In his article, Zhuang Fenggan, president of the China Anti-Cult Association and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), expressed his strong indignation at the July 24 resolution passed by the US House of Representatives.

The resolution, which turned a blind eye to facts and demanded China stop what it called "persecution" of the Falun Gong cult, represented a flagrant interference in China's internal affairs, the scientist wrote.

Zhuang, who obtained a doctorate at the Institute of Aeronautics of the California Institute of Technology during 1947-1950, said it was well known that Falun Gong was a cult that was anti-human, anti-society and anti-science in nature.

The scientist said a small number of US congress members attempted to use the cult to serve their anti-China purpose, which he warned would get them nowhere.

Under a guise of "truth, benevolence, and forbearance", the cult's leader Li Hongzhi used deceitful tricks and inept exercises as a disguise for brainwashing its practitioners, according to the article.

Li Hongzhi claimed practicing Falun Gong would cure diseases and improve health on the condition that practitioners did not see a doctor or take medicine.

One consequence was that many practitioners obsessed with the cult took Li's words as genuine and refused to see a doctor after they became ill, said the article.

Many obsessed practitioners even committed suicide in order to reach "nirvana" as Li Hongzhi claimed they would.

Zhuang said Falun Gong had been blamed for the deaths of about 1,700 people during recent years.

To suppress the mass media's critical reports and the enforcement of some laws and regulations, many Falun Gong practitioners had been encouraged by Li Hongzhi to besiege government institutions and media organizations.

Their illegal gatherings involving more than 300 people each numbered 78 since the mid-1990s, according to the article.

Falun Gong Banned in 1999 to Protect Basic Human Rights

To protect basic human rights and freedom and safeguard the dignity of the Constitution and law, the Chinese government moved on July 22, 1999 to ban the Falun Gong cult. It prosecuted a very small number of cult members while helping most return to normal life through education.

But Li Hongzhi had not stopped his illegal activity since then, and had established underground groups inside China and set up his headquarters in the United States, said the article.

"Li and his Falun Gong cult have been launching sabotage activities on important events in China since then, and the activities are becoming more violent and terrorizing."

On Jan. 23, 2001, they organized a group suicide at Tian'anmen Square in central Beijing, in which five obsessed Falun Gong practitioners, including two mothers and their two young daughters, set fire to themselves in order to reach "nirvana".

The Falun Gong cult had gone further in the last two months, attacking China's satellite television transmission system, or SINOSAT 2A and SINOSAT 3A translators, disrupting TV signals and transmission in China.

The extremist moves and terrorist activities by the cult had seriously undermined social stability, and put at risk the lives of the general public, the article said.

Those supporters of a cult that violated human rights would get nowhere in their confrontation with 1.3 billion Chinese people who disapproved of the cult, according to the article.

(People's Daily August 5, 2002)