re: Religion: Falun Gong, Cults and Persecution (Vincent Littrell, US)

Vincent Littrell responds to Istvan Simon’s post of 6 November:

I think Istvan Simon has written eloquently and reflected almost exactly what I was thinking along several strands related to the Chinese government persecution of the Falun Gong. I have quite frankly been disturbed by Mike Bonnie’s posts on this topic, which seem to paradoxically combine both a criticism of religious persecution in general with a dismissal of the Falun Gong situation. I was appalled by his indication that the Falun Gong were not “worth saving.” The phenomonological aspects of Falun Gong member experience cannot be discounted out of hand. If, as I believe now, the experiences of Falun Gong persecution reflected in the WAIS ‘09 conference presentation are true, the Chinese government has much to answer for in this regard. Though I’m not an expert on the demographics of Falun Gong persecution yet, I am increasingly thinking that a moral imperative exists for the international community to pursue this subject at the level of formal state-to-state diplomacy. Of course, this all ties into the overarching issue of religious persecution in general.