07/08/2001 - Sunday
Mengyang Jian will celebrate her 17th birthday in two days. She will be hundreds of miles from her family and trekking through a town in which she has never before set foot.
But for Jian, and the three other Falun Gong adherents walking with her from Boston to Washington, D.C., that's just one sacrifice being made in the name of freedom.
Like many followers of the spiritual group who live in the United States, Jian has relatives in China who have been imprisoned and tortured because they are practitioners of Falun Gong.
"There can be no excuse whatsoever for the tortures, the rapes and the trials China has done to its people," Jian said. "These people should never have been incarcerated in the first place." More than 100 supporters of Falun Gong, the meditative and spiritual practice banned by the Chinese government that also is known as Falun Dafa, rallied outside the Chinese Consulate in Manhattan yesterday. They greeted Jian and her companions - Wao Wang, 16, Pin Li, 32, and Susie Truong, 31 - who paused briefly along their journey to speak to the crowd.
Some supporters arrived hours before the marchers to practice meditative exercises on the corner. A group of Chinese construction workers laboring on a building across the street paused to watch the graceful movements and completely stopped what they were doing when the travelers began to speak through microphones.
"Every step we take for the next few days will be to let people know about the terrible persecution in China," Wang said. "Walking 20 miles a day is not an easy task ... but we feel that this can make a difference in the lives of millions of people." One of seven groups walking to the nation's capital, the four Bostonians, who began their trek June 26, represent a major movement to stop what followers say is the persecution of a peaceful group at the hands of the Chinese government. Teams from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., and New York will join the Boston quartet on July 19 to conduct a rally with thousands of supporters at the Capitol.
Since banning the practice in 1999, Chinese authorities have attempted to squash meetings and discredit members with a zeal that has caught the alarm of human-rights groups as well as the United Nations.
Nearly 500 members have been jailed, and tens of thousands more have been detained without due process. Reports of beatings, rapes and starvation tactics are common. Chinese officials deny these accusations, saying many of the deaths are suicides.
Followers of Falun Gong are estimated to number 70 million worldwide with adherents in more than 40 countries. Most are in China, however.
"People feel this is only a Chinese thing, but it breaks all types of barriers, be they racial, political or religious," said Benjamin Zgodny, 21, of Hamden, Conn., a Quinnipiac University student who attended the rally.
"Besides, this isn't just about Falun Gong. It's about basic human rights that China is violating."
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