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Religion News Report - March 19, 2001 (Vol. 5, Issue 337)
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=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Aum Doomsday Cult Shadows Japan
2. Key Members of the Aum Cult

=== Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God
3. Uganda Cult Mass Murder Anniversary
4. Up in smoke or into thin air? Uganda's killer cult leaders a year on

=== Ho-no-hana Sanpogyo
5. Taxman sinks boot into foot cult
6. Bureaus put foot down over Honohana taxes
7. Foot cult leader failed to declare 750 million yen in income

=== Falun Gong
8. Girl Set Ablaze in Tiananmen Dies
9. Exhibition Targeting Falun Gong Begins in Hong Kong
10. Falun Gong puts spotlight on HK civil servants
11. Analysis: US, China still clash on Falun Gong

=== Scientology
12. Threat of Scientologists' Legal Wrath Prompts Slashdot to Censor a Posting
13. Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot
14. Slashdot buckles to Scientology loonies
15. Xenu Do, But Not on Slashdot
16. Holy? Or wholly without grounds

=== Buddhism
17. 'Buddha's hair' found in China

=== Islam
18. 400 Afghan clerics decided to destroy statues: Minister
19. Taliban Ways Under Question

=== Catholicism
20. Italy threatens to silence Vatican [Radio]
21. Few confessions

=== Mormonism
22. SLOC and the LDS Church downplay the church's involvement in the Olympics
23. From SLOC Leadership to Liquor, Church Has Long Had a Powerful Olympic Voice
24. Special Treatment for the Church?
25. Non-LDS Religious Leaders Cite Minimal Input
26. Courting Controversy
27. Sex change worshipper sues the Mormons

=== Hate Groups
28. Bertollini sues Coeur d'Alene newspaper
29. Parade foes to put best foot forward
30. Report Links Putin to Anti-Semitism
31. Estee Lauder's latest tangle
32. What's in a Name?

=== False Memory Syndrome
33. Jury awards family millions

=== Faith Healing
34. Senate Panel Backs Faith-Healing Ban When Kids At Risk
35. Mandatory medical aid for sick kids gets committee OK

=== Other News
36. Atheist leader's remains found on Texas ranch
37. China Extends Cult Crackdown to Protestants, Says Rights Group
38. Sect Not Allowed to Build Cult Hall [Universal Church of the Kingdom of God]
39. Man Shot Dead As Bulletproof Magic Fails
40. Moscow police make arrest in multiple murder
41. Poles rethink anti-sect moves after minority church complaints
42. Appeals court says Ohio motto is acceptable

=== Faith-Based & Community Initiatives
43. Conservatives call for ouster of director of faith-based charities


=== Falun Gong

8. Girl Set Ablaze in Tiananmen Dies
AP, Mar. 18, 2001
http://news.excite.com/

BEIJING (AP) - A 12-year-old girl who set herself on fire in Tiananmen Square in a purported protest against China's crackdown on the Falun Gong meditation sect has died in a Beijing hospital, government-run television said Sunday.

Liu Siying died Saturday night of sudden heart troubles at Jishuitan Hospital, where she had been receiving treatment since she and four others set themselves ablaze on Jan. 23, Chinese Central Television said.

One of the four, Liu's mother, died that day on the square. The three others are still in the hospital's burn unit.

The Chinese government has said the five were members of the Falun Gong spiritual group, which it banned 19 months ago as a threat to social order and communist rule.

Falun Gong has denied that the five were members, saying its teachings do not condone suicide.
[...more...]


9. Exhibition Targeting Falun Gong Begins in Hong Kong
Reuters, Mar. 17, 2001
http://www.insidechina.com/

HONG KONG, Mar 17, 2001 -- (Reuters) A three-day exhibition aimed against the Falun Gong spiritual movement kicked off on Saturday in Hong Kong, where the movement is legal, though outlawed in mainland China.

The display of more than 200 pictures and photographs organized by pro-Beijing groups in the former British colony classed Falun Gong with some of the world's deadliest cults, such as Japan's doomsday Aum Shinri Kyo.

''We hope Hong Kong citizens, through this exhibition, can increase their understanding of cults...This can help maintain Hong Kong's stability,'' Jiang Enzhu, head of China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong, told reporters at the exhibition.
(...)

Hui Yee-han, spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Association of Falun Dafa, said on Friday it regretted that Beijing was vilifying the movement with such an exhibition in the territory.

''They have distorted our aims and practices. It's a lie. The materials are fake,'' Hui said, adding that she would probably visit the exhibition.
[...more...]


