Falun Gong Practitioners Face Harassment in Australia

Australian practitioners of Falun Gong believe the Chinese government's crackdown on the spiritual movement has spread to Australia, Rebekah Van Druten reports. The Chinese Government's insistence that Falun Gong is a [slanderous words omitted] that poses a "threat to social and political stability" led to a violent crackdown in 1999 that saw more than 25,000 devotees detained. Two years after the initial arrests, which saw many Falun Gong members tortured and killed, the Chinese Government has again orchestrated a campaign to wipe out the movement, and it seems they may have their sights on the rest of the world including Australia.

Leisa Griffiths-Park is a strong-minded, middle age woman who was born and bred in Australia. She stumbled upon a Falun Gong book some three years ago and was inspired by Li Hongzhi's teaching so she began practising. Griffiths-Park said when she began practising she was unaware of the Chinese government's oppression of Falun Gong members but since becoming an organiser of the movement she has experienced similar methods of intimidation in Australia first hand. She said just because the western world had adopted this practice didn't mean the persecution against practitioners was stopped, especially in Australia. "We held a vigil, in Centenary Park, for all of the practitioners that have died at the hands of the Chinese government. In that time three of our cars were broken into and another one was stolen. "Fortunately, they don't take any of our belongings but they do ruin all of our Falun readings," she said. Griffiths-Park added that staff at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney tried to influence the Bankstown City Council and advised them stop to stop letting Falun Gong practitioners hire practice halls. "They have also broken into Falun Gong members' houses and some people believe their phones are being bugged," she said. She said often it is only the spokespeople for Falun Gong that are targeted, especially those involved with the Falun Gong web site.

Yao Qiwen, who resides in Sydney and is the webmaster for www.faluninfo.net said the web site is constantly being hacked and tampered with and when his house was broken into in 1999 all they took was his address book full of Falun Gong contacts, in Australia and China, and his phone. National Falun Gong spokesperson, Yan Zhao, said these methods of intimidation have become so common that the Australian Federal Police have recommended that members of Falun Gong put together a document listing all disturbances and hand it to the Australian Government. "The police and the government in Australia know very well that the Chinese government are behind most of these activities but they need hard evidence before they can charge anyone," she said. The Australian Federal Police would not confirm if they were involved in an investigation relating to Falun Gong, however a spokesman did admit that crimes against its members had been reported, however these were often classed as common assaults or burglaries and were usually handled by state police.

The most recent of these crimes, according to Yan Zhao, occurred on October 6. She recalled how three women [who can not be named for security reasons] received police permission to hold a peaceful protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. "The protest had been going well and then late in the afternoon a Chinese diplomat came out of the embassy and began to shout at them, he was being very coarse and defamatory towards all three women and so one of them begun to take photos of him in the hope that the police could later charge him. "This made the gentleman very angry and so he came and grabbed the camera out of the woman's hand and slapped her across the face, one of the other women then jumped on him while another called the police on her mobile, but other men from the embassy came and took the diplomat away before the police arrived. "It was a very frightening experience for the women," said Zhao.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Human Rights lecturer, Ross Daniels, confirmed Ms Zhao's and Ms Griffiths-Park's accusations through his own contact with the Chinese community. "It is probably not the Chinese Government itself employing people to break into houses and cars, but you can be best assured there's a little world going on that we know little about," he said. "There's whispering behind doors and people have to be very careful about what they do and say." Daniels said many in the Chinese community had family or business links in China that made their participation in Falun Gong circumspect. There are grave concerns in the movement that China continues to demonise Falun Gong throughout the Western world, while detaining, torturing and killing its practitioners in China. China's efforts to outlaw Falun Gong have even seen President Jiang Zemin declare the Falun Gong founder as "public enemy number one".

Yet with every new claim of human rights abuses, the Falun members seem to grow more determined.

Caterina Vereshaka, a practitioner of Falun Gong in Melbourne, said although it is now becoming dangerous to practise Falun Gong in Australia she would continue to practise the meditation ritual and plans to return to China regularly to further the Falun case by distributing books and protest letters. This is despite the fact that Australians have already been arrested in China for protesting about the government's treatment of Falun Gong. Just last month four Australians, Kate Douglas, Chris Cominos, Myrna Mack and Kay Belonogoff, were among the dozens of foreign protestors arrested and detained by Chinese police while taking part in a meditation protest [on Tiananmen Square, China] in support of the banned movement. Vereshaka said the four were rounded up when they unfurled pro-Falun Gong banners after disguising themselves as a tour group to get past guards and onto the square. "We were quite worried about their safety because we were not sure what they [the police] would do. "We really hoped that they will just get deported. I think it's pretty good that they haven't suffered any mistreatment, although they have been slapped around a bit," she said. "It's scary, but we will fight for many years to come,"

http://www.aushomepage.com.au/article/727/