3.1Chinese experts and scholars on Falun Gong harming families
· Guo Zhengyi, researcher of China Research Institute for Science Popularization:
After April 25, 1999, Li Hongzhi left mainland China for Sydney and held a two-day meeting from May 2 to 3, during which he said: "In fact at kindergartens in some places, all the headmasters and teachers are practicing Falun Gong, all the boys and girls are practicing it. As for children, they don't have any attachments and when they sit over there, alas, that's so great, so pure, so amazing. This is a good thing of course, to teach the children with the theories of Dafa, and this will benefit them for a lifetime."
What he said was true and, during a campaign against Falun Gong in 1999, people found to their surprise that there was a study group teaching Falun Gong targeting at children and teenagers in Jinan City, Shandong Province. A total of 19 kids were talked into this "Dharma Propagation" program, the youngest member was 4 to 5 years old, and the oldest was 12. They got the younger ones with candy and biscuits and the bigger ones with the lie of "becoming immortals and obtaining the truth." These kids were locked up in a secret room, watching the teachings of Li Hongzhi on videotape, learning to read the books about Falun Gong, and even reciting the reactionary poems in Hong Yinby Li Hongzhi! What a horrible scene, this is more like a "concentration camp" destroying these kids than a study group.
After 10-year-old Hu Zhenwei was saved and stepped out of the small room, she complained: "They told me to hold my breath during practicing, but that made me feel suffocated and my heart ached." Being asked what they were doing in that small room, Wang Guangjun answered: "To sit in meditation and to pass all the tests." And a kid said: "I used to be one of the top students in my class, but now I can only manage to pass the exams."
What does this "study group" want to do? To compete with us for the younger generation! We want to teach them to learn, love, and apply sciences; what does Falun Gong do? Just like what the founder of the "study group" said: "They're just kids, they'll believe in anything you tell them!"
That's so horrible; for the souls of children are blank papers, we won't allow them to be polluted from the very beginning by those evil theories of Falun Gong. But they just do this and we must take it seriously, for the fight for future successors is just around us.
I want to tell you a story, a true story that happened in a kindergarten in my neighborhood. A teacher there is a practitioner and she had her eyes on a girl. So she prevented the girl from coming out to play with other kids and kept her inside to sit in meditation and practice. She also talked to the parents of the girl, proposing to be the godmother of the girl. The parents brought the girl back home and stayed away from the kindergarten ever since.
We know that Li Hongzhi founded a lot of Minghui Schools in foreign countries and we should make an intensive investigation on what they teach children there.[1]
The home that Li Hongzhi describes is actually his unreal Falun World. Those practicing Dafa are no longer ordinary human beings, don't have to be abided by the rules and laws for ordinary people, don't have to care for the families that they used to have when they were ordinary people, by forgetting about everything, reading the books on Falun, obeying the order of Master, then they won't be disturbed by any "Buddha, Dao, God, Demon" and they will surely succeed. At that time, Master will bring you back "home."[2]
· He Zuoxiu, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Some qigong masters greatly exaggerate the functions of qigong and mislead the public on its effect. I believe that this will prevent the public from having a correct understanding on qigong. They make qigong something magic and this will do a great harm to the youth. For example, they say to practice qigong will make you go up to the heaven and to the world of Falun; at least, you'll get magic powers, etc. As for some teenagers and young people, since they're lack of experience, at hearing these ridiculer theories, they'll be easily confused and misled and will finally engage in something ridiculous and stupid, and some will even go extremes by burning themselves at Tian'anmen Square.
For self-burning, if lucky enough, it will endanger one's life, if not, it will kill him or her. Boys and girls, think about it, as for that 12-year-old girl, her mother committed suicide, she had no idea how she could make it by herself. She cried for her mother, but her mother would never come over to her and care about her ever. As for that 19-year-old girl, so beautiful, with such a talent in music and such a promising future, but she intended to burn herself. Yes, she didn't die; but she couldn't play her favorite lute anymore and she had no future as a promising musician. In this sense, all will feel so sorry for them.
As for the senior citizens participating in these ridiculous activities, people might say that you should be old enough to know things better. But as for the young people, I feel it the duty of all scientists and educators to do something, otherwise, we won't live up to the expectation of the younger generation. I am for the revelation on Falun Gong and want to appeal to the public to pay close attention to the exaggerated propagation of qigong. So I want to make this clear once again, I am against the young people to practice qigong, for it will cause certain diseases.
