Olympics 'worsening China rights'

Olympics 'worsening China rights' Reuters
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
[align=left] China's human rights record is getting worse, not better, because of the Beijing Olympics, a rights group says. [/align]
According to Amnesty International, China is clamping down on dissent in a bid to portray a stable and harmonious image ahead of the Games in August.
It urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and world leaders to speak out against abuses, including China's handling of protests in Tibet.
US President George W Bush is facing calls to boycott the Games' opening.
(Article continues below)


"It would be clearly inappropriate for you to attend the Olympic Games in China, given the increasingly repressive nature of that country's government," a group of 15 US politicians wrote in a letter to Mr Bush on Tuesday.
Mr Bush has said he plans to attend the ceremony but Germany's Angela Merkel says she will not. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has not ruled out a boycott.
An IOC team is currently in Beijing to assess its readiness for the Games.
'Beyond reach'
In a report entitled China: The Olympics Countdown, the London-based group said the Olympics had failed to act as a catalyst for reform in China.
Full article here.

Beijing Steps Up Falun Gong Persecution Ahead of Olympics Caylan Ford
Epoch Times
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
[align=left] As the Chinese regime's violent repression continues in Tibet, another group claims that they too are experiencing heightened persecution. [/align]
Since January of this year, representatives of the Falun Gong spiritual practice say that the Chinese regime has tortured over 100 Falun Gong adherents to death, mostly in reeducation-through-labour camps.
The New York-based Falun Dafa Information Center claims to have received reports from inside China of over 1,878 arrests of Falun Gong adherents since January. The Centre says that authorities in at least 29 Chinese provinces have been conducting door-to-door searches in search of Falun Gong practitioners or anyone in possession of Falun Gong-related books or materials.
(Article continues below)


According to reports relayed by Falun Gong inside China, the Public Security Bureau has been offering cash rewards to citizens who turn in Falun Gong adherents. In one city in Shandong province, authorities have announced a reward of up to 3,000 Yuan for information leading to the arrest of a Falun Gong practitioner.
Once detained, the Falun Gong adherents are sent without trial to reeducation-through-labour camps, where reports indicate they face torture and other forms of abuse.
The Falun Gong website Minghui.org, which receives and compiled accounts of persecution from inside China, has reported that 129 Falun Gong adherents were tortured to death by authorities between January 1st and March 20th, 2008. The website provided a list and case details for each individual reported to have been killed.

Pretext for Repression
When bidding for the 2008 Games, the Vice-President of the Beijing Olympics committee, Liu Jingmin, promised the international community that awarding China the Games would "help develop human rights."
Yet internally, Chinese authorities expressed a very different understanding. According to a 2001 report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, China's former Vice Premier declared that winning the Olympics was "justification for the country's crackdown on the Falun Gong."
Similarly, articles appearing in China's state-run People's Daily newspaper noted that the Olympics signaled the international community's endorsement of the handling of Tibet.
China's former Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang has also been quoted as saying that the country must "strike hard at hostile forces at home and abroad, such as ethnic separatists, religious extremists, violent terrorists and â?¦ the Falun Gong" in order to ensure the success of the Olympics.
In a new report on human rights in China, Amnesty International noted the continued plight of activists and journalists who have faced persecution for attempting to draw attention to human rights abuses.
"It is increasingly clear that much of the current wave of repression is occurring not in spite of the Olympics, but actually because of the Olympics," read the report.
"Peaceful human rights activists, and others who have publicly criticized official government policy, have been targeted in the official pre-Olympics 'clean up', in an apparent attempt to portray a 'stable' or 'harmonious' image to the world by August 2008."
The Amnesty Report also implied that recent allegations by Chinese authorities of planned terrorist attacks on the Olympic Games may have been fabrications.
"â?¦ a failure to back up such assertions with concrete evidence increases suspicions that the authorities are overstating such threats in an attempt to justify the current crackdown."
Chinese authorities in March claimed that members of the ethnic Uighur minority â?? who, like the Tibetans, have been advocating for greater autonomy and religious freedoms â?? were plotting a terrorist attack on an airplane.
This week, authorities claimed that Tibetans were plotting suicide attacks. It offered no evidence to support the claim.

