A War of Propaganda

I was on my way home on the MRT this afternoon, and there was this middle-aged woman, seated, with this big banner in front of her.

I read the 1st 2 words, and that was quite enough.

Falun Gong.

Hold it right there, you geeks with Wikipedia search bars. Wikipedia is amazingly poorly informed on this issue.

OK, allow me to clear the air a bit using a simple summary of the conflict:

People’s Republic of China – Falun Gong is an illegal secret society with an organised hierarchy, aimed at expanding its influence in order to amass both wealth and power.

Falun Gong – Falun Gong is merely a qigong practice that is good for health and self-cultivation, eventually leading to enlightenment and immortality.

People’s Republic of China – Falun Gong is a wannabe cult built round superstitious beliefs with no verifiable roots beyond its founding in 1992.

Falun Gong – Falun Gong is a revival of the correct beliefs and practices of traditional Chinese religions which have become corrupted over time.

Personally, I find Falun Gong’s claim that it is not well-organised a truckload of hogwash.

If you can assemble 10, 000 demonstrators, that would be organisation. If you could have coordinated hacking of satellite communication, television broadcasts and radio signals, that would be organisation as well. If you could spread the Falun Gong resistance to Beijing’s campaign through to the rest of the world and raise funds for the effort, that would most definitely be organisation.

Falun Gong practitioners are just bad liars.

Not to say that Beijing’s case is entirely watertight, of course. After all, they once actively encouraged Falun Gong as a wholesome practice, only to execute a sudden about-turn in 1999 without much in the way of preceding buildups one might expect from political moves of such magnitude.

Then there is the 2006 UN Report of torture of Falun Gong practitioners in China……

What the China-bashers will neglect to tell you is that a investigation team comprising of members of the UN consulate in China was immediately dispatched on-site with journalists for verification.

The mental hospital supposedly housing 6000 ‘mental patients’, all arrested Falun Gong members, was also claimed in the report to have a cremation downstairs, to dispose of corpses once the ‘patients’ were killed for their organs.

Number 1: It is ridiculous to assert that Beijing would house the prisoners if any in a mental hospital; a regular prison would be far more efficient and secure.

Number 2: The investigation team located the hospital, and found there absolutely no facilities of any sort that can be converted to be used for cremation purposes.

Number 3: The investigation team concludes that it is nigh impossible to house 6000 inmates in that hospital.

Number 4: The idiot who came up with the report had only 2 eye-witness accounts to back his claims.

A follow-up study in 2007 was far more coherent, and also seemed convinced of human rights abuses in the campaign against Falun Gong.

Unfortunately for the Special Rapporteurs of Torture, Human Trafficking and Freedom of Religion or Belief, their evidence was entirely circumstantial, stuff that can be easily made up.

Of course, Beijing’s propaganda is not much better off. I am quite disappointed with them, actually.

It is convenient, that the statistics for the percentage of mental patients who are practitioners (said to be as high as 41%) started spiking just about the time when the campaign began.

Sloppy work, if you ask me.

However, there is apparently some basis to this, as reports from US hospitals that increasing numbers of practitioners are losing control of their limbs to spontaneous actions, as well as various forms of psychotic disorder and instability.

What that could mean is that the founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzi, could have once been in favour with the Politburo, but later lost patronage. Hence the violent suppression of his movement as well as the sudden surfacing of statistics previously kept under wraps.

The key difference between Falun Gong and other qigong practices is that it continues to preach eternal salvation and the like, placing it in direct conflict with Marxist atheism. Seeing that it was founded only after China began to prosper again, and more importantly long after the shadows of the Cultural Revolution began to fade, it is most understandable that practitioners got too carried away with themselves.

So, yeah, they asked for it.

Oh, and the infamous claim by the Falun Gong that 22 000 000 members of the CCP have quit the Party over the Falun Gong campaign?

You have got to be kidding.

Piaroh-Cze:

You cannot fool all the people all the time.