Monday, Jan. 31

MIRO CERNETIG
China Bureau
Monday, January 31, 2000

Beijing -- Canada has a new weapon in its battle against illegal boat people: He's Communist Party member Sima Nan, who as China's No. 1 cult-buster is helping the Chinese regime combat the mysterious falun gong sect.

Boat people arriving on Canada's West Coast from China increasingly are claiming to be members of falun gong in an effort to win entry to Canada as refugees. Unsure how to disprove those claims, immigration officials are turning to Mr. Sima, who has been dispatched by the Chinese government to give lectures against the group around the country.

"Canada has asked me to help tell the difference between the real and not-real falun gong members who are coming to your country," said Mr. Sima, who met recently with Canadian officials in Beijing.

"This is a problem I know how to help you Canadians fix. Your government wants my help."

Dressed in a sleek black suit, with a no-nonsense brush cut, Mr. Sima is China's self-declared "hero of atheism" and a willing player in Beijing's war against falun gong and other sects.

His pedagogical techniques involve bending spoons, eating glass and mind-reading.

Those are tricks that cult leaders in China's countryside often use to dupe peasants and workers, but he demonstrates they are easily learned parlour tricks, not real magic.

The Canadian government, however, hopes to use Mr. Sima's talents in a different way: to help understand the falun gong movement and then to weed out refugee claimants who are faking their falun gong credentials.
Falun gong combines traditional Chinese breathing exercises with faith healing and Buddhist and Taoist beliefs.

Canada's quiet discussions with Mr. Sima are certainly an unorthodox approach to the problem of illegal immigration.

Officially, Ottawa criticizes Beijing for its crackdown on falun gong members, thouands of whom have been arrested or jailed. Now, it is asking one of the Chinese regime's major critics of the sect for advice on how to determine who is a political refugee.

Smuggling operations, chiefly from the province of Fujian, have brought waves of clandestine immigrants to Canada's West Coast. The smugglers, known as snakeheads, have begun instructing their clients to tell immigration officials they are members of falun gong to buttress refugee claims.

So far, only one of the people landed in B.C. last summer has successfully claimed refugee status on the basis of falun gong membership. He convinced a refugee board panel that he legitimately feared persecution in China because of his belief.

Canadian immigration authorities announced last week they were withdrawing their appeal of the decision Dec. 17 granting refugee status to a 38-year-old migrant on the last of four human cargo ships to land off the West Coast.

Mr. Sima himself acknowledges that, even after his meetings with Canadian Embassy officials, he is having trouble determining where his loyalties lie.

Canada's own members of falun gong, which is a legal and active movement on Canadian soil, are likely to wonder about the propriety of enlisting Mr. Sima.

Although he says most members are innocents, he says the leaders of falun gong are evil. He expresses anger about the sect's opposition to homosexuality, saying his own view, which matches the Communist Party's, is that homosexuals are ill and in need of medical care.

Precisely how Mr. Sima proposes to help the Canadian government identify false falun gong members among refugee claimants is unclear. He refused to give details of his meetings with embassy officials.

The Canadian Embassy prefers not to say much.

"Mr. Sima is one of many sources of information about falun gong, which the embassy has used to have a better understanding of this movement," an embassy official said. "Mr. Sima is a good source of insight into the workings of not only this movement, but the government attitude toward them."

The Communist regime's view of falun gong isn't hard to figure out. China's security forces are now in a full crackdown, chalking up thousands of arrests and doling out heavy jail sentences to its leaders.

Last week, more than a dozen members were detained for trying to unfurl a picture of the movement's founder in Tiananmen Square. Chinese officials have acknowledged destroying more than 10 million books and other publications of falun gong in the last year.

Stardom in China arrived last spring for Mr. Sima, who grew up poor and dabbled in the traditional Chinese breathing exercises known as qi gong. In April, more than 10,000 falun gong supporters gathered outside Zhong Nanhai, the Beijing home of China's leadership.

It was an unprecedented march, even if the mostly poor and lower middle-class falun gong members simply stared quietly at the red-walled leadership compound. The unexpected display of peaceful civil disobedience rattled the Communist regime.

Within months, falun gong was declared a criminal cult. And overnight, Mr. Sima, who had been investigating falun gong in obscurity, was viewed by Beijing as a useful propaganda tool to publicize the view that falun gong was counter-revolutionary. He quickly became a fixture in China's state-controlled newspapers and TV stations.

Canada then approached Mr. Sima, who is 43, for his in-depth knowledge of falun gong, government officials say.

Canadian law provides asylum if refugee claimants can make a reasonable case they face religious or political discrimination in their homeland, which active falun gong members certainly do in China.

The question officials face is simple: Who is telling the truth?

It's not a new problem. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, many Chinese arriving illegally told Canada's refugee boards they were involved in the democracy movement. Others have claimed to be endangered by China's one-child policy, saying they could be sterilized or punished for having a second child.