CBS 11 News, Feb 26, 2007
Maria Arita
(CBS 11 News) PLANO The fastest growing spiritual movement in Asia is
affecting people in Texas. Some world leaders have called it a new kind of evil.
A Plano group practices the controversial religion called. It's called
Falun Gong. It borrows from Qi-Gong, an ancient medicinal practice.
Dr.
Wenyi Wang is a journalist and activist at the University of Colorado, Mt. Sanai
who follows Falun Gong. "You have to pay attention to both spiritually and
physically," said Dr. Wang.
It was said to be so effective in healing,
the Chinese embraced it for years. By 1999, Wang said, their membership had
exploded to 100 million. That's 30 million more people than the Chinese
Communist Party. That's when the trouble began.
In 1999, the Falun Gong
movement was banned by the Chinese Communist Party as a cult citing heretical
teachings by their leader Li Hongzi.
In 2006, the Epoch Times reported
that organs were being harvested by the Chinese government from living Falun
Gong prisoners. Dr. Wang protested the atrocities last year in
Washington.
Former Secretary of State David Kilgour, a prominent human
rights activist and prosecutor, launched an investigation. "Since the
persecution of Falun Gong five years ago, the number of transplants has gone
through the roof," he said. In a five year period, there have been about 41,500
organ transplants.
Harry Wu is a former Chinese prisoner and activist
against Chinese prison corruption. "I don't deny that Falun Gong could be killed
and organs could be donated, but I don't think the organ transplant relates to
Falun Gong persecution," Wu said.
But Kilgour has taped conversations of
people posing as patients calling Chinese hospitals. The doctors on the
recording admit they can get organs from living people. These people practice
Falun Gong.
Chen Guangda at the Chinese consulate in Houston denied the
allegations. "The Chinese government never persecuted Falun Gong practitioners.
We just outlawed Falun Gong because it is anti-social, anti-humanity and
anti-science cult," Guangda said. "We just want to help them."
But help
them how? "My parents, they were both 63-years-old, but they were sent to the
forced labor camp," Plano resident Fu Chen said.
Her only hope might be
Kilgour, who is prepared to call for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. "We
simply want to make sure this practice stops immediately," he said. "People are
dying literally as we speak." Even, he says, the very young.
(CBS 11 News)