Pressure put on Mayors and Governors by the Chinese Embassy

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Chinese officials are conducting a nationwide campaign in the United States against the Falun Gong meditation sect by contacting mayors, and at least one governor, and urging them to snub the group.

"I was shocked that a communist nation would go to this amount of trouble to suppress what is routinely accepted in this country," said Randy Voepel, mayor of Santee, Calif., a city of 53,000 located less than 100 miles from Los Angeles.

Mr. Voepel said he received a letter just more than a year ago, signed by Lan Lijun, consul general at the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, that said: "It is our hope that your city, by taking your citizens' interest into consideration, will earnestly consider the request from the Chinese side that no recognition and support in any form should be given to the Falun Gong cult organization."

Reached by telephone this week, The Chinese campaign came to light in a civil lawsuit that Falun Gong members in the United States filed against Beijing.

The sect, which combines Buddhist meditation and deep-breathing exercises, has been banned in China.

Members' attempts to protest the ban have prompted the largest crackdown on dissent since the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

Stan Bogosian, former mayor of Saratoga, Calif., a city of 30,000 near San Francisco, said he received a similar letter sometime in 2000.

"I would characterize it as pressure," he said. "There is a network [by the Chinese authorities] going on."

Gov. Gary Locke of Washington state also received a letter from Wang Yunxiang, consul-general at the consulate in San Francisco.

"I am writing hereby to request your kind support by not granting any application of this Falun Gong for registration in your state in whatever names," said Mr. Wang in June 2000.

The Chinese consulates have sent about 300 letters to local governments throughout the United States, U.S. Falun Gong practitioners say.

Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, acknowledged a letter-writing campaign by Chinese diplomats but denied it was intended to suppress the movement.

"We are just sharing the facts about Falun Gong," Mr. Sun said. "We have only urged local officials to stop honoring the Falun Gong."

U.S. Falun Gong members filed the lawsuit on Wednesday. It accuses Chinese agents operating in the United States of making death threats and tapping phones of Falun Gong practitioners.

The 57-page complaint names two Chinese security ministries, China Central Television, and employees of Chinese Embassy and Consulate offices for engaging in criminal activities intended to impair the organization. "The Chinese government has stolen our Constitution and our Bill of Rights," said Martin F. McMahon, an attorney for the religious group. "We want it back."

Terri Wu, one of the plaintiffs, said that her home and mobile phones have been bugged and recorded and that unidentified callers have played the recordings back to her since January 2001.

"I had conversations played back to me on five different occasions," Miss Wu said.

Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong practitioner in New York City, said her apartment had been broken into three times.

"They didn't steal anything but my income tax records, address book and other Falun Gong-related materials," she said.

In response to the lawsuit, the Chinese Embassy released a statement denying any wrongdoing and saying U.S. courts lack the authority to put the Chinese government on trial.

In bringing its dispute with the Chinese government to the United States, the Falun Gong spiritual movement has nudged some Utah leaders into the realm of foreign diplomacy.

Late last year, the Falun Gong asked Gov. Mike Leavitt and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson to sign proclamations supporting the movement as peaceful and beneficial. They agreed, and Leavitt decided to declare Jan. 8 "Falun Gong Day" in Utah.

But after meeting with Chinese officials, the governor did neither, citing the importance of Utah's neutrality on the issue in light of February's 2002 Olympic Winter Games.

Anderson stands by his decision to sign a proclamation, unlike the mayors of Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco, Decatur, Ill., and Westland, Mich., who rescinded theirs under pressure from Chinese officials.

Anderson's spokesman, Josh Ewing, said Wednesday the mayor's office has received thousands of thank-you letters for protecting the Falun Gong's First Amendment rights as members protested, held vigils and distributed literature during the 17 days of the Games.

"We met with members of the Chinese government who expressed concerns about the Falun Gong, and we said, 'Hey, we are not going to allow anyone to do anything dangerous, but we are going to let them get their message across and not censor them,' " Ewing said.

Some 400 Falun Gong followers from around the country joined about 100 of their Utah counterparts during the Games, calling the Olympic spirit of global unity a complement to the movement's philosophy.

Falun Gong members have filed federal lawsuits claiming Beijing Mayor Liu Qi violated human rights and resorted to torture in quashing the movement in China's capital. Qi was served the suit in San Francisco as he was traveling to Salt Lake City to head China's Olympic delegation.