According to the statistics released by an asylum in Beijing, among those suffering mental problems due to the practice of qigong, about 20% are Falun Gong practitioners, ranking the first. But the other 80% patients used to practice various kinds of qigong, and even some "safe" qigong also cause problems. What is safe qigong? In the past, public health authority in China used to promote some qigong, one of which is Internal Cultivation Practice invented by Liu Guizhen, who believed that qigong is good to people's health and can serve as a method supporting medical care. It enjoyed extensive influence at the time. Moreover, the public health authority used to promote Guolin Qigong, which might help to treat cancers. Both of them are known as safe qigong; in spite of this, you can find the practitioners of both in asylums. In this sense, "safe" qigong is not one hundred percent safe either.
Moreover, I want to make this clear to you, the life span of the founders of above-mentioned two qigongs is no more than 60 and they haven't enjoyed the expected health and longevity; while the average life span of Chinese people now is 70. So, those engaging in publicizing the mystical power of qigong shall wake up a little at hearing what happened to the two founders. Of course, we shouldn't deny the functions of two qigong completely due to the short life span of their founders. For in a sense, I agree that qigong has certain effect in maintaining health. But we must see through the exaggerated advertisement on the functions of qigong, which we shall not bear and allow. At least the two founders haven't lived a long life themselves. I think we should let the public know more about these things and should introduce these cases to the youth properly.[3]
· Zhu Shijun, director of General Hospital of the People's Liberation Army
The purpose of Falun Gong organization is not to help people to improve health but to manipulate the life of practitioners through their so-called practicing routines, so that the practitioners will become increasingly indifferent and depressed, losing sense of responsibility to both the society and to family, ending up with morbid pertinacity or insanity.[4]
· Duan Qiming, director of China Association for Cultic Studies
Li Hongzhi poisoned the soul of practitioners with his evil theories, lies and deceitful trick so as to brainwash them, to make them unable to tell right from wrong, so that they will follow all his orders. What he has done not only does damages to the implementation of the strategy of reviving the country with science and education, destroy the construction of socialist spiritual civilization, but also result in severe social consequences and a series of family tragedies. More than 1,400 people died because of practicing Falun Gong, many more have been tortured by Falun Gong so much that they lost their mind and ended up with a broken marriage and broken family. While at the same time, Li Hongzhi and his followers made a fortune from practitioners and from different countries to support their lavish lives.
What does Li Hongzhi mean by the term "attachment"? He said: "The reason there are people, and that people can live in the world, is just for one word: qing! Your happiness, anger, grief, and pleasure; what you like to do or don't like to do; what you like to eat or don't like to eat; whichever person you like or don't like; feelings for family, feelings for friends, feelings of love, feelings for parents – everything of everything – everything of human beings comes from this qing. Then it follows that qing can produce every kind of attachment... Then when a person is actually cultivating, he has to get rid of this attachment, to gradually wear it down. It's even better if you can completely get rid of it, because it is a manifestation of your level. You should gradually come to take these things, things that ordinary people are attached to, more and more lightly."[5] If one really does what Li Hongzhi said, as a result for Falun Gong practitioners, they'll lose "the love of relatives, friendship, love, and love of parents," together with all emotions, all the plans for getting a better life, giving up their responsibilities for the family, the career, the society, and the country. They'll become heartless and ruthless, can't tell right from wrong and good from bad, living a meaningless life; then are they still an ordinary person? For such a man is no good than a pig or dog.[6]
3.2Foreign experts and scholars on Falun Gong harming families
· Pasty Rahn, a US scholar, condemns on Falun Gong for destroying families
In May 2000, during the annual meeting of "Cult and Millennium" held in Seattle by American Family Foundation, Pasty Rahn, a scholar from University of California, Los Angeles, delivered a speech stating that Falun Gong did destroy families. In her 11-page report, Rahn pointed out that some practitioners refused to seek medical care after falling ill and died because of that. She said that Li Hongzhi claimed he could manage to make the practitioners reach a disease-free status and no practitioner will fall ill ever since; in case practitioners do fall ill, Li Hongzhi will say that they are undergoing sufferings and this is to test whether they're loyal to the Master. Rahn said that, with these theories, no practitioner will go to see doctor or take medicine after falling ill and how can they not die because of that?[7]
·Margaret Thaler Singer, professor on psychology from University of California, Berkeley, believes that Falun Gong make practitioners to choose a way separating from their families
Professor Margaret Thaler Singer also former chair of American Psychological Association as well as one of the world leading researchers on cult issues, said on Falun Gong destroying families:
"I began talking with cult members who had left cults and their families back in the very early 1960's. So then for forty years, I've been working with people and their families captured by cults.
