Spectator (North Carolina): [Durham People] in Tiananmen Square

Todd Morman

Feb. 28, 2002

Thai Ton is describing the most beautiful moment of his detention in a Beijing jail two weeks ago. "It was quite chaotic," says Ton, a 34-year-old practitioner of the spiritual exercises known as Falun Gong. "The police were trying to pull a couple of practitioners who were Asian away from our group, but we locked arms to stop them. Everyone was shouting. Then, two German girls started to sing a song about Falun Gong. It was very beautiful. Everything got very quiet and the atmosphere changed. The policemen were all listening. I was sitting there and tears were running down my face. That was the most beautiful moment."

It didn't last.

Soon, Ton says, policemen grabbed him by the hair, shoved him and the rest of the foreign protestors on a bus, took them to a detention center and interrogated them for 20 hours before deporting them back to the United States. Two other Falun Gong practitioners from Durham, Tina Bakatsias and Al Whitted, share similar stories of being arrested that day, along with about 40 others from 10 different countries.

Their crime?

Unfurling pro-Falun Gong banners in Tiananmen Square while shouting in Chinese, "Falun Dafa is good! The whole world knows Falun Dafa is good!" Falun Dafa is another name for Falun Gong.

The [persecution] and the protestors

It can be difficult for Western minds to get a clear handle on Falun Gong. Not exactly a religion, it is often described as a "spiritual self-cultivation system" based on ancient meditative exercises known as qigong. These exercises have been widely practiced in China for centuries; proponents speak of dramatic benefits to their physical, mental and spiritual health.

While Falun Gong appears to be the most popular, claiming up to 100 million adherents, it isn't the only qigong group. The British newspaper The Guardian reports that at least five other similar movements, [...], have been the target of harsh repression and abuse at the hands of the Chinese government in recent years.

According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, dozens of Falun Gong practitioners have died in police custody in China since 1999, with hundreds more deaths reported. Thousands have been imprisoned, beaten or lost their homes. Many have been tortured. Two days before the Feb. 14 protest, the Washington Post reported that recently smuggled-out Chinese government documents provide evidence of an increasingly violent campaign against unauthorized spiritual activity, including Protestant house churches and underground Catholic worship networks.

As repercussions for Chinese Falun Gong adherents become more severe, and as Chinese media continue what some see as a campaign of distortion about the group, practitioners in other countries -- including Triangle residents Bakatsias, Ton and Whitted -- have decided to lend a hand.

The international escalation of pressure began last November, when 36 foreigners were arrested in Tiananmen Square after unfurling banners displaying the Falun Gong credo "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance." A few months later, an American and a Canadian were arrested for a similar offense during the Chinese New Year celebration.

Tina, Thai and Al took note.

"I'd heard stories of the 36 who had gone in November," says Bakatsias, account manager at a local wine distributor and a former DJ at college radio station WXYC 89.3 FM. "I'd also heard stories of Chinese farmers who walk across China -- literally -- just to go to Tiananmen Square and shout support for Falun Gong. I decided to go myself; I felt that I had to do something to represent so many people who can't go."

"It's been in my heart for a long time," says Whitted, a local middle-school teacher. "Thai and I were talking about how we can make a difference. We decided to go during the Spring Festival, and then heard that others were planning to go, too."

"We're living very comfortable lives here," adds Ton, who works at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park. "When I heard the story of an old lady in China saving her meager allowance to print Falun Gong flyers, I figured I can go do this."

The three, along with Joann Kao and Magnus Lee of Charlotte and Drew Parker of Greensboro, bought $875 roundtrip tickets to China out of their own pockets and left on Feb. 8. They took Falun Gong banners with them.

Fun with the Chinese police

On the morning of Feb. 14, Bakatsias and Kao hid their banner under Joann's clothes and left their hotel for Tiananmen Square. They'd been sightseeing for a few days, but had always kept the real purpose of their trip in mind.

"I carried the banner with me every day," Bakatsias says. "I didn't want anyone to find it in our hotel room. I was there for a reason -- to do this for millions of people."

In the square, the women took a few pictures and ate some snacks, waiting for a signal that it was time to unfurl the banner. Like all of the North Carolina protestors, they had no idea how many other foreign Falun Gong practitioners were there that day, and had no clear idea of when to start their protest.

Suddenly, they heard "Falun Dafa hao!" -- "Falun Dafa is good!" -- and saw police running in the direction of the sound. Then it happened again. The next time, Bakatsias and Kao unfurled their banner.

