Twenty-four hours a day for the past three years, the followers of Falun Gong have kept a silent vigil. In the dark, or in the snow, or in the rain, they are always there, sitting quietly in front of the Chinese consulate. Now the building on St. George St., just a quick walk from U of T’s downtown campus, has become the symbolic battleground of a struggle that has spread all the way from Asia and spilled over Canada’s borders.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a religious belief system based on meditation that came to prominence in China in the early 1990s. According to Joel Chipkar, a local spokesman for Falun Gong, it is a peaceful doctrine that promotes the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance, and allows its practitioners to live better, more peaceful lives.
Though the majority of Falun Gong practitioners in Canada are of Chinese descent, Chipkar is among the ever-increasing number of new members here who claim to have been attracted to the practice by witnessing its dramatic effects on others.
It is, at least in part, its almost uncanny ability to win devoted converts that seems to have made Falun Gong dangerous in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1999, less than a decade after being introduced to the public, Falun Gong was reportedly being practiced by one in every 12 Chinese citizens. Its huge numbers, coupled with the fact that its founder, Li Hongzhi, was able to organize thousands of his followers quickly to demonstrate against an unfavourable newspaper article about them, made Chinese officials believe Falun Gong posed a serious threat to their authority. It was labelled a suicidal and murderous ‘heretical organization’ and banned in 1999. Since then, according to Amnesty International, “thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have reportedly been imprisoned, assigned to ‘re-education through labour,’ or forcibly institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals where they are at high risk of torture and ill-treatment.”
Lizhi He is one of those thousands. On July 21, 2000, days after he received Canadian immigration papers, government agents burst into his office in China and arrested him. He had been seen mailing pro-Falun Gong letters to colleagues and friends, something that was deemed unacceptable by the government-the same government that for years has attempted to control all information about Falun Gong within its borders. Lizhi He describes the ensuing three years of his life as “a terrible nightmare” spent inside three Chinese prisons, where he endured torture and abuse that left him close to death.
Talking over the phone from Toronto, where he settled after serving his full sentence, he speaks articulately and deliberately about Falun Gong’s presence in China. Until, that is, he is asked about his treatment in jail. His voice lowers to a mumble as he recounts the ordeal.
“Every day,” he says, “I was forced to sit in a fixed position, in terribly unsanitary conditions…. For almost one and a half months, I was in a high fever; every day sharp pains in my chest accompanied. For some time I could hardly breathe or lie down to sleep at night.” He was forced to do physical labour and to run and jump endlessly outside in the winter. He contracted scabies and tuberculosis, had severe kidney problems, and began coughing up and urinating blood.
Despite his rapidly deteriorating health, the prison guards would not take him to the hospital unless he confessed to being “insanely infatuated” with Falun Gong. Fearing that if he died in jail, his death would be publicized by the government as a suicide and presented as further proof that Falun Gong practitioners were deranged, He renounced his belief.
“Against my will and my conscience, I was forced to admit all those letters should not have been mailed, and that it was a crime….I said I would obey.”
Later, after a long stay in the prison hospital, He says government inspectors visited the jail to assess how well Falun Gong prisoners were being transformed.
“I was given a last chance to tell my real mind,” he said, “I told them that Falun Gong is righteous, the persecution is wrong, and that I was innocent.” He says he was then attacked by three policemen with electric batons. The assault was so severe that he felt pain in his chest and kidneys for months afterward. The psychological damage has lasted even longer. “Even today when I see electric wiring, it reminds me of the electric shocks,” he said.
This past Friday, Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Canada on his first official visit to the country since assuming power in 2003. As Prime Minister Paul Martin stood beside him in front of the nation’s media, he declared that “transparency…[and] an understanding of human rights” must accompany China’s global economic ascent, but Hu assured him that his country had made great strides towards good governance. Martin appeared confident in China’s ability to reform, and he proceeded to toast Hu’s plan of doubling the two nations’ trade by 2010.
Falun Gong practitioners in China are incapable of protesting against their government without putting themselves at great personal risk, but here in Canada they have kept up a non-stop protest against the injustice they say has claimed the lives of 1,800 innocent people.
But it appears that even here, thousands of kilometres from mainland China, the Communist Party is not willing to let them speak out freely. Earlier this summer, two Chinese government agents defected and revealed that there are roughly 1,000 Chinese spies in Canada, many of them whose duty it is to intimidate Falun Gong members.
To Joel Chipkar, the announcement was not surprising. “The spy activity here is rampant,” he said, “Any event we have, there’s always people there with cameras, taking pictures.”
Pixing Zhao says a number of U of T students have even been harassed by Chinese agents. Zhao is one of the co-ordinators of the Falun Dafa Practice and Study Group, a recognized campus organization. According to him, a Falun Gong practitioner from Singapore who came to Toronto to attend U of T began getting anonymous phone calls soon after his arrival. “He received calls ten times a day,” said Zhao, “On the other end was a message broadcasting hate propaganda against Falun Gong. In Toronto, more than twenty [practitioners] got the same phone call.”
Zhao says that after writing emails to fellow practitioners, he has received anonymous emails reading “I know who you are” and “I know your name.” Though disturbed by these emails, Zhao has accepted such intimidation as the price he must pay for speaking his mind.
“When we stand up, we know we’ll get harassed,” he said. “I know spies exist in my daily life, but I don’t know what they know about me.”
Zhao says that even in Canada, many Chinese people are afraid to even speak out about Falun Gong. In Canadian Chinese communities, “people are isolated from each other,” he said. “That’s the real tragedy.”
Falun Gong practitioners are adamant that, despite what the Chinese government says, they pose no threat to the Chinese Communist Party. Yet it is increasingly clear that, at least for the moment, Falun Gong and the Chinese government cannot coexist amicably, especially considering the egregious charges the religious group has made against them. If the international community heeds what Falun Gong practitioners are saying, China would certainly face damaging repercussions, possibly even tough sanctions.
So far, however, most nations seem to be taking an ambivalent stance toward China’s treatment of Falun Gong. The country’s growing economic influence makes chastising its government an unappealing prospect for most western countries. But people like Zhao are urging the Canadian government to set aside its friendly economic ties with China and demand that Falun Gong practitioners at home and abroad be treated humanely.
But he dismissed protests such as Martin’s as lacking the necessary force.
“Their voice is too low,” he said.
