Word: crackdowns
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...Party has broken Falun Gong. The organization once stunned the party by claiming tens of millions of followers; on April 25, 1999, 10,000 showed up to demonstrate in central Beijing. As recently as last winter, dozens arrived in Tiananmen Square nearly every day to protest the party's crackdown on the movement. But on the recent second anniversary of the 1999 demonstration, only about 30 people reached the square; most days no one does. The majority of practitioners, like Liu, seem to have surrendered their faith--or, at least, say they have. Most of the die-hard elements have...
...crackdown is revealing. Though decades of economic reforms have empowered many in Chinese society, the party retains a firm grasp on the tools of repression. But it deploys them only when it feels directly threatened. In 1992 a grain clerk named Li Hongzhi, who had once played trumpet with a song-and-dance troupe, first mingled the tenets of Buddhism, Taoism and traditional qigong exercises to create Falun Gong, a cocktail of religious beliefs and physical exercises aimed at leading its practitioners to enlightenment. The party took no action, though Li published books, sold videotapes and lectured to large audiences...
...protest stunned the leadership, Falun Gong's list of members terrified it; included were retired Communist Party elders and military officers. So the crackdown, when it finally came three months after the huge demonstration, stretched from the top of the party's ranks to the remotest rice paddy. A nationwide system of collective guilt held police, factory bosses and family members accountable when people around them practiced Falun Gong's slow-motion spiritual exercises. Foreign companies fell in line. Police sentenced more than 10,000 followers to labor camps, and Falun Gong's exiled leaders say they have evidence that...
...gathered to tell their stories: a middle-age doctor who had been confined to a mental institution, a peasant woman whose husband had been beaten to death. The youngest was a 12-year-old boy. His family members, he said, were neighborhood leaders of the movement. When the crackdown began, the boy arrived home from school one day to find police surrounding his house. Three weeks later, the authorities broke in to discover his grandmother and aunt hanging side by side in a dual suicide. The boy and his mother were incarcerated at the kindergarten where she taught, but refused...
...firm's overseas data line to read Falun Gong's website. In early January she found an essay by Li Hongzhi called "Beyond the Limits of Forbearance." Written at the time the demonstrations were starting to ebb, the essay urged more dramatic actions against the "evil" of the crackdown. "I copied it to a CD-ROM and gave it to everyone I know," she says. Through such networks, Li's words have spread to more radical practitioners. On Jan. 23, five suspected followers set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Two of them, a 12-year-old girl...