BEIJING (AP) - His followers revere him as Master Li, believing his teachings make them healthy, moral citizens with a ``wheel of law'' that spins in their bellies, absorbing and releasing energy.
But in recent months, a Hong Kong businesswoman has laid claim to Li Hongzhi's title as leader of China's outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, sparking a war of words that has seen the normally reclusive Li angrily denounce his usurper over the Internet.
In the latest headache for the embattled sect, 37-year-old Hong Kong practitioner Belinda Pang has attracted a small group of followers who call her ``Lord of Buddhas'' and believe she is Falun Gong's true master.
``Several practitioners were enlightened,'' said Pang follower Mary Qian in a telephone interview Friday. ``We realized that (she) is the true master who created the entire universe.''
Falun Gong representatives, while clearly annoyed, say Pang's movement does not threaten to divide the group, since she claims at most 30 followers. Li's followers claim he has 100 million believers worldwide.
Still, the assertions have sparked bickering on competing Internet sites. The dispute adds to the difficulties faced by Falun Gong as it struggles to survive a yearlong Chinese crackdown that has seen many of the movement's leaders sentenced to prison terms of up to 18 years and thousands of ordinary followers sent without trial to labor camps.
Li, a former government clerk who moved to New York after founding Falun Gong in 1992, has denounced Pang and her followers, saying anyone who follows teachings other than his own are not genuine practitioners.
``I am the principal being,'' Li wrote on Falun Gong's official Web site. ``Nobody should pay attention to what that saboteur in Hong Kong has instigated or give her an audience.''
Pang's followers responded by launching their own Web site that features glowing accounts of their realization May 11 - celebrated as Buddha's birthday - that she was their master.
Letters from Li denouncing Pang were fakes, Qian said, adding that she and others believe that Li has finished his mission and left the world, allowing Pang to take his place.
Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York, said Li is alive and that Pang, formerly an active participant in the group's Hong Kong chapter, is no longer regarded as a practitioner.
Falun Gong attracted millions of followers, most of them in China, with its combination of slow-motion exercises and philosophy drawn from Taoism, Buddhism and the often unorthodox ideas of founder Li.
Chinese leaders declared the group a public menace and threat to Communist Party rule last July. Aside from jailing followers, the government has forced tens of thousands of practitioners to renounce the sect.
BEIJING (AP) -- His followers revere him as Master Li, believing his teachings make them healthy, moral citizens with a "wheel of law" that spins in their bellies, absorbing and releasing energy.
But in recent months, a Hong Kong businesswoman has laid claim to Li Hongzhi's title as leader of China's outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, sparking a war of words that has seen the normally reclusive Li angrily denounce his usurper over the Internet.
In the latest headache for the embattled sect, 37-year-old Hong Kong practitioner Belinda Pang has attracted a small group of followers who call her "Lord of Buddhas" and believe she is Falun Gong's true master.
"Several practitioners were enlightened," said Pang follower Mary Qian in a telephone interview Friday. "We realized that (she) is the true master who created the entire universe."
Falun Gong representatives, while clearly annoyed, say Pang's movement does not threaten to divide the group, since she claims at most 30 followers. Li's followers claim he has 100 million believers worldwide.
Still, the assertions have sparked bickering on competing Internet sites. The dispute adds to the difficulties faced by Falun Gong as it struggles to survive a yearlong Chinese crackdown that has seen many of the movement's leaders sentenced to prison terms of up to 18 years and thousands of ordinary followers sent without trial to labor camps.
Li, a former government clerk who moved to New York after founding Falun Gong in 1992, has denounced Pang and her followers, saying anyone who follows teachings other than his own are not genuine practitioners.
"I am the principal being," Li wrote on Falun Gong's official Web site. "Nobody should pay attention to what that saboteur in Hong Kong has instigated or give her an audience."
Pang's followers responded by launching their own Web site that features glowing accounts of their realization May 11 -- celebrated as Buddha's birthday -- that she was their master.
Letters from Li denouncing Pang were fakes, Qian said, adding that she and others believe that Li has finished his mission and left the world, allowing Pang to take his place.
Gail Rachlin, a Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York, said Li is alive and that Pang, formerly an active participant in the group's Hong Kong chapter, is no longer regarded as a practitioner.
Falun Gong attracted millions of followers, most of them in China, with its combination of slow-motion exercises and philosophy drawn from Taoism, Buddhism and the often unorthodox ideas of founder Li.
