By RICK CLEMENSON, Staff writer

First published: Thursday, June 21, 2007

GLOVERSVILLE -- Some of the happiest times in Leejun Taylor's life have been stretching and meditating at her Mayfield lake house. The practice of Falun Gong, she says, has helped relieve her arthritis and tap into her spirituality.

It also may have led to the disappearance of her 73-year-old mother who returned home to Beijing in March because she had become homesick after nine months in America.

Xiuian Li hadn't been heard from since May 14, days after a cryptic phone call with her 44-year-old daughter, who lives in Gloversville. Taylor received a call from her mother on June 12. She sounded shaken, but otherwise in good health.

During their brief conversation, Taylor said, her mother was unable -- or unwilling -- to divulge what happened when she was detained.

Taylor planned to call a relative in China in hopes of getting more information -- and to plead for her to move permanently to the United States.

"I hope she will think about leaving now, but there is such a huge cultural divide between China and America. Everything is so fast-paced here," Taylor said.

She is certain China's secret police apprehended her mother because she is a practitioner of Falun Gong. She said the communist government began its crackdown in 1999 out of fear that Falun Gong had become too popular among the public.

Now the government wants to eradicate it before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but millions continue to practice in secret, Taylor said.

An estimated 75 million people around the world practice Falun Gong, which was created by Li Hongzhi in 1992. In the mid-1990s, thousands flocked to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to stretch and meditate.

Yu Chen, who practices Saturday at the University at Albany with Taylor and a small group, said the persecution is just the latest in a series of government abuses throughout China's recent history.

"The government targeted specific groups like laborers and businesses in the 1950s and 1960s and let the rest of the people watch," Chen said. "Fear is instilled in people's minds and they think it's wise to be quiet."

International outrage is growing over the Chinese government's alleged abuses. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 420-0 to condemn the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Former Canadian Cabinet member David Kilgour and lawyer David Matas documented the alleged atrocities in their report "Bloody Harvest," which was released in January. They said the country's secret police whisk away people they suspect of practicing Falun Gong to labor camps or to harvest their body parts for a burgeoning organ donor business.

Westerners, who often wait years to obtain a healthy organ that matches their blood type, are increasingly turning to Chinese donors to give them one in less than a month in some cases, according to Taylor.

Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, say the donors are often Falun Gong practitioners -- particularly healthy young males -- who have been hauled off by the country's secret police.

Taylor, who immigrated to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1990 after the Tiananmen Square massacre and became a U.S. citizen in 1995, was arrested during a visit to her homeland in 2004. Secret police cars surrounded her vehicle while she was driving to her birthday party near Beijing. She said she was taken to a hotel where police tried to make her sign an agreement to spy on Falun Gong practitioners and disavow their practices. She refused and was let go 10 hours later, mostly, she believes, because she is an American citizen.

Pointing to a Falun Gong pamphlet that shows a meditating woman and the words "truthfulness, compassion, forbearance," she says, "this is important to stand up for."

Taylor's mother was aware of the dangers she faced when she returned home in March. Taylor repeatedly tried to talk her mother out of leaving when the two drove to New York City for Li's flight.

"She didn't expect anything to happen," Taylor said. "I didn't see any fear in her."

Clemenson can be reached at 454-5030 or by e-mail at [email protected].

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