Media Credit: Emilia Aigotti - DFP PHOTO
Caption: A co-founder of the new campus FalunGong group, BU graduate student Anna Skibinsky, meditates near the Charles River.

A banned Chinese [spiritual movement] known as Falun Gong, described as both a benign belief system and a threat to [party's name omitted], has come to Boston University, and local believers are looking to spread their message.

"Falun Gong is good and it's being treated badly in China. I think that anyone who wants to learn the practice should be able to," said Anna Skibinsky, a BU graduate student and Falun Gong practitioner.

Skibinsky, along with a small group of BU students and alumni, held the first meeting of the Falun Gong Practice and Information Club in the General Classroom Building last week to teach Falun Gong [peaceful] exercises and educate the student body on government persecution of the group in China.

"I started practicing Falun Gong four-and-a-half years ago ... because graduate school was very stressful," Skibinsky said. "I didn't feel very good."

"One of the reasons I decided to start this club is ... that I felt that if I had learned about Falun Gong in college, I felt like I could have done much better. I probably would have felt better during my college years and would have been more concentrated on what was important," she said.

Li Hongzhi, often referred to as "Master Li" by practitioners, founded Falun Gong in 1992 in China. According to a Falun Gong website, the movement is one of many qigong, an ancient combination of exercises and meditations designed to refine the body and cultivate moral character in accordance with the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance."

The practice, consisting of five meditative exercises, centers around the Falun, or law wheel, which, according to Li's "China Falun Gong," one of two books of his teachings, "collects and evolves energy from the cosmos" and refines practitioners from the lower abdomen.

"At first ... the [exercises] were sort of difficult because it took a lot of concentration to do something without constantly thinking about things ... but I did feel better afterward. My mind felt calm," Skibinsky said of her first experience with the practice.

"It's an inner cultivation way for raising one's moral standards and ... making one's physical body healthy ... by acting up to those principles in a conflict, instead of blaming someone else," she said. "Look inward ... and think of others before thinking of yourself."

Wen-li Zheng, a founding member of the BU group and a part-time Computer Information Systems graduate student, was introduced to Falun Gong by his parents who visited him from China. He has practiced with area Falun Gong groups in Medford, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Some practitioners suggested since we are students of BU, we can establish a club so more people can know about this," Zheng said. "It's very good for the health, mentally ... to have a formal way to introduce Falun Gong to the student."

Falun Gong Practice and Information Club is a "meeting of whoever wants to drop in and learn the exercises ... [and] events that are happening in China. I find that many people are misinformed of what Falun Gong is," Skibinsky said. "Some people even say there is no persecution. I know someone whose entire family is in a labor camp in China for practicing Falun Gong."

Zheng credited the [spiritual movement] with helping his parents' health struggles, which many Chinese face since the decay of the state-run health care system.

"The practice of Falun Gong is very good for my parents' health," he said. "My father has heart disease ... but after the practice, he has very good health if you compare it to before he practiced."

Zheng said he has noticed the health benefits himself.

"It's just amazing," he said. "I've had allergies, I don't feel sick like before. I've become a better person. I had a short temper ... but now it's really changing me. That's why it attracts so many people."

Tianlun Jian, another founding member and alumnus of BU's doctoral program, said he "learned Falun Gong because [his] neck has been fairly painful for 23 years."

"Within three months, I completely forgot about this," he said.

"I do not try to indicate that [health problems] will automatically be solved ... but this happened to me and other family members," Jian said.

"Anxiety, back pain ... are gone ... [Falun Gong] helps me balance my schoolwork. I am not feeling the anxiety people my age feel," said group co-founder Robert Counts, a Massachusetts College of Art senior.

While the students praised Falun Gong's curative abilities, Chinese government officials view the [spiritual movement] as a threat.

[...]

"Mr. Li withdrew from China Qigong Research Society in 1995 because at that time, all China Qigong Research Society did was try to make money off the qigong masters," Jian said.