For its part, the Chinese government, which banned the Falun Gong in 1999 as an "evil cult" and a threat to public safety and communist rule, has urged American mayors and governors to offer the movement "no recognition and support in any form."

An article last month in People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, said the Falun Gong's activities in Utah posed a danger to Chinese athletes and officials and revealed its "anti-humanity, anti-society, and anti-science sectarian nature."

"We are not a religion or cult," he said. "Falun Gong is a practice that allows us to cultivate the values of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance through meditation, abstention from alcohol and drugs, and tai-chi-like exercises."

Mei also vehemently rejected suggestions that Falun Gong protesters pulled a fire alarm during a Chinese New Year's celebration on Feb. 1 at the University of Utah, sending nearly 1,000 revelers into the midst of protesters outside.

The same thing happened last year at a Falun Gong convention in San Jose, Calif., and a San Francisco City Council hearing, Mei said. "Someone is trying to link us to fire alarms and public disturbance, and this is something we definitely want cleared up."

The Falun Gong has an estimated following of 100 million worldwide, and its leader, Li Hongzhi, has been living in the United States since 1995.

Will Chinese Repression Play in Peoria? -- Beijing's campaign comes to America

Time was when Americans had to travel halfway around the world to feel the steely touch of China's state security apparatus. No longer. In their fervor to trample any grassroots movements that might challenge their power, China's rulers are hustling these days to share their bizarre, oppressive tactics not only with their own 1.3 billion citizens, but with folks all across America.

In particular, Beijing has been offering its own nasty brand of spiritual guidance to hundreds of American mayors, in big cities and small towns, from Los Angeles to Baltimore to the Illinois Corn Belt. This Beijing outreach program has even played in such local papers as the Peoria Journal Star, which noted last April 26 that "a routine, seemingly harmless proclamation recognizing a Chinese religious group has thrust a group of Illinois mayors into the unlikely realm of foreign diplomacy."

Beijing's most visible target, the "religious group" to which the Peoria newspaper refers, is the Falun Gong. This spiritual movement, also known as the Falun Dafa, began spreading 10 years ago inside China, where it evidently holds huge appeal for tens of millions seeking some form of faith more gratifying than the bankrupt and corrosive state ideology of communism.

After some 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners staged a peaceful demonstration in April 1999 in front of Communist Party headquarters near Tiananmen Square, China's rulers condemned it as [Chinese government's slanderous words] and embarked on an official campaign to wipe it out. Since then, China has racked up quite a record of jailing, torturing and in scores of cases killing Falun Gong followers inside China. The Wall Street Journal's Ian Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize last year for his stories documenting such Chinese government abuses, including the case of Chen Zixiu, a 58-year-old woman who was beaten and tortured to death in Chinese state custody for refusing to renounce Falun Gong.

Falun Gong followers outside China have responded--reasonably enough--by seeking gestures of support. Which is how America's mayors get into the act. It is a widespread and largely decorative habit of U.S. mayors to issue all sorts of proclamations, celebrating a great welter of groups, themes and causes of the day. Falun Gong practitioners here in America have asked many mayors in recent years to issue proclamations honoring their movement.

The Chinese government, not content with persecuting the Falun Gong in China, has responded by urging local U.S. officials to shun or even persecute them right here in America. The approach, made variously by letter, phone call or personal visit from a Chinese official based at China's Washington embassy or one of its numerous consulates, tends to combine gross disinformation with scare tactics and, in some cases, slyly implied diplomatic and commercial pressure.

Typical is the experience of Santee, Calif., a city of 58,000 on the outskirts of San Diego County. A little over a year ago, Mayor Randy Voepel received a letter from the newly arrived Chinese consul general in Los Angeles, Lan Lijun. Mr. Lan's letter began with a cheery greeting and rolled right along to describe the Falun Gong movement as [Chinese government's slanderous words]." Noting that China would "like to establish and develop friendly relations with your city"--and implying this would require complying with China's wishes--Mr. Lan's letter went on to urge that "no recognition and support in any form should be given to the Falun Gong" and urged banning them from registration as any kind of official organization.

