Commissioned by The Australian, never run, the criticism being that it was too sympathetic.
John Stapleton
``When two truths meet the most courageous one wins.'' Chinese proverb.
THE number one enemy of the Chinese government, the so-called ``evil'' or ``doomsday cult'' of Falun Dafa or Falun Gong, has spread rapidly across Australia.
Outside the Chinese embassy in Canberra and consulates in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, Falun Dafa adherents sit cross legged in silent, almost daily protests.
In Sydney, unlike in much of the rest of the country, Chinese adherents outnumber Westerners. At the park opposite Sydney's Central Station a group of old Chinese ladies gather each morning, performing their distinctive Falun Dafa exercises. At Ashfield Park in the west of the city a mix of Westerners and Chinese gather at dawn. On the weekends at Darling Harbour thirty or more join in meditation.
In Queensland, where Falun Dafa was first introduced in 1996, there are now practice sites from Cairns down to the Gold Coast and west to Toowoomba. In Brisbane the majority of practitioners are Chinese, in the rest of the state they are mostly westerners.
In Western Australia, where Falun Dafa was introduced in 1998, there are now practice sites from the picturesque town of Albany in the south to the northern suburbs of Perth.
The astonishingly rapid spread of Falun Dafa across Australia mirrors its rapid spread around the world. It is now just as easy to practise Falun Gong in Spanish or French as it is in English or Chinese. Around the globe, as in Australia, it is rapidly spreading outside Chinese ethnic groups.
Begun in China in 1992 by Master Li Hongzing, Falun Dafa is probably best understood as being simultaneously a powerful Buddhist sect and a traditional Chinese ``qijong'' or energy cultivation and meditation exercise.
That is, it is at once a religion and an exercise or meditation program.
Even the most sympathetic of journalists covering the Falun Dafa story around the globe have remarked on their eclectic and sometimes decidedly eccentric beliefs. Essentially it is a blend of the civic and personal self responsibility of Confucianism, the mysticism of Daoism and the cosmology of Buddhism mixed with animist and magical beliefs. Plants have souls. You can be reincarnated into a rock. Multi-dimensional universes are taken as a given. Advanced beings can appear and disappear at will. While there is much that is wise, sometimes the teachings appear just plain hallucinatory. Be that as it may, there is little doubt we are witnessing the birth of a major new religion.
On one level Falun Dafa promises a fast track to enlightenment, to a Buddha-like state of being, through exercises, cultivation and the purification of mind, body and soul.
The secrets of enlightenment, according to Falun Dafa, were previously passed down from master to pupil in Chinese monasteries over thousands of years. They have been made available at this time to the ordinary person, here at the ``end of days'', because we now face the final apocalyptic fall of mankind's final civilisation.
On another level, through the physical exercises and improved moral character from concentration on the faith's precepts of ``Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance'' it promises increased mental, spiritual and physical health.
It is the emphasis on good health and the curative character of the practice which Falun Gong practitioners most immediately emphasise. Characteristically, many look far younger than their actual years.
By the time Falun Dafa was outlawed by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 its followers numbered in the tens of millions. Each morning practitioners gathered in their hundreds in parks across China. Thanks to the relentless efforts of Falun Dafa and the vicious brutality of the crackdown, the tortures, the murders and the forced labour camps are now common knowledge and the subject of concern to human rights bodies around the world.
Latest estimates suggest around 2800 have died as a result of the crackdown, hundreds of thousands of others have been forced through labour camps, and the practising of the exercises in a park or even at home anywhere across China provokes immediate arrests. While the world rallied over the issue of apartheid in South Africa, and Australia led the charge on Zimbabwe, Falun Gong has evoked no such sympathies. A rapidly increasing multi-billion dollar trade with China has made sure of that.
The sect's numerous internet websites are also forbidden. Even the mention of the words Falun Gong on the burgeoning number of Chinese blog sites can provoke police attention or are automatically deleted.
Falun Gong practitioners were people who don't drink, smoke, gamble or take drugs and who believe in improving their moral character through meditation and adherence to the three precepts of their faith, the universal principles of ``Truth, Compassion, Forbearance''. Women, often elderly, are drawn to the practice in large numbers, partly because of its health benefits.
Yet rightly enough, the Chinse Communist Party sensed the most serious threat to their authority they have ever faced.
Falun Dafa regard the communist party as a Western aberration, a moral corruption on the noble history of Chinese civilisation. It is not a de facto pro-democracy movement. Instead they hark back to a nobler time in China's past.
While in its physical exercises Falun Dafa bears a passing resemble to Tai Chi, in its spiritual precepts it resembles millennial sects which have played in an integral part in overthrowing Chinese dynasties and shaping the nature of its government.
