2001-07-14

On the east side of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, about a dozen people sat on the ground.

Backs straight. Legs crossed. Eyes closed. Hands cupped in front of their chests.

Meditation, it's called.

In the land of the red, white and blue, such a display draws mostly shrugs, if any reaction at all.

Try it in [party' name omitted] China, though, and it could get you killed.

That was the message delivered this week by practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. They stopped in Oklahoma City on a cross-country van trip to protest persecution in China that they claim took the lives of 15 women in a labor camp last month.

"We are seeking every means -- diplomatic, legal and humanitarian -- to stop any further killing of innocent people in China," said Gina Sanchez, a California acupuncturist and trip organizer.

Speakers gave personal accounts of mistreatment in China while blaming the June 20 deaths of the Falun Gong practitioners on beatings by guards at the Laogai labor camp in Heilongjiang Province.

The trip started July 6 in Los Angeles and will end Tuesday in Washington, D.C., with rallies and meetings with lawmakers.

Falun Gong, started by Li Hongzhi in 1992, espouses truth, compassion and benevolence, followers say. Practitioners believe Falun Gong improves health, reduces stress and increases energy and peace of mind.

During a two-year crackdown on Falun Gong, the Chinese government has sent thousands of followers to labor camps.

China's government says [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous terms omitted].

Falun Gong followers deny those allegations and say 250 followers have died from police brutality since July 1999.

Glen Hong, an Oklahoma City University graduate student from Taiwan, came to show support for the travelers.

Hong and his wife, Daphne, sported yellow T-shirts declaring, "China: Stop Persecuting Falun Gong." Their daughter, Chou, 1, wore a button with the same message.

"A lot of practitioners, they are illegally detained by the (Chinese) police," Hong said. "They torture them and they don't give them food."

Hong and his wife distributed fliers to national memorial visitors and displayed a "Help Stop the Persecution" poster showing pictures of people with bruised buttocks and other signs of trauma. Pointing to the pictures, the Hongs described a 28-year-old woman killed despite having an 8-month-old baby and a 33-year-old woman whose arm had to be amputated as a result of torture.

"All the practitioners, they don't fight back because Master Li always asks us to be good people," said Glen Hong, who began practicing Falun Gong five years ago.

"The bad guy can do bad deeds to us, but we cannot do the same thing to them. That's what always the master asks us to do."

For generations, Chinese people have gathered at dawn in public parks to perform the flowing movements of tai chi (tie-CHEE), their national exercise. Many also practice qigong (chee-KUNG), a similar discipline that is said to awaken and move energy (qi or chi) within the body.

In 1992, a young man from Manchuria began teaching a new form of qigong with simpler movements. He called it Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, which is loosely translated as "law wheel of the universe." It caught on quickly, spread to Beijing, and the young man, Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk and trumpet player in a military band, became "Master Li."

By the mid-1990s, by some estimates, Falun Gong had nearly 100 million adherents in China. Master Li lectured widely. Huge crowds gathered daily to perform the exercises and meditation he prescribed.

China's [party' name omitted] government grew nervous. Large gatherings could spell trouble. Any ideology other than Communism was a threat, even something as seemingly benign as Falun Gong's principles.

A Chinese government Web site describes Falun Gong [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous terms omitted].

Falun Gong supporters who came to Oklahoma told a different story.

Mingjing Xue, a Chinese woman who now lives in Los Angeles, said she was twice detained for a total of 104 days.

"Once, I was handcuffed together with another practitioner for three days to the window," Xue said. "We were not permitted to eat, sleep or use the rest room.

"We had no water, we had to sit on the ground, and were not allowed to meditate or even close our eyes."

Yaning Liu, a university student in Phoenix, said her mother was sentenced to three years in prison for appealing to the government on Falun Gong's behalf.

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