Toronto Star: Canadians arrested in Tiananmen protest

(Clearwisdom.net)

November 21, 2001

Canadian Held in Tiananmen Protest

Falun Dafa led Zenon Dolnyckyj away from a life of drugs and hopelessness, his mother said yesterday.

This is why the Thornhill resident travelled to Beijing to try to spread the message of how the spiritual movement, now banned in China, had made him a new man.

"He was a young man going down a very dangerous road physically and mentally," before he discovered Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) a little more than three years ago, Orysia McCabe said.

Dolnyckyj, 23, was one of two Canadians among 33 protesters dragged off by Chinese police yesterday after unfurling a banner and staging a peaceful demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The men and women, from 10 different countries, looked like ordinary tourists until they suddenly sat down, legs crossed, eyes closed and hands pressed together as if in prayer.

In an early-morning phone call to alert friends in Canada, Dolnyckyj said he had been kicked and punched by police, said Cindy Gu, a friend and Falun Dafa practitioner in Toronto.

Fellow protester Joel Chipkar, of Toronto, was released yesterday and was heading home, Gu said. The other detainees could be deported as early as today, Swedish Ambassador Kjell Anneling said this morning after meeting with Chinese officials.

McCabe said she thought she'd lost her son when he was 19 and his life revolved around getting high. The teenager had moved out of the house, was in between jobs and living in a dank basement.

"His life centred around drugs," said McCabe, who feared for his future. "I would have never dreamed there would have been anything that could change him this profoundly. It (Falun Dafa) gave me my son back."

The young man who left for China last Thursday is now living a life "full of love for his fellow man," McCabe said. She said it was important for her son to take part in the protest in Tiananmen Square because he wanted average Chinese people to see that the movement has followers worldwide who are not persecuted outside China for their beliefs.

Falun Dafa says more than 300 followers have died in custody and thousands have been sent to prisons and labour camps. The group, which says its philosophies and slow-motion exercises promote health and good citizenship, attracted millions of Chinese followers in the 1990s.

Before he left Canada, Dolnyckyj told his mother: "We have to let the Chinese people know the rest of the world does not treat Falun Gong the way the Chinese government does."

When he was arrested, Dolnyckyj was holding aloft a banner he had made out of a pillowcase and on which he had written in red Chinese characters, "Falun Gong is good."

McCabe, 51, said she is proud of her son for standing up for a cause he believes in so deeply. Last night, she still did not know the fate of her son.

But she said she was far more worried about her son in the days his life was spiralling out of control.

Dolnyckyj discovered Falun Dafa on the Internet. McCabe said her son was so intrigued by what he read that he flew to Boston to learn it.

"Since then it was the difference of day and night," McCabe said. He stopped taking drugs and drinking, moved back home and is now studying part-time at Ryerson University.