World Tribune.com

Back home, Hu Jintao orders halt to future Falun Gong disruptions

INSIDE CHINA — by Willy Lam*
Special to World Tribune.com
Friday, May 5, 2006

With more than two years to go before the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing’s labyrinthine security apparatus has already started intensive training and shizhan (literally, “live war games”) maneuvers. The all-important priority is to ensure that an assortment of “anti-state elements” can’t take advantage of the biggest show the PRC has ever hosted to embarrass the Hu Jintao administration.

Thousands of international journalists and TV crew are expected in the Chinese capital. And the worst nightmare for Hu and his Politburo colleagues, who want the games to affirm the PRC’s quasi-superpower status, would be for, say, pro-Tibet or pro-Taiwan independence banners to be unfurled — or anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) riots to break out — under the gaze of hundreds of millions of sports fans worldwide.

President Hu had words with Luo Gan upone his return. Luo, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, is seen shaking hands with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba.
Earlier this year, the Party leadership finalized the appointment of elite units — picked from departments including the police, state security, the People’s Armed Police as well as its anti-terrorist squads — specifically charged with safeguarding law and order in the run-up to and during the games.

The CCP Leading Group on Political and Legal Affairs (LGFA) has even issued instructions to the courts and prosecutor’s office (called the procuratorate in China) on the imperative of joining in the task of preventing “hostile forces both at home and abroad” from using the games to discredit the leadership. Foremost on Beijing’s black list are the Falun Gong quasi-Buddhist sect and separatists from Tibet and Xinjiang.

Sources close to the Chinese security apparatus said Hu, upon returning to China after touring the U.S. and four other nations, had given instructions to Politburo Standing Committee member Luo Gan to take tougher measures to minimize the “destabilizing gambits of anti-CCP elements” such as the Falun Gong.

During his welcome ceremony at the White House, Hu was heckled by a Falun Gong activist for almost three minutes. Luo, an East German-trained engineer who heads the LGFA, had won notoriety in international human rights circles for being the hatchet man for former premier Li Peng.

Last week, Luo called a national meeting of security and judicial officials on ways and means to promote what he called “law and order construction” so as to “create a harmonious and stable social environment.”


Willy Lam is a Hong Kong-based China scholar and journalist specializing in Communist Party politics and foreign policy.


Copyright © 2006 East West Services, Inc.

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