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Meditating on Politics
By Alejandro Kirk
Want a break from the tedium of straightening square brackets? Then you may want to check out the attraction of Room 18 on 9-11 rue de Varbene, right in front of the Geneva Conference Centre. Meditation in the morning .
Meditation at lunch time. Meditation in the afternoons .
Two groups share the small room: the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University at lunch time, and the Chinese Falun Gong sect the rest of the day .
There is a big difference between the two, admits a rather embarrassed Bruno Romazzotti, the Geneva 2000 Forum coordinator, Both groups claim to practice meditation and exercises conducive to relaxation and to a greater personal and social improvement but one group throws in a little politics. .
Between 12:00 and 13:30, the Brahma Kumaris members teach people ‘’an easy method for relaxing the mind and focusing the thoughts in just one half hour .
Even a video of the Earth as seen from outer space has been presented, to make people reflect on ‘’the true meaning of social development,’’ probably hoping that people would feel closer to each other when confronted with the infinite .
Other Braham Kumaris activities include a series of panel discussions on issues of body and mind and their relationship with social development, women of spirit, generational transmission of values, UNESCO’s Manifesto 2000 campaign, poverty, marginalisation and destitution and eco-technology .
The Falun Gong sign outside the Forum invites people to spend the day meditating, but inside, the scene is rather one of a lobbying campaign. Huge placards expose scenes of torture and reports of human rights violations in China and a table full of newsletters and pamphlets mixes the objectives of achieving healthy minds and bodies with denunciations of the Chinese government’s repression .
No wonder. The sect was banned last year for disseminating ideas and attitudes considered by the Chinese government as subversive. The Western press and international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch immediately assailed the ban and the repression that followed .
Some 200 Falun Gong members, most of them Chinese, are participating in the campaign here in Geneva, says Zhang Jianping, a computer engineer in Paris and one of the group’s organisers. He claims that the groups funding comes from their own members and that there is no political objectives in their presence here, other than spiritual and physical improvement .
But Romazzotti sees it as more complex than that, given the active campaign displayed by the group’s members in the Forum .
They are everywhere, distributing thousands of pamphlets, some carrying their children, and talking to whoever wants to hear their message, and that seems not to be part of the spirit by which the Geneva 2000 organisers lent them prime office space .
‘’There is the issue of the Forum’s image,’’ says Romazzotti. ‘’We do not want and cannot be seen as censoring anyone. They said they teach human improvement through meditation and that’s why we agreed to host them.’’ ‘’But this issue has become very difficult,’’ he adds. Zhang told Terra Viva that ‘’one of the goals in Geneva is to present the truth’’ about the movement, which claims to have more than 100 million followers around the world .
The Chinese mission has let the Forum organisers and the United Nations know that they are not particularly happy about the Falun Gong’s visible presence in Geneva, although no formal or direct complaint has been presented. It is not in the Chinese mission’s habit to fight opponents through public campaigns and press releases, anyway .
While the Brahma Kumaris group started alone the meditation sessions at the Forum on Sunday, the Falun Gong followers staged a massive demonstration at the Place des Nations on Monday, undeterred by a burning sun. Most of them now show the results of the journey on their tanned, smiling faces .
But the Brahma Kumaris’ meditation sessions have been ever since overshadowed by the Falun Gong’s overwhelming campaign.
Read TerraViva
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