Thursday, April 26, 2001

DECATUR, Ill. (AP) -- A routine, seemingly harmless proclamation recognizing a Chinese religious group has thrust Decatur Mayor Terry Howley, and several other Illinois mayors, into the unlikely realm of foreign diplomacy.

Howley, along with mayors from Urbana, Galesburg, Bolingbrook, Chicago and elsewhere, signed a proclamation this year honoring the meditation and spiritual discipline promoted by members of the Falun Gong -- a religious group whose struggles with the Chinese government have sparked international human rights concerns.

Now the mayors have stumbled into a propaganda war between the Chinese government and a spiritual movement China outlawed and labeled an [Chinese government's slanderous term omitted], but which is spreading into other parts of the world, including the United States.

Thousands of members of the outlawed [group] have been arrested in China and human rights groups say at least 100 have died in police custody. Dozens more were detained Wednesday on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the second anniversary of the group's first large demonstration.

Howley's brush with controversy began when three Falun Gong members, none of whom live in Decatur, showed up at his office seeking a proclamation. The mayor, who routinely obliges such requests, declared the week of Jan. 21 as Falun Dafa Week. American mayors in cities large and small have adopted similar resolutions in recent years.

Chinese diplomats in the United States resent the proclamations. In 1999, mayors of Seattle, San Francisco and Baltimore rescinded such proclamations. Now Illinois mayors are getting correspondence, phone calls and visits from Chinese diplomats saying Falun Gong is [Chinese government's slanderous terms omitted].

[...]

Urbana Mayor Tod Satterthwaite said Shishun Shen, a spokesman for Consul Wei in Chicago, visited him and asked him to rescind the city's proclamation. He refused.

"The whole thing sounded like a propaganda pitch to me," Satterthwaite said.

[...]