November 25, 2001

By John Gittelsohn
The Orange County Register

A Lake Forest man detained last week in China for protesting repression of Falun Gong said he hoped to show the government that foreigners support the meditation practice.

Brad Carson was one of 35 people from 13 countries arrested Tuesday in Tiananmen Square. The 1999 graduate of El Toro High School was held 30 hours before being released to spend Thanksgiving weekend with his family. He left Lake Forest on Saturday for California State University, Sonoma, where he studies theater and psychology.

"Our purpose was not to be a martyr," Carson, 20, said. "We weren't there to get arrested. We were there to tell them that Falun Gong is good."

China banned Falun Gong in 1998 as an [slanderous term omitted]. Thousands of followers have been jailed, and hundreds have died in custody, according to human-rights groups.

The foreign Falun Gong practitioners traveled separately to China to avoid detection. "All we knew was that we'd meet at Tiananmen Square at 2 p.m., sit and meditate," Carson said.

The 35 gathered at the scene of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in front of an enormous poster of Chairman Mao Tse- tung. They sat in the lotus position and unfurled a yellow-and-red banner that read "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance," the Falun Gong motto.

Carson took his shoes off to meditate. One of them is still in Tiananmen Square, he said.

As they shot photos, police surrounded them and shoved them into vans. Some used cell phones to call their embassies and the media.

"They dragged women by their hair and pulled one guy by his fingers," Carson said. "I saw them hit my friend in the back with their fists. I saw them kicking a guy on the ground. A girl from Australia got her hair ripped out, which was not cool."

[...]

The police interrogated the demonstrators during the next 30 hours, holding them first in a jail and then in a hotel conference room. None of the guards laid a hand on Carson, he said, because he meditated to remain calm, which had a calming effect on his jailers.

"In English, I said, 'Be nice to me and I'll be nice to you.' I think it worked," he said.

Carson has practiced the breathing, balancing and meditation exercises of Falun Gong for about 18 months. He said it has helped him overcome asthma and clarified his thinking. Falun Gong is not a religion, Carson said, but it has allowed him to "react compassionately" and have the "tools to look inside and become a better person."

He spent Thanksgiving with his parents, Fred and Lois Carson, and other family. "I apologized that I made my parents worry," he said.

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