PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - A few people looked, some asked questions. Others, like the police officers, merely drove past the two dozen or so people who stood, meditating, on the courtyard in front of the old North Church on Sunday afternoon.
It was a demonstration, not a protest, and rather tame. The little group marched from John Paul Jones Park in Kittery into Portsmouth, carrying balloons and letters of support from U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe and U.S. Rep. John Baldacci. After about two hours, everybody went home.
Had the group done such a thing in China, the reaction would have been vastly different.
That was the point.
The demonstrators are practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that the government of the People's Republic of China has declared [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted] and banned. Practitioners there are arrested, tortured, killed.
Demonstrators said that in the past two years, more than 50,000 practitioners in China have been arrested, more than 250 have been tortured to death, more than 10,000 have been sent to labor camps and more than 600 have been sent to mental institutions.
"We in America have a right to speak out," said Brian Marple, an 18-year-old Falun Gong practitioner who lives in Whitefield, Maine.
In fact, he said, Falun Gong practitioners - and people of good will in free countries have a responsibility to speak against the Chinese government's crackdown.
"The Chinese people themselves have very little way to fight against it," said Marple, one of 14 practitioners from Maine who attended the demonstration, "so it really has to come from other countries."
Slowly, that is happening.
In her letter, Snowe wrote: "I have supported efforts to call on China to release all prisoners of conscience and immediately end the harassment, detention, physical abuse and imprisonment of Chinese citizens exercising their legitimate rights to free belief, expression and association."
Snowe, a Republican, continued: "I will continue to support congressional initiatives to end the crackdown on Falun Gong."
Her Democratic colleague, Baldacci, who represents Maine's 2nd Congressional District, wrote that he and other members of the House have nominated Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Whenever possible," he wrote, "I will continue to use my voice in Congress to assist our nation's efforts to persuade China to stop its persecution of the Falun Gong and reverse these destructive policies."
Mary Byrom, a Falun Gong practitioner who lives in Kittery, said she wants the world to take notice. She said the movement, which is grounded in truth, compassion and tolerance and incorporates seated and standing meditation, merely wants to exist.
She had some hope, too.
She said there's a possibility that the 2008 summer Olympic Games, which were awarded to Beijing on Friday, may open the country up.
Falun Gong has no position on the Olympics, she said, but she noted that many ordinary Chinese citizens don't know what's really happening. The intense scrutiny that may accompany the Games may change that.
At least, Byrom hopes.
http://www.portland.com/news/state/010716gong.shtml