IGX

I've seen Falun Gong demonstrations against Chinese gov't oppression in a couple of cities. There's an article in the NY Post outlining serious persecution and torture. It actually sounds like it was written as a propaganda piece by the organization.

What's up with this group, are they using "persecution" as a sales tool or is the PRC really persecuting them viciously? If so, why? Just statist paranoia?

Their beliefs seem about as innocuous as can be and they seem as harmless as the early Christians. Of course the early Christians were lion food so maybe I've answered my own question.

There, he was subjected to electric shocks, medical tests, forced feedings, beatings, violent sexual assaults and other barbaric forms of torture designed by prison guards to humiliate and inflict maximum pain.

But it was one particularly savage punishment that etched the deepest psychological scar on Liu.

“The incident which marked me the most was when they, four of (the prison guards), stripped me of my clothes, and used the toilet brush to pierce my anus, saying that they would pierce until I turned homosexual,” Liu told news.com.au.

“They pulled my pubic hairs and played with my genitals.”

His only “crime” was to practice Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation based on the guiding principles of “truth, compassion and tolerance.”

A lot of Chinese Rough Bottoms falsely claim to be Falun Gong to get the toilet brush.

Between 1999 to 2009, human rights organizations estimate that at least 2000 Falun Gong practitioners died in Chinese custody. That's probably a lowball estimate.

So yes, the government persecutes them.

Maybe someone in Beijing is afraid of another Tai Ping Rebellion?

It's real. I had a colleague arrested and "re-educated" and she was a shell of her former self. Stories of torture and organ harvesting (which is a huge industry in China) are fairly consistent and have been over the past few decades.

China has always been afraid of charismatic leader who gather a good number of followers and unseat the government because, basically, that's what's happened throughout Chinese history.

Falun Gong gathered steam throughout the mid-90s for a lot of reasons. What made it unique was it spread throughout the country and a good number of gov't officials became practitioners. In 1999 some practitioners were beaten and arrested by the equivalent of the national police force following some kind of protest in Tianjin. They were not released and the organization decided to hold a fairly massive protest, surrounding Zhongnanhai (the head of the Party) before dawn. Something like 10k people showed up, sat silently then went home and it freaked out Zhang Zemin who was President at the time. Virtually overnight, he declared the organization public enemy number one and it sort of spiraled from there.