Fatalism hung in the air the next morning, as Liu and more than 20 other Falun Gong followers prepared to depart for Tiananmen Square. They gathered at an abandoned farmhouse south of the capital. In slow motion, eyes closed in concentration, they went through deep-breathing and yoga-like exercises. One of several devotees who flew in from Japan for the protest tore up his Japanese residency card card and declared, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Then they joined hundreds, some claimed thousands, of Falun Gong members converging on Tiananmen. Many had flocked to Beijing in cars to avoid checkpoints set up to stop them in airports and rail stations. For five days, the devotees mixed with sightseers in the square, silently protesting the crackdown. Accosted by police, they readily identified themselves as Falun Gong protesters. Hundreds were hauled away to detention centers while party leaders attacked the group as a threat to China’s stability. President Jiang Zemin, touring in Europe, compared Falun Gong to bloodstained cults like Aum Shinrikyo of Japan, and said “no responsible government” could let such a menace “go unchecked.” Liu was arrested on Thursday.
Falun Gong has been checked with a vengeance. Jiang apparently views Falun Gong as an echo of the millennial uprisings that have often augured the death of Chinese dynasties. Last April, after some analysts attacked the movement’s leader, Li Hongzhi, as a fraud and a profiteer, about 10,000 Falun Gong members gathered near Beijing’s leadership compound to protest the insult and demand official recognition. Stunned, Jiang unleashed the crackdown. Now Falun Gong followers are being put on trial and expelled from jobs, schools and the Communist Party. They descended on Beijing last week hoping to prove they are a peaceful movement, just as the National People’s Congress was legislating even tougher suppression of “cults.” Monitoring the crackdown via modem and phone, overseas supporters claim that at least three Falun Gong devotees have died in detention–two while trying to escape from moving trains. “They have nowhere to go now,” says Rping Zhang, spokesman for Falun Gong in New York. “You cannot practice in the work place. You cannot practice at home. They are cornered.”
What may worry communist elders most is that so many party members have joined Falun Gong. Founded in 1992, the movement has attracted more than 2 million followers (Li claims 70 million), with an estimated one third of the total from within the ruling party. Many communists find renewed purpose in Falun Gong at a time when faith in their old ideology is dying. On Tiananmen Square followers seemed to find one another effortlessly. They need no secret signals, one explained: “Followers of Falun Gong exude a special radiance, so it’s easy for us to recognize each other.”
Fu Jiangying was easy to spot. The 28-year-old university grad says he worked at the party Propaganda Department until last summer. Then his bosses noticed his Falun Gong lapel pin and expelled him from the party and his job. Now Fu says Falun Gong members actually practice the professed ideals of communism, sharing “our money, our homes and our high morality.” His faith rests in Li Hongzhi. “I saw his face in the sky” during the April demonstration, says Fu. “Other people saw his writings in the sky, too. In fact if you practice long enough and open your celestial eye you can see him whenever you want.” (Fu was also detained Thursday.)
This devotion has made Li an unlikely public enemy. Now lying low in New York, he has been accused by Beijing of stealing government secrets – potentially a capital crime. Authorities attacked his movement last week as an “antiscience and antisociety cult.” An anti-Falun Gong advocate addressed a gathering of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club to ridicule Li as a failed hotel receptionist, a “loser in life” who turned in despair to spiritual quackery. Jiang compared Falun Gong to suicide cults and said Li may be responsible for the deaths of 1,400 followers.
With many of its leaders in jail, Falun Gong is trying to rally support abroad. Last Friday the group held a clandestine Beijing press conference for foreign journalists, pleading for an end to the persecution. In earlier interviews with NEWSWEEK, a dozen members told of harassment. Construction boss Zhang Zhaofeng said police beat him in detention and extorted more than $1,200 from his wife in exchange for his release. Yan Yuling said police at a detention center forced her daughter, 17, to strip and then doused her with cold water more than 100 times. Beijing officials deny claims of police abuse. But their basic dilemma persists: the mass arrests have only provoked more protests. Instead of combating the perceived threat of Falun Gong, the crackdown is deepening it.