That story is coming from the Faloonies, better known as the Falun Gong - a crackpot religious/political cult in China, with factions in the United States. They own the Epoch Times (your source), and I've seen these nutjobs on the streets of NYC for a few years. Their rag is given away on the streets here, with requests for donations.

The website below contains the truth about them, from cult experts at The Rick A. Ross Institute of New Jersey, a database of information about cults, controversial groups, destructive movements, etc.
Falun Gong a.k.a. Falun Dafa

just because you don't like them doesn't mean they deserve to be imprisoned without charge or trial and be tortured.

More about the Falun Gong/Epoch Times propaganda machine.

The gospel truth: Falun Gong

Followers of Falun Gong say it's a spiritual movement with no political motives. But the community's sometimes alienating methods of protesting their persecution, and their evasiveness over links to front organisations, don't help their cause

Sunday Star Times, New Zealand/March 2, 2008

By Tim Hume

Two portraits dominate the living room of Huang Guohua's sparsely furnished Highland Park, Auckland home, depicting the figures who have loomed largest in his life. One is of Li Hongzhi, the unprepossessing-looking 56-year-old founder of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The second is of Huang's pretty wife, architect Luo Zhixiang, who was one of Li's disciples, and who subsequently died in the custody of Chinese authorities five years ago, aged 29.

Huang, a picture frame maker from Shandong province, had been a practitioner of Falun Gong for a year before the movement, a system of "mental and physical cultivation", was outlawed as an "evil cult" by Chinese authorities. He was first arrested while performing Falun Gong's meditative exercises on July 20, 1999, the day a nationwide crackdown on the movement began; he says he and his wife were subsequently subjected to years of dehumanising state persecution. He was beaten, illegally detained, sent to a labour camp, force-fed through his nose, "re-educated", forced to renounce his beliefs. He wanted to die.

His pregnant wife was sent for brainwashing. Weakened by the ordeal, she was taken to hospital under custody of the 6-10 Office, the notorious National Security Bureau branch allegedly established to persecute Falun Gong, where she fell to her death from a third-storey toilet window.

When authorities told Huang of Luo's death four months later, they said it was suicide, which is forbidden by Falun Gong's teachings. Huang rejects this, blaming Chinese authorities for her death.

Huang eventually fled to Bangkok, where he and daughter Ying gained refugee status. Their new lives began on January 6, 2006, when they were among the first of 15 Falun Gong refugees to arrive in New Zealand. They love it here. Huang, 36, is learning English. Ying is much taken with her new hobby, swimming.

But they have not been able to leave the years of persecution completely behind. Huang was on the front page of a community newspaper last month, voicing his belief that Chinese Communist Party sympathisers were behind damage to his letterbox (it was hit with a rake). He has no evidence of this, but, having lived through what he has, he believes it makes every sense.

Falun Gong ("Law Wheel Cultivation") was unveiled in China in 1992 by its enigmatic creator, former police band trumpeter Li, and has spread rapidly since. Formally known as Falun Dafa ("Great Law of the Law Wheel"), the practice is essentially a revivification of qigong, an ancient Chinese tradition involving regulated breathing and movement, which draws on Buddhist and Taoist traditions. Practitioners seek to "cultivate" themselves through gentle, meditative exercises, improving their character according to the movement's guiding principles of "truthfulness, compassion and tolerance".

Li claims supernatural powers, developed through training with spiritual masters in the mountains from his youth; his book, Zhuan Falun ("Turning the Law Wheel"), posits that he can treat disease more effectively than medicine, and can telekinetically implant the falun, or law wheel, into the abdomens of his followers, where it absorbs and releases power as it spins (other beliefs attributed to Li are that he can fly, that Africa has a two billion-year-old nuclear reactor, and that aliens invaded Earth about a century ago, introducing modern technology; one type, he told Time magazine, "looks like a human, but has a nose that is made of bone").