As American political scientist Maria Hsia Chang noted in her recent book Falun Gong: The End of Days, historically Falun Dafa most closely resembles the Buddhist secret society White Lotus, which first emerged in 1360. Just as with Falun Dafa, its repression at the hand of the state politicised an essentially religious movement. Its diffuse organisation and powerful belief system made White Lotus instrumental in overthrowing the Yuan dynasty. Pre-existing conditions, including oppressive state control and a largely disaffected population, mirrored the present day.
Chang wrote: ``Since 209 BC, when the first rebellion by a secret society overthrew the Qin dynasty, millenarian movements had exerted a profound impact on the course of Chinese history. For that matter, the last millenarian movement that succeeded in overthrowing the state was none other than the Communist revolution of 1949... Having come to power by exploiting China's millenarian tradition, the Communist Party is only too mindful of the potency of such movements.''
As a reporter, it was plain old curiosity and fascination for the story that led me to sitting cross legged at dawn in parks across Sydney.
"Velly good," old Chinese ladies with barely a word of English would beam whenever I got a hand movement right. Or they would sternly show me the right way if I got something wrong. I was always welcome.
For a physically disassociated person such as myself the exercises, slow moving though they are, seemed at first immensely complex and difficult. Even though they are exactly the same each time it took me weeks to accomplish them. I am still incapable of sitting in the Buddha or lotus position so characteristic of the sect.
The exercises are meant to focus on the energy lines in the body, to implant a Falun or energy wheel in the lower abdomen, to purify the body of negative energy or "dark matter", to turn negative karma into white light through the transformation of pain into virtue, to link one's body to the natural energy of the universe and to strengthen divine or supernatural powers.
Whatever they actually do, and whether celestial beings really do hover over practice sites around the world, as Master Li has maintained, it is certainly true that Falun Dafa is on to something. After two hours in the park doing the exercises you walk away feeling as if you had been hit over the head with a cosmic hammer. Most adherents claim almost immediate health benefits. Coincidental or not, after a month of doing the exercises I too feel healthier, more organised, somehow more peaceful.
While Falun Gong had hardly been hiding, I first noticed them after the Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin defected from the Sydney consulate, making claims that among the duties of a thousand Chinese spies in Australia were the close monitoring of Falun Gong practitioners.
Chen claimed the Chinese Consulate in Sydney had a blacklist of more than 800 Falun Gong practitioners. While many of these people were born in China, they would now have great difficulty returning there. To back his claims Chen provided several pieces of documentation, including a list of 300 names of practitioners sent to the Sydney and Melbourne consulates by the Chinese ambassador in Canberra.
Chen's claims, and his conduct in defecting, had particular credibility by Falun Dafa practitioners because he was previously well known to them as someone who harassed and filmed them.
Demonstrations after Chen's defection, a number organised by Falun Gong themselves, changed the face of refugee protests overnight.
For years bored reporters have covered these utterly predictable events out of some sense of duty. A scruffy ragbag of the Socialist Alliance and left wing unions, in the company of a few aggrieved immigrants from Iran or Iraq, would wave makeshift banners and pound on about the evils of Ruddock and more recently Vanstone.
Overnight their character transformed. Now huge, neatly manufactured banners line the perimeter of the demonstration, earnest groups, including children, furiously wave neatly produced paper flags, and neat people speak passionately about the evils of the Communist regime in China, imploring the Australian government not to trade with this repressive regime or they will create a new generation of refugees.
The acting out of shocking images of men and women being tortured and brainwashed is also now a standard part of the campaigns.
With much of Australia's mineral and energy wealth riding on the back of insatiable demand from Chine, the chances of the Australian government not trading with China are remote.
But with three years to go to the Beijing Olympics, Falun Gong are a proving a major embarrassment to the Chinese government worldwide. As The Australian's Chinese correspondent Catherine Armitage recently reported, the Beijing Olympic press office have not even been answering their phones in case it is a call from a Falun Gong devotee. Anyone visiting a Chinese embassy almost anywhere in the world will have leaflets or pictures of tortured women thrust at them or be confronted with silent and apparently peaceable people in the lotus position under Falun Dafa insignia.
If, as Chen claimed, there are a thousand spies monitoring the activities of Falun Gong in Australia, they have had a very easy time of it. The practice sites in public parks across Australia are advertised on the web. The telephone numbers of devotees are also up on the web. Public meetings and demonstrations are advertised. And with Truthfulness one of the platforms of their belief, if approached and asked if they are practitioners, they invariably say yes.
The group owes its phenomenal success partly to its loose organisational structure. It has none of the priests, churches or organisational infrastructure characteristic of the established faiths. It costs nothing to meditate and do exercises in the park. The literature, music and exercise instructions can all be downloaded for free. Any devotee, or disciple as they have come to be known, can start up a practice site without prior authorisation.
