The New York Times

Friday, February 11, 2000

More Members of Falun Gong Are Being Detained

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

BEIJING, Feb. 10 -- At least 2,000 followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement have been detained in China in the last week, the official holiday period for the Lunar New Year, a Hong Kong human rights group said.

The detentions were in cities across China, although the largest number, 500, were conducted here, around Tiananmen Square, said the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. The numbers could not be independently verified.

Some of the detainees were foreigners. At least one, Tracy Zhao, 30, a Beijing-born American citizen and resident of New York City who did not have her passport when she was arrested, remained in custody, friends of Ms. Zhao said.

For months, individual members of the sect have staged almost daily acts of defiance in the vast Tiananmen, sometimes unfurling small banners, but generally just meditating or identifying themselves as practitioners to the dragnet of police officers who patrol the square looking for Falun Gong members.

The government has acknowledged tens of thousands of encounters between the police and practitioners since it declared the group illegal in the summer.

The recent detentions resulted from a somewhat larger silent protest that involved hundreds of people and that group members said they had planned in Tiananmen around the New Year.

Although witnesses saw vans of practitioners removed from the square on Friday night, New Year's Eve, and a few more on Saturday, it was difficult to estimate the number of participants or arrests, because the silent protests were been sporadic and their margins hard to define as the throng of revelers welcomed the Year of the Dragon.

The role and size of the overseas contingent in the protest are also unclear. A number of foreign members traveled here in anticipation of an event, some to take part but others as a gesture of camaraderie.

"We felt the Beijing practitioners needed our support," said Lin Chongli, an American practitioner, also from New York, who said he observed, but did not actively participate in the protests.

"Coming here is dangerous for us, too," he said. "It shows the local practitioners that we're also willing to make sacrifices. We'll encourage others in the U.S. to make similar trips."

The Falun Gong founder, Li Hongzhi, lives in exile in the United States, where the movement has become especially popular among Chinese-Americans.

Eight months into the Chinese government crackdown, the group is vastly diminished but not utterly defeated. Last spring, practice groups thrived in virtually all Beijing parks, mostly with middle-age retirees. Practitioners of Falun Gong, which combines slow-motion traditional Chinese exercises and meditation with a smattering of Buddhism and Taoism, say it enhances health and moral behavior.

But after months of anti-Falun Gong propaganda and almost daily arrests, the parks are barren compared to a year ago, devoid not only of Falun Gong followers, but also of many unrelated groups devoted to traditional exercise and meditation who fear police scrutiny and actions might classify them as "superstitious."

Hundreds of Falun Gong members face criminal charges. Some have been sentenced to prison terms of more than 10 years. Human rights groups say thousands have been detained for short periods or placed in labor camps for "re-education."

With the stakes so high, most casual members have given up practice or moved to another form of exercise, although some have continued to exercise in private.

"A lot of people are in detention, but a lot of others are very clandestine because they are under heavy surveillance," Mr. Lin said. "There's a bit of a chasm in the group. Some feel it's their duty to make their practice known, to educate people about Falun Gong. But others feel they should focus on their own personal cultivation. So they practice at home rather than getting thrown in jail."

Mr. Lin said he and Ms. Zhao had come to China with a group of six American practitioners. He said immigration officers had turned away Ms. Zhao's mother because she was detained here in December for protesting the ban on Falun Gong.

Ms. Zhao, who moved to the United States at 20, is a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines.

Although she was not meditating or actively participating in any protest action on Feb. 4, she was detained while photographing the arrests of other Falun Gong followers, Mr. Lin said. Also detained around that time, he added, were Shelley Jiang, an Australian, and David Cui, 14, a Chinese with a resident visa for the United States who had traveled here with his parents.

Mr. Lin said that this evening, acting on a request from the Beijing Public Security Bureau, he took a companion pass, essentially a blank airline ticket to the United States, to the police office. He said he hoped that meant that Ms. Zhao would soon be flying to the United States.