BEIJING, China -- Two years into China’s crackdown on the spiritual Falun Gong sect, the effect on the group’s membership is difficult to assess.
Numbers appear to have been reduced and crackdown survivors have become more ragged, at least in Beijing.
The sect's multi-million following may have been reduced by the turn-off publicity surrounding grisly self-immolations. The sect loomed large before the Chinese leadership when more than 10,000 people protested in silence outside China’s Communist Party headquarters two years ago.
They were asking for formal recognition of the Falun Gong, a sect that blends Bhuddism and Qigong into a system of reverence for a leader in exile.
In July,1999, China banned the sect, which set the stage for repressive police tactics against demonstrators and a nationwide crackdown against adherents who continued to practice in public, disseminated Falungong books and videos, or refuse to recant their belief.
Before the Falun Gong was banned in July of 1999, it claimed 70 to 100 million members nationwide – a figure derived from an official sporting association, overlooking the sect's adherence to spiritual Qi Gong.
Practising in secret
Two years after the ban, a spokesman for the Falun Gong’s exiled movement based in New York says that so many adherents are practising in secret, an accurate count is hard.
Indeed the intensified search for Falun Gong practitioners slipping into the capital appears to have reduced the ranks of the most hard-core members committed to unfurling banners and shouting slogans on Tiananmen Square.
The increasingly ragged appearance of some members attests to the marginalization from society of those who continue to practice in public.
Beijing is now home to an unknown number of practitioners unwilling to return home, having lost their jobs and ties with society.
Two years on the movement, publicly at least, appears to be loosing steam.
But judging from the officially confirmed numbers of people in detention or labor reform camp as well as the Falun Gong and human rights organizations’ far higher claims, it appears the government has got much further to go before it can hope to put the sect firmly under its control.
Despite detentions and some deaths of Falon Gong followers at the hands of police, the more hardcore members continue a cycle of confrontation with Chinese police in Tiananmen Square.
Changing the minds
Police win the obvious battle, rounding up practitioners to take them away in vans.
But it’s much less clear if the campaign against the Falun Gong is changing the minds of its more extreme members.
Chinese observers sympathetic to the government’s way of handling the sect say public opinion has swung against the sect and against its leader in exile, Li Hongzhi, largely due to horrifying images of sect members immolating themselves on Tiananmen Square in January of this year.
“Following the self-immolations, many ardent Falun Gong followers’ viewpoints changed a great deal. It’s as if Li Hong Zhi went up a mountain, and then fell down,” says Professor He Zuoxiu, a physicist and expert on the Falun Gong sect.
There were no hard figures of how many practitioners had decided to leave the Falun Gong, but he added that he spoke to several members who had decided to drop the sect.
Since the immolations, China’s state-run media has broadened its focus to include accounts of Falun Gong followers who, after labor reform, say they changed their views.
“After the immolations, they realized and also saw on the Internet that Li Hongzhi was denying that these people who had set themselves on fire were Falun Gong practioners, and that instead it was the Communist Party which had done it. Everyone was very angry. They could not accept this denial,” He added.
Cameraman Fan Wen-Chun and I witnessed the self-immolations and were detained by police.
Grisly incident
Speaking to average citizens later that evening, some of whom had heard about the burnings, it was clear that some were genuinely disturbed by the grisly incident.
People differed then in their views on whether the sect threatens social stability, and to what extent the crackdown was justified.
Not all the public shares the government’s sense of urgency, a gap some observers think will grow as the Chinese propaganda machine continues to drone on.
“I think ordinary Chinese will tire of this. They will ask, what are you fighting for?,” asks Dai Qing, an outspoken journalist and commentator.
The real concerns of most Chinese lie closer to their own lives, says Dai.
“Ordinary Chinese feel unsafe living in society. I’ve had five bicycles stolen, I’ve been robbed, my house has been broken into, for example.
"There is so much real crime, while a lot of police resources are instead diverted toward cracking down on the Falun Gong. So people are really tired of this whole thing.”
The underlying causes of Falun Gong’s popularity include economic marginalization and a spiritual void – both byproducts of China’s hectic pace of modernization and the loosening of the state-run iron rice bowl of social security.
Rustbelt of factories
Falun Gong began gaining popularity in the mid-1990s in China’s north – a rustbelt of defunct factories and laid off workers.
One material appeal the group offered was self healing without medicine – significant at a time when the price of medical care was rising just as peoples’ salaries were falling.
The government claims that Falun Gong’s appeal for practitioners to rely on the curative powers of Qi Gong is deadly.
According to official tallies, more than 1,600 practitioners have died by self-mutilation, medical neglect or suicide.
More recently, Beijing added human rights to its arsenal of anti Falun Gong rhetoric. China’s Anti-Cult Association sent a delegation to Geneva last month take advantage of the international spotlight at the UN Conference there.
Activists showed a banner they said bore the names of more than a million Chinese who had signed onto the idea that the Falungong suppresses the human rights of practitioners.
“In China, the Falun Gong made its followers set themselves on fire. Furthermore, they are against the government and have done many things against Chinese law.
"Then in order to gain sympathy from the international community, they made themselves look pitiful and they lied, telling people that their human rights are being suppressed in China,” say Si Manan, an anti-cult activist to travelled to Geneva.
But beyond it’s argument that the Falun Gong is dangerous to the rights of others, there’s another reason the authorities are trying so hard to control the sect.
“We all know that the government is afraid of any organized opposition. The government of course does not like protests in front of its compounds, or people self-immolating themselves on Tiananmen Square.
"But the government has many other ways of dealing with this, and still they choose to crack down and imprison people. It just doesn’t work,” says Dai Qin, an outspoken journalists and commentator.