In my observation there are two broadly different types of Falun Dafa practitioners - those who follow the exercises for the physical and mental health benefits and those who use the exercises as a portal into the spiritual world. Only those who practice both the exercises and cultivation of their character or "heart nature" can be disciples.
Construction manager Steve Olding, 50, is the only Falun Dafa practitioner I ever saw smoke a cigarette. He declares cheerfully there are no rules. He says he began going to Falun Gong eight years ago in Hong Kong. "For me it is a practical more than spiritual thing," he says. "It clears my mind, gives me a positive outlook on life. They don't force anything upon you. You can turn up for practice or not, You are never pressured into it in any shape or form. I have never been asked to donate a cent, yet I have been given so much."
On the other hand John Andress, 58, a traffic controller on the Queensland Gold Coast, has been doing Falun Dafa for more than six years. "I spent many years following spiritual practices in the Indian systems. A friend of mine introduced me. I came for the spiritual aspects. I didn't come for the health. Many people, particularly in China, came for health; because it had such an immediate impact. I came for the deeper aspects. It is beneficial on all levels; the physical is the one every one recognises, but it upgrades moral standards. It is based on very high principles. We live by Truth Compassion Forbearance."
Tane Dalzell, 21, a house painter from Annandale, is also a "seeker". "From a young age I have always been interested in what life is all about," he says. "I have always been intrigued by different practices from India, different yoga masters. And one day Falun Dafa came along and answered a lot of questions that other practices didn't answer. I found out what life is all about and what I am here for. That is how I am a different person. A few years ago I was really lost. Now my head is sharp and clear, I don't have any illnesses, I don't have anything wrong with me."
Thomas Dobson, 31, a language teacher, puts it another way: "Some of the nicest people I have ever met in my life are in Falun Dafa. All I know is I haven't been ill in years, haven't even had to take an aspirin."
Many of the elderly Chinese seen in parks and outside consulates and embassies began the practice in Australia after Master Li visited Australia to give lectures, twice in 1996 and once in 1998. A number have family or friends who have suffered as a result of China's oppression of their sect. For them Truthfulness involves telling the truth about what is happening in China.
At one point, interviewing Chinese women in a park with the help of an interpreter, I just started laughing. These stubborn old girls, well into their seventies, were the biggest threat to the Chinese Communist Party in its history!? Well so it has proved to be.
Here's one example. Guo Ying Zhang, 73, who speaks no English, was a farm labourer in one of the poorest provinces of China. She says of her four children, two died of starvation. She herself nearly died in child birth. She came to Australia in the early 1990s as part of a family reunion. She had never heard of Falun Gong until Master Li visited Australia in 1996. "My own life was very hard, my health was in a very bad condition, I nearly died," she says. "I am a very simple person, but I learn, I practice, now I am healthy. I don't know if I would still be alive if it was not for Falun Gong."
For Zhang and others like her, sitting outside the Chinese consulate all day protesting over the treatment of Falun Gong in China is the very least she can do.
Guo Jiu, 72, also in Australia as part of a family reunion, worked in an electronics factory in China. She says she suffered numerous health problems, and shows the scars from a knee operation. This is a woman who can now sit in the lotus position for hours. "After I start the practice, I don't need to go to doctors," she says. At first she practised at home alone, but says she likes to come to the park. "I meet people who are very kind and who take care of me and I feel very nice," she says. "I am very active with Falun Gong activity and I feel very happy with it."
Melong Yie, 62, was born in Shanghai but was allocated to work for the Ministry of Culture in the harsh conditions along the Chinese Russian border. Like other civilian workers, she regularly wore army uniform to convince the Russians of the large number of Chinese soldiers. She taught Tai Chi sessions organised by the Workers Union. "For me, before I started practice I focussed on daily life, myself, my children, my family. Now I understand that life is more, that life is precious. I am very active, I protest outside the consulate. People ask me why, do the American and Australian governments give me money? No one gives me money. It is from my heart. The minimum thing is: we should tell people the truth."
The Chinese consulate in Sydney moved recently from Elizabeth Street, where the daily Falun Gong protests cluttered the streets and were a major embarrassment. Despite a massive new multi-million dollar compound, with high walls and state of the art security, Chinese officials have not been able to escape the Falun Dafa. Being an enterprising mob, a practitioner promptly rented a vacant shop opposite and it has become the headquarters for daily protests. Jiamo Li, 67, who's daughter in law rents the shop, said he is happy to endure the daily insults as he protests outside the consulate. His heart breaks when he hears what has happened to so many practitioners, their families and their children in China. He says: "No matter whether it is hot or cold, I will stand here to clarify the truth."
