"IF
the story was wrong, you can go right to the court and sue
us."
Song
Lingjun, editor-in-chief of the Hangzhou-based Qiantang
Weekend, still remembers speaking these angry words to a
group of Falun Gong practitioners when they besieged and
harassed the newspaper's office two years ago.
In
a front page story on December 12, 1997, the Qiantang Weekend
reported the death of one of its staff reporters, a young
Falun Gong practitioner, who died after falling ill and
refusing to take medicine because of his firm belief in
the supernatural healing powers of Falun Gong.
The
story concluded with a critical remark that Falun Gong's
practice of forbidding its practitioners from taking medicine
was "unreasonable and dangerous."
These
comments obviously enraged Falun Gong's leaders, Song told
China Daily yesterday in a telephone interview.
In
the time since the critical article was published, Song's
office has received floods of phone calls and letters demanding
an apology.
Other
followers chose a different approach _ they personally went
to the office to argue or plead their case, Song recalled.
"We
were really exasperated and exhausted coping with all these
harassments," he said.
A
number of practitioners even broke into the editor's office
and attempted to argue in person with chief editors, according
to Song.
Nearly
six months after the article had been printed, on June 7
of last year, hundreds of Falun Gong followers staged a
protest outside the newspaper's building.
"I
told these people again that if the story was wrong, they
could go directly to the court and sue us. We were ready
to take the responsibility for our report," Song said.
"But they just kept harassing us.
"We
felt sick and frustrated at such a sit-in. If their freedom
of speech was justified, as they said, then where was our
freedom of speech?" Song said.
All
the ugly responses _ the protests, the phone calls and the
continuous harassment _ marked the protracted confrontations
that occurred between China's media and the Falun Gong groups
before the cult was officially banned last month.
The
Xinhua News Agency earlier reported that there had been
18 mass sit-ins organized by Falun Gong leaders and involving
misguided followers.
"The
Falun Gong leaders will try all means to harass you if you
say anything against it," Zhou Fangzheng, deputy editor-in-chief
of Beijing-based Health Digest, told China Daily.
Hundreds
of Falun Gong followers surrounded Zhou's office building
after his health-oriented newspaper published an anti-Falun
Gong article in May of last year, urging patients to visit
doctors and take medicine instead of practicing the so-called
cure-all Falun Gong.
"The
article was based on our first-hand investigation on Falun
Gong from medical perspectives. We found all their doctrines
were ridiculous and showed the sheer lack of basic medical
knowledge," he said.
"We
really cannot tolerate it any more when we find more and
more people became mentally disturbed or died because they
believed such doctrines," he said.
"It
is our responsibility to let people know more medical knowledge
instead of falling prey to such fallacies.
"I
think we are doing the right things, that is, to maintain
most people's human rights while the Falun Gong is definitely
fooling and destroying them," he said.
China Daily 08/14/99
