Transcript
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: You see them in parks in most big cities - people exercising and meditating to the teachings of Falun Gong. Practitioners say it heals body and mind. Well, you've probably heard of Falun Gong as a persecuted spiritual movement. And it really is, the Chinese Communist Party has done terrible things to it. But you probably haven't heard that Falun Gong has also become one of the most determined backers of Donald Trump. In recent years it's morphed from being a fringe quasi-religion to being a big player in America's conservative media establishment. So what is going on at Falun Gong? In this joint investigation with ABC Radio's Background Briefing, we're taking you around the world to find out.
Karishma Vyas: "We just want to ask you if Master Li is here?"
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: In New York state we'll visit the base of its reclusive leader, Master Li, a former government clerk who believes aliens walk the Earth.
BEN HURLEY: They see him as a god, they see him as the creator of the universe.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: We'll hear from a former follower who blames him for ruining her life.
ANNA: It tore my family apart.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: In Sydney, we'll meet a woman who believes Falun Gong's aversion to modern medicine caused her mother's death.
SHANI MAY: If they get them in long enough, they're gone. I didn't realise how far down the rabbit hole Mum was.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: And we'll investigate how media outlets set up by Falun Gong practitioners have spent millions to bolster Donald Trump.
Epoch Times advertisement: "Over the last two and half years we've been reporting on the Trump administration honestly and without any false narratives."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Two hours' drive from New York City, ringed by the forests of the Shawangunk Mountains, is the headquarters of Falun Gong.
ANNA: You have to go a little bit off road, up this gravelly path that's very steep, and then you get to this beautiful lake area with hills around and these Tang Dynasty temples.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: One former follower, who wants to be known only as 'Anna', started coming here as a child after her parents joined the movement.
ANNA: It wasn't like being in place of spiritual bliss for me. It was more like being in a place of judgement, because part of the practice is Master Li can read everyone's mind at all times. I grew up with this notion that my thoughts were always being monitored.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: With a Chinese mother and a European father, she soon learned she was different from the other children.
ANNA: The leader of Falun Gong claims that race mixing in humans is part of an alien plot to drive humanity further from the gods. My mother read that part of the texts to me when I was about 11, which was a lot to take in. To hear that coming from not only the religion or practice that you're believing in, but from your own mother, it was very damaging.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, started in China in 1992. It was based on traditional meditation and breathing exercises called Qigong. But its founder, Li Hongzhi, added a supernatural layer. It would prepare people to return home to heavenly kingdoms where they had once dwelled. It would even teach practitioners to levitate.
LI HONGZHI: When your practice improves, you can levitate. A lot of our practitioners have. But most of the time, we stop them from doing it. If they did, it would disrupt peoples' lives.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: By the end of the 1990s, he had tens of millions of followers in China. The communist leadership saw that as a threat to its own grip on power and banned the movement. I began covering Falun Gong almost 20 years ago, when I was the ABC's China Correspondent. In my first week, I was among a handful of journalists taken to a re-education camp for Falun Gong members. Tens of thousands of practitioners had been locked up indefinitely to force them to renounce the movement.
CAMP COMMANDANT: Once they are freed from Li Hongzhi's mental control, they take on a new appearance and face life with a positive attitude. They are grateful to the government.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: The Chinese Communist Party had branded Falun Gong an evil cult, but it was behaving like a cult itself, demanding robotic obedience.
Women: "Falun Gong is a cult"… "Falun Gong is a cult"… "Falun Gong is a cult".
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Li Hongzhi had moved to the United States five years earlier and was building Falun Gong into an international movement.
LI HONGZHI: I only teach people to be good, to be free of disease and do exercises, to reach higher moral standards. I make people's hearts better.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Master Li set up a retreat in Deerpark, a ring of rural hamlets in New York State. Grace Woodard's family has lived in the area for generations. She says locals at first welcomed the new arrivals.