"To today, I'd been called by 75 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters of people who have got into Falun Gong. I have read all the literatures, I being able to find, of translations of Li Zongzhi's stuff. I haven't talked with anyone that's left the cult. But the parents, what they described to me, is, first of all,they are shocked, that someone from a Chinese family would break away from hundreds and hundreds years of family affiliation to go so against the grain of their cultural background. Then the second thing that these mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters have told me. [Only three of the 75 family said,] when I asked them, is your brother or your father whoever [, oh,] Chinese or honkies. Only three of them are honkies. 72 to all the 75 were Chinese. The brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers told me the first concern was that the son or daughter had just disappeared, didn't talk to them when they called on the phone, and didn't come home to visit, and was really strange and pushing them off, which wasso against Chinese traditions.
"From my readings and from what these people have told me, Li Hongzhi just took all the little excises, Tai Chi exercises and the breathing, and new sources sortof a front piece to lure people in. Then, he takes them down to the garden paths reputed, to believing every thing he tells them and they can not differ from it.
"I don't know how many months ago it was, that family started calling me, because they've seen me on television in the San Francisco area a lot, talking about cults, about mind controlling, brain washing, various kinds of scams and trickeries, because at that area I've been studying on how people influence and trick one another. So, Chinese families got very concerned. Up to now, (there were) 75 different families, because I haven't seen them having calledme before. They say no, this is our first call. It will be mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, who are telling me that one member of their family has been recruited into Falun Gong. They are either on the western coast, very near San Francisco because we have a very large Chinese popular community there. Some of them have beencalling from up in the Boston area, because they got my phone number from relatives in San Francisco. They have seen me on the TV, talking about how to help people get out the cults.
"What the parents and brothers and sisters of theFalung Gong members are concerned about is: first, their saying is so against thousands of years of Chinese tradition. To drop your family, to just don't be your family. Once he get with Falun Gong, they are gone, the young adult or the person just abandons their family because the Falun Gong people replace their real family. Then secondly, these family members say, our brother,our sister doesn't talk with us any more. He lectures at us. He has memorized speeches of Li Hongzhi, that he just recites. If we visit him or if we call him on the phone, he just recites. They say, we can't communicate with our family members, he just lectures at us. Then, the third thing that they are very worrying about is that Li Hongzhi tells his followers to stop taking medicine. Some of these family members have said that their brother or sister have some very chronic diseases like diabetes, where he should be taken hisinsulin or other diseases were they should be taken their medicine. They are very afraid that their relatives just get die, because they've read and gained at the internet and see how many people have died in China that being followers of Li Hongzhi. They are very concern, because these relatives say, I want to go toChina, and be with the Falun Gong people in China. Their parents and brothers and sisters say to me 'we are very afraid that they will go and they will do some illegal in China and they will get put in jail and shot, who knows what.' They want to know how to get their relatives out, with them along, about how to lure them back out again, and so on. But we just don't have enough people. There are not too many of us that read all the stuff that's been translated into English what Li Hongzhi has said."
When asked about what kinds of harms have been done to these members, Dr. Singer said:
"They've been separated from their family. They have been told not to take their medicine. They usedto be like you and I, regular people, who rationally thought about stuff. Once they get with Falun Gong, their family says, they don't rationally reason any more. They just recite, learn phrases. They have lost their ability to be independent reasoners. Some of these people, the relatives say, have lost their job skills, because they put so much time in with their for long Falun Gong friends."[8]
· Korean monthly Church and Heresy points out that to destroy families makes Falun Gong a cult
To sum up, Falun Gong is a cult, for it divinize a man, propagating that his followers will also become God, and this kind of transcendent belief initiates a lot of controversies in the society. As for the practicing of Falun Gong cult, we shouldn't sit doing nothing at all, for ignoring lives and guarding what they believe is true even at the price of destroying families, that's the nature of a cult.[9]
· Samuel Luo, an expert on Falun Gong issue from San Francisco, holds that Falun Gong actually demands practitioners to give up their love to families
On November 1, 2006, during an interview by KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California USA, Samuel Luo said: "Falun Gong actually demands their followers to give up their love for their family. Now in Zhuan Falun the main text of the book, Mr. Li writes this 'Love between a man and woman, love for parents, feelings, friendship, doing things for friendship and everything else all related to this sentimentality. And if this sentimentality is not relinquished, you will be unable to practise cultivation.' So, I think in following or should I've, say, brainwashed by this group, they have become a different person."[10]
· Professor Alexander Dvorkin, a Russian expert on sect studies, believes that Falun Gong is a cult for it does harms to the families of the practitioners
Professor Alexander Dvorkin told China Association for Cultic Studies: "They would turn individuals into tools of cults, and destroy their families. Cults harm individuals, families, societies and countries like "cancerous cells" in a healthy body.Cults make no contribution to the society. But they kept absorbing human resources and wealth from it.Like cancerous cells, they obtain nutrition from the healthy body of society until it collapses."[11]
