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Falun Gong focus of talk at Pitkin
County Library
Aspen Times writer
April 2, 2004
Falun Gong,
banned in China after multitudes took up the practice of refining
the body and mind through exercise and meditation, will be the focus
of a free talk on Monday at the Pitkin County
Library.
Avon resident Leejun Ivie,
a native of China and naturalized American citizen, will offer an
introduction to the principles of Falun Gong and discuss the Chinese
government's ongoing persecution of its practitioners. She will
relate her experiences during a recent visit to her homeland, where
she was detained and interrogated by agents who tried to intimidate
her into giving up the practice.
China's Communist government banned the practice of
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, in 1999 when it grasped the
growing popularity of the practice, which combines yogalike
exercises with meditation to cultivate physical health and moral
character.
"It helped me become a
better person," said Ivie, who took up Falun Gong after seeing its
effects on her mother during a 1996 visit to
China.
"I saw a very dramatic change
in her, physically and mentally," she said.
Falun Gong, introduced in 1992 by founder Li Hongzhi, is
now practiced by an estimated 40 million people worldwide, according
to the Web site http://www.falundafa.org/.
It is neither political nor religious in nature,
according to Ivie, but the spooked Chinese government labeled the
practice an evil cult and cracked down on its practitioners,
sentencing more than 10,000 people to labor camps, according to an
article in Time Asia.
When Ivie
visited China in January, she said authorities tried to force her to
renounce Falun Gung and alternately threatened to keep her in China
and deport her immediately, she said.
"I think the core message I want to convey is that
freedom of belief and freedom of consciousness is our constitutional
right," she said.
Ivie's talk is
scheduled for 6:30 to 7:30
p.m.
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RAIN 41°