Not so typical was Mr. Voepel's reaction. A Vietnam War veteran, he wrote back: "Your letter personally chilled me to my bones. I was shocked that a Communist Nation would go to this amount of trouble to suppress what is routinely accepted in this country. . . . I have the greatest respect for the Chinese people in your country and everywhere else in the world, but must be honest in my concern for the suppression of human rights by your government as evidenced by your request." Mr. Voepel then issued a mayoral proclamation commending the Falun Gong.

Some other officials, such as former Saratoga, Calif., mayor Stan Bogosian and a raft of mayors in Illinois, have stood up to China's pressure. But many have kowtowed, [...]

China has been brazen enough to pressure even the mayor of Salt Lake City--currently hosting the Olympics, as Beijing is slated to do in 2008. Last month the Chinese Embassy's deputy chief of mission, He Yafei, paid a call on Mayor Rocky Anderson, who had issued a proclamation last year honoring the Falun Gong. As part of a "security briefing" for Mr. Anderson, Mr. He's message included warnings about the Falun Gong, one of many groups that had applied for permission to hold a peaceful demonstration during the Olympics. Mr. Anderson let the demonstration go ahead, on Feb. 7. It was so peaceful, says a mayoral spokesman, that the sole problem with the Falun Gong was that "they walked very slow."

A half dozen Falun Gong practitioners did engage in a somewhat more aggressive protest against China's international [campaign of defaming Falun Gong], as the logo goes on the official Web site of China's Xinhua state news agency. When Beijing's Mayor Liu Qi arrived in the San Francisco airport earlier this month, en route to attend the Olympics, they served him with papers for a lawsuit filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 and the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1992, for letting grave abuses against Falun Gong followers go unchecked in Beijing. [...] Mr. Liu himself, who announced last year that Beijing in preparing to host the 2008 Olympics would "resolutely smash and crack down on Falun Gong and [...]," has yet to respond.

Obviously the Falun Gong, with its blend of meditation, exercise and otherworldly visions, may not be everyone's cup of tea. But the soul of America itself centers on allowing individual choice, not only in market transactions, but in matters of faith. China's campaign to snuff out the movement even on U.S. soil not only runs counter to American principles. It also fits into an even larger pattern in which Chinese state security, with its desperate fear of anything that might challenge party dictatorship in Beijing, has snaked its tentacles into numerous communities in the U.S., trying i#0066FFn various ways to intimidate China scholars, harass exiled Chinese dissidents and bully supporters of the world's only full-blown Chinese democracy, on Taiwan.

President Bush is in Beijing today and tomorrow, seeking common ground with his Chinese hosts. It would also be a good moment to remind President Jiang Zemin and his comrades that persecution of a peaceful spiritual movement is the kind of ugly, cruel and embarrassing practice that they need to be trying to shed inside China itself--not share with the wider world.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."

I recently read that the mayor of Alhambra, succumbed to pressure from the Chinese government and apologized for his proclamation recognizing Falun Gong (San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 12). On Nov. 15 while still mayor, I issued a similar proclamation on behalf of the people of Saratoga, and shortly thereafter was contacted by the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco requesting a meeting.

On Dec. 15 the city manager and I met with the Chinese representatives at city hall. They were not pleased with my proclamation, and among other things, handed me a letter from the Chinese Consul requesting that I rescind the proclamation.

My proclamation simply stated the health and psychological benefits of Falun Gong, and that practitioners of Falun Gong should have the right to freely assemble anywhere in the world. Interestingly, the People's Republic of China was the only country to take exception to my proclamation.

In fact, not only has the Chinese government banned Falun Gong, it has yet to provide the rest of the world answers to serious allegations of brutality and torture of Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong.

In both 1996 and last November, I was elected to the council with a strong record of support for participatory democracy. I have opened up the process at city hall by making our government accessible to all citizens. Whether Falun Gong is a cult, as the Chinese government asserts, is not the issue here. The issue is the systematic attempt by a foreign government to interfere with the exercise of free speech in our country through intimidation.

My proclamation was an affirmation of the basic human right to peaceably assemble, which is a fundamental building block of a strong democracy. It was offered in the same spirit as my proclamation honoring Family Week, which, coincidentally, was also issued on Nov. 15.

