Word: falun
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...easy to get pulled in. A friend might have mentioned that a new group was gathering in the local park to do a form of traditional qigong exercises. One morning you found them, 20 or 30 people, under the yellow-and-red banner of Falun Gong--the Law of the Wheel Breathing Exercise--doing the slow-motion exercises to music from a tape recorder. There was no fee, no formal teaching--they just invited you to join in and copy their movements...
...were being watched--that you and millions like you were already caught in the net of China's biggest internal security operation since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. One of the other members in your group may have sent you an e-mail about how some 10,000 Falun Gong members had gathered in Beijing in April to protest being called a cult. But nobody had been arrested, and you thought little of it. The exercises got your circulation going, and meditation afterward helped dissipate frustrations from work and your crowded apartment block. China began to seem livable again...
Banning the fastest growing religious group in modern Chinese history may be a risky move for Beijing, but letting it flourish may have been even riskier. That appears to be thinking behind a government decision Thursday to declare the 70-million strong Falun Gong religious cult illegal. The move came as protests continued in Beijing and other major cities against the arrest Wednesday of thousands of members and leaders of the group. "The government fears that Falun Gong, as a nationwide movement with more members than the Communist party, could become a lightning rod for the political frustrations...
...Falun Gong (or "Law of the Wheel Breathing Exercise") blends a series of traditional Buddhist beliefs and simple exercise routines into a package that its followers believe promotes spiritual and moral well-being, and cures illness. Although many of its practices are simply a variation on the age-old Chinese Qi Gong belief, the authorities may be particularly threatened by the practitioners? fierce loyalty to the group?s New York-based founder, Li Hongzhi. The Communist party presents itself as the country?s supreme moral authority, and isn?t about to tolerate competition ?- particularly from a group whose leader believes...
...Wednesday the government seemed to opt for a fairly hard line. It stepped up surveillance on Falun Gong members and called the demonstration "completely wrong." For now, Li's followers' decision to take to the streets appears to have backfired, and aliens had nothing to do with...