"It was all so fast," says Bakatsias. "Someone grabbed the banner, then someone grabbed me from behind. Next thing I was on the ground and men's feet were all around me. I yelled 'Falun Dafa hao!' and one covered my mouth. Then they pulled me up and dragged me by my hair to a van."

Not giving up, Bakatsias quickly opened a window and started shouting her message as loud as she could. The police yelled at her and shut the window, but she opened it again to shout "Falun Dafa hao!" over and over. She was taken to jail.

"There were so many police that day," remembers Whitted. "I was a little intimidated by that, but then I realized it's just more people who'll see the truth and hear our message of compassion. This was our opportunity to let innocent Chinese people know what was going on, to create our little ripple and hope it had an effect."

The two men sat reading Falun Gong poetry "to get in the right frame of mind" and played with Chinese children as the police moved closer. Soon, the protests began.

"We saw three Florida practitioners being chased and decided it was time," Whitted says. He took the 9-foot by 6-foot banner out from under his shirt and pulled it tight with Parker.

"Ten policemen charged us. The first thing I felt was a strong whack on the back of my knees, but I didn't fall. They tried a couple of times to rip the banner down. Drew smiled and started singing 'Falun Dafa hao' to all the Chinese people who'd gathered. We just looked into their eyes, smiled and kept singing as the police took us to jail."

Ton, who went to the square alone that day, bought flowers and waited until he heard the protests begin.

"I thought, well it's time, and pulled out the banner," he says. "Just when I did, a plainclothes policeman knocked it down and tried to tackle me. I just kept struggling and yelling 'Falun Dafa is good! The whole world knows Falun Dafa is good!' for as long as I could."

He was wrestled into a police van, and his head was shoved under a seat. They took him to a local jail.

"One guard sat with his boot on my head the whole trip," he says. "They mistook me for Chinese."

The three all say they tussled with police in the jail, and that police were particularly aggressive in trying to pull Asian practitioners away from the group.

"I saw one Asian-American woman with blood coming out of her mouth," says Whitted. "Instead of asking her to move, they'd just drag her by her hair. That told me how it is for Chinese who are arrested. If we were Chinese, they would have beaten us. We know the facts."

[...]

"Clarifying the truth" for Chinese cops

After being held for 20 hours, the protestors were taken by bus to the airport and escorted onto a plane headed back to the United States. Some of them travelled without their shoes and other belongings, which they say were kept by Chinese police. The protestors also say they were denied the chance to contact American embassy officials from jail.

Dumped off the plane in Detroit, the six locals managed to find their way back to North Carolina on February 15. Four days later, Ton, Bakatsias and Parker drove to Washington, D.C. to meet with State Department officials and share information about the episode.

"The meeting went very well," says Ton. "The State Department told us they were going to go through appropriate channels to protest to the Chinese government that American students' rights were violated. We told them it's now become a domestic issue as well, since we've gotten word that China is sending more agents over to harass Falun Gong practitioners outside China. One woman from Canada talked about how she was followed by five or ten Chinese men when she got back."

Now home, the protestors reflect on what they feel they accomplished by their arrest and brief imprisonment.

"When we were in jail, lots of men came in, smoked and stared at us," says Bakatsias. "I looked each of them straight in the eye, thinking compassion in my heart. I figured that some of them have probably beaten practitioners in the past, and I wanted them to see that we know what they're doing."

Bakatsias also says that one of the guards who interrogated her later asked her why she was crying. "I told her I wasn't crying for myself; I was crying for the pictures I'd seen on the Web of women who'd been tortured, probably near where I was now. At one point, a guard told me, 'I know you're a good person. If I had more time and if my English was better I'd like to talk to you more about this.'"

Bakatsias pauses. "Actually, her English was pretty good."

Whitted describes a similar experience. "On the way to the detention center, the guards were ordering us to sit, like dogs, but we were resisting. One very short woman from Minnesota tried to stand, but they wouldn't let her. She began to sing in a sweet, beautiful voice that just penetrated the bus. She sang to the guards and it got completely still. At that point a policeman let her stand and a tear went down his eyes. I saw another one crying, too. A few guards even put their thumbs up, very low-key and close to their bodies, like they were telling us they'd support us if they could."

Were moments like that worth the time, expense and abuse they suffered? Absolutely, according to Thai Ton.

"During the interrogation, we had a lot of opportunities to clarify the truth for the police," he says. "I'd look at them and say things like, 'Good people are getting killed' and watch their reaction. Every time I'd say those things, they'd look down at the ground, or look away. It may have an effect in the future, the next time those guards see a Chinese practitioner. I hope they'll think twice before beating that person."

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