Posted: 04 February 2006 1144 hrs Falungong followers fight in US for place in New Year's parade
SAN FRANCISCO : Followers of the Falungong spiritual movement banned in China have gone to war with San Francisco Chinese community leaders who shut the group out of a coming Lunar New Year parade. Falungong was barred from marching in the popular Chinatown parade because they broke rules two years ago by having too many people and handing out political leaflets along the route, according to director Wayne Hu. Falungong representatives charged that the reasoning is a smokescreen and that Chinese Chamber of Commerce officials running the parade are puppets of China's government, which has branded the group a dangerous cult. Hu flatly denied the chamber was doing the bidding of the Chinese government. "I have had no direct dealing with the Chinese consulate regarding who we invite, and I've run the parade for 20 years," said Hu, who added he was fifth-generation Chinese-American. "As a business organisation, we have dealings with governments in China, Taiwan and other parts of the world. Are we an agent? We are not. We are independent." The battle went public with the chamber and Chinese-American businesses taking out costly newspaper advertisements bashing Falungong as a troublesome, homophobic cult unworthy of being in the parade on February 11. Practitioners fired back by getting city leaders to pass a symbolic resolution condemning persecution of Falungong members. The group filed a lawsuit demanding that US$77,000 in city funding be stripped from the parade due to human rights violations. "There are no human rights violations occurring," Hu said. "The practice of Falungong is an individual right, and we are not challenging that." A judge refused the group's request for an emergency injunction stopping the funding. A civil trial is pending. "I expected the chamber to dig in," Falungong representative Sherry Zhang told AFP. "They gave many excuses, but we think the true reason is the influence of the Chinese government." Falungong has applied annually since 2000 for a spot in the parade. It was rejected until 2004, when the group's alternate name, Falun Dafa, was used on the application, Zhang said. "Someone probably got confused and let us in by accident," Zhang said. "We could tell we weren't welcomed." The next year, after the group was rejected, it "crashed" the parade by showing up uninvited, Hu said. Falungong members were relegated to trailing the final official parade entrant. Parade security stopped Falungong members before they reached the viewing stand, which was empty when the unsanctioned participants arrived, Zhang said. Falungong, a religious practice that combines meditation and exercises, was created by former Chinese civil servant Li Hongzhi. The founder's book refers to homosexuality as "one of the top ten evils in the world," Hu said while explaining why a newspaper advertisement brought that to the attention of people in the unabashedly gay mecca of San Francisco. The parade welcoming the Year of the Dog in San Francisco is intended to be apolitical, Hu said. The only flags allowed are those of California and the United States. Among the applicants shunned was the band from Stanford University in the California city of Palo Alto, Hu said. "It is a great band, but difficult to manage in a parade," Hu said. "We apply our rules fairly." Falungong practitioners did not disclose whether they intend to crash the parade that will wind through San Francisco's Chinatown in the heart of the region's rainy season. "Our parade will go on," Hu said. "Even if it rains. That is good luck." - AFP/de http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/191597/1/.html Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
