re: Religion: Falun Gong, Cults and Persecution (Istvan Simon, US)

Istvan Simon writes:

As the moderator of the China panel at WAIS’ 09, I would like to offer my comments on the persecution of the Falun Gong in China, and address the recent comments on this subject by Ying Rong, Mike Bonnie and Alain de Benoist.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ying Rong’s presentation at WAIS ‘09 was one of the high points of the WAIS’ 09 conference. Her presentation was powerful, because it included a first-hand testimony of someone who was actually tortured by the Chinese authorities for no other reason that she was a follower of the Falun Gong. The savage and on-going persecution of the Falun Gong by the Chinese authorities is a stain on the Chinese government which in my opinion no moral person can condone. I condemn this persecution as unjustifiable, inhumane, and I believe ultimately futile. No spiritual movement was ever successfully suppressed by savage persecution, and so the Chinese government is being extremely short sighted in believing that their persecution of the Falun Gong will succeed in suppressing this movement. I believe for many reasons that it will fail, just like the persecution of early Christianity failed, and the even more savage and persistent persecution of Jews throughout history failed too.

Alain de Benoist is correct that the persecution of the Falun Gong in China, terrible as it is, is not a genocide, and so it should not be called so. And he is also correct that the Falun Gong has turned into a movement which now has partially political overtones. But I would add that this is hardly surprising, and it should be noted that this political tilt is not due to the original ideas of the Falun Gong, which were not overtly political, and in fact for many years were viewed positively by the Chinese authorities themselves. In a nutshell then, it is the Chinese government’s savage persecution which turned the movement into something which also has political overtones, because o reasonable person would expect followers to remain politically neutral towards their persecutors when their brothers and sisters in belief are imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and “re-educated,” and in many cases murdered by a government gone berserk.

I have many things in common with Mike Bonnie. Like him, I have a Chinese wife, and through her, Chinese family members. And like him I have many many Chinese friends. I can say like him that I love China, and I wish the Chinese people well, and even that I wish success to the Chinese government when I see their efforts as benefiting China and the Chinese people. All of this is true, in spite of the fact that I abhor communism and dictatorial governments. But I draw the line when it comes to human rights and issues of freedom. So I part company with Mike Bonnie when he says that the Falun Gong is “not worth” saving.

It is clear to me, that even though I am not a follower of the Falun Gong, and some of its practices even strike me as strange, nonetheless, when a spiritual movement has as many adherents as the Falun Gong does, it is absurd to call it a cult. Furthermore, calling it so is disrespectful to the many many millions of people that believe in it. Freedom of worship and tolerance of the beliefs of others is a cornerstone of our values. I support such tolerance and condemn intolerance wherever it comes from. For me, the key point in this kind of question is whether or not the belief is unduly threatening or not to the beliefs of others. But I have never seen the Falun Gong resort to violence, and so I see it as a peaceful and primarily spiritual movement. Who resorted to savagery and violence is the Chinese government. So it is the Chinese government that is wrong, and the followers of the Falun Gong are doing nothing more than exercising their right to believe in whatever they want to believe in. It is not against the law, or in any case it should not be against any reasonable law, to have beliefs that in some aspects may appear to us as bizarre, and we do not necessarily share.

What is the difference between religion and cult? What is it that gives anyone the right to term the beliefs of millions of people as a “cult” and thus with a simple arbitrary choice of a word make their persecution supposedly acceptable? I do not particularly care whatever Li Hongzhi may or not have said in front of television cameras. That is because I think that Li Hongzhi is not the Falun Gong, just like Maffeo Barberini, who as Pope Urban VIII ended up ordering the persecution Galileo by the Inquisition, was not the Catholic Church. So what Li said or did not say is irrelevant. What matters to me is that millions believe in the ideas of the Falun Gong, and who is anyone to say that they are being deceived or wrong? No one is the judge of what people may believe in and no one should be. I have never seen the Falun Gong threatening anyone. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, Falun Gong practitioners are entitled to their beliefs, and whoever persecutes them or is indifferent about their persecution is wrong.