Many practitioners and scholarly authorities alike feel the persecution was a reaction to the fear that Falun Gong's numbers were exceeding that of [party's name omitted].

While the Chinese government estimated that there were only 2 million practitioners in China, other sources assert 30 million - 40 million practitioners existed in China before the [repression].

"One out of every 10 people -- 100 million people were learning this practice," Skibinsky said. "Only a few leaders in the Chinese government decided to ban the practice."

Also in July 1999, the Chinese government began a systematic persecution of Falun Gong practitioners through arrest, torture and mental hospitalization to brainwash practitioners into forgetting Falun Gong, campus practitioners said.

According to Amnesty International, the Chinese government declared Falun Gong a [term omitted] and threat to stability before launching a nationwide propaganda campaign against the faith. [Party name omitted] authorities described the campaign as an important "political struggle."

To date, 307 practitioners in China have died from police torture, the Falun Gong website claims.

"My parents right now are under police supervision, and every move they are being watched," Zheng said. "They should be very careful, otherwise [the police] shall put them into jail."

"They won't give up the practice," Zheng said. "The [party name omitted] government controls all the media, the people's life ... They only tell you the good things -- how good the government is, how wonderful people's lives [are] ... Falun Gong practitioners just want to practice ... The police will beat them to death," Zheng said.

His parents tried to come to the U.S. but were told at a police station that unless they renounced Falun Gong, they could not get passports.

"It's very hard for Americans to understand. Falun Gong teaches Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance in any circumstance. The Chinese government just doesn't want people to be like that," Zheng said.

Despite the oppression, followers said Falun Gong practitioners remain completely pacifist, even when beaten by Chinese policemen. "For the almost three years of prosecution, there is not one case where a Falun Gong practitioner struck back," Zheng said.

The suppression came to a head on Jan. 23 when five alleged Falun Gong practitioners set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square, but local followers said the event was set up by the Chinese government.

"It's very clear ... in Falun Gong ... killing living beings including oneself is very, very bad and leads me to believe that the [self-immolators] weren't Falun Gong practitioners," Skibinsky said.

"I don't know exactly who those self-immolators were, but I would not be surprised if they were people who had in fact been brainwashed by the government," she said.

Chinese History Professor Emeritus Merle Goldman and Weller said they didn't know for sure whether the self-immolated were Falun Gong practitioners.

Though the self-immolation broadcast "turned people against [Falun Gong]," Falun Gong continues to receive widespread support for their cause, Goldman said.

"The U.S. government is really supportive of Falun Gong ... trying to voice their concerns about what's happening," Skibinsky said.

[...]

Although Weller said the followers will be reduced in number after the government persecution, Goldman said she didn't believe the faith could eliminated.

Tianlun Jian has a 60-year-old relative who was arrested and sentenced to prison, but is now under house arrest and daily supervision because the prisons are full, he said.

"They [the government] is even releasing some prisoners to make room for Falun Gong practitioners," Jian said.

"While many Chinese decide to practice Falun Gong, on the other hand, the Chinese government is sending out its own propaganda against Falun Gong ... [...] Any sort of negative reports I've read about Falun Gong are filled with information that isn't true about Falun Gong," Skibinsky said.

Zheng expressed faith that the group at BU could have a positive impact on the persecution by influencing public opinion. Recently, the U.S. government has called for the release of Chinese intellectuals charged as spies, he said.

Measures have been taken to spread awareness of Falun Gong's plight in China, including the SOS Walk from several U.S. cities to Washington, D.C., in July 2001 to mark the two-year anniversary of the [persecution].

Zheng participated in the 20-day SOS Walk [Across MA], "to raise people's attention and to help us since this is an urgent situation."

"We also gave some material to local governments ... in all the places we passed," he said.

"It would be great to have an open house to invite faculty and the professors in history, Chinese cultural studies and ... the theology department as well as staff and students ..." to speak about the movement in the U.S. and China, Skibinsky said.

"It's not the quantity of people that matters," Skibinsky said.