NEW YORK—It was a bright and frigid early afternoon in the middle of Columbia University’s campus on April 5 when three Chinese women happened to stroll by. Around them echoed the chimes and strings of Chinese meditation music, while volunteers stood by poster boards, ready to talk about one of China’s most censored, and sensitive, topics: the persecution of Falun Gong.
The three Chinese women just happened to fall into the major archetypes of public opinion held by Chinese on the topic: There was one antagonist, one supporter, and one who just didn’t want trouble.
“It’s not a problem if they just go home and practice their meditation,” said Ms. Gao, a middle-aged Chinese tourist in an orange jacket. “But they oppose the government.”
Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese discipline of self-improvement and meditation, has been persecuted in China since 1999, after nearly a decade of tacit endorsement by the state. The anti-Falun Gong campaign, which targeted an estimated 70–100 million Chinese, swept the nation into a frenzy of denunciation and hatred, and the propaganda and vituperation directed against Falun Gong still resonates in the minds of many Chinese today.
Ms. Gao seemed to stand as a stubborn testament to this, outright dismissing the demonstrators and their message using tropes found in official propaganda.
“She’s a Communist Party member, you know,” Ms. Wang, a younger woman in a black coat and wearing sunglasses, said. “She’s received political education.”
Ms. Wang is a classic case of a Chinese who is not afraid to buck the trend.
“At first I didn’t believe the allegations that Falun Gong practitioners’ organs were being harvested,” Wang said, “but I have seen a lot of videos and read many articles about it.”
Wang has lived and worked in the United States for four years. While in China, she often used a VPN (virtual private network) to circumvent Internet censorship by the authorities in order to access information about human rights issues.
Wang was entertaining her two friends who were visiting from China, and that day they had decided to come down to the university and snap selfies in front of the statue of Athena that stands before the Low Library. It was then that they came across the demonstration—hard to miss—organized and co-sponsored by the school’s Falun Gong and Amnesty International student clubs.
Near a large, transparent yellow Falun Gong banner on the small square were several adherents of the practice doing meditation exercises, while others passed out flyers about Falun Gong and the regime’s repression.