GRACE WOODARD: They had a public presentation with a diorama of the temples, and rather beautifully done, of what was going to be built at Dragon Springs. People thought, this is interesting.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: For two decades, the Falun Gong complex has been steadily expanding, even building a school and a dance and music college.
GRACE WOODARD: This is all theirs off to the right.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Outside the complex, practitioners have been buying up houses and land.
GRACE WOODARD: And this whole area they wanted to put their shopping mall in. All along here.
Grace: "Hey Frank!"
Frank: "Hey Grace, how are you."
Grace: "Pretty good."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Grace and her friend Frank Ketcham are in a residents' action group called Deerpark Rural Alliance, set up in opposition to Dragon Springs' expansion. They regularly trek through the State forest to try to work out what's going on in the compound.
Frank: "It's going to be quite a hike for you Grace."
Grace: "It would be great if I'd had both my hips done but I haven't."
Frank: "If the bear comes, all I got to do is run faster than you."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: As they near the lookout, they pass a surveillance camera.
Grace: "Is it a camera?"
Frank: "Yeah."
Grace: "Well hello, the local communists are here."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Frank's property overlooks Dragon Springs and he's been documenting the building works.
FRANK KETCHAM: It just got out of control when they started building the schools.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Their Alliance has accused Falun Gong of violating environmental and building codes.
FRANK KETCHAM: An eight-storey building that was never approved and doesn't have fire protection.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Falun Gong in turn has sued the local authority.
FRANK KETCHAM: You know, their concern is all the time that all they're doing is trying to save people in China from being persecuted – no matter what they do here is all for the people in China that are being persecuted. And I don't see that as a reason to ignore local building codes, local laws and environmental laws, that are made to protect the people in those buildings and protect the environment.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: One of their concerns is that Dragon Springs won´t let them inside to see what they're building.
GRACE WOODARD: There's no transparency. They're doing their own thing. It's like the Forbidden City, only certain people can go in.
KARISHMA VYAS: It looks like this is the entrance right here.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: We sent our New York producer Karishma Vyas to visit the Dragon Springs compound.
Karishma: "Hello, good morning sir. We just want to ask you if Master Li is here. We are looking for an interview with Master Li. Is he available?"
Guard: "Master Li doesn't live here."
Karishma: "Okay. He doesn't live here. Is the spokesperson, Mr Jonathan Lee, available?
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Jonathan Lee is the Vice President of Dragon Springs.
Guard: "Let me make a call."
Karishma: "Okay, thank you."
KARISHMA VYAS: Looks like the security guards really don't know what to do with us.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: As they waited, security called the local police.
Karishma: "There's a police car… Hi. Good morning. I didn't realise you'd been called for us but am happy to explain what we're doing."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Jonathan Lee agreed to be interviewed in a nearby town at a store owned by a practitioner.
Karishma: "Shall I go in?"
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: He says the high security is to stop the Chinese embassy infiltrating.
JONATHAN LEE: We have seen embassy cars that's roaming around in the early days when we started. We see embassy cars. We block them and then called the police. But now they are smarter. They are always having people in and out.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: He says Dragon Springs follows all planning and environmental rules and provides a haven for refugees from China.
JONATHAN LEE: It's all ordinary people who practice Falun Gong, they want to have a sanctuary, especially people who was persecuted, and the kids - their parents has died.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Anna is now 25. For her, Dragon Springs was never a sanctuary. Looking back, she says her mother became more distant the more time she spent with Falun Gong.
ANNA: Part of the whole premise of the practice is getting rid of your human attachments in order to attain salvation. I think a lot of parents in the practice sort of conflate human attachment with just a basic parental love.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Her mother´s dream was for Anna to become a Shen Yun dancer. This is a professional troupe based in the compound and promoted heavily on Falun Gong´s social media.
Shen Yun promotional video: "This season take an incredible journey through 5,000 years of culture, with Shen Yun…"
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Before COVID, it toured the world constantly, raising the movement's global profile.