Instead of tracking all the various proclamations in support of Falun Gong and attempting to intimidate the elected officials who issued them, the Chinese government should be seriously studying our democracy and borrowing its strengths to apply at home. It might begin with the right to peaceably assemble and freedom of speech.

SANTEE -- Local Falun Gong activists celebratedd yesterday's start of the Lunar New Year at an unlikely venue.

Several showed up at the Santee City Council chambers last night to thank Mayor Randy Voepel for defying the Chinese government and issuing a proclamation supporting their practices.

"Issuing a proclamation, on the surface, is a very simple act. It's so simple we take it for granted,'' said Arleen Freeman, 58, a Falun Gong practitioner who works as a real estate agent in San Diego.

"But at the heart of this simple act is something very powerful and very beautiful, a guarantee of individual freedom, a guarantee we can cherish because in Falun Gong in China, we've had a vivid example of what happens when that guarantee is absent."

Kevin Irwin, 31, a vocational nurse from Chula Vista, also told the mayor how much the proclamation meant. He said it "demonstrates your commitment to basic human rights and liberty, something to be applauded. It has sent a great example to the mayors around the world what a good mayor should do in upholding truth and justice."

Since China banned Falun Gong in July 1999, the two sides have waged a propaganda war in China and abroad.

Last year, California activists began asking cities to issue proclamations supporting the spiritual movement. The Chinese Consulate sent letters to Southern California cities asking officials to avoid any type of recognition.

Chinese officials say Falun Gong is a dangerous cult, responsible for more than 1,500 deaths in China. Practitioners dispute the charge, saying they follow centralized teachings about spiritual and physical enhancement.

They say the Chinese government has tortured to death 120 Falun Gong practitioners.

Practitioners "have a consistently long record of peaceful appeals," said Wen-yi Wang, a Chinese doctor living in Mira Mesa who teaches Falun Gong classes.

"If injustice is somewhere and nobody says anything, it will spread everywhere. Very soon people's consciousness becomes numb," Wang said.

She also said she feels U.S. public opinion carries weight, even at the local level.

"There is a unique value of the United States in the world," she said. "People here have the courage to stand for justice and freedom."

DECATUR, Ill. (AP) -- A routine, seemingly harmless proclamation recognizing a Chinese religious group has thrust Decatur Mayor Terry Howley, and several other Illinois mayors, into the unlikely realm of foreign diplomacy.

Howley, along with mayors from Urbana, Galesburg, Bolingbrook, Chicago and elsewhere, signed a proclamation this year honoring the meditation and spiritual discipline promoted by members of the Falun Gong -- a religious group whose struggles with the Chinese government have sparked international human rights concerns.

Now the mayors have stumbled into a propaganda war between the Chinese government and a spiritual movement China outlawed and labeled an [Chinese government's slanderous term omitted], but which is spreading into other parts of the world, including the United States.

Thousands of members of the outlawed [group] have been arrested in China and human rights groups say at least 100 have died in police custody. Dozens more were detained Wednesday on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the second anniversary of the group's first large demonstration.

Howley's brush with controversy began when three Falun Gong members, none of whom live in Decatur, showed up at his office seeking a proclamation. The mayor, who routinely obliges such requests, declared the week of Jan. 21 as Falun Dafa Week. American mayors in cities large and small have adopted similar resolutions in recent years.

Chinese diplomats in the United States resent the proclamations. In 1999, mayors of Seattle, San Francisco and Baltimore rescinded such proclamations. Now Illinois mayors are getting correspondence, phone calls and visits from Chinese diplomats saying Falun Gong is [Chinese government's slanderous terms omitted].

Urbana Mayor Tod Satterthwaite said Shishun Shen, a spokesman for Consul Wei in Chicago, visited him and asked him to rescind the city's proclamation. He refused.

The Washington Times: Officials ask U.S. to Snub Sect	04-08-2002
The Salt Lake Tribune: Falun Gong Seeks Support in U.S.	03-15-2002
The Wall Street Journal: Will Chinese Repression Play in Peoria?	02-21-2002
Saratoga News: Saratoga, California Not Intimidated by Chinese Government	01-10-2001
Union-Tribune: Santee defies China by supporting Falun Gong	01-25-2001
AP: Chise diplomats lobby Illinois mayorsne	04-26-2001