Thursday, July 15, 2010
Falun Gong
Shan Zhu Qiu, an immigrant from China who fled his native country out of fear of persecution over his Falun Gong practice, has been given a second opportunity to stay in the United States. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on July 12 ordered immigration officials to reconsider Qiu’s asylum case after his attorney successfully argued that his client would be punished back home for being a member of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong is a meditation and exercise-based spiritual group, whose belief-system is peaceful and seemingly harmless…except, that is, to the Chinese Communist Party. Falun Gong was outlawed in China on July 22, 1999, its publications banned and thousands of its followers arrested and even executed. The harsh government action followed an unexpected incident three months earlier when 10,000 Falun Gong adherents staged a day-long silent protest outside the Zhonggnanhai compound where the nation’s leaders live in Beijing.
In the United States, Falun Group is considered just another New Age group, but to China’s leader, Hu Jintao, and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, the Falun Gong are suspiciously similar to the Tai Ping of the 19th century and other sects that have served as rallying points for mass discontent.
-David Wallechinsky
Falun Gong Follower Wins Asylum Review (by Joe Celentino, Courthouse News Service)
Shan Zhu Qiu v. Eric Holder (U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit) (pdf)
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