BEIJING One morning in April, biologist Wang Lan was called to the security office of the government science laboratory where he works. He was told there was no time to pack a bag or telephone his wife. He was being taken away immediately by the police.
Nobody called it an arrest or a sentence to a labor camp. It was, Wang recognized, an attempt at deprogramming.
For the next two weeks, while in the custody of state security, Wang spent his days attending meetings in a prison lecture hall and his nights at a comfortable police guesthouse. It was all part of an effort by the government to persuade the 28-year-old biologist to renounce his belief in the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
By the end of his stay, Wang said, he no longer was a Falun Gong member and was free to go.
China has used propaganda, police suppression and harsh sentences to labor camps in its two-year campaign against Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that the government considers an "evil cult." With stories such as Wang's, there is now evidence that the government has created a short-term, prison-run re-education program designed to quickly win back some adherents.
The program, which has been in place for at least several months but has not been publicized, illustrates anew how seriously China's government perceives Falun Gong as a threat. It also suggests that China is searching for more efficient, somewhat less Draconian methods of battling the cult than lengthy imprisonments that destroy lives and careers.
Wang said his employer, a state-run organization, paid the government $725 for his stay at what was called "study class."
He was not mistreated or threatened, he said, but it was made clear to the 15 other Falun Gong members in the class, including other state university employees, that they were expected to renounce the movement or repeat the program. Those who continued to resist faced the possibility of a longer sentence, perhaps up to 2 years, in a labor camp.
China has been under attack by human-rights groups, foreign governments and Falun Gong members abroad for quashing religious freedom and treating adherents cruelly.
Some members who have engaged in pro-Falun Gong activities and protests have been imprisoned, while others--perhaps thousands, according to Falun Gong--have been sentenced to terms of up to 3 years in so-called re-education-through-labor camps.
Reports of torture
There also have been credible reports of torture, mistreatment and as many as 200 deaths in custody.
China has denied reports of mistreatment, but acknowledges that some adherents have died of disease or committed suicide after being detained. The government has charged that the group and its belief system, which includes healing illnesses and attaining enlightenment, is dangerous to public health and security and has been responsible for more than 1,600 deaths.
In Chicago on Tuesday, China's ambassador to the United States, Yang Jiechi, said his government considers Falun Gong an "evil cult."
Even Falun Gong leaders "don't describe their activities as religion," Jiechi said. "It is a political organization with political motives."
Falun Gong combines traditional Chinese exercises, some Eastern religious thought and the teachings of its founder. China outlawed it in 1999, and the group has come to represent the most significant political challenges to Communist Party rule since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Membership estimates range from several million to tens of millions, but the group first gained attention when more than 10,000 adherents shocked the government by appearing outside Beijing's leadership compound in April 1999 against to protest police harassment.
Since then, the government has fought a battle of wills against the group and its exiled founder, Li Hongzhi.
Li, who is said to live in New York but rarely appears in public, has encouraged protests via the Internet and speeches. The movement reached its most dramatic moment in January when a group of people claiming allegiance to the group set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Falun Gong disavowed any connection to that protest.
State-run media have attacked the group almost daily, portraying members alternately as psychopaths and victims of deceit who can be cured and successfully returned to society.
Abroad, China's treatment of Falun Gong, including detention without trial in labor camps, has become a point of criticism as China competes to host the 2008 Olympics
Defending itself, the government for the first time two weeks ago allowed foreign reporters to visit a re-education-through-labor camp, where they saw detainees in neat track suits who attended classes, watched a video on the origin of the universe, played basketball and were thankful for the government's benevolence. They saw no signs of abuse, and several inmates told the reporters they had come to recognize that Falun Gong was bad.
Government workers targeted
The two-week seminar seems to be an accelerated version of that program designed for adherents who recently have steered clear of trouble and who belong to government work units.
Government officials could not be contacted for comment. An information officer said that telephone numbers for the government's State Council Office on Preventing and Handling Cults were secret and that no one else could discuss the issue.
According to two Falun Gong members who went through the program at facilities outside Beijing, participation was compulsory, and by its completion 13 of 15 adherents had renounced their affiliation with the group.
They said they were watched 24 hours a day, wore their own clothes and stayed at a state security guesthouse where they were well-fed. Each day they were driven 10 minutes to a meeting hall at a labor camp where three former Falun Gong members were assigned to meet each adherent in the group.
Wang Lan, who was arrested last autumn and spent three weeks in jail after distributing pro-Falun Gong literature on a train, said that after his initial detention he was pressured for weeks by his boss and his wife to sign confessions renouncing Falun Gong. Still, he said, he privately retained his faith and was prepared to fight for his beliefs during the sessions.
He held out for three days, he said, as three former adherents tried to talk him out of his beliefs. In discussions and video presentations, he said, the government made its argument that Falun Gong was a morally corrupt organization and that founder Li was a manipulator as well as a tax cheat.
The pressure was intense, Lan said, and what he came to recognize was that he could reject the group but hold onto what originally attracted him to Falun Gong: the desire to do good and be a better person. The argument that swayed him was that Falun Gong members expected something in return--salvation--for their good deeds. That was unnecessary, he said.
"When I look back, everyone who practiced Falun Gong was always trying to obtain something by doing good things," Lan said. "I feel differently now."
Another participant, a 30-year-old school administrator who was attracted to Falun Gong to help treat a breast tumor, said she recognized that her involvement was selfish because it frightened family members.
"I joined Falun Gong because I wanted to be a good person and reach perfection," said the woman, who asked to be identified by her last name, Cui. "Afterward we found that in order to pursue perfection we hurt people. This was selfish."
2 see the light
While both Cui and Lan indicated that Falun Gong once had moved them powerfully enough to risk arrest, they said they now recognize that the Chinese government was right and Falun Gong was wrong.
But rather than expressing regret or anger, the strongest emotion they showed was relief that their ordeal with a banned organization was over.
"I can be an ordinary citizen now who has his work and his family and doesn't have to worry about other things," said Wang. "I can enjoy life."