A look at the sky from the bottom of the well: minorities in China whose mouths are being closed

New Internationalist, Sept, 2004

Practitioners of FALUN DAFA

(also known as Falun Gong)

Falun Dafa is a practice combining slow, gentle body movements and meditation with the study of the universal principles of truthfulness, benevolence and tolerance.

On 25 April 1999 more than 10,000 Falun Dafa practitioners held a peaceful gathering in Beijing outside the Chinese leadership compound, Zhongnanhai--the biggest demonstration since Tian'anmen Square in June 1989. Within two months, the practice was declared illegal. Since then it has been actively suppressed.

Poems from prison

At the end of last year, a Falun Dafa practitioner in China was sent to a detention centre because he refused to give in to officials' demands to forsake his practice. Seven months later he was released due to lack of evidence. Another prisoner--who had been sentenced to death--asked him: 'If you are right and kind, why were you sent here?' He then wrote the following poem--

Atone

I come here
In this period of my life
I come here to atone for your soul
If you are willing
Then
It is mine
You shall take care of it for me
Don't let it become broken again
And don't let it be covered by dust
Until that day
You bring it and hand it to me in good condition
I'll then give it back to you perfectly
I come here
To atone for your soul
In this period of my life

The Facts (1)

100 million -- the number of people practising Falun Dafa in 1998 before it was banned.

1,006 -- the number of practitioners verified as being tortured to death from July 1999 to July 2004. Government sources inside China say that the actual number may exceed 1,600.

6,000 -- the number of practitioners imprisoned--more than 500 for terms of over 18 years.

1,000 -- the estimated number of people who have been forced into mental hospitals.

100,000 -- the estimated number of practitioners who have been sentenced to forced labour camps.

TIBETANS

Of the three Chinese territories that experience the greatest ethnic separatist unrest (Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia), it is Tibet that has received the greatest international attention. The Tibetans claim--and the Chinese refute--that the territory was once independent (so proclaimed by the Dalai Lama in 1912). It has been occupied by China since its People's Liberation Army invaded in 1950. By 1959, Tibetan protests had escalated to armed rebellion. The Dalai Lama--who now lives in exile in India with more than 100,000 followers--wante a degree of autonomy for the territory that would guarantee religious freedom and political control. Other Tibetans--such as Tenzin Tsundue--want total independence from China.

Tenzin Tsundue was born into a Tibetan refugee family who laboured on India's border roads. After graduating in Madras, South India, he crossed the Himalayas on foot to participate in the freedom struggle. He was arrested by the Chinese border police, imprisoned in the capital, Lhasa, for three months, and then pushed back to India. He joined Friends of Tibet (India) in 1999 and is now the organization's General Secretary. The following poem is from his prize-winning book Crossing The Border (2).

My Tibetanness

Thirty-nine years in exile.
Yet no nation supports us.
Not a single bloody nation!
We are refugees here.
People of a lost country.
Citizen to no nation.
Tibetans: the world's sympathy stock.
Serene monks and bubbly traditionalists;
one lakh (3) and several thousand odd,
nicely mixed, steeped
in various assimilating cultural hegemonies.
At every check-post and office,
I am an 'Indian-Tibetan'.
My Registration Certificate,
I renew every year, with a salaam.
A foreigner born in India.
I am more of an Indian.
Except for my Chinky Tibetan face.
'Nepali?' 'Thai?' 'Japanese?'
'Chinese?' 'Naga?' 'Manipuri?'
but never the question--'Tibetan?'
I am Tibetan.
But I am not from Tibet.
Never been there.
Yet I dream
of dying there.

The Facts (4)

4.6 million -- the number of Tibetans in China, less than half of whom live in Tibet.

1.2 million -- the estimated number of Tibetans who have been killed by the Chinese since 1950.

3,000 -- the number of people believed to have been detained for political offences since September 1987 (many for writing or talking to foreigners about Tibet's right to independence).

145 -- Tibetans in (or likely to be in) a prison or detention centre as of January 2004 (a fall from approximately 800 in 1996).

57 -- the number of minority nationalities (including Tibet) in the 1990 Census, which amounts to 8.1% of the total Chinese population.

GAYS

Homosexuals (tongzhi) have been acknowledged in China since ancient times. Homophobia arrived with the British: a sodomy law--the result of British colonial rule--was introduced in Hong Kong in 1865. Systematic persecution of homosexuality occurred during the Cultural Revolution, when unknown numbers of gays were assaulted, imprisoned and executed. While there was a loosening up of attitude towards homosexuality during the economic reforms at the end of the 1970s, during the 1980s and 1990s homosexuality was treated as a mental illness, with tongzhi being detained in psychiatric institutions as a result. Tongzhi are now tolerated but not officially accepted.