ANNA: She thought that it would, it was the highest honour and that it would guarantee me getting into heaven essentially. But I was not a very good dancer. I wasn't every interested in dancing to begin with. There was one day where the ballet teacher came up to me and she placed me in front of the mirror. She lifted up my shirt, grabbed my stomach, shook it, and then turned to the other kids in the class - there were several of them - and said, "Do you see this, everyone, this is an example of how a woman should not look."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: At the age of 13, she was hospitalised with severe anorexia. She says her mother rejected the hospital's treatment plan.
ANNA: They wanted to include medication. And she refused, because Falun Gong has a principle where you're absolutely not allowed to have any kind of medical treatment. It means you're a bad practitioner. It means you do not fully trust Master Li.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Anna remembers the last time she went to Dragon Springs. She says her mother brought her to Master Li to exorcise her demons.
ANNA: So it was very hot, very humid. And I remember waiting in that room and they said, okay, Master is coming. He looked right into my eyes and just started waving his hands around my head and chanting something. And then, I remember looking into his eyes and thinking you are just another regular pathetic man. On the way back, driving south, my mother said to me 'Now you're all better. You're normal now. Now I love you.' I looked out the window the whole time and I just - it was like seeing everything about the practice just crumble before my eyes. I could not believe it anymore.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Sixteen thousand kilometres away, in Sydney Australia, another family feels torn apart by Falun Gong. Shani May watched her mother Colleen drift away from them after joining the movement. She had to pressure Colleen to visit her grandson Ellery in hospital after he developed a tumour.
SHANI MAY: I always thought of grandmas as being at hospital and being there for you all the time. And the old Mum would have been there straightaway. So she arrived. He was in bed, he wasn't really well. She stayed for an hour, although the whole hour, she kept looking at her watch and I kept saying stop looking at your watch and just be here with us. But her mind was somewhere else.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Shani's father was the famous jazz singer Ricky May. They had grown up a tight knit family. Colleen was a glamorous dancer. They travelled the world together until Ricky died of heart attack in 1988. Years later, Colleen found solace in Falun Gong.
SHANI MAY: She saw them in the park that she passed one day and she came home and she said I've met these lovely people in the park, and they do meditation once a week and I'm going to go down and do that with them.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: What seemed to be harmless soon took over her life as she became obsessed with studying Master Li's teachings and organising protests against the Chinese government.
SHANI MAY: As time grew on, there was something to do every day of the week. And then it was a couple of nights a week, then it was weekends. So it really took over.
"It's amazing – she put everything in diaries."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Shani's frustration turned to despair when Colleen fell ill but refused to see doctors or take medicine.
SHANI MAY: I tell her, you're not well you have to go see a doctor and she kind of brushes it off as I've just got a sore throat. Yet she knew she wasn't well – 'Body aching, coughing, throat sore.'
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Colleen wrote in her diaries that she would cleanse and meditate.
SHANI MAY: She'd literally just drink water. 'First day up, for a while since Sunday. Four days in bed. Have had a huge cleanse.' She was put on medication for high blood pressure and when she joined Falun Gong slowly she started not taking medication. As in, if she had a headache she wouldn't take Panadol, she'd go do exercises, if she had a sore leg or a sore back then she'd lie down. And because of that, then she decided that she didn't need the blood pressure tablets.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Jonathan Lee denies Falun Gong tells people to avoid hospitals or to stop taking medicine.
JONATHAN LEE: I haven't been to a doctor for 10 years. My health has changed quite a bit. If I have a fall or something, maybe I'll go to the hospital. It's nothing preventing me from going to a hospital, but in the meantime because of Falun Gong, I don't need to go to a hospital.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: He insists Falun Gong is a force for good, devoted to the three principles of truth, compassion and forbearance.
