Falun Gong

Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on a mixture of Chan Buddhist practices and philosophy, and the ancient taoism philosophy of Qigong. Falun Dafa has been translated to mean "Buddhist Law." Founded by Li Hongzhi in China in 1992, http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln270/FalunGong/FaLunGong.htm Falun Gong practitioners use a series of five meditation exercises to develop an understanding of the main principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.Falun Dafa: Introduction to Falun Dafa

Members of the Falun Gong staged a protest in 1999 as a result of a magazine article that was published slandering the organization and because the Chinese government would not give them recognition as a religious organization. The movement was banned in China that same year because government officials feared it challenged their authority. Since then, members of Falun Gong have been harassed, jailed, tortured, and even killed for use of their organs in transplants.http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=139457

Eyewitness Account of Organ Harvesting, December 14, 2009

Canadian CBC TV Documentary Probes Persecution of The Falun Gong in China

Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong aired on CBC Newsworld on Tuesday, November 6 and on Saturday, November 10. The film was also aired in Quebec and Ireland this fall. The film reports how Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested while on a return visit to China in 2002. He was sentenced without trial to three years in a labor camp, where he was severely beaten, repeatedly shocked with an electric baton, and brainwashed in an attempt to have him relinquish his faith. Canadian activists forced China to release Zhang with a pressure campaign.

Thousands of other Falun Gong members in China have been routinely jailed without trial. They face the same sort of brutality inflicted on Zhang simply because they adhere to Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline and meditation practice. Human rights groups have documented over 3,000 torture deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and the most recent U.S. Department of State report on human rights highlighted the ongoing persecution.

The problems for members of the Falun Gong began in April 1999 after about 10,000 practitioners quietly gathered outside the Communist Party headquarters to protest harassment. The Party became alarmed and took action beginning on July 20, 1999 with a directive from Jiang Zemin. This led to mass arrests and an intense propaganda campaign that vilified Falun Gong both in China and overseas. Soon afterward, disturbing reports began to emerge, telling of the systematic persecution, torture, and execution of practitioners.

A part of the broadcast documents the illicit, state-sanctioned harvesting of the bodily organs of Falun Gong practitioners for China’s booming transplant industry. Chinese organ brokers freely admitted in phone conversations that they had “Falun Gong suppliers” immediately available to provide organs. Average wait times for a kidney transplant appear silently on the screen, the figures speaking for themselves: Canada, 2555 days; United Kingdom, 1095 days; United States, 1825 days; and China, 15 days.

Despite the persecution and arrests, the Falun Gong has been quietly growing in rural areas and smaller cities, " because nobody can destroy one's belief," says Guo Guoting, an exiled Chinese lawyer who defended Falun Gong adherents in China before the authorities shut down his law practice. He fled to Canada in 2005.

Johnson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of features he wrote about Falun Gong, says in Red Wall that the persecution “remains one of the scars on the body politic of China,”

“In order for China to move forward, they have to have this kind of a reckoning," says former Canadian Cabinet Minister Kilgour, “...the killing has to stop.” http://www.livestrong.com/health-article/canada-cbc-tv-documentary-probes-persecution-of-falun-gong-in-china_dcbae8d7-50d3-4a23-8e8a-c9631f1ef617/

• The Onion: The Falun Gong Show (August 18, 1999)

• Uncyclopedia: Great Leap Forward: The Aftermath