It is not just the elderly Chinese who are being attracted to Falun Dafa, with young professionals also in evidence.
Albert Lin. 34, a doctor in Fremantle in Western Australia, says considering they give out tens of thousands of flyers it clearly doesn't appeal to everyone. "For me I find it is a pure environment, where everyone wants to be a good person. It improves my mental and physical health. People find the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance echo with their own principles, and then they want to learn the practice. And also because some find it helps them relax, and their health improves.
"I am not surprised it appeals to Westerners. There are a lot of kind people. Their thinking is not as complicated as Chinese people. They have an inclination to goodness. We have some very good western practitioners."
However much Falun Dafa focuses on individual self-improvement, its political potency is without doubt. Opposite the Chinese consulate in Sydney Falun Dafa signs suggest: "Saying goodbye for good to the Chinese Communist Party is realising hope for freedom and peace." Another suggests getting rid of the CCP "is refusing brutality and returning to humanity".
Many Falun Dafa devotees are critical of the Australian government's perceived kowtowing to the Chinese government. This has included the issuing of certificates to curtail their activities in front of the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. This is now the subject of appeal to the ACT Supreme Court.
"Downer has bowed to the regime," says Vina Lee, 42, who came to Australia in 1990. "The Chinese Communist Party has no humanity, it is killing people. I am just a practitioner. If they did not persecute Falun Gong, I could never have imagined I would stand on the street and tell people what is happening in China. As practitioners we are not interested in power, fame. We focus on self improvement, to be a good person. I would never have campaigned against the Communist Party if they had not persecuted us."
For a group whose traditions date back into Chinese antiquity Falun Dafa has shown a remarkably adept use of modern technology. They are all over the web, with numerous websites dedicated to their cause. Little old ladies thrust CDs at you in the parks. Members have disrupted television broadcasts across China. Though it may be a crime to listen to it, a satellite now beams sympathetic coverage across the country.
The Epoch Times, introduced into Australia with a local edition in December last year, has become the most widely distributed Chinese English language newspaper in the world. While the owners remain strictly anonymous, some are rumoured to be Falun Gong devotees. While it is a general interest newspaper, it has covered the Falun Gong story with thoroughness and sympathy. It recently published "The Nine Commentaries", a hugely influential critique of the CCP within the Chinese world.
They have recently claimed more than two million resignations from the communist party as a result of their campaigns.
An Australian spokeswoman for the Epoch Times Caroline Dobson said they were an independent media outlet and were an entirely separate entity to Falun Dafa. "The reason that we cover Falun Dafa is because we have a multilingual staff, unique contacts within the community and for anyone interested in China it is such a big story. It affects a large number of people.
The press office of the Chinese Embassy referred inquiries to the head press officer, Mrs Ou Boqian, who did not answer the number provided by the press office.
Even since the spectacular mid-year defection of Chen Yonglin the story of Falun Gong in Australia keeps popping up in unusual ways. In the UK and Canada in recent months, just as in Australia, there have been sorrowful stories of Chinese practitioners being forcibly repatriated back to China and a very uncertain future. Recent activities in Australia have included a conference titled A Great Wall of Courage, an anti-torture exhibition and a candlelight vigil to mark the sixth anniversary of the Chinese crackdown.
In another incident, Falun Gong was forced to deny that any of its members were involved in an episode of self harm amongst Chinese inmates at Villawood; pointing out, not for the first time, that their beliefs are totally opposed to self harm or killing of any kind.
And in yet another incident, Sydney's University of Technology refused to remove mention of a Falun Dafa meditation club from its website. As a result, the UTS website has been blocked in China, which is expected to lower the number of incoming Chinese students, substantially affecting university revenue. UTS Vice Chancellor Ross Milbourne says an increase in undergraduate student fees was largely due to the university taking a principled stand in keeping Falun Dafa content on the site.Equally odd, a San Francisco politician of Chinese origin withdrew her support for an art show, the "National Treasures of China", after it was revealed that owner of the valuable collection Mei-Ling Dai, described by the local press as the matriarch ofan aristocratic Chinese-Australian family,practices Falun Gong.
There is no doubt as the Beijing Olympics and 2008 approaches, stories of Falun Dafa will proliferate. At the very least, virtually anyone in the world who goes to a Chinese embassy or a Chinese consulate to get a visa will have a Falun Dafa leaflet thrust at them.
I shrug when people ask me if I will continue with the exercises after I finish the story. In 17 years, since Falun Gong was launched in 1992, it has attracted millions of followers in more than 60 different countries and as evidenced by the crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party it has posed a serious threat to the government of the most populous nation on earth. What is clear is that the story of Falun Dafa is far from over.
