Times: Olympics win sparks attack on Falun Gong

From Lynne O'donnell In Beijing

Saturday July 21 2001

The Chinese Government has seized on its success in bringing the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing as indicating international approval of its crackdown on the Falun Gong.

Amid the euphoria of the decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to grant Beijing the Games, the [party' name omitted] Government launched an exhibition vilifying the "[Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted]" and justifying tactics aimed at destroying it. Li Lanqing, the Vice Premier, fresh from accepting the IOC's honour in Moscow, opened the exhibition at the capital's Military Museum by making a direct link between the 2008 Games and the campaign against the Falun Gong.

[...]

His words confirm fears of opponents of a Beijing Olympics that the Games will be used to glorify the ruling [party's name omitted] Party -- in the manner of Hitler in 1936 and the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1980 -- and its repressive methods of ensuring its enduring power.

By reviving its campaign against Falun Gong, the Government is sending a clear signal that it will not tolerate disloyalty at any level of society, while acknowledging that crushing the once popular movement is proving more difficult than first thought. [...]

[...]

The ban came after a surprise mass demonstration in early 1999 when up to 10,000 adherents gathered outside the central leadership compound in Beijing to demand recognition. Many thousands of [...] followers have since been sent to extra-judicial labour camps to be expunged of their belief. Others have been jailed, tortured, beaten, harassed, sacked and evicted from their homes.

Falun Gong says that 250 people have died in custody in the past two years, and has reported almost 50 deaths in the past month alone. In its most recent reports, the group said that ten male members had been beaten to death at a labour camp in northern China.

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