Word: groupe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...suspecting anything, you went back the next morning. After several sessions, you were offered the book written by their "master," Li Hongzhi. It was about self-control and Buddhist enlightenment, written in a chatty style that was not hard to understand, and it cost only $2. The group would read and discuss parts of it after the exercises, so you bought a copy. What you didn't know was that you were being watched--that you and millions like you were already caught in the net of China's biggest internal security operation since the Tiananmen Square crackdown...
...Chinese government announced that Falun Gong was banned--for practicing "evil thinking" and threatening social stability. All over China police began rounding up thousands of Falun Gong practitioners and driving them off to sports stadiums. There they were interrogated, sometimes for hours, and forced to sign letters disavowing the group. In scenes reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, more than 2 million books and instructional tapes were pulped or crushed by steam rollers last week. And there was also the astonishing news that some of the arrested Falun Gong members were top Communist Party officials. On Thursday, Beijing...
...agents infiltrated Falun Gong activities and clandestinely videotaped exercise sessions. The investigation was reportedly ordered by President Jiang Zemin himself after the silent demonstration by 10,000 members of Falun Gong on April 25 outside Zhongnanhai, the Beijing compound where China's top leaders live. At that time the group said it was protesting magazine articles labeling it a superstitious cult, a charge that could have led to its being banned. Instead it wanted to be recognized as a legitimate religious group...
Beijing estimates that Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) has acquired 2 million adherents since it was founded in 1992; the group claims 100 million practitioners. Official paranoia about this invisible force reaches as high as President Jiang. The 72-year-old leader, not known for late-night Web surfing, has reportedly become obsessed with the sect and its ability to organize its activities in cyberspace. Apparently Jiang frequently brings up Falun Gong in conversations with high-level foreign visitors, and Western diplomatic sources say he was driven outside Zhongnanhai in a car with tinted windows to observe...
That has users tearing out their hair. "This is one of those rare moments, like the birth of the Internet, when something can fundamentally change the way people communicate with each other," says Rob Enderle, an IM watcher at analysts Giga Information Group. "But there must be a standard for this technology to reach its potential. Otherwise, it's like you have to use two telephones...