July 11, 2001
Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - Beverly Clark of Provo, Utah, said she "just took off" from her job to join a cross-country Falun Gong caravan demonstrating for human rights in China.
"I had a lot of annual leave built up, and when I heard about this, I decided to come along," she said Tuesday during a demonstration by the China-based exercise-meditation movement.
Clark, who has been a Falun Gong practitioner for two years, was among 14 people who traveled to Denver. They joined a few dozen local followers at Civic Center to give testimonies and show pictures of other followers.
Practitioners contend their colleagues are being persecuted, unlawfully jailed and even murdered by the Chinese government. They hope the cross-country trip will make Americans aware of the "atrocities" committed by Chinese leaders.
Eugene Carai, a Romanian, joined Falun Gong about 18 months ago after finding out about it through a friend.
A software engineer in the San Francisco area, Carai said "coming on the trip is a way I can help all persecuted people and people in general."
The group will make a dozen stops on the journey from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where it is scheduled to arrive July 20. Members hope to make their case to Congress.
Before and after leaders talked to the press, about a dozen practitioners did the slow-moving exercises of Falun Gong, which teaches that meditation and exercise enhance a person's "spiritual, mental and physical well-being." They say Falun Gong is a movement, not a religion.
The Chinese government supported Falun Gong when it was formed in 1992, but over the years became suspicious "because they don't like for people to think for themselves," Carai said.
The practice was banned in 1999, and numerous reports have come out of China about practitioners being rounded up, detained, denied food and water, beaten and killed.
Practitioners of Falun Gong - which has no headquarters, no membership rolls and no paid staff - claim that since the Chinese began persecuting followers two years ago, 234 have died in police custody.
Chinese leaders have denied all human rights abuses, but Falun Gong followers believe that police who are guilty of murder and torture "go unpunished and even rewarded," according to a statement.
Amnesty International supports the assertions.
Falun Gong has an estimated 100 million practitioners in China, and hundreds of thousands in 40 other countries. About 30 people meet in Washington Park each Saturday to do the meditation, and others do so privately, said Vivian Lam, a Denver software developer.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E64297,00.html