Condemning Singdao Daily's Slanderous Report about Falun Gong

I saw a June 11th, 2007 report on www.Singtao.com about a tragic murder in the Netherlands involving the chopping up and cooking of the victim's body. The headline, in big print, read, "Falun Gong Kill when Insane." This report is a deceiving and defaming report that is against media ethics. The stated connection with Falun Gong is completely fabricated. First, the killer has been diagnosed as being mentally ill and, second, this killer is a homosexual male prostitute who never was a Falun Dafa practitioner.

Falun Gong has clear rules forbidding killing. This is explicitly stated in the following paragraph from the Seventh Lecture of Zhuan Falun:

"The issue of killing is very sensitive. For practitioners, we have set the strict requirement that they cannot kill lives. Whether it is of the Buddha School, the Tao School, or the Qimen School, regardless of which school or practice it is, as long as it is an upright cultivation practice, it will consider this issue very absolute and prohibit killing--this is for sure. Because the consequence of killing a life is so serious, we must address it in detail. In the original Buddhism, killing mainly referred to taking a human life, which was the most serious act. Later, killing large-sized lives, large domestic animals, or relatively large animals were all considered very serious."

It is clear that the killer fundamentally violated this Falun Gong principle, so how could he be a Falun Gong practitioner? Falun Gong has no relationship with people who kill.

This report spreads shocking slander by saying that the killer is a Falun Gong practitioner, yet it failed to point out that when the killer was examined by the Psychological Institute under the Bureau of Justice for psychiatric health, they found that he is schizophrenic and chronically paranoid. According to an accepted rule in psychiatric health, this kind of tragedy should not be correlated with a person's spiritual or religious beliefs.

For example, in two recent incidents of mothers killing children in Texas, both mothers are Christian. They declared that "God" and "Satan" told them to kill their children, but the American media did not put an emphasis on their religious background, because it is irrelevant. Yet the Singtao Daily article, from title to content, tries with its all its might to connect this tragedy with Falun Gong, even misleading readers that practicing Falun Gong would lead one to become mentally insane. This report is exactly the same as those produced by the Chinese Communist media, defaming Falun Gong using extremely disreputable means.

The article's contents actually reveal that the killer is not a Falun Dafa practitioner. It quoted the killer's words, "The god I believe in had conflicts 500 years ago with the victim's god." Falun Dafa practitioners are all cultivating according to Teacher Li Hongzhi's teaching since 1992, and the content of Falun Gong does not include the concept or phraseology of "the god I believe in."

This report also said, with regard to his background, that the killer was born in mainland China and was very naughty and stubborn. He was expelled from middle school in 1994, left the countryside to go to Beijing, worked in dance clubs, and became a male prostitute. He got to know a Dutch person and had a thought that he could make a living in Netherlands, even if he had to be a prostitute.

When he first arrived in Holland in August 2003, he was working in a Chinese restaurant. After six months, he became acquainted with Joost Vastenhouw's father at a gay club in Amsterdam. They lived together in Alphen, for purposes of a sexual relationship and for a permanent residency application.

"Question: Why is homosexuality considered immoral?

Teacher: Think about it, everyone: Is homosexuality human behavior? Heaven created man and woman. What was the purpose? To procreate future generations. A man being with a man, or a woman with a woman--it doesn't take much thought to know whether that's right or wrong." (Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland)

According to the report, the killer carried out homosexual behavior, and was a male prostitute. These are totally against Falun Dafa's teachings. How could this kind of person be a Falun Gong cultivator? There are so many fake Falun Gong practitioners outside of China who are trying to obtain permanent residency by using Falun Gong; how can their crimes be related to Falun Gong?

The Singtao Daily slandered Falun Gong by saying that this killer was a practitioner. They also refused to interview a real Falun Dafa practitioner, and did not give practitioners a chance to explain the facts about Falun Dafa. This report is the same as the the Chinese Communist Party's slander of propaganda.

We strongly condemn the Singtao Daily for its irresponsible report, and demand the Singtao Daily to return the good reputation of genuine Falun Dafa practitioners.