but who will be next?