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Tuesday, July 3, 2001

Bicyclist on trek to protest Chinese treatment of Falun Gong

By DANIEL LATHROP | News-Journal Staff Writer

THE HAMMOCK — A Floridian is riding her bike up the eastern seaboard hoping to bring change on the other side of the planet.

For the next two weeks Elly Xu, an Orlando mail-order book dealer and native of Shengyang, China, is riding north to Washington, D.C. as part of a national protest against the People's Republic of China's repressive treatment of people who practice Falun Gong.

The Chinese government has denounced the spiritual practice as a dangerous cult, but it's members described what they do as a combination of meditation and physical exercises similar to Tai Chi. Xu's message is that Falun Gong, born in China during the early 1990s, is not something that should be viewed as a threat government authority. She appealed to the Chinese government in Beijing to let Falun Gong alone.

"We are not interested in any political issue," she said. "We are just interested in our inner self."

Xu, 41, moved to the United States about seven years ago to study English and has been here ever since. Monday morning she sat in her hotel room at Palm Coast Villas with her luggage, her notebook computer and a digital camera preparing for a ride to Jacksonville, where she expected to participate in another rally today.

She began her trip with a rally in Orlando in front of City Hall Sunday and rode with a handful of compatriots through Volusia County and into Flagler County.

She said she plans to meet up with other Falun Gong supporters during the 12 more days of riding and three more public events on her way to the July 19 protest march and rally in the nation's capitol.

At least 77 followers of Falun Gong have died suspiciously while in government custody or shortly between July of 1999 and last December, according to human rights group Amnesty International. Also according to Amnesty, Falun Gong practitioners are being sent to "reform centers" where they must renounce their beliefs in order to be freed.

Xu said the numbers have now reached 200 dead and more than 50,000 imprisoned.

Four years ago she was living in New York City, three years after coming to the U.S. from Japan, and working at a Chinese language school, one of a series of jobs she held there before moving to Florida.

She had stomach tumors and was drinking too much, she said. Then one night, she went to hear a lecture about a new spiritual teaching from her homeland.

She walked in curious and walked out convinced.

Now she is better body and mind, ready for the long bike ride and the July 19 rally with other supporters.

Their goal?

"To ask the Chinese government to stop killing these people," Xu said.

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