Dangerous Meditation

The Chinese government is using new laws and new
interpretations of old laws to crack down on the Falungong, Human Rights Watch says in this report. today. Falungong members have been classified with Tibetan and Uighur 'splittists' and unauthorized religious groups as a major threat to the Communist Party, Human Rights Watch said. This 117-page report, Dangerous Meditation: China's Campaign Against Falungong, analyzes why and how the Chinese government embarked on a plan to eradicate the group it terms an "evil cult." In recent documents, the Chinese government has suggested that Falungong is a terrorist organization. The new report traces the evolution of the Chinese government's crackdown, starting with the July 1999 ban on the hierarchically-organized meditation group, which now boasts millions of members worldwide. From the initial ban, the government moved on to prohibit practicing the group's exercises in public, and to confiscate and destroy hundreds of thousands of copies of its publications.