(Clearwisdom.net) Tibetans, Catholic clergy, Uyghur Muslims, dispossessed farmers, foreign human rights and environmental groups, as well peaceful practitioners of Falun Gong... in the Communist Party's eyes, are all political threats to next year's Olympics. According to recent reports, Chinese officials compiled a list of 43 "undesirable" groups it plans to ban from the Games.

For Li Huang of Middletown and other Frederick and Montgomery County practitioners of Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa, as it's also called), the Beijing Olympics are a mixed blessing. Many Chinese immigrants still have friends, family or co-workers in China who practice Falun Gong. There's fear that they and other practitioners face even greater threats of arrest and persecution as part of their ongoing human rights struggle.

"My mother, who practices Falun Dafa, was detained three times," said Larry Liu of Gaithersburg, a visiting professor at American University awaiting his green card. "Thankfully, she's safe and she is with me now. She's 67 years old and a retired electrical engineer. She wasn't a threat to anybody."

"If they (the Chinese government) knew I practiced, they would not allow me back to visit," Li Huang said. She learned Falun Gong in the United States in 1997, four years after immigrating here. She said families and coworkers of Falun Dafa practitioners are often detained and penalized in China, even if they do not participate in the popular spiritual movement themselves, as a form of intimidation.

"Personally, I think the Olympic Games are good because they make whole nations unite internationally through sports," Li said. "But I feel like these Olympic Games are in the wrong hands. I think they are similar to the Games just before World War II in Germany. I think China will try to show off its good side and hide everything else."

Ancient exercise, spiritual principles

Falun Gong, practitioners are quick to point out, is neither a cult, as the Chinese Communist leaders claim, nor a religion. Everything is offered free.

The principles of Falun Dafa are explained in the book Zhuan Falun, and in the beginner's text, Falun Gong, both written by Falun Dafa's founder, Li Hongzhi. They can be downloaded free from the Internet. Classes, like the ones Li Huang taught at the William Talley Recreation Center in 2003, are free. Essential to the practice are five gentle exercises, including a seated meditation.

Catherine Huang, a Frederick mother of three, began practicing in Baltimore on weekends with her husband at The Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus 11 years ago. Now she practices at home.

"My husband practices, too," Huang said. "And my son. He's 7. We used to bring him in a cradle to Johns Hopkins and he'd watch us. He loved the music. The exercises are simple, he was able to start doing them when he was three."

For Catherine Huang, who also has young twin girls; Li Haung; Liu; and other practitioners like Frederick computer programmer Karen Hong, the attraction of Falun Gong is both its simplicity and rewards.

"Like many people I was looking for something healthy that would help me feel good physically," said Hong. "Many people in China look to qigong, Tai Chi or martial arts for exercise."

The difference, she said, was the combination of Taoist, Buddhist and Confucianism in the texts that added a spiritual component, helping her develop the core principles of "Truthful, Compassion and Tolerance." Regular practice focuses on the continual spiritual reading of the texts. "You might read the same thing a week or month later, but it will be with a new perspective and you'll see the same words in a different light."

The exercises enable the body to release tension and stress.

"You relax and regain your body's energy," Hong said. "You feel refreshed."

Introductory classes and group practices are ongoing throughout Montgomery County and the D.C. metro area, including weekends on the Mall, in Columbia, Silver Spring, and during the school year on Friday nights at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville.

In mid-July, the annual, week long Washington D.C. Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference attracted more than 4,000 people from around the world, according to organizers. The event included films, discussions, group practice, reading, meditation and a rally in front of the Chinese Embassy on Connecticut Avenue.

"I'll tell you one story I thought was funny," said Lui Huang, who graduated from the Harbin Institute in Beijing and later earned a master's degree from Hood College. She nonetheless described herself as a very low-energy person before she began Falun Dafa a decade ago. "I was always tired," she said. "Then I had a colleague who I had worked with for four years and when he was leaving, he remarked that he had never seen me tired the whole time we worked together and that surprised me.

"Then I laughed," said Huang. "I remembered, he hadn't known me before I started practicing."

Chinese crackdown in 1999

There is hope increased media scrutiny will bring international demand for Chinese human rights changes. However, Huang, Liu and others interviewed do not see the Chinese Communist Party backing away from its persecution of Falun Gong's practitioners soon.

On April 25, 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside the Chinese leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, in Beijing. [Correction: the practitioners gathered at the Appeals Office, which is near the government compound, as they were instructed to do by the authorities in Tianjin-ed.] The peaceful assembly [was] prompted by reports of violence and harassment previously inflicted upon Falun Dafa practitioners by Chinese police in the city of Tianjin, as well as an unjustified ban on publishing Falun Dafa materials, according to falundafa.org.

[...]

Shortly thereafter, on July 22, 1999, Falun Gong was officially banned. Later, China's parliament, the National People's Congress, adopted a legislative decision banning all "'heretical organizations" in October 1999. According to Amnesty International, a New Year's editorial on Janiary 1, 2000, in the official People's Daily newspaper, Chinese officials listed the "serious handling" of the "heretical organization Falun Gong" as one of the government's major achievements of 1999. They claimed, and continue to claim, that the Falun Gong represents a serious "threat to social and political stability."

"Since the ban, the Chinese authorities, at national and provincial levels, have carried out a severe crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners and members of other organizations deemed to be 'heretical organizations,'" Amnesty International said. "Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained by police, some of them repeatedly for short periods, and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs," a 2000 A.I. report stated. "Many of them are reported to have been tortured or ill-treated in detention. Some practitioners have been detained in psychiatric hospitals. Those who have spoken out publicly about the persecution of practitioners since the ban have suffered harsh reprisals."

Also in 2000, as the human rights crackdown received international attention, places like Washington, D.C.; Montgomery County; Hagerstown; and Frederick proclaimed ceremonial Falun Dafa Weeks in support of practitioners here and abroad. Unfortunately, little has apparently changed in China.

"I don't know if hundreds of thousands (Falun Gong practitioners) have been arrested since 1999, but certainly tens of thousands," said Mickey Spiegel, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch, which, along with the Foreign Correspondents Club of China and Reporters Without Borders. issued a recent report saying the country has not stuck to pledges on media access and human rights it made to secure its Olympic bid. "It has been ferocious," Spiegel said. "Quite a lot of people got sentenced to 7-14 year prison sentences. Others they've sent to re-education camps for up to three years. It's absolutely real."

Also, "absolutely real," Spiegel said, is the pressure Chinese trade officials put on cities, as well as small towns, to prevent further "Falun Dafa Weeks."

"The Olympics present an opportunity in a different way because the whole world is watching," said Spiegel. She noted that a lot of issues that people don't know about that should become front and center with international media there, adding that sportswriters won't have to look too hard to address important topics.

"NBC announced they are covering 3,600 hours of events," Spiegel said. "I don't expect them to ignore these issues completely."

"People may think, 'It's not my problem, I'm OK, I live in Maryland, or 'I'm not Chinese,'" Karen Wong said. "But it should be everyone's concern. The Chinese government does a lot of trade with the U.S. and Maryland and you can't trust these relationships if the government does not value morality. Look at their problems with food contamination, with labor, with the environment.

"Eventually, these things will impact U.S. citizens, too."

Staff photo by Rebecca Davis Li Huang of Middletown practices Falun Dafa in her backyard. Huang is one of a number of Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong, practitioners in the Frederick County area who are becoming increasingly concerned about the recent suppression of the practice in China leading up to next year's Olympic Games.

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