Word: gongli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...This lack of solidarity is adding to a growing desperation among the meditation group's rank and file, many of whom feel out of touch with their exiled master and misguided by his overseas ministers. Ever since Beijing outlawed it as an "evil cult" two years ago, Falun Gong?an eclectic mix of Taoism, Buddhism and Qigong breathing exercises?has prided itself on its organizational acumen. In April 1999, the group achieved the impossible, silently assembling 10,000 adherents in front of Beijing's walled leadership compound. Even as thousands of its members were thrown into labor camps and more...
...Certainly, the government would be delighted by any disarray within the group's ranks. Despite an unrelenting propaganda campaign?Beijing claims that 1,700 followers have died because of eccentric Falun Gong practices?most Chinese view the group as harmlessly kooky. Yet for the nation's control-crazed rulers, no group, not even firebrand dissidents who call for immediate political reform, is as menacing as these quiet meditators who have mounted among the most sustained protests in the history of the People's Republic...
...part, Falun Gong continues to claim that it has no overarching political agenda. Still, the group has taken to describing Jiang Zemin as a "demon worshipper" infected with "Mad Power disease." And on January 1, its mysterious master, New York-based Li Hongzhi, upped the ante by releasing a curious scripture that appeared to allow violence in extreme cases when protesting ill treatment. For some Falun Gong followers, the words were a welcome call to arms. "It is not in Falun Gong's nature to be violent," says a retired teacher, who was arrested last year for her ties...
...Gail Rachlin: "The essay is about stepping out and telling of evil, not about creating evil." Such fine-tuning may be too subtle for the thousands of believers who flock to Beijing to voice their protest. Indeed, New York's disowning of the five immolators has bewildered some Falun Gong adherents living in China. "I know that violence is against the spirit of Falun Gong," says a 53-year-old factory worker from Nanjing. "But why don't our foreign friends support us when we are in trouble?" For his part, the master has not expounded further on the subject...
...troubles may not be over. Anonymous flyers distributed last week in Shanghai and Wuhan mailboxes ominously spoke of the necessity of taking "extreme measures." "Tiananmen is China's national political altar," says veteran human-rights watcher Robin Munro. "Blood spilled there consecrates a cause." For the five Falun Gong extremists, perhaps only fire could purify the nation's spiritual center...