Li has lived in exile in New York, the movement's base, since 1998; the China government's crackdown did not begin in earnest until a year later, when 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners protested outside the Communist Party's Beijing headquarters. Displeased by the challenge, the government responded with a brutal campaign, vilifying the movement as a dangerous, anti-Chinese doomsday cult.

Powerless to fight back in China, the global Falun Gong community has mobilised in a concerted, centralised effort to draw attention to their plight and agitate against the Communist regime; it has engaged in a proxy war of information through an interconnected set of front organisations established to influence public opinion.

Falun Gong claims 100 million adherents around the world (Victoria University religious studies head Paul Morris pegs the number "in the hundreds of thousands"). In New Zealand, the community numbers somewhere between 200 and 300, about 90% of whom are ethnically Chinese; the rest are people like Chris Thomas, a music producer from Wellington who tried Falun Gong after seeing an advertisement on a community noticeboard.

"I was having a tough life I was dealing with a lot of losses, couldn't sleep, had drug problems and I was looking for a way to look after myself better," he explains.

You've probably seen Falun Gong; they march in Christmas parades, demonstrate outside Chinese diplomatic offices, engage in macabre street theatre dramatising China's alleged organ harvesting of practitioners.

Last week they made headlines when the Wellington City Council stopped them displaying a banner during their weekly meditation sessions opposite the Chinese Embassy, an action that breached a rule prohibiting political activity in parks.

Less visibly, Falun Gong has advanced its cause through a free newspaper, The Epoch Times, distributed around the country, and a globetrotting cultural showcase by the Divine Performing Arts troupe.

Both operations downplay their links with Falun Gong, with Epoch maintaining it has no special relationship with the movement. Equally unsustainable, but just as insistently asserted by Falun Gong internationally, is the claim that the movement is not political. Auckland spokeswoman Charmaine Deng is almost insulted by the suggestion, as it is one of the allegations levelled at them by the Chinese government to justify their persecution.

Acknowledged or not, political agitation, with the supreme goal of bringing about the demise of Communist rule in China, has become one of the movement's core activities. Its political impetus is unsurprising, given the Chinese persecution is deeply felt by practitioners here, some of whom have experienced it first hand and many of whom have family and friends in China.


The doublespeak around these issues has done the movement no favours as it engages in heated political battles with the Chinese embassy to the widespread incomprehension of local observers.

The parades


"They've done little to help their own cause," says Michael Barnett, Auckland Santa Parade Trust chairman, who had to hire security when Falun Gong picketed his office last year in response to his banning the group's 70-piece marching band from the parade.

He had been warned by other parade organisers of issues with Falun Gong: in particular, their distribution of flyers depicting the mutilated bodies of allegedly organ-harvested practitioners. "I told them the parade was about children, about Christmas, about fantasy. I didn't want to see it turned into a political wheelbarrow," he says. "They said that wasn't what they wanted, but couldn't guarantee the performance of various people. On that basis, I wasn't prepared to allow them."

The parades have become an important political platform for the movement, with practitioners converging from all over the country to perform. There have been problems elsewhere.

Hamilton's city council describes Falun Gong's relationship with the city's Santa parade as "fraught", while Dunedin banned Falun Gong after issues in 2005.

"They totally lied," says parade trust chairman Malcolm Dodds. The group had marched under a banner bearing Chinese characters, telling organisers it was "a Chinese greeting for Christmas spirit". "We later discovered it was something to the effect of `Celebrating the end of years of persecution under the Chinese regime'. It was totally embarrassing because we had taken them in good faith."

When the Wellington City Council told Falun Gong last year that its participation would breach a council ban on political content at its events, the movement engaged human rights lawyer Tony Ellis to take their case to the High Court, arguing the decision contravened their civil rights. The council decided to suspend its rule and allowed Falun Gong to march "as a show of good faith".

