On Thursday the Chinese police arrested about 40 western Falun Gong practitioners on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Among them was a Dutch adherent to the religious movement Falun Gong. 28 year old Egon Knapen from Breda, who works as a software engineer for Siemens in Munich, has already been put back on a flight to Europe.
According to Peter Houben, chairman of the Falun Gong Foundation Netherlands, the Europeans went to Beijing to appeal against the ban of the movement. Falun Gong which claims to have about 100 million adherents worldwide is forbidden in China since 1999.
The demonstrators were arrested when they unfurled their banners. According to eyewitnesses they ran across the square shouting, while being chased by hundreds of policemen. The policemen hit and kicked them.
According to the partner of Matthias Slaats (30), a Belgian Falun Gong adherent from Ghent, a group of British sympathizers were arrested in their hotels even before the demonstration took place. At the beginning of this week, on Chinese New Year, another two western adherents of the movement were arrested. The American and the Canadian were expelled the next day. So far 53 activists from twelve countries have been expelled from China, according to the official Chinese press agency Xinhua.
Falun Gong has a few dozens of practitioners in The Netherlands. The movement combines physical exercises and meditation techniques with ideas from Buddhism and Taoism, with the purpose of bringing oneself more and more in line with Zhen-Shan-Ren (truthfulness-compassion-forbearance), the basic principle of the universe.
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