John Stapleton
``When two truths meet the most courageous one wins.'' Chinese proverb.
THE number one enemy of the Chinese government, the so-called ``evil'' or ``doomsday cult'' of Falun Dafa or Falun Gong, has spread rapidly across Australia.
Outside the Chinese embassy in Canberra and consulates in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, Falun Dafa adherents sit cross legged in silent, almost daily protests.
In Sydney, unlike in much of the rest of the country, Chinese adherents outnumber Westerners. At the park opposite Sydney's Central Station a group of old Chinese ladies gather each morning, performing their distinctive Falun Dafa exercises. At Ashfield Park in the west of the city a mix of Westerners and Chinese gather at dawn. On the weekends at Darling Harbour thirty or more join in meditation.
In Queensland, where Falun Dafa was first introduced in 1996, there are now practice sites from Cairns down to the Gold Coast and west to Toowoomba. In Brisbane the majority of practitioners are Chinese, in the rest of the state they are mostly westerners.
In Western Australia, where Falun Dafa was introduced in 1998, there are now practice sites from the picturesque town of Albany in the south to the northern suburbs of Perth.
The astonishingly rapid spread of Falun Dafa across Australia mirrors its rapid spread around the world. It is now just as easy to practise Falun Gong in Spanish or French as it is in English or Chinese. Around the globe, as in Australia, it is rapidly spreading outside Chinese ethnic groups.
Begun in China in 1992 by Master Li Hongzing, Falun Dafa is probably best understood as being simultaneously a powerful Buddhist sect and a traditional Chinese ``qijong'' or energy cultivation and meditation exercise.
That is, it is at once a religion and an exercise or meditation program.
Even the most sympathetic of journalists covering the Falun Dafa story around the globe have remarked on their eclectic and sometimes decidedly eccentric beliefs. Essentially it is a blend of the civic and personal self responsibility of Confucianism, the mysticism of Daoism and the cosmology of Buddhism mixed with animist and magical beliefs. Plants have souls. You can be reincarnated into a rock. Multi-dimensional universes are taken as a given. Advanced beings can appear and disappear at will. While there is much that is wise, sometimes the teachings appear just plain hallucinatory. Be that as it may, there is little doubt we are witnessing the birth of a major new religion.
On one level Falun Dafa promises a fast track to enlightenment, to a Buddha-like state of being, through exercises, cultivation and the purification of mind, body and soul.
The secrets of enlightenment, according to Falun Dafa, were previously passed down from master to pupil in Chinese monasteries over thousands of years. They have been made available at this time to the ordinary person, here at the ``end of days'', because we now face the final apocalyptic fall of mankind's final civilisation.
On another level, through the physical exercises and improved moral character from concentration on the faith's precepts of ``Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance'' it promises increased mental, spiritual and physical health.
It is the emphasis on good health and the curative character of the practice which Falun Gong practitioners most immediately emphasise. Characteristically, many look far younger than their actual years.
By the time Falun Dafa was outlawed by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 its followers numbered in the tens of millions. Each morning practitioners gathered in their hundreds in parks across China. Thanks to the relentless efforts of Falun Dafa and the vicious brutality of the crackdown, the tortures, the murders and the forced labour camps are now common knowledge and the subject of concern to human rights bodies around the world.
Latest estimates suggest around 2800 have died as a result of the crackdown, hundreds of thousands of others have been forced through labour camps, and the practising of the exercises in a park or even at home anywhere across China provokes immediate arrests. While the world rallied over the issue of apartheid in South Africa, and Australia led the charge on Zimbabwe, Falun Gong has evoked no such sympathies. A rapidly increasing multi-billion dollar trade with China has made sure of that.
The sect's numerous internet websites are also forbidden. Even the mention of the words Falun Gong on the burgeoning number of Chinese blog sites can provoke police attention or are automatically deleted.
Falun Gong practitioners were people who don't drink, smoke, gamble or take drugs and who believe in improving their moral character through meditation and adherence to the three precepts of their faith, the universal principles of ``Truth, Compassion, Forbearance''. Women, often elderly, are drawn to the practice in large numbers, partly because of its health benefits.
Yet rightly enough, the Chinse Communist Party sensed the most serious threat to their authority they have ever faced.
Falun Dafa regard the communist party as a Western aberration, a moral corruption on the noble history of Chinese civilisation. It is not a de facto pro-democracy movement. Instead they hark back to a nobler time in China's past.
While in its physical exercises Falun Dafa bears a passing resemble to Tai Chi, in its spiritual precepts it resembles millennial sects which have played in an integral part in overthrowing Chinese dynasties and shaping the nature of its government.
