Last winter, I met a Carleton student who told me his elderly grandmother was imprisoned in a forced labour camp in China because she practised Falun Gong.

I have been looking for this student ever since.

I want him to know that, together, with the Canadian government, we can bring her to safety in Canada. Since 2002, 13 people who were imprisoned in China for practising Falun Gong have been rescued because they have family members in Canada.

Among those already rescued is Kunlun Zhang, an internationally-renowned professor, sculptor and father of Lingdi Zhang, a Carleton student. We can do the same for this student's grandmother. But this article is not written for just this one person, this is something that everyone should be aware of.

What is Falun Gong anyway?

Also known as Falun Dafa, it is a peaceful spiritual practice of mind and body. Practitioners of Falun Gong strive to live by the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.

Practitioners learn how to follow these principles through studying the teachings of Master Li Hongzhi, as they are taught in the book Zhuan Falun. Assimilating yourself to these principles can be considered the cultivation of your mind.

The cultivation of the body is done through practising Falun Gong's five sets of gentle, slow moving and meditative exercises. They incorporate both standing exercises -- loosely resembling Tai Chi -- and sitting meditation. In Falun Gong, the keys to improvement are putting others first and cultivating one's heart.

Falun Gong is always taught free of charge and has no membership. It is now practiced by approximately 100 million people in over 60 countries worldwide.

Falun Gong has made my body sickness free, and my mind has become clear and tranquil. I'm rarely stressed, even when my workload at school seems impossible. So many of the questions in my life have been answered. I am always open to new things and am always improving myself. I divide my life into "before Falun Gong" and "after Falun Gong." I will never go back to that "before Falun Gong" person.

I'm a third-year music student at Carleton, and have been diligently practising Falun Gong since my first year. Barely a month after learning the practice, I began to help the president of the Falun Gong campus club hold information tables in Baker Lounge.

In September of that year, the president had to devote more time to her graduate studies and to educate people outside the university about Falun Gong. She handed the responsibility of the club over to me.

While holding an information table in Baker Lounge last winter the student I mentioned earlier approached me and asked if this was information about Falun Gong. I told him it was and asked him if he had ever heard of it before. He quickly replied that he had and told me that he felt Falun Gong was bad.

This student was of Asian descent. Up to this point, I had probably spoken with hundreds of people from China, and many of them expressed a similar opinion. I learned in all of these cases, the negative thoughts toward Falun Gong were derived from a state-controlled propaganda campaign used to justify the Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong and to deceive the country's people.

In fact many students, who grew up overseas or who may never have been to China, acquire the same opinion from talking to friends who have been exposed to these ideas.

This student was different. I asked him why he felt this way and he told me that his grandmother was currently being imprisoned in a forced labour camp in China because she was a Falun Gong practitioner.

This caught me off-guard, but it immediately, touched my heart. I told him how brave his grandmother is to be able to stand up for her rights and peaceful beliefs under such tremendous pressure. I told him his grandmother is being held there because she knows Falun Gong is good and isn't letting the regime bully her into giving it up. My heart is with her.

"You should not feel any resentment towards Falun Gong, for it is the regime that is illegally persecuting her, not the peaceful meditation practice she chooses to live by," I told him.

Today in China, there are hundreds of thousands of people like this student's grandmother imprisoned in camps or detention centres for practising Falun Gong. These people are all illegally detained. The Chinese constitution grants them the right to freedom of speech and freedom of belief, all of which have been denied.

For the past four-and-a-half years, led by former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, the Chinese government has tried to eliminate Falun Gong.

Falun Gong practitioners officially accounted for at least six percent of China's 1.3 billion population in 1999.

For the first six years Falun Gong was made public from private instruction, the Chinese government not only helped spread the practice, but many officials endorsed it and it was even taught inside the public security bureau. After the census informed Jiang of the enormous amount of people practicing Falun Gong, it was made illegal and thus began one of the most irrational persecutions of our age. In this oppression, thousands have been tortured to death, expelled from school, fired from their jobs and forced to leave their homes to avoid further persecution. Families have been torn apart. Practitioners are severely beaten, tortured, subjected to psychological brainwashing, raped, electrocuted with cattle prods and hung by hand cuffs. The list goes on and on.

While all this is going on, the majority of China's population has been blinded by fabricated propaganda from state-controlled media, which incites hatred against Falun Gong. This allows the government to continue to oppress its people. All outside media in China are blocked and the people of China have almost no way to know what the outside world already does.

Under these severe circumstances, Falun Gong practitioners in China, like the student's grandmother, risk their lives on a daily basis in order to uphold the Chinese people's constitutional right and show them the truth about Falun Gong. They choose to do this knowing the consequences may be severe torture and death.

They should all be considered heroes.

By the end of the conversation, I think the student understood his grandmother's situation much better and saw Falun Gong in another light. After he left, I began to think more about his grandmother and what an awful situation she was in. Suddenly, I realized something: We can save her.

Over the past two years, Falun Gong groups worldwide have taken part in a campaign to save imprisoned practitioners who have family abroad. In this campaign, the Canadian government has helped save 13 family members of Canadian citizens.

The first of these was Zhang, the McGill professor mentioned earlier.

Zhang was sentenced to three years in a labour camp without trial on Nov. 15, 2000 for practising Falun Gong exercises in a public park. Prior to this detention, his home was ransacked twice, his Falun Gong books were confiscated and his phone conversations were monitored.

In the labour camp, he was tortured by electric shock, intense brainwashing and other brutal means.

Lingdi, realizing the possibility of what her father might be subjected to, fought with all her heart for his release. Due to international pressure, the Chinese government released Zhang and re-united him with his family on January 10, 2001 after he served only two months of his sentence.

Since the release of Zhang, Falun Gong practitioners worldwide have taken the initiative to work with their governments and have successfully saved dozens of Falun Gong followers.

Although a few dozen practitioners is nothing compared to the scores of other people who are still imprisoned in camps and detention centres in China, it still sends a powerful message to Chinese government saying: We don't tolerate this. Falun Gong practitioners are innocent and deserve their freedom.

In addition, when these people are brought back to Canada, they then have the opportunity to tell the world about the persecution of Falun Gong from their own personal experiences.

Since Zhang's release, he has travelled the world to tell his story. He recently testified at a current trial in which a Montreal-based Chinese newspaper is being sued for inciting hatred against the Falun Gong. Zhang is among the first persecuted Falun Gong practitioners to tell his story in a western court. Meanwhile, the discrimination continues.

Within the last year, with the help from signatures of people across Canada, the government has helped bring back seven more Falun Gong followers.

Many Carleton students have already shown their help and support by signing postcards that are sent to the Canadian government, urging them to do more to stop the persecution and specifically to save those imprisoned practitioners in China who have Canadian family members.

In addition, a small group of young Canadian citizens who practice Falun Gong have been touring the country to raise awareness of the issue.

They have visited as many as 40 towns in three months time. There are currently 12 known family members of Canadian citizens who are imprisoned in China for practicing Falun Gong, but because too few Canadians are aware of these initiatives, there may be hundreds more family members whom we are unaware of.

The student with whom I spoke can be re-united with his grandmother, but initiatives must be taken.

With so many Chinese students at Carleton, there are likely others who have friends or family members who are detained in labour camps or detention centres for practicing Falun Gong.

Let us re-unite them with their families and tell the Chinese government: "Carleton students don't tolerate this."

Let us give them the freedom they deserve and stand together in one voice to save them.

http://thecharlatan.nexus.carleton.ca/articles/2004/01/15/stories/41516.html