10. Falun Gong puts spotlight on HK civil servants
Financial Times (England), Mar. 15, 2001
http://news.ft.com/

Chinese President Jiang Zemin last week put an end to a debate about the Falun Gong spiritual movement that had obsessed Hong Kong for weeks and had lent urgency to a wider debate about the territory's independence.

After a conversation with Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, the Chinese president said that the local government was the appropriate authority to deal with the Falun Gong in the city, where the group is legal in spite of being banned in China.

His statement is seen as another reminder that Beijing respects the autonomy that was promised the territory when it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Mr Tung's good relationship with the Communist leadership is being lauded. All is well with Hong Kong's world again.

Well, almost all. Hong Kong's secretary for security, Regina Ip, has been in the middle of a schizophrenic attempt to rein in local members of the Falun Gong, while not abusing the civil liberties the former British colony enjoys. Mrs Ip has emerged from the saga with her reputation badly tarnished. ''She is the most irresponsible government official in town,'' says Law Yuk-kai, head of Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor.

The reviews of Mrs Ip's high-wire act have been almost uniformly damning. A leading Catholic weekly recently featured an editorial denouncing her war of words against the Falun Gong while local pro-democracy activists burned an effigy of her.

The storm surrounding Mrs Ip raises large questions about the role of Hong Kong's civil service as it grapples with the challenge of administering an increasingly politicised city that has become more demanding than it ever was of its colonial masters.

Far from being faceless bureaucrats like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, civil servants in Hong Kong are frequently being thrust into the spotlight or - like Mrs Ip - seizing it. ''She is playing a political role without having the political antenna to do it,'' says Michael DeGolyer, a professor of political science at Baptist University. Hong Kong's unruly press and its peevish politicians, meanwhile, demand that civil servants be held more accountable. This is in itself a challenge because the head of the government, Mr Tung, is not elected on the basis of universal suffrage, but is appointed by Beijing.

The result is the contradictory picture of a sometimes politically awkward government presiding over a city that runs like clockwork.
(...)

Another showdown may be in the offing. In May, President Jiang will visit Hong Kong for a business forum. There has been speculation that the spiritual group will protest against President Jiang. Demonstrations by pro-democracy activists against the Chinese leadership during the handover celebrations in 1997 were drowned out by loudspeakers playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Mrs Ip's critics worry there remains a risk she may not come up with a solution as ingenious. (Pressed to explain why she had said the government was keeping a close watch on the Falun Gong, Mrs Ip invited derision recently when she explained that the government had received complaints about the group aggressively handing out pamphlets and sending out unsolicited emails.)

''The Falun Gong doesn't have a lot of good sense either,'' says Mr DeGolyer. ''This is matches and gasoline coming too close together.''
[...more...]


11. Analysis: US, China still clash on Falun Gong
UPI, Mar. 15, 2001
http://www.vny.com/

WASHINGTON, March 15 (UPI) -- Chinese diplomats seeking to explain their government's reasons for cracking down on the Falun Gong religious movement have so far received humiliating rejection from the new Bush administration in Washington.

And this state of affairs looks likely to continue, further exacerbating tensions between the two giant powers.

Chinese officials have sought to defuse U.S. official criticism of their continued determination to crack down on the Falun Gong -- emphasized in last week's annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's main
governing body. But China has made no progress to defuse criticism.

According to administration sources, on one occasion earlier this month,
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice listened in virtual silence for 20
minutes as Chinese officials explained their reasons for maintaining their
crackdown on the group, which they argue is a destabilizing and subversive
sect. She then frostily dismissed them from her office saying she had no
more time to hear them, the sources said.

The Chinese did not expect this kind of reaction from the new Bush
administration. When the Republican administration took office on Jan. 20,
they expected it would return to the sympathetic, pro-China policies of
President Bush's father, former President George Bush the elder, between
1989 and 1993.

In a bid to return to the atmosphere of those times, Chinese officials
have even been cultivating the former president, administration sources have
told United Press International. Their thinking is that the father will
continue to have a profound influence on the son, especially in areas of
foreign policy that were his specialty.

But this maneuver instead reveals the degree to which the Chinese do not
understand the dynamics of decision-making in the new administration, or the
degree to which Bush and key figures on his team differ markedly in their
views on China from the team around Bush, Sr. a decade ago. And for their
part, the Americans fail to understand the real worries the Chinese
government has over the Falun Gong, based on the insecurities and traumas of
the past century and a half of Chinese history.
[...more...]
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