Falun Gong is an evil cult, everybody who has lived with it in china knows it.
But the way government handles the issue (as well as FLG's PR campaigns) help FLG won some sympathies overseas.
I have pity on those foreigners who are brainwashed by FLG and I think that associating free speech with such a notorious clown really gives the good things like free speech a bad name in china.
The government should and could handle the issue in a better way. As many Chinese are witnesses of the FLG crimes, and even many foreigners living in china are well aware of how stupid this cult is, why the government can't ask them to offer testimony. There are many many ways that the stupidity and crimes are exposed in front t of the world in a credible way.
Another thing that puzzles me is why FLG, which is such a notorious campaign in china and so many people are victims of its stupidity, could still fool many foreigners and win their sympathies overseas? is it just because what Mao says, "the enemy's enemy is our friends"? what do they think and feel if Chinese people sympathize those 911 terrorists just because they were "persecuted" by the American government?
FLG must be punished by law, but government should do a better PR to let outsiders know the truth.
"President Hu, your days are numbered. President Bush, make him stop persecuting Falun Gong," the woman yelled. U.S. officials later identified her as Wang Wenyi, 47, a reporter with The Epoch Times, an English-language publication strongly supportive of the meditation movement that is banned in China.
A lot of the FLG hardcore members are middle-aged women in china, uneducated and superstitious. 15 years ago, when china just opened its door to the outside world, the communism ideology still dominated while superstitions and rebellions were increasing, the most resolute apologists of communism ideology were also the same group of middle-aged women, uneducated and superstitious (lot of them were crazy to see Mao in Beijing), we even have famous label for them - Ma Lie Lao Tai (Marxism-Leninism old ladies)
Another reason I hate the FLG is that the factors that created this freak are not that different from those that created many fatuous and destructive peasant revolts in Chinese history, many of which were in the form of a cult but later developed into a political uprising to overthrow the former dynasty, but the path to a new dynasty was accompanied with the same thing that former dynasty has, and even worse - violence, lie, intolerance, social hierarchy and tyranny, superstition and idol worship. i am 100% sure that FLG is much worse than any kind of government i can image in china.
Here is how an expat living in Beijing for 10 years described FLG:
A final point: whereas many Western commentators see the suppression of F@lg as the action of an evil Co$$$$unist regime against a harmless Buddhist sect, many Chinese agree with the government that the movement is both highly political and a very bad idea for China. If you look at the English language materials and websites that Falun Gong produces, you see people meditating and scenes that could be from a yoga retreat in Berkeley. But two years ago I received a different kind of Falun Gong material, slid under the door of the local apartment I was living in at the time. It was a video CD containing a certain amount of Buddhist chanting and Chinese traditional music, but about half of it was an attack on former president ZM for "giving land back" to Russia. This referred to the settling of an old border dispute with China's northern neighbor. After I saw this type of material, it was easier to understand why the Chinese government is so worried about Falun Gong they are not as harmless as they look, they have a political agenda, and they are not afraid to stoke up a rather nasty, irredentist type of nationalism to further their aims.
Comments from a Chinese reader living in Chicago:
Below are my comments in its full glory;
Contrary to the Chinese government, Falun Gong (FLG) is very shrewd at PR stuff.
From all appearances, FLG controls a newspaper called the Epoch Times, and possibly a TV station called NTDTV (New Tang Dynasty TV). Indeed, the person that interrupted today's White House ceremony for Hu and Bush works for the Epoch Times. I just confirmed that from its web site.
A lot of days on my way to the train station after work, there are FLG people passing out the Epoch Times to commuters. (I live in Chicago area.)
Before this past Chinese New Year, there were lots of pamphlets in Asian restaurants around Chicago, promoting a so-called traditional, authentic Chinese New Year performance around the world, including Chicago. Initially I was very interested. However, after checking out the show's web site (the NTDTV site), I found the connection to FLG and just lost interest. At the end of February, I attended a Chinese party. A family at the party who attended that show was disgusted by FLG's antics.
In fact, before the show in Chicago started, somebody wrote me an email, asking me to promote it on my blog. I just ignored it.
Sometimes I wonder where FLG gets their money.
(BCChinese.net, April 21, 2006)
Original text from: http://blog.bcchinese.net/bingfeng/archive/2006/04/21/65756.aspx
