The characters in ETERNAL SPRING belong to a group known as Falun Gong. A spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition, Falun Gong combines slow-moving exercises, meditation, and moral teachings centered on tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. It quickly grew in popularity after its public introduction in 1992 by Changchun City local Li Hongzhi. By 1999, estimates put the number of adherents in the tens of millions, at which point Communist authorities banned the practice and commenced a repression campaign against those who persisted in it. More information on Falun Gong can be found at faluninfo.net.

Unfortunately, yes. While the abuses against Falun Gong were more frequently in the news in the early days of the government’s repression of the group (for example, in a 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles by the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Johnson), the detention and abuses against those who persist in Falun Gong continues today. In fact, arrests and surveillance targeting Falun Gong believers reportedly increased in the recent lead-up to the 2022 Winter Games. What’s more, the tactics used against Falun Gong adherents—including large scale detention and coerced abandonment of religious beliefs—can also be found in the treatment of Uighur Muslims in Northwest China.

For more detailed information about the persecution of Falun Gong, please see this report by Freedom House: Falun Gong: Religious Freedom in China (2017). Amnesty International also released a report in 2013 that described the treatment of Falun Gong in some detail. You can find more in the resources section, below.

In the immediate aftermath of the TV hijacking, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy told the Associated Press that “as many as 2,000 people were believed to have been detained” in response. Amnesty International issued a call for urgent action ten days after the March 5 2002 hacking, noting that those taken into custody in the “security crackdown” then underway in Changchun City were at “serious risk of torture or ill-treatment.”

Within three weeks, Falun Gong sources described police raids extending to neighbouring cities and numbering an estimated 5000 arrests in total, including several reported torture deaths in police custody. A US Congressional-Executive Committee database of political prisoners in China listed the incarceration of a number of the TV hijacking participants following their arrests, while a UN report on freedom of expression detailed the torture death of one individual depicted briefly in Eternal Spring, Dr. Liu Haibo.

Audience members have asked about the current status of the surviving members of the TV hijacking who remain in China. Those no longer in prison are unfortunately difficult to contact. Some have been re-arrested for their beliefs or are under house arrest. Mr. Sun Changjun, for example, was re-arrested in April of 2021 despite having been released from a 17-year term in prison sentence just one year earlier. His re-arrest sparked protests outside of Chinese consulates internationally.

The filmmakers are familiar with this narrative about Falun Gong, but do not find it a fair generatlization of a large and diverse religious community. None of the subjects interviewed in the film express such views (nor do the filmmakers), and to infer that all people in a faith community hold the same views, which are defined in a hostile manner by people who have mostly spent very limited time in the community, is toxic and xenophobic.

There is important context here. Falun Gong adherents in China have been subjected to an often-brutal persecution for their beliefs at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party for more than two decades. As this repression was frequently ignored in Western media, in 2004 founding Falun Gong practioners exiled in the United States started a community newspaper, The Epoch Times, with the initial goal of shining a light on human rights atrocities in China. It did, and has earned significant readership and goodwill amongst Falun Gong practioners for this reason.

The newspaper has also evolved to be unabashedly anti-Communist and conservative. In recent years it has attracted a large audience on the political right in the United States and other countries, including supporters of former president Donald Trump. Of course, people are free to take issues with opinions expressed in a newspaper. But we take issue with the guilt-by-association approach of attempting to brand an entire religious community based on the views or politics that one disagrees with.

In response to some of the characterizations that have been repeated, there are countless individuals in the Falun Gong community who do not regard themselves as “right wing.” Falun Gong doesn’t espouse any belief in QAnon (it appears nowhere in Falun Gong’s teachings); the Epoch Times newspaper also disputes claims that it has engaged in promoting the conspiracy. Falun Gong does not prohibit vaccination. It does not condone discrimination toward anyone regarding sexual orientation. Falun Gong’s attitudes on sexuality are conservative, in line with a Buddhist ethic of abandoning desires and attachments, but this is personal and not something that is to be imposed on others. On the contrary, practitioners welcome everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation as expressed by the community on FalunInfo.net.

ETERNAL SPRING is not a documentary about the beliefs and positions of some Falun Gong adherents within the fraught politics of contemporary America. At the same time, efforts to portray Falun Gong’s beliefs in a disparaging and overly reductive way risks breeding inaccurate stereotypes and encouraging apathy to ongoing human suffering. The issue is explored in greater depth in this article.

Miconceptions and apathy about Falun Gong:

Why Did Liberal Elites Ignore a 21st-Century Genocide? – Caylan Ford, Arc Digital

Falun Gong and moral panic – ABC Religion & Ethics (ABC News. 2020. “Falun Gong and Moral Panic – ABC Religion & Ethics,” August 6, 2020.‌)

Cold Genocide: Falun Gong in China (Cheung, Maria; Trey, Torsten; Matas, David; and An, Richard (2018) “Cold Genocide: Falun Gong in China,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 12: Iss. 1: 38-62.)

Misconceptions About Falun Gong (Falun Dafa Info Center – a collection of responses from the Falun Gong community to claims put forward about their practice and beliefs)

The persecution of Falun Gong in China:

US Congressional-Executive Committee on China Political Prisoner Database (2012).This database lists the timeframe in which a number of the TV hijacking participants, including Liang Zhenxing, Zhou Runjun, Lei Ming, and others were first held at Siping Prison, which aligns with witness testimony recorded for our film.

United Nations Commission on Human Rights: Report on Civil and Political Rights, Including Questions of Freedom of Expression (2005). This report details the torture of Mr. Liu Haibo (who appears briefly in our film), substantiating his abuses at Fenjin labour camp, and also his subsequent death in police custody in March 2002. Falun Gong appears over 100 times in the report.

Human Rights Without Frontiers – China: Falun Gong (2019). A report on Falun Gong report on the imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners for their beliefs, including several cases at Jilin Prison.

HRWF: Freedom of Religion or Belief & Blasphemy Prisoners Database: World Report 2016.This report mentions cases of Falun Gong imprisonment for their beliefs at Jilin Prison.

Amnesty International report on the abolishment of re-education through labour in China (2013). This report makes brief mention of Fenjin labour camp, where a number of our film subjects had been held. It is aside from this an insightful report detailing the mistreatment of Falun Gong adherents in China for their practice.