Word: falun
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...Yorker Levi Browde, a 29-year-old software engineer and Falun Gong practitioner, struck first. "I wanted people in China to see that Falun Gong is embraced around the world," he says. So he and a friend took a taxi to Tiananmen Square on Feb. 11, unfurled a banner reading FALUN GONG IS GOOD and in seconds were carted away by police. Three days later, more than 40 foreign demonstrators raced through the square as police chased them past astonished Chinese tourists who were spending the weeklong holiday in the capital. The foreigners had come, said the state-run Xinhua...
...They didn't undermine the festival but the protesting foreigners did show how thorough the domestic crackdown on Falun Gong has been. Most Chinese practitioners are in jail, and those still free are underground or closely watched. If they protest, their relatives or bosses are punished. "Holding local officials responsible for practitioners in their areas was a stroke of genius," says a Western diplomat who tracks religious issues. As a result, native Chinese haven't protested in Tiananmen Square in large numbers since January last year, when five people set themselves on fire...
CHINA Welcoming the Year of the Horse The Chinese celebrated the lunar New Year with lion and dragon dances and the customary televised musical marathon. Beijing police said protests in Tiananmen Square by foreign followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement were intended to stop the Chinese from enjoying the festival. They deported most of the more than 40 foreign nationals arrested. Since 1999 many Falun Gong supporters have been imprisoned without trial, and the movement claims over 1,600 have died in custody...
...lion?s share of the thanks for that should go to the New York Police Department, who have laid down a security cordon around the Waldorf-Astoria and other midtown hotels, and manned (or womaned) it, by and large, with great good humor. Demonstrators - followers of Falun Gong have been the most prominent - have been segregated across the street, squashed into a narrow area behind barricades. The main demonstration, on Saturday, went off remarkably quietly, as the marchers were kept well away from the delegates; I had no idea that the NYPD had so many police horses...
...That sentiment is precisely what worries Beijing. As China gears up for an expected succession struggle in the Politburo later this year, the Communist Party wants to ensure that no group nibbles away at its hold on power. Thus Beijing's severe crackdown on Falun Gong, the Buddhist-exercise movement that spooked China's leaders by getting 10,000 followers to protest in front of Beijing's leadership compound three years ago. The demonstration prompted the hasty passage of a law dictating harsh punishment to anyone involved in a cult?while conveniently failing to define what exactly constitutes one. "Anytime...