30.01.2006

University of Southern Queensland Chinese contemporary culture and language lecturer and Falun Gong practitioner Yan Zhao agreed to shed some light on the group and its practices. Ms Zhao said Falun Gong was not a religion as much as a "cultivation practice" involving exercises, meditation and living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance developed by Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992.

"Whatever you do, you conduct yourself according to these principles," she said. "There's no rules, you check from within your heart." The exercises look similar to Tai Chi, with slow, meditative movements but Ms Zhao said the point of difference was that Falun Gong encouraged inner cultivation through the three principles as well as the physical exercise dictated by Tai Chi. She said the practice had benefits both in improved relationships and health. "If someone upsets me or says something bad to me, I don't react to that," Ms Zhao said. "I just think (of) what I can do better. "When you give that positive attitude, everything else is positive too." She said her mother, now in her 80s, is a Falun Gong practitioner who has seen her arthritis completely disappear since she took up the practice. "I saw the change in my mum, it really convinced me," Ms Zhao said. "I haven't visited a doctor for so long I can't remember my family doctor's name." Despite the apparent benefits of practicing Falun Gong, Ms Zhao said the Chinese communist government was strongly opposed to the practice. She said the Chinese government viewed Falun Gong as a threat because it had no central hub of control that the government could manage. As a result, practitioners were persecuted and the practice was denounced by the government.

"We have no political agenda, they are insecure," Ms Zhao said. Thousands of people had been jailed and killed in China for practicing Falun Gong, she said. Compassion, a Falun Gong publication, describes practitioners undergoing electric shock torture and beatings in labor camps and even Chinese media refer to placing practitioners in "re-education camps". Many practitioners have died. Falun Gong devotees in Australia have also been affected by the Chinese government's stance. Over the recent Christmas and New Year period, several Falun Gong practitioners around Australia received harassing phone calls they believed stemmed from the communist government.

The calls, mostly in Chinese but some in English, were pre-recorded and contained either slanderous statements about Falun Gong or pretended to be from a Falun Gong practitioner encouraging other practitioners to condemn the Queen, George Bush and the South Korean president. Some practitioners received 40 or 50 of the phone calls each day. Brisbane Falun Gong practitioner William Luo said the calls were "silly" and "childish" but an interference. Mr. Luo believed the government obtained the practitioners numbers through Falun Gong publications and websites and said the calls were probably connected to New Year celebrations. "They always do it when there is a big day, like Chinese New Year or Middle Moon Festival. All the calls I received in Chinese began with Happy New Year," Mr. Luo said. While the persecution ranges from inconvenient in Australia to deadly in China, Ms Zhao was confident the practice of Falun Gong would continue. "This is the only movement that has not been crushed by the communist government," she said. "The numbers have increased in spite of it."

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