Spain’s Oldest Newspaper Reports on Falun Gong Practice and the Persecution in China

On July 25th 2005, the oldest newspaper in Spain – Norte de Castilla - published full-page article about Falun Gong and the severe persecution against the spiritual practice by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Tormented Spirituality

Falun Gong, also known as “the Chinese yoga”, unites 100 million practitioners in sixty countries. Six years has now passed since Beijing started a ferocious persecution

Reporter: A. Corbillón
Photos: GMR

Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance are the universal principles that were too demanding for the Chinese Government. Each year China tops the lists of human rights violations, torture or the implementation of capital punishment that are published by the most prestigious independent organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc. This intolerance has afflicted practitioners of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa).

The three principles Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance inspire this practice of ancient origins that were transmitted through word of mouth along the centuries. Since Master Li Hongzhi introduced Falun Gong to the public in 1992, it started filling up the plazas all over China with people doing its meditation postures, as well as unraveling a bloody persecution by the Communist Government. In a few years there were over seventy million practitioners, more than the number of members in the Chinese Communist Party, which perpetrated overnight a ferocious repression from the regime formerly presided over by Jiang Zemin.

This past Wednesday was six years since this persecution started. The result: more than 100,000 people are in forced labour camps, more than a million people suffer long jail sentences and the confirmed number of victims tortured to death is between 980 as documented by Amnesty International, and 2,676 as documented by the Global Mission to Rescue Persecuted Falun Gong practitioners.

What is there behind a practice that managed to attract 7% of the more than a billion Chinese people in less than a decade? A number to which is added another 30 million followers worldwide. In Spain you can see groups of practitioners in the parks of Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, the Canary Islands, etc. "We should not look at it with Western eyes. It is a philosophy of life and the Chinese Government saw it as a destabalising enemy," said the spokesperson of Amnesty International in Spain.

Zero Cost

The first "revolution" of this movement is that it's free of charge. "There is not a single euro behind it,” assures human rights lawyer Carlos Iglesias, who issued the three criminal lawsuits for genocide and torture [against Falun Gong practitioners] that have been presented here in Spain.

The official web pages of the practice leave a clear impression that this practice has, "No political, ethnic nor religious aspirations. It is informal and completely free of charge, without any obligations or rituals of any kind." The 180 pages from the book of Master Li Hongzhi, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for three consecutive years, can be downloaded for free from the Internet (www.falundafa.org). These and other web pages offer all the information necessary for anyone who is interested, as well as contact groups by countries to get initiated into the practice, but they will never ask you for a cent to do so. Neither will you find it amongst offers from multiple centres of martial arts or non martial arts and oriental disciplines that proliferate in cities throughout Spain.

The Finish ex-model and television presenter Pia-Maria Sandas has over the last few years become one of the global ambassadors of this culture. She says that Falun Dafa helped her get through years of stress, a very busy schedule, personal obligations and travelling around the world. "It has been like a “mental cleansing”. The most important is the “philosophical/theoretical part”, then secondly, the exercises. There are medical studies that demonstrate its efficacy in this society, in which 70% of the illnesses are psychosomatic," she explains in perfect Castillian Spanish during her brief visit to Valladolid.

Sensibility and Denunciation

Now thirty-seven years old and retired from modelling, Sandas found Falun Gong six years ago in Sweden, more or less at the same time as the repression started in China. She is now one of the ambassadors of raising worldwide conscience about the human rights violations of the Beijing Government.

Falun Gong brings together the excellence of qigong (qi=vital energy; gong= cultivation energy), a form of refining internal nature and life through special exercises and meditation.

Its practitioners assure that at the very least, this discipline is useful for relaxing whoever practices it, reducing muscular and emotional tensions. Its postures are based on five positions. They begin with gentle stretches, followed by static positions to increase energy levels, then smooth hand movements that follow the contour of the body so that energy will flow cleanly and, lastly, a meditation in a position very similar to the lotus positions sitting with legs crossed.

One of the keys is to do all the exercises at once, but practitioners say that it can be adopted based on one's own schedule and routine. "It's true that it looks a bit like yoga, but Falun Gong guides the person to a higher level of enlightenment, and it's exercises are easier to learn," Pia Maria Sandas concludes.

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A lawyer from Valladolid presents three lawsuits for genocide and torture

By A. C. VALLADOLID

This past Wednesday dozens of people concentrated outside the Chinese Embassy in Madrid to denounce the sixth anniversary of this persecution. Carlos Iglesias delivered a letter to the president of the Spanish government, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who on that day was beginning a visit to the Asian giant, requesting that he "raise his voice in China since, above all economic agreements is the right to life, to human dignity and the right to not be tortured." These words form part of a statement of an international group of human rights lawyers who have already filed lawsuits in more than thirty countries. "So many lawyers and in so many countries, nothing like this has ever been seen before”, he states.

“For example, Apartheid changed when the world started looking towards South Africa. Now it is important that the whole world looks at and becomes aware of this situation that is taking place in China," explains Pia-Maria Sandas, one of the spokespersons of the organisation. Chinese citizens who are practitioners in Spain denounce the harassment they suffer from the Chinese diplomatic delegation of their own country.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have put the persecution of this practice on the list of new genocides. Tortures with electric batons and the destitute conditions in labour camps are very well documented, even with photographic evidence of these practices. On August 5th, Amnesty International's headquarters in London will make public an update of its report on human rights in China. In it the latest information about the situation of the Falun Gong practitioners is expected to be found.