There were no problems; Falun Gong toned down the political element, and did not distribute flyers.

But no invitation was made to participate in Wellington's Chinese New Year parade last month, which Falun Gong had gatecrashed the previous year, one zealous practitioner driving a van through the security cordon.

The claim that Falun Gong was banned from Santa parades to appease China appears paranoid; the group seems to have been excluded because its actions were deemed inappropriate.


But in the case of Wellington's Chinese New Year parade, sponsored by the Chinese Embassy and the council, politics was clearly at play. Organisers wouldn't comment, but sources said "there was no way in hell" the embassy would allow Falun Gong to participate.

The newspaper


Founded in New York in 2000 with the stated goal of providing uncensored coverage of China, The Epoch Times now claims a circulation of 1.4 million in 30 countries. The slim broadsheet began publishing a weekly Chinese-language version here in 2002; a fortnightly English version appeared in 2005. The paper now boasts a handful of local reporting staff, and distributes 17,000 copies for free on news stands in dairies and supermarkets around the country; they are routinely distributed by practitioners.

Along with local and international coverage, the latter often focusing on human rights in China, each issue invariably features an extract of the newspaper's Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, an indictment on the regime which it claims is "disintegrating communism in China".

The US views Epoch as "affiliated" with Falun Gong, and Li himself has been reported as saying the paper was founded by his followers; despite this, Epoch's advertising manager, Shelley Shao, insists the only connection between the newspaper and Falun Gong is that one reports on the other.

Shao is a Falun Gong practitioner (she has been quoted in her own newspaper as a "Falun Gong spokesperson") but refuses to discuss whether other staff are Falun Gong practitioners. She suggests I have been put up to write the article by the Chinese Embassy.

Sarah Matheson, Epoch's chief reporter, is more forthcoming. The most formally qualified member of her team, with a journalism diploma from Aoraki Polytechnic, Matheson became a practitioner two years ago. Matheson, 25, made the news in September when she was escorted from an Apec media session in Sydney at the behest of Chinese security agents who feared she would shout at Premier Hu Jintao (the previous year, Epoch reporter Wenyi Wang had heckled Hu as he spoke at the White House).

"Australia is supposed to be a democratic nation," says Matheson, adding she had no intention of disrupting proceedings. "Why did they even give me accreditation? It's ridiculous because they know... what our goal is. We're trying to dismantle communism in China."

Despite the strident statement, Matheson insists Falun Gong is not political, maintaining the distinction between Falun Gong and Epoch.

Sydney was not her first brush with Chinese officials; she says embassy staff routinely phone the newspaper's distribution outlets, urging them to withdraw it. Chinese interference goes beyond efforts to disrupt the movement's media activities, she says, to surveillance and harassment.

Her account of being photographed by a man she believed worked for the Chinese Embassy echoes stories from other practitioners: Huang believes his house has been vandalised, Deng believes Chinese agents posing as international students have infiltrated meetings, Shao says her phone has been bugged and her family in China instructed to urge her to change jobs.

Their claims may smack of paranoia, but appear more reasonable in the context of claims by Chen Yonglin, a former diplomat at the Chinese consulate-general in Sydney who defected in May 2005, that there was a network of 1000 spies operating in Australia; Chen claimed to have been responsible for monitoring dissidents, particularly Falun Gong. Last year he claimed a Chinese woman was abducted and extradited by agents in Auckland.

Another defector, Hao Fengjun, who claimed to have been a member of the 6-10 Office, alleged a spy had infiltrated an Auckland church.

The New Zealand government will not comment on these matters, but the SIS reports that spy activity remains an issue. Former Auckland University academic Paul Buchanan estimated there were probably 50 Chinese operatives gathering intelligence locally.


Chinese Embassy spokesman Zeng Yun says he is unable to discuss claims of interference with Falun Gong's media efforts, but refutes the allegations of spying and harassment. "Anyone with common sense will know the answer to this kind of claim."

