Practitioners of Falun Dafa, a meditation sect with followers around the world that has been the target of a crackdown by the Chinese government, have obtained statements of support from several Princeton-area government officials.
Phyllis Marchand, the mayor of Princeton Township, proclaimed a "Falun Dafa Week" in 2000, and the Township Council in nearby West Windsor passed a resolution backing the group's freedom to practice its program of meditation and exercises in 2001.
Local followers of the group organize classes in the Princeton Public Library and morning exercises next to the Princeton Shopping Center.
Princeton's legislative leaders, including the Township Committee and the Borough Council, have declined to pass resolutions in support of the group, which the Chinese government describes as a cult.
Steve Frakt, a Township committeeman, said he did not think it would be appropriate for local officials to take a stance on the group.
Local officials around the country have reported receiving letters from Chinese officials urging them not to recognize the group, but no one in Princeton reported receiving such letters.
Also known as Falun Gong, the group was founded in China in 1992. Chinese officials tolerated it until 1999, when the government changed its stance and labeled the group "an evil cult."
Falun Dafa came to international attention after some of its followers staged a demonstration in Tiananmen Square in January 2001. During the demonstration, which involved several hundred members, seven individuals set themselves on fire.
Practitioners say these seven were outsiders whom the Chinese government sent into the protest to tarnish the sect's reputation for non-violence.
The group's founder now lives in Brooklyn, and many practitioners live in the United States. According to its literature, the group is not a religion, but rather a "cultivation practice." Its members claim to harness energy from extraterrestrials in pursuit of their goals of truthfulness, benevolence and tolerance.
"Falun Dafa has been banned by the Chinese government," said Tang Yin Long, a spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York. Saying the group is not "against human beings, and a potential threat to the social order," Tang said, "We just persuade local [American] officials not to take any measures or find any ways to let those cult believers spread their viscous belief."
Throughout the conflict between the group and the Chinese government, Western observers have been hard pressed to evaluate competing claims from the two sides.
"I have always refused to consider, or abstained if it actually came to a vote, various resolutions on topics that were unrelated directly to running the Township of Princeton," Frakt said. "We're not the Congress, and we're not the United Nations, and we don't have the resources to vet the arguments pro and con."
Borough Mayor Marvin Reed also said the matter was something a national political body would decide.
"The issues that they were presenting were not a matter of local concern," he said.
Wei Zhu, an area resident and Falun Dafa practitioner, said some practitioners in New Jersey have been denied visas to visit China or have had relatives in China tortured because they practice Falun Dafa.
The group's website catalogues 83 proclamations, resolutions and letters of support issued by New Jersey officials. The state effort is part of a nationwide campaign to pressure the Chinese government to end their crackdown.
Wei said the group is not a cult, but that Chinese officials have termed it one out of fear that it will destabilize the government. The group at one point had more members than the Chinese Communist Party, he said.
"So far, even though practitioners have been tortured to death, we have never heard about any violence against the police or government [by group members]," he said. "What Falun practitioners are doing in China is just to tell the government that Falun Dafa is good.
"We respect their decision," Wei said of the Borough Council's refusal to endorse the group. "But we expect to get more support from them in the future."
Wei said though there have been practitioners on campus at Princeton in years past, there are none presently.
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