Chinese leaders declared the group a public menace and threat to Communist Party rule last July. Aside from jailing followers, the government has forced tens of thousands of practitioners to renounce the sect.
A leadership battle has broken out in the outlawed Chinese spiritual movement Falungong, which the authorities have been trying to suppress for a year.
A Falungong follower from Hong Kong, Belinda Peng, has declared herself its true leader, replacing the movement's founder, Ling Hongzhi, who lives in exile in the United States.
Leading figures in the Falungong say the breakaway does not threaten to divide the group, as Belinda Peng has few supporters.
But the two sides do have competing Internet sites, on which they've been arguing in public.
Many of Falungong's leading members in China have been been given prison terms of up to eighteen years, and thousands of other supporters have been sent to labour camps without trial.
SHANGHAI, Aug. 2 -- Falun Gong followers in Hong Kong and the United States are squabbling over assertions by a woman in the southern Chinese territory that she is the "true master" of the spiritual movement, having taken over from its founder, Li Hongzhi, who has dropped from view.
The power struggle is a potentially important one for Falun Gong, which drew millions of adherents in the late 1990's, because most of its followers are on the Chinese mainland, across the border from Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, the former British colony, reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, and whoever controls the group there has a chance of influencing Falun Gong's development in the rest of China.
The assertion that the woman, Belinda Pang, 37, is the "Lord of Buddhas" has led to more of a cat fight than catharsis for the movement, which went underground on the mainland after Beijing banned the group a year ago. Mr. Li, who is now based in New York, and Ms. Pang have traded accusations on competing Web sites.
The dispute began on May 11 -- celebrated as Buddha's birthday and, Mr. Li says, his birthday, too, though birth records in his hometown in China show otherwise. Ms. Pang, a tireless organizer in the Hong Kong chapter, organized a march through the city. Although only 24 people turned up, along the way most of them said they had experienced a vision of Ms. Pang seated in outer space while angels flew around her plucking flowers and dropping them to Earth. The flowers turned into raindrops when they hit the skin, said Mary Qian, one of those who said they saw the image.
"That's when we realized Ms. Pang was the Lord of Buddhas," Ms. Qian said by telephone today. They reported the finding on their Web site, www.falundafa.com.hk.
Mr. Li was quick to denounce Ms. Pang on the official Falun Gong site, www.minghui.ca.
Ms. Pang, who has drawn 30 hard-core believers, said all recent messages from Mr. Li were fakes, because he has left to "quietly watch practitioners and people in the world" from a cliff somewhere in the United States, where he is pictured in his last photo posted on the Falun Gong Web site, in January.
Members of the Zhong Gong spiritual group have appealed to Washington in a last-ditch attempt to lobby for political asylum for their exiled leader.
In an open letter to US President Bill Clinton, the sect urged Washington to defy pressure from Beijing and grant asylum status to Zhang Hongbao, who is in Guam awaiting a decision on his fate by US immigration officials.
The group said Mr Zhang was being persecuted by Beijing, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
"The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the US law hold that anyone under political persecution will be given political asylum. Millions of sect members will lose faith in the US' belief if it fails to do that," the centre quoted the letter as saying.
Mr Zhang, 45, who founded the qi gong sect - which is similar to the banned Falun Gong - has been on the run from mainland authorities since a crackdown on the sect started in October. He reached Guam, a US territory, in February with an aide, Yan Qingxin.
A Guam immigration court granted the pair provisional political refugee status on June 13.
While Ms Yan's asylum status was confirmed on July 28, Mr Zhang's confirmation was postponed after the Chinese Embassy in Washington wrote to US authorities demanding his extradition.
The embassy accused the leader of having been involved in unspecified criminal activities and of illegally leaving the mainland. The case is being handled by immigration officials in Hawaii, who are expected to make a decision this week.
The sect said in the letter that the alleged criminal activities were fabricated and mainland authorities had yet to produce any evidence to support their claims.
HAGATNA, Guam - A man who identified himself as Zhang Hongbao, founder of the outlawed Zhong Gong Chinese meditation-exercise sect, said he fears agents of the Chinese government are out to kill him.
Arrested Jan. 29 at the Guam airport by U.S. immigration officials, he said Tuesday he is being hunted because of his influence and his anti-Communist sentiments, which have been published in his organization's magazine.
The Chinese government cracked down on Zhang's group following a July 1999 ban on a similar sect, Falun Gong.
Hundreds of the latter's members have been jailed as political threats since thousands of them shocked the government by appearing in silent protest near the ruler's compound in Beijing.