The Stage Show


A recent case of interference by the Chinese Embassy occurred last April, when Divine Performing Arts brought its musical roadshow to Auckland.

In a dynamic that resembles Taiwan's tit-for-tat skirmishes with its giant rival for diplomatic recognition, Divine's goal appears to be to entice "influential" figures such as politicians, media and academics to the show, recording and trumpeting their endorsements as a coded display of political support. Chinese officials, for their part, dissuade people from attending.

Last year, seven mayors in the Auckland region were invited but did not attend; George Wood, North Shore mayor at the time, rescinded his acceptance after a call from the Chinese consulate, saying he felt uneasy about being "the meat in a sandwich". The troupe will return to New Zealand for four Auckland performances next month; Matheson is sending out invitations with no mention of Falun Gong.

One Auckland journalist, who did not want to be named, attended last year with complimentary tickets. He had not realised the show's Falun Gong affiliation, but became aware of something unusual when he was welcomed by a camera crew, who harried him to agree to give his impressions after the show.

The man said he "felt used", and implicated into some sort of propaganda. He left during intermission.

The New York Times last month reported similar responses to a Divine performance in Manhattan with moments of heavy-handed propaganda. Epoch, a sponsor of the show, reacted angrily, saying the Times' "unwarranted criticisms... clearly reveal[ed] a darker side" of the newspaper; one Epoch article, under the headline "New York Times Parrots Communist Party Line", asserted "the response to the show, confirmed by The Epoch Times reporters in over 1000 interviews with audience members, was overwhelmingly positive".

Epoch also points out that the New York Times story was, unusually for a Western article, immediately reprinted by Xinhua, China's state media agency, and propagated widely.

The propaganda battle between Falun Gong and the Chinese government is a zero-sum game, accounting, perhaps, for the movement's propensity to overreact to criticism; any critique of one is celebrated as a vindication by the other.

Political scientist Maria Hsia Chang of the University of Nevada, Reno, author of a book on Falun Gong, says the movement "seems to be treating organisations it has created, such as The Epoch Times, as front organisations to influence public opinion via a concerted information-PR-propaganda campaign".

The most charitable explanation she is able to offer for this strategy "is that Falun Gong's decision-makers are products of the political-social environment in China", where to survive, the movement has to create organisations that are publicly unaffiliated with it.

Such strategies are counterproductive in democratic societies.

"Being secretive and deceptive will just play into the image they're a kooky group with something to hide," Chang says.
As a movement, Falun Gong displays the paranoia of the genuinely persecuted. Sometimes its suspicions are justified; clearly some of its activities are subject to Chinese interference. Other times, it perceives threats that are not there.

In a year when China's appalling human rights practices should be squarely in the spotlight ahead of an Olympics which China's leaders had once hollowly promised would usher in a new era of political freedoms Falun Gong's misguided strategies may instead be turning off its potential audience.

Chang says that like many she sympathises with the movement's goals, particularly given the way China's human rights conduct has fallen off the West's agenda. "I just wish Falun Gong would use better tactics."

The gospel truth: Falun Gong

well i'm sold! in the name of human rights and freedom let's torture all of them! go china!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pisshead

well i'm sold! in the name of human rights and freedom let's torture all of them! go china!!

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What some Americans do not get is that China does not believe in religious freedom, often for very justified reasons. They understand that these types of cults lead to violence, often involving death, corruption, ignorance, delusions, and sickness. When they try to reason with cult groups, and it fails to produce any improvements, they will try to re-educate them - and oversee the results. If the program doesn't work, then they go to the next level.

I don't always agree with their tactics, but I don't know all of the facts and refuse to condemn them in most cases.

The Chinese are not into crackpot, irrational groups - and they will do whatever is necessary to keep them under varying degrees of control. That's they way they do things, and we should not be so quick to criticize, without knowing and understanding the facts.

