Why falun gong is banned

In April , some 10, Falun Gong members staged a protest in Beijing outside the headquarters of the ruling Communist Party to complain about defamatory reports about the group in the state media. The Chinese Government responded by saying Falun Gong had "created disturbance and jeopardised social stability", and the movement was banned nationwide soon afterwards as an "evil cult".

Angered by the "misunderstanding", Ms Li said she travelled to Beijing in October hoping to "demand justice" along with four fellow devotees — they planned another sit-in, but the trip was cut short when police showed up at their hotel. Ms Li told the ABC she was written off as a leader of the protest, and as a result, claims she was constantly tortured and harassed by the Chinese police in the next 17 years.

She added that a few months later local police smashed the windows of her shop front and poured gasoline over it. From to , Ms Li says she was detained by police six times, had her home searched twice, and was sent to "brainwashing centres" where she was forced to renounce the practice. Unlike many other Falun Gong practitioners in China, I was beaten by the police a couple of times, but never spent any time in jail," Ms Li says.

According to Falun Gong itself, the ongoing suppression has led to the imprisonment of tens of thousands of practitioners, and claimed some 3, lives — but the claims of horror don't stop there. In , a controversial Canadian report brought the world's attention for the first time to a horrific allegation: that the Chinese Government was secretly harvesting organs of Falun Gong followers.

The report said the Chinese regime was performing some 60, to , transplants per year — about six times the official total of about 10, — and that this means that there are unacknowledged organ sources in China, the primary one being imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners. Acknowledging widespread scepticism towards the report, one of the authors of the original report, David Matas, a prominent human rights lawyer, told the ABC that "there is new evidence every day".

But Benjamin Penny, an expert of religious and spiritual movements in China and a professor at Australian National University, told the ABC that he does not think organ harvesting is an ongoing practice. That's well known and there's no controversy about that," Dr Penny said.

Organ harvesting is a claim that was not initially made by Falun Gong itself but by a Japanese journalist who heard about it. But I've not seen any evidence that convinces me that it's not true. To date Falun Gong practitioners have done everything they can with the evidence available to try prove their claims of organ harvesting.

But under the opaque Chinese information laws, "there is no way they can improve their credibility … unless the Chinese Government one day in the future makes all of the archives available," Dr Penny added. However, Wendy Roger, a professor in clinical ethics at Macquarie University, disagrees and maintains that there is in fact credible evidence that Chinese prisoners of conscience are murdered on demand for their organs. Ms Li told the ABC that she is grateful that she now lives in Australia and no longer has to fear having her organs taken, but she says that even in Australia she can still feel the Chinese Communist Party's far-reaching power.

We found Ms Li via her fellow practitioners who were campaigning in the Melbourne CBD earlier this week, who at first suspected us to be spies sent by the Chinese government. Ingrid Wu, spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Association of Falun Dafa, an alternative name for the group, said two members have already left Hong Kong because of fears for their safety.

She identified one of those people only as Susan, and asked that the other not be named. Even though the new security law makes no specific mention of religious or spiritual groups, Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, described the law as wide and arbitrary.

Yang and six other of the or so Falun Gong devotees who regularly practice in various places across Hong Kong told Reuters they plan to continue as they did before the law.

Some Falun Gong members said they have already made changes. Wu said that after the law was passed, some police officers asked volunteers to take down such banners, and that some members had agreed to take them down temporarily. Hong Kong police declined to comment on Falun Gong and said it did not track national security complaints against specific groups. Falun Gong has been strictly non-violent and had no rebellious plans. One final flawed explanation is that the April 25, gathering of 10, Falun Gong practitioners in the political heart of Beijing startled Party leaders and triggered the oppression that followed.

But the peaceful demonstration actually came after three years of escalating state oppression already taking place. In fact, it was a direct response to practitioners being arrested and beaten in nearby Tianjin and a smear media campaign against them. The incident was pivotal, but for different reasons. That April day, Premier Zhu Rongji engaged members of the gathered group and listened to their grievances. Those arrested were released. Practitioners who were there told me they had felt elated about the open communication between the government and its people.

He labelled Falun Gong a threat to the Party and said it would be an international loss of face if Falun Gong were not immediately crushed. What appears to have scared Jiang and other Party hardliners some who are still in top posts, maintaining the campaign was how popular and cross-social strata Falun Gong had become. In northern cities, workers practised Falun Gong together in factory yards before heading to the machines.

Professors and students meditated on Tsinghua University lawns.