Zhang, 46, said he plans to continue teaching if he is granted asylum in the United States.
''Now I'm in hard times, but I believe in the government of the United States, the people of the United States and the lawyers of the United States,'' he said through an interpreter. ''This place is the hope for freedom.''
He refused to say how or when he left China, but said he hid in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines with the help of supporters.
The Chinese government first began observing him in 1990 as the number of his students grew, and nearly arrested him in 1995 and in 1997, he said. A nationwide search for him began in 1998, according to Zhang.
The manhunt later was expanded to neighboring countries, and he said he decided the only safe place for him was the United States.
He used a false passport to get a plane ticket to Guam, where he was arrested and detained. He now lives in a tent city behind barbed wire on the grounds of the Guam Department of Corrections, awaiting a decision on his asylum request.
BEIJING, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Followers of the banned Chinese Zhong Gong meditation group have appealed to the United States to grant its founder political asylum, human rights groups said on Wednesday.
Zhang Hongbao, whose group was banned last year along with the better-known Falun Gong, faced persecution if returned to China, the Information Centre on Human Rights & Democracy quoted a Zhong Gong statement as saying.
The case forces an awkward choice on the United States between sending the meditation guru home to political persecution and possible execution and giving a home to a fugitive China says has committed unspecified ``criminal offences.''
Further complicating matters is U.S. criticism of China's ruthless campaign against Falun Gong in which dozens of adherents have died of beatings and forced feeding or medication in police custody.
China interprets U.S. statements of general support for freedom of belief and assembly as backing for Falun Gong. It is angry that Washington rejected as politically motivated Chinese requests to arrest the group's New York-based founder Li Hongzhi.
The Hong Kong-based centre said Zhang's asylum confirmation hearing was scheduled to be held on Guam this Friday, but was postponed for the second time in a week as U.S. authorities weighed Chinese demands to deny him political protection.
U.S. officials in Beijing declined to comment on Zhang's case, citing its sensitivity and fears of prejudicing the ruling.
On June 16, an Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) court told Zhang, who fled to U.S.-administered Guam in February, that he would be given political asylum, it said.
But confirmation was delayed last Friday as INS authorities studied a July 16 Chinese embassy demand that Zhang be denied asylum.
A second Zhong Gong organiser, Yan Qingxin, was granted asylum last week. ``This shows that Zhang Hongbao's reasons for seeking political asylum are well-founded,'' the centre said.
It said the Beijing's failure to explain to the INS what crimes Zhang was accused of -- as well as the absence of state media accounts of his alleged offences -- suggested ``the accusations are fabricated.''
A 1997 notice from the Zhejiang province police accused Zhong Gong of ``using feudal superstition to deceive the masses'' -- one of the many offences of which Falun Gong has been accused.
Disciples who have broken from the group are known to have accused Zhang of having illicit sex with followers.
A Chinese dissident group based in Washington, the Free China Movement, said Zhang could be executed in China, a fate suffered by another sect leader accused of sexual crimes last year.
It has now been just over a year since the government of China began its effort to stamp out the nonviolent spiritual movement known as Falun Gong. Thousands of Chinese followers of the group have been subjected to surveillance, harassment, arrest, torture and, in some two dozen cases, death. The two most recent Falun Gong members to perish in police custody were 44-year-old Li Zaiji and 68-year-old Wang Peisheng, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. They both died in the first two weeks of July.
Falun Gong adherents nevertheless marked the anniversary of the government crackdown by raising banners and otherwise protesting peacefully in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Few visitors to the vast square even noticed, because police immediately seized the protesters and hauled them to jail. Hundreds are said to have been detained.
The Communist government portrays its battle against Falun Gong as an effort to protect China from an evil cult bent on destabilizing society. In fact, the authorities are reacting out of instinctive hostility to the growth of an independent organization that appears capable of offering Chinese a spiritual alternative--however obscure--to official ideology.
Yet for all its determination to deny Falun Gong practitioners their right to the free exercise of their beliefs, Beijing has been unable in a year to restore the monochromatic ideological climate its rulers require. The effort to destroy Falun Gong will be a "long-lasting, complicated and acute struggle," a July 20 editorial in the official People's Daily conceded. This backhanded compliment to the undeniable courage and tenacity of Falun Gong's adherents was also, alas, probably a threat of even greater official violence to come.
What Is Falun Gong? See "Falun Gong 101", by Massimo Introvigne
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