They way they see it, Falun Gong is a criminal organization because they spread insane beliefs, often by very questionalbe method to people that are vulnerable - much like all religious organizations. But, this one is pretty far out, even by China's strict standard of secularism. Falun Gong profits from it, and the Chinese know this. That is why they persecute their existence as an organization. If they didn't, they wouldn't be China.

It was Christian, and other, missionaries and churches in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century that were largely responsible for China becoming Communist in the first place. They have plenty of experience being fucked with by religion, so we should forget about changing their minds about Falun Gong and other cults and religions.

is Falun Gong the same group that attacked a Japanese subway a few years back? not trying to get in this debate but was just wondering. that name sounds familiar.

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Originally Posted by boaz

is Falun Gong the same group that attacked a Japanese subway a few years back? not trying to get in this debate but was just wondering. that name sounds familiar.

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No, it wasn't Falun Gong.

Aum Shinrikyo was the cult that attacked Japanese subways with nerve gas, 13 years ago.

oh, sorry about that, thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by boaz

oh, sorry about that, thanks.

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No problem! This question brings up another issue: The Dalai Lama was a supporter of this group, the murderous Aum Shinrikyo cult of Japan. He is also a supporter of Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong. When is the Dalai Lama going to be held accountable for his actions? He seems to bond with any and all crackpot group that has gotten under the skin of China.
The Dalai Lama: enlighten or evil?

Xinhua Shi Shan.

The world has seen rapid development in the scientific civilization of mankind, but the malignant tumor of evil cults is still rampant, plunging innocent people into the depths of suffering. Evil cults such as the Solar Temple Cult of the United States, the Falun Gong of China and the Movement of the Restoration of God's Ten Commandments of Uganda wantonly preach the fallacy of "the End of the World", destroy social stability and jeopardize the lives and property of the public. Such perverse acts have aroused strong indignation of the people and governments of various countries. Many countries have staged a fight against evil cults by enacting legislation and setting up special agencies.

Buddhist doctrine advocates good deeds and extrication from the earthly weal and woe. It has also long been viewing evil cults as the "feud of Buddha" and maintaining that "Buddha and demons do not coexist with each other".

The 14th Dalai Lama, who boasts to be a "follower of Buddhism" and "human rights fighter", however not only has no hatred toward evil cults but instead shows a great deal of compassion for them. Isn't it worth pondering the reasons behind this?

Let's first start with the Aum Shinrikyo cult of Japan. The cult leader Shoko Asahara claimed that it was "the 14th Dalai Lama who personally led him into the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism" and that he could shorten the time needed for one to become a Buddha from 2,000-3,000 years to just 10 years, urging people to ditch the ascetic practices advocated by Buddhism and follow his sect tenets to merrily achieve longevity and even to become a Buddha.

The 14th Dalai Lama kept writing certificates or letters of recommendation for Shoko Asahara to the authorities of Tokyo, hailing Shoko Asahara as "a very capable religious teacher" and hoping the authorities would "allow the Aum Shinrikyo Sect to be exempted from tax payments and propagandize its credo. The German weekly Focus reported that without the support of the 14th Dalai Lama, it would have been absolutely impossible for Shoko Asahara to build up his sect empire and, within a short period of very few years, gain status as a cult leader in Japan. In other words, it is the 14th Dalai Lama's all-out "support" that turned Shoko Asahara, a swindler and a mountebank, into "a religious teacher".

It was because of the 14th Dalai Lama who persistently supported and trumpeted Shoko Asahara that the Aum Shinrikyo cult could acquire the privilege of "tax exemption" and accumulated funds to bankroll his cruel evil doing against the Japanese people. In the Spring of 1995, Shoko Asahara organized a terrorist attack by discharging poisonous gas in Tokyo's subway, killing 12 people and injuring 5,000 others. The event sparked indignation from the Japanese people. In October of the same year, Shoko Asahara and his die-hard followers stood public trial in a local court of Tokyo and were punished in line with laws.

