Falun Gong Practitioners Denounce Chinese Persecution

Mardi 21 mars 2000

Human Rights ' section

At the "Place des Nations" more then 500 disciples silently protested

The contrast is striking. Mute and as if struck with slowness, the group occupies the totality of the central rectangle of the "Place des Nations". Orientals and Westerners stand facing the seat of the UNO, in well arranged rows. The traffic rages all around. On this cold yet sunny Monday morning, over 500 practitioners of the spiritual movement Falun Gong denounced, in their own way, the repression of religious freedom in China and the arrest of thousands of their disciples by the authorities of Beijing.

Organized the same day as the opening of the annual session of the Commission of human rights, the protest certainly aimed at touching the international public opinion at the same time that the United States is preparing to put forward a resolution to the Central Government of China. A new mass demonstration in front of the "Palais des Nations" is also foreseen for Thursday (*), due to the arrival of the secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Today and tomorrow you will see them practicing their exercises all over Geneva in small groups of 20.

Thousands of practitioners violently beaten In China , Falun Gong practitioners endure, in effect, a serious repression on the part of the government, which banned the movement July 1999. According to Amnesty International, the thousands of practitioners who wanted to peacefully protest or who continued practicing were arbitrarily detained all over the country in the days and weeks that followed. "Many were violently beaten by the police during their arrest", the organization revealed in a report dated last October." Many hundreds of people are still incarcerated and legal actions have been started against some of them, based on accusatory motives with political connotation. They will probably be sentenced to long terms of imprisonment following unjust trials".

According to Amnesty International the government in Beijing is warned about the phenomenal growth of the movement, which includes a large number of practitioners in all sectors of society, including the heart of the administration. Falun Gong guides 70 to 100 millions disciples, most of whom are in China.

A "dangerous sect"? This morning, at the same time the gathering occurred in absolute calm at the "Place des Nations", a chaotic conference was held at the "Villa La Pastorale" Chinese journalists directly criticized the Press Club for welcoming the spokespeople of a "dangerous sect". They accused the spiritual movement of pushing its disciples to reject modern medicine and of guiding then to suicide, comparing it to the sect which led to hundreds of deaths in Uganda.

"Ridiculous!" retorts Mary Bakhtiar, in charge of defending Falun Gong in Geneva. "For us, suicide is a sin, in the same order as any attempt on human life". Founded in 1992 by Li Hong-Zhi, the movement seems to defend universal values such as truth, comprehension, and tolerance. The practice, based on the five (5) meditation exercises presented yesterday morning, has the goal of teaching the discipline of the body and of the mind.

(Photo caption: Followers of the Falun Gong "sect", gathered at the "Place des Nations")

Curiously, Monday's gathering was not authorized by the Department of justice and police. The organizers had nonetheless asked for and obtained permission to appear at the "Place des Nations" for the entire week. However, Friday night the counselor of State Gérard Ramseyer went back on that decision: The authorization would only be valid for Thursday. The problem is that practitioners from all over the world had arranged to meet in Geneva yesterday morning. Impossible to reschedule at the last minute! Given its eminently peaceful character, the demonstration was finally tolerated.

One can nonetheless ask oneself the reasons for this change of decision. Must it be the result of pressure exerted by the diplomats from Beijing? "The reactions of the Chinese are always pretty intense", acknowledges Gérard Ramseyer. "When I met the Dala Lama, they accused me of welcoming a terrorist." On the issue of Falun Gong I did not yield. If not, there would not have been a demonstration. It's not by accident that I proposed the Thursday date. That day, Madeleine Albright will be at the Committee of human rights." So what's all the fuss about? "Many movements come to protect during the Committee and I believe that the "Place des Nations" should not be monopolized. Believing it was the right thing to do, the counselor who gave the authorization compared it with the case of the Tibetans last year, who stayed put for weeks. But they were only three of them!".