As American political scientist Maria Hsia Chang noted in her recent book Falun Gong: The End of Days, historically Falun Dafa most closely resembles the Buddhist secret society White Lotus, which first emerged in 1360. Just as with Falun Dafa, its repression at the hand of the state politicised an essentially religious movement. Its diffuse organisation and powerful belief system made White Lotus instrumental in overthrowing the Yuan dynasty. Pre-existing conditions, including oppressive state control and a largely disaffected population, mirrored the present day.
Chang wrote: ``Since 209 BC, when the first rebellion by a secret society overthrew the Qin dynasty, millenarian movements had exerted a profound impact on the course of Chinese history. For that matter, the last millenarian movement that succeeded in overthrowing the state was none other than the Communist revolution of 1949... Having come to power by exploiting China's millenarian tradition, the Communist Party is only too mindful of the potency of such movements.''
As a reporter, it was plain old curiosity and fascination for the story that led me to sitting cross legged at dawn in parks across Sydney.
"Velly good," old Chinese ladies with barely a word of English would beam whenever I got a hand movement right. Or they would sternly show me the right way if I got something wrong. I was always welcome.
For a physically disassociated person such as myself the exercises, slow moving though they are, seemed at first immensely complex and difficult. Even though they are exactly the same each time it took me weeks to accomplish them. I am still incapable of sitting in the Buddha or lotus position so characteristic of the sect.
The exercises are meant to focus on the energy lines in the body, to implant a Falun or energy wheel in the lower abdomen, to purify the body of negative energy or "dark matter", to turn negative karma into white light through the transformation of pain into virtue, to link one's body to the natural energy of the universe and to strengthen divine or supernatural powers.
Whatever they actually do, and whether celestial beings really do hover over practice sites around the world, as Master Li has maintained, it is certainly true that Falun Dafa is on to something. After two hours in the park doing the exercises you walk away feeling as if you had been hit over the head with a cosmic hammer. Most adherents claim almost immediate health benefits. Coincidental or not, after a month of doing the exercises I too feel healthier, more organised, somehow more peaceful.
While Falun Gong had hardly been hiding, I first noticed them after the Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin defected from the Sydney consulate, making claims that among the duties of a thousand Chinese spies in Australia were the close monitoring of Falun Gong practitioners.
Chen claimed the Chinese Consulate in Sydney had a blacklist of more than 800 Falun Gong practitioners. While many of these people were born in China, they would now have great difficulty returning there. To back his claims Chen provided several pieces of documentation, including a list of 300 names of practitioners sent to the Sydney and Melbourne consulates by the Chinese ambassador in Canberra.
Chen's claims, and his conduct in defecting, had particular credibility by Falun Dafa practitioners because he was previously well known to them as someone who harassed and filmed them.
Demonstrations after Chen's defection, a number organised by Falun Gong themselves, changed the face of refugee protests overnight.
For years bored reporters have covered these utterly predictable events out of some sense of duty. A scruffy ragbag of the Socialist Alliance and left wing unions, in the company of a few aggrieved immigrants from Iran or Iraq, would wave makeshift banners and pound on about the evils of Ruddock and more recently Vanstone.
Overnight their character transformed. Now huge, neatly manufactured banners line the perimeter of the demonstration, earnest groups, including children, furiously wave neatly produced paper flags, and neat people speak passionately about the evils of the Communist regime in China, imploring the Australian government not to trade with this repressive regime or they will create a new generation of refugees.
The acting out of shocking images of men and women being tortured and brainwashed is also now a standard part of the campaigns.
With much of Australia's mineral and energy wealth riding on the back of insatiable demand from Chine, the chances of the Australian government not trading with China are remote.
But with three years to go to the Beijing Olympics, Falun Gong are a proving a major embarrassment to the Chinese government worldwide. As The Australian's Chinese correspondent Catherine Armitage recently reported, the Beijing Olympic press office have not even been answering their phones in case it is a call from a Falun Gong devotee. Anyone visiting a Chinese embassy almost anywhere in the world will have leaflets or pictures of tortured women thrust at them or be confronted with silent and apparently peaceable people in the lotus position under Falun Dafa insignia.
If, as Chen claimed, there are a thousand spies monitoring the activities of Falun Gong in Australia, they have had a very easy time of it. The practice sites in public parks across Australia are advertised on the web. The telephone numbers of devotees are also up on the web. Public meetings and demonstrations are advertised. And with Truthfulness one of the platforms of their belief, if approached and asked if they are practitioners, they invariably say yes.
The group owes its phenomenal success partly to its loose organisational structure. It has none of the priests, churches or organisational infrastructure characteristic of the established faiths. It costs nothing to meditate and do exercises in the park. The literature, music and exercise instructions can all be downloaded for free. Any devotee, or disciple as they have come to be known, can start up a practice site without prior authorisation.
