Metro [Dutch newspaper]: Falun Gong, ten years later

17-05-2002

Banned Chinese teachings are still vividly alive

The Falun Gong [..] movement celebrates its ten year anniversary this month. There is not much to celebrate because the Chinese teachings are still forbidden in the land of origin. Communist China considers Falun Gong as [slanderous term used by Jiang Zemin regime] ; practitioners are being persecuted, locked up, tortured and killed. Worldwide there are tens of millions of practitioners; in the Netherlands Falun Gong is active as well. What drives them?

In Amsterdam’s Vondel Park a small group of men and women separate themselves from the crowd. One of them puts on a tape with tinkly music and soon the rest of the world doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Silently they line up in rows, close their eyes and perform slow movements with their arms. The same movements over and over again. Passersby watch the ritual with Argus eyes [..] – but the majority of the passersby ignore the Falun Gong practitioners…. . In China that would certainly be different. There, a demonstration like the one last Monday in the Vondel Park would cause the participants present to be arrested, or worse.
In Amsterdam, Harmodjo Rid Wang doesn’t understand at all the Chinese government’s ban on the Falun Gong practitioners. “It’s a peaceful movement without any political message. The only thing we ask is that we are listened to, so we can practice Falun Gong in freedom.”

With his mother and sometimes with other adherents as well, he performs the physical exercises. “We can do that without any trouble, but in China at least 5000 practitioners have been arrested in the period of January – March of this year. Recently more than a hundred of them have been killed.” He maintains extensive contacts with his family in China and they have already incurred the wrath of the Chinese authorities many times by practicing Falun Gong in public. “My grandmother of 87 has been arrested 4 times already. An uncle of mine has been abused and convicted twice. Once for 3 months and the second time for 3 years. But even my niece of 14 was arrested on her way to school. And all that because they practice Falun Gong.”

29 year old Peter Houben has been learning the teachings of Falun Gong for almost 3 years now. He is the chairman of the Falun Gong Foundation of the Netherlands and as far as he knows there are about 25 active Falun Gong practitioners in the Netherlands, of whom half are Dutch and half are Chinese. “There are no member lists, but according to estimations there are about 70 million practitioners in China. Then the number of 25 in the Netherlands is indeed very few. How come? I don’t know.”

He subsequently talks of practitioners instead of followers, because worshipping of Li Hongzhi, the man who spread the teachings of Falun Gong among the Chinese people since 1992, is not the case according to him. “It’s not that we have a statue of him in our homes and kneel down before it or something like that”, he jokingly says. What the Falun Gong practitioners do practice is the study of 3 basic principles (truthfulness, compassion and forbearance) of the teachings and practice physical exercises. “On average I am occupied with that for about 3 hours daily”, Houben says. “I try to do the 5 physical exercises every day and assimilating to the teachings is something I actually do all the time.”

Houben calls his acquaintance with Falun Gong a “coincidence”. “In a newspaper I read that Falun Gong was being persecuted in China. The teachings are strongly related to Buddhism and Taoism and I was already interested in them. The step to Falun Gong was therefore quickly made.”
Falun Gong, a dangerous cult? Houben holds his laugh. “Falun Gong doesn’t have any political goals, but we do point out to the Chinese authorities that they should stop the persecution. We try to get a dialogue going, but the Chinese government refuses this, sees every form of religion as a threat to the communist doctrine. It doesn’t want to listen to us.”
Despite the ban on their activities, the Falun Gong practitioners keep making appeals for recognition. Last Monday a few hundred adherents celebrated the ten year existence with a march and a meditation session in Hong Kong. Some of the people present called upon the Chinese government to end the suppression of Falun Gong.

Though Hong Kong belongs to the People’s Republic, Falun Gong is allowed there. The police in the Chinese city of Beijing took harsh measures to prevent that adherents of the meditation group from coming together in the Chinese capital. A foreigner who waved a little banner on the square and started to shout Falun Gong slogans was arrested.
The most recent wave of arrests in China dates from the end of last month. The police arrested thousands of Falun Gong practitioners after some of them succeeded at the beginning of March in interrupting a broadcast of state television to show [information] films in the city of Changchun. “All quite harmless, but it fell wrong with the government.”, Houben comments. 150 adherents were sent to forced labor camps.

The fact that the authorities don’t treat the Falun Gong members softly, is shown from Amnesty International’s data as well. Since China’s ban on Falun Gong in July 1999 at least 93 adherents have died in police custody according to the human rights organization (data 2001). The majority of them died due to torture. Amnesty estimates the number of Falun Gong practitioners that are being held captive in the thousands if not the tens of thousands. Many of them have been convicted without trial to labor camps and some of them are detained in mental hospitals.
Houben in fact is convinced that the actual number of fatal casualties is many times higher. “These are the official numbers; the number of people that died in police cells, detention centres and labor camps is probably far above 1500.”
For Houben Falun Gong creates a clear image about life. “It gives me answers to big existential questions. Especially the philosophical aspect appeals to me. Others aim more at the physical and the healing of severe illnesses.”

In a nutshell, according to Houben, Falun Gong comes down to the following: it is important to be a good person. If you do bad things, you build up karma. Falun Gong aims at breaking down karma. “Karma is the source of misery, suffering and illnesses. If you do good deeds and follow the moral teachings, you are a good person and you break down karma”, Houben teaches.
Of the 25 practitioners in the Netherlands a few of them have recovered from severe illnesses, so Houben ensures. “A woman in Amsterdam had aches in the heart, but has now completely recovered. There are also cases known of people who recovered from terminal cancer after practicing Falun Gong. During the practice you work with energy in your body and this has an effect on your body cells.”

[……]

What is Falun Gong

In 1992 […] Li Hongzhi started spreading his teachings. The system is known as Falun Dafa (Law wheel great Law) and as Falun Gong (Law wheel capability) …

[…]

Falun Dafa is best described as a moral philosophy […]. Falun Dafa bases itself on a cosmological vision, in which 3 principles are central: truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. Adherents practice 5 exercises on a daily basis that, just like other Chinese gymnastics, are performed in the morning on squares and parks.

[…]

Patrick Smit