Falun Gong

alternative Fa-lun kung

1. A spiritual practice founded in China by Li Hongzhi (李洪志) in 1992, purporting to enable practitioners to ascend spiritually through moral rectitude and the practice of exercises and meditation.

   Of all the qigong exercises practised in China, Falun Gong is the only one that can have the effect of "the Law refining the practitioner".

   1998 May, Li HongZhi, CHINA FALUN GONG (REVISED EDITION) (English Version), Hong Kong: Falun Fo Fa Publishing Co., →ISBN, →OCLC, page 34

   3 more examples

   More recently, the Chinese authorities' paranoia in religious matters has become apparent in the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. It was banned in July 1999 and thousands of its members have since been arrested.

   2002, Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, HarperCollins, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 174

   As President Bush addressed students at Qinghua University in Beijing on the 30th anniversary of Richard M. Nixon's momentous trip to China, where was the mention of the six Qinghua graduate students recently sentenced in southern China's Xiangzhou District Court, in Zhuhai City, for "utilizing an evil cult to sabotage legal enforcement"? All are practitioners of Falun Gong, the outlawed meditation movement that numbers its followers in the tens of thousands. They had been writing articles about the persecution of Falun Gong members.

   2002 February 23, Bei Ling, Andrea Huss, “Warming Up to China, Neglecting Democracy”, in The New York Times (Opinion section), New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 09 Nov 2010

   The decision to ban the group entirely was made after 10,000 Falun Gong adherents staged a silent protest outside the gates of Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party’s leadership compound in Beijing, to complain about reports in the state-run media that the group said were defamatory.

   2009 April 27, Andrew Jacobs, “China Still Presses Crusade Against Falun Gong”, in The New York Times (Asia Pacific section), New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 01 Feb 2011

   Synonyms: Falun Dafa