In my observation there are two broadly different types of Falun Dafa practitioners - those who follow the exercises for the physical and mental health benefits and those who use the exercises as a portal into the spiritual world. Only those who practice both the exercises and cultivation of their character or "heart nature" can be disciples.
Construction manager Steve Olding, 50, is the only Falun Dafa practitioner I ever saw smoke a cigarette. He declares cheerfully there are no rules. He says he began going to Falun Gong eight years ago in Hong Kong. "For me it is a practical more than spiritual thing," he says. "It clears my mind, gives me a positive outlook on life. They don't force anything upon you. You can turn up for practice or not, You are never pressured into it in any shape or form. I have never been asked to donate a cent, yet I have been given so much."
On the other hand John Andress, 58, a traffic controller on the Queensland Gold Coast, has been doing Falun Dafa for more than six years. "I spent many years following spiritual practices in the Indian systems. A friend of mine introduced me. I came for the spiritual aspects. I didn't come for the health. Many people, particularly in China, came for health; because it had such an immediate impact. I came for the deeper aspects. It is beneficial on all levels; the physical is the one every one recognises, but it upgrades moral standards. It is based on very high principles. We live by Truth Compassion Forbearance."
Tane Dalzell, 21, a house painter from Annandale, is also a "seeker". "From a young age I have always been interested in what life is all about," he says. "I have always been intrigued by different practices from India, different yoga masters. And one day Falun Dafa came along and answered a lot of questions that other practices didn't answer. I found out what life is all about and what I am here for. That is how I am a different person. A few years ago I was really lost. Now my head is sharp and clear, I don't have any illnesses, I don't have anything wrong with me."
Thomas Dobson, 31, a language teacher, puts it another way: "Some of the nicest people I have ever met in my life are in Falun Dafa. All I know is I haven't been ill in years, haven't even had to take an aspirin."
Many of the elderly Chinese seen in parks and outside consulates and embassies began the practice in Australia after Master Li visited Australia to give lectures, twice in 1996 and once in 1998. A number have family or friends who have suffered as a result of China's oppression of their sect. For them Truthfulness involves telling the truth about what is happening in China.
At one point, interviewing Chinese women in a park with the help of an interpreter, I just started laughing. These stubborn old girls, well into their seventies, were the biggest threat to the Chinese Communist Party in its history!? Well so it has proved to be.
Here's one example. Guo Ying Zhang, 73, who speaks no English, was a farm labourer in one of the poorest provinces of China. She says of her four children, two died of starvation. She herself nearly died in child birth. She came to Australia in the early 1990s as part of a family reunion. She had never heard of Falun Gong until Master Li visited Australia in 1996. "My own life was very hard, my health was in a very bad condition, I nearly died," she says. "I am a very simple person, but I learn, I practice, now I am healthy. I don't know if I would still be alive if it was not for Falun Gong."
For Zhang and others like her, sitting outside the Chinese consulate all day protesting over the treatment of Falun Gong in China is the very least she can do.
Guo Jiu, 72, also in Australia as part of a family reunion, worked in an electronics factory in China. She says she suffered numerous health problems, and shows the scars from a knee operation. This is a woman who can now sit in the lotus position for hours. "After I start the practice, I don't need to go to doctors," she says. At first she practised at home alone, but says she likes to come to the park. "I meet people who are very kind and who take care of me and I feel very nice," she says. "I am very active with Falun Gong activity and I feel very happy with it."
Melong Yie, 62, was born in Shanghai but was allocated to work for the Ministry of Culture in the harsh conditions along the Chinese Russian border. Like other civilian workers, she regularly wore army uniform to convince the Russians of the large number of Chinese soldiers. She taught Tai Chi sessions organised by the Workers Union. "For me, before I started practice I focussed on daily life, myself, my children, my family. Now I understand that life is more, that life is precious. I am very active, I protest outside the consulate. People ask me why, do the American and Australian governments give me money? No one gives me money. It is from my heart. The minimum thing is: we should tell people the truth."
The Chinese consulate in Sydney moved recently from Elizabeth Street, where the daily Falun Gong protests cluttered the streets and were a major embarrassment. Despite a massive new multi-million dollar compound, with high walls and state of the art security, Chinese officials have not been able to escape the Falun Dafa. Being an enterprising mob, a practitioner promptly rented a vacant shop opposite and it has become the headquarters for daily protests. Jiamo Li, 67, who's daughter in law rents the shop, said he is happy to endure the daily insults as he protests outside the consulate. His heart breaks when he hears what has happened to so many practitioners, their families and their children in China. He says: "No matter whether it is hot or cold, I will stand here to clarify the truth."
