Host: Welcome to 'At The Table’. For the people that haven’t been following this story, it has been in the news yesterday, let’s start from the beginning. What does Falun Gong stand for?
Practitioner: Falun Gong is actually a cultivation method of mind and body. What does that mean? Falun Gong is based on 3 principles, truth, compassion and tolerance. And we try to apply those three principles as best we can in our daily lives.
Host: And how is this expressed?
By, first of all, thinking of others first, by trying to put aside ones ego.
And are there any rituals that accompany that, or how does it work?
No, absolutely not. Falun Gong is cultivation practice of mind and body, with the three principles we live by for the mind and to cultivate the body, we do exercises. Physical exercises, like Tai Chi or Yoga, very slow movements.
Show some, so we can get an impression of such things… Ah, so you have to stand up for it?
Yes, yes. So we have four standing exercises and 1 sitting meditation exercise.
Do one please.
One movement we do for instance is going up and down with the hands, following the body…
What does that do?
…We do this 9 times in a row.
What do you feel then?
It makes energy flow through your body. So the energy goes through our body and as a result our body is being purified. It’s actually to achieve a healthy body and to maintain it.
No one can be against that, can they? A healthy mind in a healthy body. But how did you get into contact with these movements?
Actually, it was through my husband. My husband came into contact with it about four years ago through an article in a newspaper. And at that time he was already practicing Qigong and Tai Chi, just like the movements I just showed, to purify the body and attain better health. That has been done for ages in the East and has now slowly reached the West.
It has now become such a big group, especially in China, more than 70 million it has being said have converted to Falun Gong, so to say.
Not converted.
Converted…, I mean that are practising it. Is that more accurate?
Yes.
Ok, now the Falun Gong movement has submitted a complaint against the Chinese government. And this is what VRT News said about it yesterday:
“The first complaint of the new genocide law that has only just been enacted has been filed this morning in Brussels by 6 practitioners of Falun Gong. Meanwhile, others have been demonstrating how they meditate in Falun Gong in front of the court building. The Chinese government have been persecuting Falun Gong practitioners systematically, torturing them and even killing them since 1999 under the order of the then leader, Jiang Zemin.”
Yes. That is of course a little strange if you tell it like that, I want to believe that it’s just about a healthy mind in a healthy body. But why would they want to absolutely ban Falun Gong in China?
What we think is that in China, Falun Gong has very quickly become enormously popular. It was in 1992 that it was made public for the first time. Its popularity grew enormously during the next seven years, so that 70 million people, like you just mentioned, started practising Falun Gong. So, we think that the president Jiang Zemin feared a large group which was so popular and as a result, was afraid of losing power.
But I cannot quite understand, that if these people only do these kinds of movements, lead that kind of life. That doesn’t mean that they are going to exercise power, does it?
No, absolutely not. We have nothing to do with politics. Nor with exercising power either. We think it was just fear of the large amount of people, because there were more Falun Gong members than members of the communist party at that time, and because Falun Gong was being practised by people from all walks of life. There were also people of the highest rank in the communist party practising Falun Gong.
Your husband, who also practises, went to China himself and there he had to deal with persecution. What happened?
Last year in February, my husband went to China to try to help open a dialogue with the Chinese government, to try to stop the persecution. He planned to join a hundred practitioners from all over the world: America, Canada, and Europe. But at that time, the Chinese government already knew that this was going to happen. Every westerner that tried to go to Tiananmen Square, was arrested and put into jail, and so my husband was arrested as well and spent twenty four hours in jail. He was then released.
Yes, that is bizarre, but why is it exactly that Falun Gong is forbidden? After all, in China, as is generally known, people have meditated for ages, go over [the reason] very briefly, the people in power would not have been surprised by something like Falun Gong, would they?
Probably because of its popularity. These exercises have always been done by many people. But Falun Gong is more than just exercises, we also hold a philosophy, a way of life and because of that it became immensely popular. The reason is probably because of the large amount of people.
It’s forbidden in China, you just said so, but how come so many people are practising it? Is it done secretly, in a basement or something?
Well, the moment the ban was ordered, there were already 70 million people practising Falun Gong. Those people are still practising now. But because they were not allowed to do it in public anymore, they would have to do the exercises and read the Falun Gong book at home.
What is there in this book? Just the teachings of Forbearance?
The teachings of Falun Gong are actually 9 lectures given by Mr. Li Hongzhi, who is the person who came out to teach Falun Gong in China. He has explained how one can live by these three principles.
But maybe that’s the reason why the government is so afraid, because there is a man who appears as a Guru so to say. And then they think it’s a kind of cult and then of course bells start ringing...
Guru is definitely a wrong word. We indeed have a person who came out with the teachings, that’s why we call him Teacher or Master, out of respect. But there is no worshipping at all. There is nothing that has anything to do with a cult. We have no initiation, we don’t have membership, we have no worshipping as I just mentioned, there is no circulation of money, you name it…
[...]
You have now filed a complaint, through the new genocide law. You know how hard it’s going to be. What do you hope to accomplish, with this complaint against Jiang Zemin?
We indeed hope that in all different nations, such a lawsuit will be started, that everybody sees what this persecution actually is, what is happening in China and that China also sees they are receiving a lot of attention so they cannot go on as they are doing now.
Are there other countries besides China where it is forbidden?
No, absolutely not. We practise Falun Gong in sixty countries. So in more than sixty countries Falun Gong is being practised, and China is the only country where it is being slandered.
Many problems ahead of you, but let’s hope they can be resolved by this complaint, with the genocide law you are using. Let’s hope it gets a good ending. But that is going to still take some time; you are surely prepared for that, aren’t you?
Absolutely.
Good luck, in every respect. Many thanks.
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