WASHINGTON, D.C. - Cleveland economist Tianlun Jian was shocked when he was taken into custody for 7 1/2 hours in his native China during a 2008 business trip on behalf of his employer, Eaton Corp.
While he was in China, Jian, who practices the Falun Gong spiritual discipline of meditation and tai chi style exercises, had decided to take a side trip to visit elderly parents he hadn’t seen in years. He says police intercepted him and interrogated him about the Falun Gong while his frantic family contacted the U.S. Embassy and Chinese authorities.
After his release, he says his mother told him: “I love you son, but we must be reasonable. You must leave this country to go back to your free country early tomorrow morning and do not come back again.”
Jian and his wife, Jingchun Guo, were among several thousand Falun Gong practitioners who gathered in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to protest Chinese repression of the Falun Gong They say their Chinese compatriots are routinely arrested, interrogated, tortured, sent to work camps, and murdered. An international tribunal investigation released last month found that thousands of them have been killed so their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, corneas and skin could be used for transplants.
Falun Gong practitioners Jingchun Guo of Cleveland, and her husband, Tianlun Jian, attended a rally on Capitol Hill to draw attention to persecution of their counterparts in China. (Sabrina Eaton, cleveland.com)
“I am here to speak out for human rights and to stop persecution of the Falun Gong,” said Gary Zhu, a computer engineer who recently graduated from University of Cincinnati. Zhu says his father in China was repeatedly arrestested for being a Falun Gong member and is under constant surveillance by its authorities.
A Chinese embassy spokesman described the Falun Gong practitioners’ claims as “outrageous fabrication.”
Chinese government websites describes Falun Gong as an an "anti-humanity, anti-society and anti-science cult” and say over 1,000 of its practitioners died because they followed its teachings and refused to seek medical treatment for their illnesses.
Government statements about the group say it was outlawed because of serious human rights violations and other criminal activities, which include engaging in “anti-China political activities aimed at undermining China-U.S. relations.”
Toledo Falun Gong practitioner Anna Gerhardinger dismisses those statements as lies and “propaganda.” Members of the group say the Chinese government endorsed it until an abrupt about-face in 1999, when it was outlawed. At that time, they say Falun Gong had more adherents in China than the communist party had members. They hypothesize that the government felt threatened because Falun Gong tenets require truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.
“We know that wherever communist ideologies take hold, people are stripped of their God-given rights, denied freedom of thought and expression and basic dignity,” Friends of Falun Gong Executive Director Alan Adler told the group at a Capitol Hill rally.
Cincinnati Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, who formerly chaired a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that oversees South Asian affairs, also decried the Chinese government’s “barbaric” treatment of Falun Gong practitioners from the rally stage.
“Wrongful imprisonment, so-called reeducation, brainwashing - really, torture and forced organ harvesting and murder are the tools that they use to stifle the Falun Gong movement," Chabot told the crowd. "Now, they’re doing the same thing to the Uighurs. Such tactics have no place in a civilized society yet they are commonplace in communist China.”
Adler said the Congress has passed resolutions condemning Falun Gong persecution five times, sending “a strong and consistent signal” that the United States “will not turn a blind eye” to China’s crimes. He also noted that a Falun Gong practitioner from China was among 27 survivors of international religious persecution who met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday..
“In our Bill of Rights, the first liberty is religious liberty," Trump told the group, “each of us has the right to follow the dictates of our conscience and the demands of our religious conviction. We know that if people are not free to practice their faith, then all of the freedoms are at risk and, frankly, freedoms don’t mean very much.”
Falun Gong practitioners display banners on Capitol Hill. (Sabrina Eaton, cleveland.com)
Adler said that repeated reports on Chinese atrocities like forced organ harvesting will help the Chinese regime see “there is no place to hide” and to change its practices.
“Once the whole world says in unison that these atrocities are unacceptable, they will come to an epic, inevitable end,” said Adler.
Cleveland’s Jian said that in addition to attending public protests of the Falun Gong’s treatment, Ohio Falun Gong members were meeting with the state’s congressional delegation to urge passage of a new Senate resolution that urges the Chinese government to “immediately cease and desist from its campaign to persecute Falun Gong practitioners,” promptly release all who are detained for exercising their spiritual beliefs and calls on China to “immediately end the practice of organ harvesting from all prisoners of conscience.”
Rachel Wang, an Ohio State University graduate student in computer science whose father was arrested for practicing Falun Gong, said she hopes U.S. pressure will force the communist party to give human rights to its people.
“We shouldn’t be treated this way,” agreed Leann Lee, a Pickerington warehouse worker. “We spread truth, compassion and forbearance.”