Hindustan Times: The Inscrutable Chinese

For the last few years I have been reading about [.] Falun Gong and how they are persecuted in communist China. Simply assumed, it must be some sort of secret society and the government finds its activities subversive. Dictatorial regimes know only one way of dealing with organisations they don’t like: crush them. This is what Beijing has done by eliminating many of its members and jailing many thousands more. Protests were lodged by the UN Human Rights Commission and governments of many countries. The Chinese government dismissed them with disdain.

A couple of weeks ago, two Chinese ladies called on me to tell me about [.] Falun Gong — also known as the Falun Dafa (‘the great way of the law wheel’). It comprises five simple exercises very much like our yoga asanas with rhythmical movements of the arms ending in the padma asana (lotus pose). It was founded by Li Hongzhi [.] in 1992 and is based on three principles: truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.

The Falun Gong [practice] spread like wildfire across China, and then over in Europe, Canada and the US. Li Hongzhi [.] had more than once been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. [.]

Since then I have read some books on [.] Falun Gong. It seems a pretty innocuous [practice] open to people of any faith who believe in truth, compassion and tolerance. Why should anyone in his senses want to stamp it out is beyond my comprehension. As I admitted at the outset, the Chinese are inscrutable.