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Sect members confined in asylum
Beijing continues drive against Falun Gong

The Chinese government is waging a campaign to discredit and eliminate the Falun Gong spiritualist movement, interring obstinate members in mental asylums, according to Robin Munro, a senior research fellow at the Law Department and Center for Chinese Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, in a 130-page study.

Munro states that the Ministry of Public Security in China runs a network of special hospitals to house the criminally insane and in which political opponents are incarcerated, and now the members of the banned Falun Gong movement are being treated in the same way. Munro adds that this system was copied from the former Soviet Union. In his study, published in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law, Munro notes that before Falun Gong was banned in July 1999, China’s political use of psychiatric confinement had declined significantly. Human-rights activists have called on the World Psychiatric Association to censure or suspend China at next year’s meeting.

Recently Bishop Joseph Zen, coadjutor of Hong Kong, said what is happening to Falun Gong could easily extend to Christians. “If they identify criticism of the government with evil, then the unofficial Catholic Church in China could be in danger of being called an evil cult.” Along with Bishop Zen, five Catholic organizations and seven Protestant groups have expressed concern for the violent repression of Falun Gong followers.

Human-rights critics rebuked
China angrily rejects accusations

Communist China, besieged with criticism regarding its human-rights record, has struck back at critics, including the UN, US, and international human-rights groups. The Foreign Ministry slammed visiting UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson over her criticism of China’s treatment of the Falun Gong movement and calls for the dismantling of labor camps to which drug users, prostitutes, and dissidents can be sentenced without trial for up to three years.

A spokesman said China’s “re-education through labor” camps were a compassionate means of dealing with social problems and likened its campaign against the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement to a war on drugs. “The authorities treat those people receiving re-education as teachers treat students, as doctors treat patients and as parents treat children,” said Liu Jing, head of the State Council Office for Prevention and Handling of Cults.

The ministry also lashed out against the US State Department, which had released a critical report on the human-rights situation in China, saying the US should not criticize other nations while it struggles with many social ills of its own. The human-rights issue has gained unprecedented prominence because of Beijing’s bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.