It is not just the elderly Chinese who are being attracted to Falun Dafa, with young professionals also in evidence.
Albert Lin. 34, a doctor in Fremantle in Western Australia, says considering they give out tens of thousands of flyers it clearly doesn't appeal to everyone. "For me I find it is a pure environment, where everyone wants to be a good person. It improves my mental and physical health. People find the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance echo with their own principles, and then they want to learn the practice. And also because some find it helps them relax, and their health improves.
"I am not surprised it appeals to Westerners. There are a lot of kind people. Their thinking is not as complicated as Chinese people. They have an inclination to goodness. We have some very good western practitioners."
However much Falun Dafa focuses on individual self-improvement, its political potency is without doubt. Opposite the Chinese consulate in Sydney Falun Dafa signs suggest: "Saying goodbye for good to the Chinese Communist Party is realising hope for freedom and peace." Another suggests getting rid of the CCP "is refusing brutality and returning to humanity".
Many Falun Dafa devotees are critical of the Australian government's perceived kowtowing to the Chinese government. This has included the issuing of certificates to curtail their activities in front of the Chinese Embassy in Canberra. This is now the subject of appeal to the ACT Supreme Court.
"Downer has bowed to the regime," says Vina Lee, 42, who came to Australia in 1990. "The Chinese Communist Party has no humanity, it is killing people. I am just a practitioner. If they did not persecute Falun Gong, I could never have imagined I would stand on the street and tell people what is happening in China. As practitioners we are not interested in power, fame. We focus on self improvement, to be a good person. I would never have campaigned against the Communist Party if they had not persecuted us."
For a group whose traditions date back into Chinese antiquity Falun Dafa has shown a remarkably adept use of modern technology. They are all over the web, with numerous websites dedicated to their cause. Little old ladies thrust CDs at you in the parks. Members have disrupted television broadcasts across China. Though it may be a crime to listen to it, a satellite now beams sympathetic coverage across the country.
The Epoch Times, introduced into Australia with a local edition in December last year, has become the most widely distributed Chinese English language newspaper in the world. While the owners remain strictly anonymous, some are rumoured to be Falun Gong devotees. While it is a general interest newspaper, it has covered the Falun Gong story with thoroughness and sympathy. It recently published "The Nine Commentaries", a hugely influential critique of the CCP within the Chinese world.
They have recently claimed more than two million resignations from the communist party as a result of their campaigns.
An Australian spokeswoman for the Epoch Times Caroline Dobson said they were an independent media outlet and were an entirely separate entity to Falun Dafa. "The reason that we cover Falun Dafa is because we have a multilingual staff, unique contacts within the community and for anyone interested in China it is such a big story. It affects a large number of people.
The press office of the Chinese Embassy referred inquiries to the head press officer, Mrs Ou Boqian, who did not answer the number provided by the press office.
Even since the spectacular mid-year defection of Chen Yonglin the story of Falun Gong in Australia keeps popping up in unusual ways. In the UK and Canada in recent months, just as in Australia, there have been sorrowful stories of Chinese practitioners being forcibly repatriated back to China and a very uncertain future. Recent activities in Australia have included a conference titled A Great Wall of Courage, an anti-torture exhibition and a candlelight vigil to mark the sixth anniversary of the Chinese crackdown.
In another incident, Falun Gong was forced to deny that any of its members were involved in an episode of self harm amongst Chinese inmates at Villawood; pointing out, not for the first time, that their beliefs are totally opposed to self harm or killing of any kind.
And in yet another incident, Sydney's University of Technology refused to remove mention of a Falun Dafa meditation club from its website. As a result, the UTS website has been blocked in China, which is expected to lower the number of incoming Chinese students, substantially affecting university revenue. UTS Vice Chancellor Ross Milbourne says an increase in undergraduate student fees was largely due to the university taking a principled stand in keeping Falun Dafa content on the site.Equally odd, a San Francisco politician of Chinese origin withdrew her support for an art show, the "National Treasures of China", after it was revealed that owner of the valuable collection Mei-Ling Dai, described by the local press as the matriarch ofan aristocratic Chinese-Australian family,practices Falun Gong.
There is no doubt as the Beijing Olympics and 2008 approaches, stories of Falun Dafa will proliferate. At the very least, virtually anyone in the world who goes to a Chinese embassy or a Chinese consulate to get a visa will have a Falun Dafa leaflet thrust at them.
I shrug when people ask me if I will continue with the exercises after I finish the story. In 17 years, since Falun Gong was launched in 1992, it has attracted millions of followers in more than 60 different countries and as evidenced by the crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party it has posed a serious threat to the government of the most populous nation on earth. What is clear is that the story of Falun Dafa is far from over.
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