Denver women recount persecution they endured while living in China

March 26, 2001

The two Chinese women, a 50-year-old retired accountant and a 32-year-old lab assistant, hardly seem the type of people to pose a threat to a powerful government.

But their habit of practicing slow-motion meditative exercises, their fervent beliefs and their membership in a forbidden [group] have caused Chinese authorities to arrest and jail them repeatedly. [Editor's note: Falun Gong has no membership.]

They're part of a growing number of Falun Gong practitioners seeking safety in the United States because of the Chinese government's ban on the movement. The U.S. is considering offering adherents asylum because of religious persecution, a proposal the Chinese government protests.

Both women wanted to remain nameless in this story for fear their families would suffer if the government learned their identities.

"I see a lot of people who are really scared," said immigration attorney Margaret S. Choi, who started seeing Falun Gong cases after a government crackdown in July 1999.

Last year, Choi handled three or four Falun Gong political asylum cases, but by the end of January this year, she had 10 clients.

National figures weren't available because political asylum cases are not tracked by cause.

But according to Don Mueller, spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington, D.C., 4,200 Chinese political asylum cases were carried over from 1999, and another 5,541 new cases were filed in fiscal 2000.

Out of those, 2,522 applications were granted and another 1,857 were referred to immigration judges.

"Anecdotally, there's been an increase of Falun Gong type cases," Mueller said. "But each case is looked at on a case-by-case basis."

"It's not right," the accountant said in Chinese, as a friend translated. "I am not against the government. I am not into politics. I just want to be able to practice something that gives me good health."

The history of Falun Gong (pronounced fah-loon goan), also known as Falun Dafa (fah-loon dah-fah), dates to 1992, when it was founded by Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk who now lives in exile in New York.

Based on traditional Chinese meditation practices [], Falun Gong means "Work of the Law Wheel." Falun Dafa translates to "The Great Way of the Law Wheel."

The study of Li's teachings are believed to promote health and morality, as well as endow the practitioner with supernatural abilities once a certain level of self-cultivation is attained.

Falun Gong has gained millions of followers in China and abroad.

On July 9, 1999, the Chinese government banned the practice, calling it [Chinese government's slanderous words.]

[]

Human rights groups estimate that 5,000 Falun Gong followers have been sent to labor camps.

The United States is in the process of issuing a resolution condemning China on its human rights record, citing China's treatment of Falun Gong practitioners.

It's the reason why the accountant is now considering applying for political asylum.

"I feel very contradictory," said the woman, a grandmother who is staying with her daughter's family in Denver. Her husband and two other daughters remain in China. "If the (Chinese) government continues to act like this, I don't want to go back. But I am also very worried about my family."

The 50-year-old woman, who comes from a rural village outside Beijing, learned about Falun Gong three years ago.

She had gone to a village healer because her teen-age daughter was having fainting spells.

"He said he couldn't cure the disease, but suggested that we should learn Falun Gong because it would help," the grandmother said.

She and her family sought practitioners in their village and learned the meditations and exercises.

"I was very happy," the woman said. "I wished I had done it earlier because I could have saved money on medicine."

But in the next two years, the woman would be arrested three times.

The first time was in December 1999, when she and a daughter went to the trial of four Falun Gong leaders in Beijing.

"There was no reason for them to take me into custody," she said.

She and her daughter were released 10 hours later, after the trial was over.

After the arrest, the woman said she and other practitioners became more circumspect about getting together, often limiting their numbers and changing venues frequently.

In March 2000, she and a small group of Falun Gong followers gathered at a secluded greenway in her village to practice.

"As soon as I raised my hands to begin, three policemen arrested me," she said. "They yelled at me, 'What are you doing? Go, go, go! The government prohibits you from practicing, so why don't you listen to the government?' "

They were taken to a police station, where they were forced to stand in freezing weather for three hours.

"We were charged with blocking traffic," she said. "We were given 15 days detention."

The woman said she was put in a room with more than a dozen other women, many elderly. They had no beds, and a hole in the floor served as a toilet.

"They would not let us practice (Falun Gong), and they would not let us read (the teachings of Li)," she said.

Still, she said female practitioners fared better than the men.

She said men often are beaten by other inmates. She recounted the condition of one injured Falun Gong member.

"His face was broken, and his body was covered with bruises," she said, adding that the man later was taken away to serve one and a half years of hard labor.

After that arrest, the woman said she stopped doing the exercises outside and instead practiced at home.

The third time she was arrested was in June 2000, when she joined thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners at a protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

"When you feel you have been treated wrongly, you can go to an appeal office in Beijing," she said. "But the appeal office was closed, so we had to go to Tiananmen."

But as soon as she approached the area, she and her daughter were arrested.

"They let us all go," she said, smiling at the memory. "There were too many of us, so they let everyone go."

After that, Chinese plainclothes police officers started following her as she went grocery shopping, she said. She has been forced into house arrest on holidays.

The lab assistant, who is in Denver with her husband (a visiting scholar at the University of Denver) and 3-year-old daughter, took up Falun Gong after her husband became interested in 1996.

"I decided to read the book and found it was very good," she said in Chinese. "It comforted me and guided me in my life. I felt the book would help me become a better person, the person I wanted to be."

She was first arrested in Tiananmen Square in mid-January while trying to contact other followers. She said she was interrogated for several hours.

She eventually went on a hunger strike, saying she wouldn't eat unless she could practice Falun Gong.

At that point, she was taken to another room, where she said she was beaten and that three other inmates tried to force-feed her a type of salty soy mixture.

"I (spat) it all out," she recounted with a grin. "Everyone had the mixture all over them. I had it all over my clothes."

The inmates then took her to another cell, where there were three other practitioners. One cellmate helped her clean up and told her that the prisoners in that cell could talk about Falun Gong and practice meditation.

The prisoners also had a copy of the [Zhuan Falun], a text of Li's teachings, which they were allowed to study and discuss.

The lab assistant said she ended her hunger strike but was imprisoned for 21 more days.

She said she is planning to apply for political asylum in the United States.

"I think the Chinese government is afraid of Falun Gong," she said.

In the meantime, both women continue to practice and study Falun Gong in the United States.

"We don't harm anyone, we don't kill anyone," the grandmother said. "It is not wrong for people to practice Falun Gong."

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