Iceland: “A few words from a Falun Gong practitioner” published in an Icelandic Newspaper

I have been practising Falun Gong for about one year. Due to the practice’s extremely positive effects I will go on practising it. I suppose that I have already been put on a list of Falun Gong practitioners, at least with the Chinese government that are able to do all the spying they want here in Iceland. In relation to what has just happened (here in Iceland) I have been thinking about my own freedom to travel. Suppose that the president of China or another high rank person from the Chinese government was coming for a public visit to Denmark. I decided to go there also to point out human violations in China or for a completely different reason. At Kastrup [Copenhagen Airport] I was then given the information that because the Danish police force was not big enough I was not welcome to enter Denmark at this time. The police would then try to have me take the next plane back to Iceland or keep me as a hostage in a Danish elementary school. In that case could I then expect to get any support from the Icelandic government or would it accept this conduct towards an Icelandic citizen that does not have a criminal record? In a situation like that I would actually count on the government of my own country to condemn an attack like this from a foreign democratic country on my personal freedom to travel! Especially if that same country would thereby show that they had violated my right of personal privacy by having information about the kind of practice that I do in my private home in Iceland.

Falun Gong introduced

Falun Gong was first introduced to the public in the year 1992. Falun Gong was not invented in 1992. It has been practised for thousands of years without being widely spread, which is not uncommon in the culture from which it originated. The Falun Gong exercises have deep and profound positive effects on practitioners and the public in China took to it very quickly. Only seven years after Falun Gong was first introduced to the public, 70 million Chinese people had started to practise on a regular basis. Falun Gong’s exceptional popularity in China did not bypass the Chinese government that indeed honoured Li Hongzhi, who introduced the practice, with two of the most honourable awards of China for its positive affects on practitioners and society. In that time period Li Hongzhi was also nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Price.

“Kill them without mercy”

In the year 1999, the Chinese government started to fear that the popularity of Falun Gong was becoming a threat to their own power, that is, after the number of practitioners preceded the number of people in the Chinese communist party. The Chinese government then decided to ban Falun Gong in China and started persecuting practitioners and creating slander about them. The persecution involves murdering and torturing Falun Gong practitioners besides organizing slander and lies in order to hurt the reputation of Falun Gong. The Chinese government uses all kinds of evil means to achieve their goals e.g. playing out alleged suicides of Falun Gong practitioners in China. The fundamental values of Falun Gong, truthfulness, compassion and tolerance involve a deep respect for all living beings and that knowledge in itself is enough to uncover the Chinese government’s slander and lies about Falun Gong practitioners’ alleged suicides. The cruelty of the Chinese government is expressed in Jiang Zemin’s latest order concerning Falun Gong practitioners in China: “Kill them without mercy” – when the Chinese government has tortured Falun Gong practitioners to death, they claim that they committed suicide.

In spite of all this it is not an easy task for the Chinese government to completely eradicate Falun Gong in China. Our common experience tells us that we never really achieve anything by using forceful means. Truth will always surpass lies, peace is more powerful than war, and forgiveness is stronger than revenge. Falun Gong practitioners do not use force, revenge or telling lies and they are not at war. No single case of a practitioner using violence has been reported, even when they have been subject to the most brutal torture.

Peaceful and steadfast appeal

The practitioners of Falun Gong do not protest in the common sense of the word. Their appeal to the Chinese government is peaceful but steadfast. It is very important that democratic countries of the world do respect and don’t interfere with legal and peaceful appeals of this kind. The Icelandic government has not paid attention to the seriousness of this matter and the extremely important ethical values that are at stake here. Falun Gong is not a religion. There is no church of Falun Gong or worshipping of any kind. Neither is it a political organization or an organization in general. There are no “professional protestors” in Falun Gong nor any lists of members as there are no Falun Gong “members”. Falun Gong is a personal practice that approximately 100 million people in 50 countries around the globe are practising to better themselves. As such, Falun Gong has received countless awards for being a constructive and effective practice, including 600 awards in North America alone and many in Canada, Australia, Germany, New Zealand and other places. Human rights organizations and governments all around the world have condemned the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China. The human rights committee of the U.S. parliament stated: “When we have come to know Falun Gong our respect has grown and we find the horrifying, cruel and bloody ban of Falun Gong in China terrible, intolerable and blameworthy.” (Tom Lantos, co-chair of the U.S. government’s human rights committee.)

Spying on practitioners

The decision of the Icelandic government to limit Falun Gong practitioners’ access to Iceland was persecuted with incredible means. How did the lists of practitioners come about? As I said earlier Falun Gong is not an organization of any sort so practitioners do not sign their names anywhere, nor do they apply for anything either. Observing people, finding out their names and documenting them, must then have made the lists. If the Icelandic government did not get those lists from the Chinese government where did they come from? What other states might put out the labour needed to spy on people to find out whether they practise a certain kind of Chinese cultivation or not?

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Teacher and BA. -Philosophy