Word: gongli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...practitioners all seem to share similar stories about the joy that Falun Gong has brought to their lives. Sure, some took up the exercises because they were convinced of Falun Gong's healing power, while others came to it as a natural progression from Tai Chi and yoga. Many, however, seem to agree with Gary Feuerberg, a statistician in the Federal Government, who says with a note of wonderment in his voice that Falun Gong "is very powerful and makes you a better person. It's about truth...
What about politics? This is Washington, after all. Each day Falun Gong followers--mostly ethnic Chinese--can be found protesting across from the Beijing government's embassy. "Before the crackdown [on Falun Gong in China]," says Feuerberg, "no one spoke about politics. There was no agenda. Yet those suffering in China are like 1st century Christian martyrs. We must stand by them while showing compassion to their oppressors." That's a very American approach. It wouldn't get you far in Beijing...
Chinese police call people like Liu Shujuan "die-hard elements." After the government banned Falun Gong, her spiritual practice, Liu traveled three times to the political heart of China to protest in Tiananmen Square. The last time, in November, she brought her four-year-old daughter and unfurled a yellow banner reading, "The Falun Law Is the Universal Law!" Police jailed Liu and threatened to dispatch her to one of China's labor camps. Her terrified parents begged her to disavow her beliefs. Her husband smacked her. At work, her boss threatened to fire her. Then someone brought her weeping...
...state wanted more. In March, the Communist Party confined Liu to a hotel room for five days with renounced Falun Gong practitioners. They picked apart the spiritual movement's doctrine and blamed Liu, a 31-year-old grammar-school art teacher, for ruining her family. By the time the sessions ended, says Liu, "I realized I was thinking only of myself." She committed apostasy, signing a written pledge to "split from the evil cult Falun Gong and its heresies." These days, the party makes her lead similar sessions herself. Speaking in a carefully monitored meeting that includes two government officials...
...Meeting by meeting, person by person, through a vast chain reaction of threats, slaps, intimidation and violence, China's Communist Party has broken Falun Gong, the organization that amazed the country by claiming tens of millions of followers?and stunned the government by bringing, on a few days' notice, 10,000 practitioners to the pavement in April 1999 outside the compound that houses China's top leaders. As recently as last winter, dozens arrived in Tiananmen Square nearly every day to protest the crackdown touched off by that show of grit and numbers. By contrast, on the recent second anniversary...