Magazine: 'Falun Gong lies'

THE influential Chinese bimonthly magazine _ Seeking Truth _ released a special issue yesterday repudiating the fallacies of Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong comprises three main tenets: "truthfulness, benevolence, and tolerance." Li has used the tenets to hoodwink people.

They were actually concocted from some concepts of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, and then jumbled up in an inferior way, the magazine says.

Although Li advocates truthfulness, what he has done is just the opposite. His books are written by ghostwriters, his date of birth was falsified to coincide with that of Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism (565-486 BC), and he saw doctors and took medicines himself but told others not to do so.

As for benevolence, Li boasts that Falun Gong can convert people, but he refused to recruit those people who were fatally ill to his Falun Gong classes. Some Falun Gong practitioners lost their lives simply because they refused to see doctors or take any medicines.

Although he preached tolerance, Li and his followers have never shown much tolerance themselves. They would not put up with criticism or opposition, it says. For several months, Falun Gong practitioners have harassed or threatened people who held different views. They attacked news organizations and even Party and government headquarters, seriously disrupting public order.

In another development, monks of Wutai Mountain in North China's Shanxi Province have made it part of their lives to tell tourists the difference between Buddhism and the Falun Gong.

A statement was issued by the monks in Wutai Mountain yesterday, accusing Falun Gong of cheating people under the guise of religion.

(Xinhua 07/31/99)