In many respects, the scene on Kissena Boulevard in Flushing, Queens, this week was familiar to those who live and work in the neighborhood: a group of men and women holding up banners that read "Gods Eliminate Chinese Communist Party" and "Falun Dafa Is Good."
For years, practitioners of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong - a form of exercise and meditation that originated in China and is banned there - have assembled quietly in Flushing to promote their views and denounce the Chinese government. But the sizable police presence at the protest on Wednesday and Thursday was new.
Nearly two weeks ago, the normally placid gatherings became turbulent. Counterdemonstrators, some brandishing red flags, have confronted the Falun Gong practitioners.
Heated words have been exchanged, hats knocked from heads, and placards snatched from hands and flung to the ground. Last week, a tug of war broke out over a banner emblazoned with a political slogan.
On Sunday, similar tensions inflamed Chinatown, when hundreds of Falun Gong members on parade were mocked by crowds who shouted insults in Chinese. Some people in the crowd threw plastic bottles or bits of food at the marchers, and police officers restrained others from surging onto the street. At the gatherings in Flushing on Wednesday and Thursday, with the police presence, there were no clashes.
"They've been a loud, vocal group," said Dan Guarino, a customer service representative for a communications company who works in Flushing, referring to the counterdemonstrators. "They seemed to be trying to shout down the other side."
Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, said on Thursday that six counterdemonstrators were arrested after the scuffles in Flushing last week. Three were charged with assault and three with disorderly conduct.
Falun Gong is a form of qigong, an ancient Chinese practice of yogalike breathing exercises. In 1999, the Chinese government outlawed the practice, saying its practitioners "had been engaged in illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances and jeopardizing social stability."
Devotees of Falun Gong, who deny the charges, have embarked upon a series of vigorous public relations campaigns, saying that in China, practitioners have been sent to prisons, labor camps and mental hospitals and tortured with electric shocks and nerve-damaging drugs.
Human rights groups have documented many abuses. But a United States State Department inquiry in 2006 found no evidence to support Falun Gong members' allegations that a concentration camp had been established in China to imprison practitioners and to harvest their organs.
City Councilman John C. Liu, a Taiwanese immigrant who represents Flushing, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that counterdemonstrators began showing up at Falun Gong gatherings on the weekend before Memorial Day.
Most of them, he said, were "Chinese immigrants, who became very upset over some of the statements that the Falun Gong members have allegedly made."
He said some Chinese language newspapers had reported that Falun Gong members had said the Chinese government had caused the recent earthquake in southwestern China, or ignored signs that it was imminent. Falun Gong members have dismissed those accusations.
Because the counterdemonstrators do not publicly articulate their views, it is difficult to determine why they are showing up at the gatherings. Mr. Liu said they appeared to have no literature explaining their positions.
"It almost seemed like a spontaneous accumulation of people," he said.
(New York Times, May 30, 2008)
Original text from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30yregion/30falun.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin
