BEIJING, March 11 -- The Chinese government and the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement have taken their two-year-old battle to the United States, using American courts and city halls as part of their struggle at home.
In recent months, Falun Gong activists have sued four senior Chinese officials, including the mayor of Beijing, for allegedly ordering the violation of human rights, torture and death of Falun Gong practitioners in China. The plaintiffs, who served the officials with papers during visits to the United States, relied in part on an obscure U.S. law from 1789, originally used to combat piracy, to seek redress for human rights violations committed in China.
The practice has so irritated the Chinese government that it recently asked the Bush administration to help stop the suits. U.S. officials responded they were powerless to do so, an argument Chinese legal experts reject. The Chinese have placed the issue on the agenda of law enforcement talks that begin Tuesday in Washington.
For their part, Chinese diplomats in the United States have written hundreds of letters to mayors around the country urging them to cancel local Falun Gong commemorations or to rescind proclamations in favor of the spiritual group. Falun Gong practitioners in the United States claim that on several occasions Chinese officials have threatened them or their relatives in China, although independent corroboration was impossible.
Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Decatur, Ill., and Westland, Mich., among others, have rescinded proclamations issued on behalf of Falun Gong. Earlier this year, Utah reneged on a decision to declare Jan. 8 Falun Gong Day after a meeting with Chinese government representatives.
Chinese officials failed to stop Salt Lake City officials from allowing Falun Gong practitioners to exercise in a public park during the Winter Olympics. Chinese officials have also used their connections in Chinatowns across the United States to attempt to ban Falun Gong adherents from marching in parades or participating in other organized activities.
The movement of the battle over Falun Gong to the United States marks an important escalation in China's struggle with the group, whose leader, Li Hongzhi, has lived in the United States since 1995. China has issued an international warrant for his arrest and has asked Interpol, the international police coordination agency, to help capture him. Interpol has declined to help.
Falun Gong is a Buddhist-like practice that combines exercise and meditation with a cosmology involving aliens and flying humans. Falun practitioners say their goal is self-improvement. China banned the group in July 1999 after 10,000 practitioners surrounded the Communist Party headquarters here. The government subsequently passed legislation imposing strict penalties for membership in an "evil cult."
China's president, Jiang Zemin, particularly detests the organization, according to Chinese sources. In addition, the Communist Party leadership traditionally has worried about any group capable of organizing people outside the party.
Falun Gong activists claim that Chinese security forces have killed hundreds of Falun Gong followers during the campaign to crush the group. At least 10,000 more have been incarcerated in labor camps and jails.
In recent months, Falun Gong activists in China have changed tactics. Foreign Falun Gong adherents, rather than Chinese citizens, have begun demonstrating on behalf of the group, mostly in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. China expelled more than 50 foreigners who protested in the capital during Chinese New Year last month and at the National People's Congress, China's legislature, whose yearly session began last week.
At the same time, Chinese Falun Gong activists have turned to technology to wage their struggle in China, distributing thousands of DVDs around major cities. The discs, advertised as "a great show," contain pro-Falun Gong documentaries. Earlier this month, Falun Gong followers tapped into a cable network in Changchun, Li Hongzhi's home town and a hotbed of Falun Gong activity, and broadcast a pro-Falun Gong video for about 45 minutes.
The first suit against a Chinese official was filed against Zhao Zhifei, head of public security in Hubei province. Zhao was in the Manhattan Plaza Hotel in New York last July 17 when a process server approached and handed him a court summons.
Zhao was taken aback, witnesses said, and asked if he was being arrested and whether he could leave the country.
The case was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 -- which was intended for use in prosecuting pirates for crimes committed outside the United States -- and the Torture Victims Protection Act. Human rights activists started using the tort claims act in rights cases in the 1980s.
The plaintiff, Peng Liang, claimed that his mother and brother were killed for their beliefs. Peng, who was in China at the time, was arrested in August with four other Falun Gong practitioners, said Terri Marsh, a Falun Gong practitioner from Washington who represented him.
"We were trying to get him out of China, but we didn't succeed in time," Marsh said. "They arrested him, and he has disappeared."
Because Zhao did not contest the charges, the plaintiffs won by default. No damages were awarded.
A Falun Gong activist next sued Zhou Yongkang, the top Communist Party official from Sichuan province, who was served as he stepped from a limousine in Chicago on Aug. 27. The plaintiff in this case was He Haiying, whose sister, an elementary school teacher in China, was allegedly tortured while in the custody of authorities in Sichuan.
She disappeared last June and has not been seen since; her family believes she was executed. This case has yet to go to court.
Subsequent cases, both filed on Feb. 7, involved Beijing's mayor, Liu Qi, who was served at San Francisco International Airport on his way to Salt Lake City as the head of China's delegation to the Winter Olympics, and Xia Deren, deputy governor of Liaoning province.
The identity of the plaintiffs, some of whom are in China, was not disclosed.