Word: gongs
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...Falun Gong Finds Free Cable By MATTHEW FORNEY Beijing...
...Settling in front of the tube one evening last week, residents of the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun thought they were about to watch a special about their rubber-stamp parliament in Beijing. They got some special programming all right?brought to them by the Falun Gong movement, Public Enemy No. 1 of the Chinese state. Hacker devotees had spliced their way into the cable system in Changchun, birthplace of Falun Gong founding guru Li Hongzhi, and broadcast to as many as 300,000 households. Stunned city officials held an emergency meeting and swore to punish followers "with no leniency...
...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...
...crackdown hasn't only targeted Falun Gong. A U.S. human rights organization last week publicized seven internal Chinese government documents that direct police not only to stamp out Falun Gong but to suppress unauthorized Roman Catholic and Protestant groups as well. The Vatican recently identified 33 Roman Catholic bishops and priests under detention or house arrest for maintaining allegiance to the Pope rather than to the Communist Party-approved church. And a Chinese court in December issued death sentences to five leaders of a 50,000-member evangelical Christian group?the South China Church?on charges of rape, although followers...