LYNNWOOD — A Chinese woman found refuge here after being persecuted, jailed and forced into a labor camp for refusing to denounce her religious beliefs.
Echo Liu, 42, started practicing Falun Dafa in 1997 while working as a journalist in Beijing.
Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that combines exercises, meditation and a moral philosophy focused on truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.
Chinese leaders, however, have banned it, calling it a cult and fearing that the millions-strong religion could lead to organized dissent.
Liu was among those at Everett’s Paine Field, protesting human rights violations in China when the country’s President Xi JinpingCQ visited in September. She felt a moral obligation to speak out about the injustices Falun Dafa followers have endured now that she has freedom to tell her story and practice her faith without fear.
“It’s especially crucial for those who are still being severely persecuted,” she said. “Their voices cannot be heard.”
Liu became interested in Falun Dafa after noticing improvements in her mother’s health that she credits to the practice. She started reading the principle book, Zhuan Falun, which was a bestseller in China before it was banned.
Falun Dafa incorporates teachings from Taoist and Buddhist traditions as well as Qigong, a holistic system of postures and movements with breathing and meditation.
Unlike most traditional churches, Falun Dafa has no official hierarchy, membership or fees.
Followers believe a person’s moral character is affected by their positive energy, which they call virtue, compared to their negative energy, or karma. Practitioners hope to gain spiritual enlightenment and health with Falun Gong, a system of postures, movements and meditation.
Despite the mystic imagery that calls to mind ancient Eastern spiritual teachings and medical arts, the faith hasn’t been around long.
The exercises, which are similar to tai chi, were developed in 1992 by the group’s now exiled spiritual leader, Li Hongzhi, who told Time magazine aliens have begun to invade the human mind and will likely destroy the world.
Followers believe by doing five particular exercises, an intelligent, golden entity called the falun is grown in one’s gut but lives in another dimension. It spins constantly, absorbing energy from parallel universes, which makes the practitioner invincible to disease.
Some followers claim the exercises have eliminated health problems for them. Jenny Hu practices alongside Liu with the informal, Seattle-based Falun Dafa Association of Washington. Hu, of Sammamish, said she started Falun Gong to get rid of headaches. She said she hasn’t had one since 1996.
“I just reconnected myself back to our traditional culture,” she said.
Liu was still in China when she took up Falun Dafa in 1997. At the time, her career was going well. She’d made her way up to the Beijing News and then took a job editing bestselling books at a publishing company. In her free time, she was promoting her faith because she believed it was beneficial.
But when the government banned it in 1999, her life changed abruptly. The Chinese Communist Party started a propaganda campaign aimed at eliminating Falun practitioners.
While she was pregnant in 2000, Liu said, she was detained by the authorities for 10 hours because she had been handing out articles about Falun. After she was released to her boss, she was demoted, forced to write confession papers and attend what she calls brainwashing classes.
Several months after she had her baby, Liu said, authorities took her from her home as she was breastfeeding. She was taken to a prison where she was deprived of sleep, forced to watch propaganda videos about Falun and listen to threats of harm to her family, Liu said.
Authorities again arrested her in 2008 as the government tried to hide human rights violations from foreign journalists before the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Liu said. In jail, she said, she was beaten, locked in solitary confinement and forced to work in toxic environments. She served two years and three months for refusing to renounce Falun.
“I do not want to sell my soul,” Liu said. “What they could do to your physical body is very limited if you keep your soul or spirit intact.”
Liu counts herself lucky because her husband was a powerful attorney and she was a journalist with connections in Boston. That’s why she believes she was treated far better than many other prisoners. There have been reports of torture and organ harvesting from Falun Dafa followers.
Shortly after she was released, her family came to the U.S. through a business connection in 2010. Liu now works in Seattle doing marketing at The Epoch Times newspaper, which is associated with Falun Dafa.
Her husband, David, an atheist, recently passed the bar exam and is on his way to start practicing law again. Their son, Tim, now 14, is doing well in school and is adjusting to the Western world.
Despite the challenges of having to start over far from home, Liu said, her family is happy here.
“For me, the crucial thing is the freedom of choice,” she said. “You can live up to what’s right with dignity.”
Amy Nile: 425-339-3192; anile@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @AmyNileReports.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
