Posted on 10/24/2002 11:21:20 AM PDT by tallhappy
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Local & State
Oct. 23, 2002, 12:37PM
By DALE LEZON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
Two Galleria-area hotels have canceled reservations of Falun Gong practitioners in Houston to demonstrate against
Chinese President Jiang Zemin when he visits here this week.
"I don't understand what the problem is," said Lisa Nappi, a Falun Gong practitioner from Virginia. "This is America. This is a free
land."
Practitioners from around the world have come to Houston to peacefully protest what they consider Jiang's attempt to
eliminate their belief system. They say the Chinese government pressured the hotels to cancel their reservations because Jiang does
not like Falun Gong. The hoteliers said the Chinese government did not contact them.
Late Tuesday night, several hundred practitioners had a candlelight vigil outside the Inter-Continental Hotel, hoping to rent a
conference room there. Their contract to rent the room had been canceled earlier in the day.
"We think this is discrimination against Falun Gong practitioners," said John Nania, a practitioner visiting from Minneapolis,
Minn.
Tuesday, practitioners planned a meeting in the conference room, but late in the afternoon, hotel
staff said the practitioners did not show up on time. Jiang is scheduled to stay at the
hotel, in the 2200 block of West Loop South, beginning today.
Monday, practitioners said about 50 of their reservations were canceled at the Homestead Studio Suites next door to the
Inter-Continental. A Homestead spokeswoman said the hotel had overbooked the rooms and offered the practitioners accommodations at
the company's other Houston hotels.
Nappi said she paid $3,710 to use the conference room at Inter-Continental. She booked the room several weeks ago under the name of
her nonprofit group, FGM Public Media Inc., which she said produces programs about Falun Gong and traditional Chinese culture.
But late Tuesday, a hotel representative told her the reservation was canceled.
Inter-Continental spokeswoman Pamela Gilbert said Nappi's
group did not show up until about 3 p.m. but their contract required they begin at 6 a.m. The hotel returned the money to Nappi.
Gilbert said hotel management did not know that Nappi's company was connected to Falun Gong until some members asked to
be let into the conference room for their meeting Tuesday.
Gilbert also said that some practitioners asked hotel managers several weeks ago if they could protest on the property when Jiang
arrived.
Hotel staff did not want Falun Gong to use the room, saying the hotel "reserves the right" to protect its guests from disturbances,
Gilbert said.
"Since they had requested to protest earlier, we decided not to set up the (conference) room again," Gilbert said.
Monday, Falun Gong practitioners who had reserved rooms at the Homestead Studio Suites said hotel staff told them the
reservations were canceled because there were not enough rooms.
Homestead spokeswoman Karen Burk has said management at the company's Galleria hotel overbooked the rooms to make sure as many rooms
as possible were occupied if some people did not show up.
The Chinese government banned Falun Gong in July 1999, saying the belief system is a cult that uses mind control and manipulation
while openly challenging Chinese law. Practitioners have been arrested and jailed. Some claim they were tortured. Others said
practitioners have been killed.
The alleged treatment of Falun Gong members in China has gained the sympathy of the international community and some members
of the U.S. Congress.
Actually, I do believe early Christians could have been described this way - heck present day Christians are described that way -
I know nothing about them - what makes them worse than communists?
We are not given a spirit of fear.
More so, one should not bear false witness and posting a Xinhua article as truth or accurate on this subject is perpetrating a lie.
You lack of faith is getting the better of you my brother.
You are minsinformed about Falun Gong (who are kooky and strange in their beliefs, but no more so than Mormons).
All of you who are condeming Falun Gong and siding with the communists and discrimination in the name of Christianity -- for shame.
I posted some info in #50
You really are not right in your walk, brother.
I know all well about Falun Gong, their strange beliefs (and not so strange as far as non-Christian religions go) and I also know about the slanders perpetrated on them by their persecutors.
You are siding with torturers who are equally (more so actually) anti-Christ as Falun Gong.
"Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's sovereign territory, whose temporary separation from the mainland is a leftover of the Communist-Nationalist Civil War in the 1940s. Chinese people are determined to defend its territorial integrity by whatever means."
"Scholars angry with island leader:
Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian was accused Thursday of doing harm to the mainland by distorting Beijing's efforts to defend the nation's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
"Taiwan's "Beacon diplomacy" doomed:
Taiwan independence" advocates recently strengthened the "beacon diplomacy" - diplomatic offensive - in an attempt to scramble for more "diplomatic space.""
Follow the link for more of the same. I think this makes it pretty obvious that the "China Daily" is NOT an objective source of opinions about Falun Gong.
So we have the word of one man, reported via a newspaper which is obviously a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, whose only direct experience of Falun Gong was staying at the same hotel, reporting the words of an unnamed US clergyman. What a great source of information about Falun Gong.
Doesn't a good Capitalist honor his contracts?
"In the past four decades, Ding won social respect as well as reverence from Christian believers for his patriotism and fraternity."
So Mr Ding is praised for his "patriotism" on a website run by the Chinese Communist Party. That tells me all I need to know about the value of his opinion of Falun Gong.
If you'd rather have an nuclear tipped ICBM fleet in the hands of people that that says they can fly, have knowledge of a 2 billion-year nuclear reactor, can see through the celestial eyes in their foreheads and that demons and extraterrestrials are everywhere, you're free to donate.
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