Chicago Sun Times: Falun Gong backers launch protest here

August 31, 2001

By Cathleen Falsani Religion Reporter

Two teardrops inched slowly down Ning Yu's face as she glared silently across the street at the Chinese consulate on West Erie Thursday.

Yu's chin didn't quiver and her expression never changed as she stood, stoic but for the droplets streaking her delicate cheeks, defiantly holding a sign that read, "Stop killing Falun Gong."

Along with several dozen other Falun Gong practitioners from the Chicago area, Yu plans to participate in a 10-day hunger strike in protest of the Chinese government's treatment of Falun Gong followers imprisoned in a so-called work camp in Shenyang, Chicago's sister city in China.

Falun Gong adherents here say the "work camps" are little more than concentration camps, where prisoners are tortured, mistreated and often worked to death.

For the last four weeks, 130 women prisoners at the Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang have been on a hunger strike. Their sentences expired at the beginning of August, but prison officials say they will not be released until they renounce their Falun Gong beliefs, "As a practitioner, I cannot stand these evil things to continue," said Yu, 37, a native of China's Qing Hai province who is studying biology in a post-doctoral program at the University of Chicago. "That's why I would like to spend my weekend and holiday to do a hunger strike for 72 hours. I want, wholeheartedly, that China's government release all the practitioners persecuted in China, and that they stop the brutal torture immediately."

Yu said she's been a Falun Gong practitioner for almost two years.

Most of the Falun Gong protesters will participate in the 10-day hunger strike on a rolling basis, three or four days at a time.

"The practitioners of Falun Gong cherish all life," said Stephen Gregory, a Chicago practitioner. "The practitioners here in Chicago choose to endure a little suffering that they know they can bear in order to let the world know of the horrible suffering going on in Masanjia today."

Practitioners in Washington, D.C., Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo, London, Johannesburg and other cities around the world also are undertaking hunger strikes in solidarity with the Masanjia prisoners, he said.

Adam Ortiz, Midwest regional deputy director for Amnesty International, said his organization would urge Mayor Daley to condemn the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners at the labor camp in Chicago's Chinese sister city.

Movement spiritual, not religious

Founded in China in 1992, the Falun Gong spiritual movement combines slow-motion traditional Chinese exercises and meditation with teachings that focus on truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance.

Its adherents say the movement is not religious and that it focuses on cultivating human goodness rather than worshipping a supreme being or ideal. They also claim that practicing Falun Gong's principles and exercises can profoundly improve health, even healing life-threatening illnesses.

Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, who lives in exile in New York, has written [several] books explaining the philosophy behind the movement. Adherents believe they can cultivate truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance by practicing five simple exercises--including meditation--and reading Hongzhi's books.

Adherents claim millions of followers worldwide--including nearly 1,000 in the Chicago area and 60 million in China, more than the membership of the [party's name omitted] Party in that nation.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, was outlawed by the Chinese government in 1999 after more than 10,000 practitioners converged on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Since then, thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested. Chinese President Jiang Zemin has called the group an "[Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted]."

For more information, visit www.falundafa.org.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-gong31.html