2002-05-29

Amsterdam - The obsession with which the Chinese government tries to globally eradicate the Falun Gong movement leaves its traces in the Netherlands as well according to the BVD (Dutch Internal Security Service)

With increasing frequency, adherents of this ideological movement in the Netherlands are being intimidated by state loyal Chinese.

In comparison with her family in China, Xiang-He Wang has nothing to complain about. She knows the stories of threatening phone calls and computer viruses the members of the Falun Gong in the Netherlands receive from China. But these are matters that do not worry her. The woman from Amsterdam is more afraid about the fate of her family in China. "My mother has lived in the Netherlands for eight years. When she went back to China she was almost immediately arrested because she practices Falun Gong. My mother is 85 years old; you cannot do such a thing to her." Brothers and nieces of Wang also disappeared to jail.

According to Wang the Chinese embassy in The Hague searches actively for Falun Gong practitioners. She tells about infiltration of Chinese students in Utrecht. "There was someone who constantly asked questions about Falun Gong and passed on names to the embassy." The consequences, says Peter Houben, a Falun Gong adherent from Maastricht, are that these people are no longer allowed to enter China.

According to estimates, the movement has several hundred adherents in the Netherlands. Houben doesn't have much to fear from the long arm of the Chinese authorities. "It was limited to an e-mail virus." But that Falun Gong adherents are being intimidated is a fact for him. "When the movement demonstrated in front of the Chinese embassy, employees came out to take photos, and they do everything to slander us. The Chinese embassy in Belgium for instance organised an exhibition in which they slandered Falun Gong as being evil and dangerous. They invited a minister and his visit was extensively captured on video. This propaganda video is now frequently played in China, in the hopes of portraying that people abroad don't want to have anything to do with Falun Gong either.

The BVD expects that tensions within the Chinese community will increase as the number of entrepreneurs that emigrate to the Netherlands increases. [...]