By Jessica Reed
In China the practice of Falun Gong -a form of spiritual teaching incorporaating meditation exercises- is prohibited: the organisation is considered to be 'heretical' and harmful to China's current political principles. In fact, the Chinese government is currently holding the sect practionners in jail, and by doing so is breaking human rights conventions - Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously called to stop the mass arbitrary detentions, while various UN reports delivered by the Special Rapporteur of Freedom and Beliefs have been published on the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group's website.
Back when I lived in Vancouver - a town enjoying the reputation of being a peaceful, multicultural and tolerant place to live in- I would often walk by the Chinese consulate where Falun Gong practicionners would invariably demonstrate by holding simple banners and organising meditating sit-ins (see picture). Today the Tyee reports the beating of a meditator outside the Chinese consulate, explainning the attack as "an expression of the Chinese government's irritation at Falun Gong's ongoing challenge locally [that] would be part of a global pattern of anti-Falun Gong harassment and violence attributed to Chinese agents." The article relates other similar acts of violence in Ottawa and Johannesburg, while the (understandly biased, Falun Gong-linked) Epoch Times in Singapore recently reported 'strange occurrences' as well as trials taking extraordinary turns.
Elsewhere: A "Falun Gong is *" experiment with the help of google.com vs. google.cn (and you can even try it yourself) + Last July a Canadian human rights lawyer and an MP were very vocal about China harvesting Falun Gong organs from live prisoners without their consent [cbc link].
Picture via Trevor Blake's FlickR page.
