July 18, 2001

The people sitting lotus-style yesterday on the hardwood floor of the Friends Meeting House in Shadyside meditated to gentle Asian music. All around them were horrific posters of fellow believers who had been tortured to death in China.

When the music stopped, they began to tell their story.

"We have traveled here today as part of our journey across America to send an SOS to rescue the Falun Gong practitioners in China," said Estelle Morgan, a Bucks County native who served as a spokeswoman for 14 people traveling from California to Washington, D.C., for a rally Friday on behalf of Falun Gong. Two vans covered with homemade signs demanding an end to the violence were parked outside on Ellsworth Avenue.

"We are seeking every means -- diplomatic, legal and humanitarian -- to stop any further killing of innocent people in China," Morgan said.

Falun Gong, which is drawn from an ancient Chinese meditative practice known as qigong, first emerged in 1992. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is based on practicing truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. It is not related to Buddhism and does not consider itself a religion.

Its founder, Li Hongzhi, traveled China from 1992 to 1994 promoting the meditations, exercises and mindset that, he said, would lead to a healthy and happy life. Back then, Morgan said, the Chinese government praised Falun Gong for helping to cut medical costs.

By 1996 it was believed to have 70 million followers in China. After a regional persecution broke out in 1999, 10,000 followers gathered for a peaceful protest in Beijing.

Falun Gong leaders say the size of the crowd frightened [party name omitted] leaders and sparked the violent crackdown that began two years ago this week.

Since then, 253 practitioners have been killed. More than 50,000 have been detained, and 10,000 sent to labor camps.

Protests from Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department have failed to curb the crackdown.

Among the posters at the meeting house was that of a 27-year-old woman and her 8-month-old son, who were reported beaten to death in a labor camp. The poster said that a medical examiner found that the baby had been shackled and hanged upside down.

The Chinese government maintains that it has banned Falun Gong for the protection of its members, alleging that the movement prohibits medical care.

[...]

Such claims, Morgan said, are preposterous. Though Falun Gong practices are intended to improve health, there is no prohibition against medicine, she said.

In fact, the focal point of the meeting yesterday was a young pediatrician from Beijing who told of being jailed for a month after she went to state officials to protest the abuse of other Falun Gong practitioners. Yang Li spoke in a near whisper and fought back tears as a translator told her story. She described a crowded, filthy jail where inmates were fed only boiled cabbage or radishes, and where they were sometimes forced to stand absolutely still for as long as 18 hours.

After she was released she lost her job, she said. Other female Falun Gong inmates were beaten or killed.

No one knows the number of Falun Gong practitioners in the United States because the movement has no membership. Most are Chinese immigrants, Morgan said, but since Li Hongzhi's books were translated into English, it has begun to attract non-Asians such as herself. Pittsburgh has a small but active Falun Gong community, including about a dozen people who gather on weekends to meditate in Schenley Park.

Information on the practice of Falun Gong is available at www.falundafa.org.

Information on the persecution is at www.faluninfo.net. The Pittsburgh group is at www.nb.net/~boying.

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