Even at this moment, the 14th Dalai Lama who claimed to be a "human rights fighter" still spoke plausibly to the Kyodo News Service that Shoko Asahara remained his friend and that he still thought what the Aum Shinrikyo cult preached was in accordance with Buddhist doctrines. It was the support and connivance of the 14th Dalai Lama who took the foe for his friend that made Asahara feel secure in the knowledge that he had strong backing. The evil cult continued to do evils under the guise of constantly-changed names and leaders. Eventually in 1999, the Japanese Senate completed the legislative procedures against evil cults including the Aum Shinrikyo. The Tokyo authorities also took a number of measures to crack down on the leaders of the evil cult.

Why would the 14th Dalai Lama openly violate the teachings of Sakyamuni that urge his followers to get rid of demons and uphold truth and laws to favor Aum Shinrikyo? Why would he flout the tenets of Buddhism urging the masses not to do evils but to do good deeds? The 14th Dalai Lama had confessed in a letter to the cult, appreciating the Aum Shinrikyo Sect for its "generous donation to our Buddhist collective in exile". Aha, it turned out to be that the "leader" even bartered away the sacred tenet of Buddhism as a cheap bargaining chip in money deals.

It is the 14th Dalai Lama's own deeds that have step by step betrayed his real intentions and political ambitions put under the guise of Buddhism and peace. A weekly newspaper in Manila commented it was a pity that the 14th Dalai Lama wore the cassock of a Lama but played political tricks, spoke of the pursuit of freedom through peaceful means but harbored in mind the vain attempt of restoring the past feudal rule of Lamaism. Even catholic senator P. Santorum of the United States couldn't help exclaiming that such conduct reflected a subdued religious sentiment. He held that to establish a society respecting life, cracking down upon crimes and promoting dignity of mankind, efforts must be made to prevent religion from being individualized. It appears that many people of insight across the world have recognized the tricks of the 14th Dalai Lama in using Tibetan Buddhism to engage in political activities and have stayed on high alert to and repulsed the deed of the Dalai Lama.

Let's now have a look at the 14th Dalai Lama's attitude toward China's evil cult Falun Gong. Cult leader Li Hongzhi of Falun Gong took religion as pretence, trampled upon religious doctrines and thus invited indignation, reprimands and stern objections from the religious circles. They said that Li Hongzhi had blasphemed Buddhism by fabricating his birthday from July 1952 to May 13, 1951, the date on which Sakyamuni was believed to be born. His attempt to pass himself as the reincarnation of Sakyamuni and his bragging about getting true knowledge from Sakyamuni and thus being more powerful than Sakyamuni was "an extreme blasphemy to Buddhism", they said. However, even such an evil cult leader who is denounced by many people and had to flee abroad to escape the punishment of laws secured compassion and admiration from the 14th Dalai Lama. The latter first dispatched his representative to comfort Li Hongzhi and then sent over his representatives to conspire with Li and staged various farces at the time when the 56th World Human Rights Conference was held in Geneva, stopping at nothing to spread lies and rumors and to trumpet anti-China bills.

As one Chinese saying goes: Birds of a feather flock together. The real reasons for the collusion of the 14th Dalai Lama and Li Hongzhi are their shared situation. They are both in exile after their illegal acts to subvert the Chinese government and the Chinese people ended in constant failures under the august Chinese Constitution and laws; Shared nature --They are both not resigned to failures and attempt to hoodwink and manipulate their few domestic followers to carry on making turbulence and to hold back the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; Shared intention--They are both hostile to their motherland and regard the 1.3 billion Chinese as enemies, dreaming a pipe dream of returning to China, with the support of their masters, to materialize their evil objective of splitting China.

Imagine the 14th Dalai Lama, the self-proclaimed "religious leader", even condescended to associate with Li Hongzhi who has been labeled by the United International World Buddhism Association Headquarters as a preacher of evil cult and a swindler! This obviously reflects that the 14th Dalai Lama has cornered himself into a dead end!
(Xinhua, October 9, 2007)
Truth on Falun Gong | The Dalai Lama: enlighten or evil?