Oct 11, 2001

[...]

I was having lunch with two women the government of the People's Republic of China has described as members of an "[Chinese government's slanderous words]" who do not live a "normal life."

They are practitioners of Falun Gong, who are, as the new House minority Whip Nancy Pelosi has often said, persecuted in mainland China. They have now become a local item since Rose Pak, in her persistent striving to become the Dragon Lady of Chinatown, denounced them before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday [...].

The Falun Gong practitioners melded right in with the Double Play crowd, scarfing down plates of pasta with scampi and veal scaloppini. They seemed pretty normal to me.

I asked them about Ms. Pak's categorization at the Board of Supervisors of Falun Gong health practitioners as [some people] who would not go to doctors even when ill and by extension were some sort of a civic menace. Would Rose Pak dare speak such ill of Christian Scientists?

"If I am sick, I go to the doctor," said Lisa Wendl, a Falun Gong practitioner who was rather healthily cleaning her plate. "Daily exercise and meditation keeps me well, but it is ridiculous to say I would not go to a doctor if I needed to."

She is a loan officer on the Peninsula and seemed perfectly normal to me, nothing like the weirdos Rose Pak screeched about at the Board of Sups hearing on Supervisor Chris Daly's resolution to send the Chinese Consul General in San Francisco a message expressing disdain for his government's abuses of Falun Gong practitioners.

That -- executions, incarcerations in insane asylums, and the sorry litany of atrocities -- is in mainland China, a matter deplored by many politicians such as Nancy Pelosi -- but ducked and put off for another vote by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, who were evidently responding to intense pressure from the PRC Consulate. The questions that Ms. Pak's histrionic antics at City Hall have raised is what is going on here against the Falun Gong?

Quite a bit, including some sort of a mau-mauing of any beneficial gathering of the Falun Gong, and intense political pressure, from the Chinese Consulate, against any civic proclamation (such as Daly's) addressing the situation.

Among the anti-Falun Gong demonstrators with Ms. Pak's crowd at City Hall yesterday were two men charged by the SFPD with beating up a Falun Gong practitioner doing his stuff in Portsmouth Square last year. The cops dropped the case, one might ask why, but it is now the subject of civil litigation.

John Downing, the attorney for the Falun Gong man beat upon by an anti-Falun Gong crowd in the square, said that the first place the men went for help after they were arrested was the Rose Pak's Chinese Chamber of Commerce. "We see a pattern here, which we will pursue in court, of using people in San Francisco to go against the Falun Gong members who are only practicing their religion as guaranteed by the United States government.

"There may be a case for a conspiracy charge here," Downing said. "We are considering amending our complaint for assault and battery."

The SFPD report was extensive and was clear that the Falun Gong guy was beat up for doing his thing. Yet the cops dropped the charges. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission sent Police of Chief Fred Lau, a Rose Pak political protege, a carefully worded letter asking the cops to be attuned to violations of the rights of members.

"You wonder why, in a city like San Francisco, it would be a problem to pass a resolution defending the rights of Falun Gong practitioners," said attorney Downing.

Rose Pak is leading a delegation headed by Mayor Willie Brown to China later this month and perhaps might wish to look like a gentle warrior to the powers that be there to cushion her arrival with gold feathers.

But before China's issue becomes San Francisco's issue, she might lighten up the rhetoric and the political mau-mauing against the Falun Gong. Or else go straight to the other side of the table and register herself as a lobbyist for the PRC.

http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.hinckle.1011%20w