JONATHAN LEE: Don't tell lies. Always tell the truth. Whatever you perceive to be truth, Shan is compassionate. You treat people compassionately, you treat people nicely, because Falun Gong believe that reincarnation, there is always somebody watching you, so compassionately treating this world.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: In Taiwan, we hear a different story. Ben Hurley was a Falun Gong practitioner for 12 years. He's now left the movement and works there as a freelance business journalist. He says he was attracted to Falun Gong during a difficult period in his youth. Contrary to Jonathan Lee, he claims Falun Gong does discourage people from taking medicine.
BEN HURLEY: In Falun Gong the teachings are, you don't acknowledge illnesses. There's plausible deniability because Li has a range of teachings in their way that says if you're sick go to the hospital but then there are always parts of a disclaimer sort of a way, and the thrust of the teaching is that Master Li can cure all of your illnesses and you just have to believe in him.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: So people are dying because of Master Li?
BEN HURLEY: Absolutely. They are dying because of the teachings of Master Li, they are dying because of his dangerous teachings and because of their belief, their belief to the point of being willing to die for those teachings.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Ben Hurley knew Colleen May as a fellow practitioner in Sydney. He witnessed people telling her not to get medical treatment.
BEN HURLEY: It definitely was a group of people just encouraging her just to strengthen her belief and she'd be able to get through this.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Three years ago, at the age of 75, Colleen died from strokes and seizures caused by high blood pressure.
SHANI MAY: If it wasn't for Falun Gong, she'd still be with us. It would have taken two tablets a day and she'd still be with us, 'til, I believe in her 90s, easily. She was healthy. I would always joke to people saying that Mum's going to outlive me.
Lucy: "21 years ago, July 20th, 1999, Chinese Communist Party start the persecution of Falun Gong in China…"
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Lucy Zhao is president of the Falun Dafa Association of Australia. I asked her if she felt any responsibility for Colleen May's death.
LUCY ZHAO: Colleen actually is a good friend of mine. I feel very sad for her family. Her health improved after she practiced Falun Gong. So whether she actually continued to take medication or not is her personal choice. Personally, I didn't tell her or pressure her not to take medicine.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Some people did. According to people we've spoken to, they said do not take medicine, put your trust in Master Li and the teachings.
LUCY ZHAO: That's probably the personal interpretation of those practitioners close to her. But personally I didn't.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Falun Gong is no longer just a spiritual movement. Manhattan is the headquarters of a growing media empire aligned to Falun Gong. Called Epoch Media Group, it runs the conservative newspaper chain, the Epoch Times which has now expanded into a popular online news channel.
Epoch Times Interviewer: “So we are here at Trump Tower in New York City with Lara Trump."
Lara Trump: "Yes. Hello."
Epoch Times Interviewer: “Wonderful to have you on American Thought Leaders."
Lara Trump: “Thank you, I am excited to be here."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Jonathan Lee says many practitioners support Trump's hard-line stance on China.
JONATHAN LEE: Because Trump is very hard on China in terms of Falun Gong persecution. They think Trump is a hope for us to eventually be able to survive in China.
BEN HURLEY: This is a matter of cosmic importance for them that I think Trump gets re-elected.
Epoch News newsreader: "Thanks for tuning into the Epoch News folks. I'm Angela Anderson."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: That support is reflected in The Epoch Times' coverage of the Trump presidency.
Epoch News newsreader: "The economy is growing at a rate deemed impossible under the Obama administration."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: The Epoch Times insists it is neither owned nor operated by Falun Gong. But Ben Hurley, who worked on the Australian edition, believes they're one and the same.
BEN HURLEY: It's a bald-faced lie. It is a Falun Gong newspaper. Everyone that works there is a Falun Gong practitioner, they have a few people, a few token non-Falun Gong practitioners they get in, that they point to every time, but those people are outside the fortress. They're not a part of the organisation.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: He thinks Master Li has directed the group's media to go all out for Trump.
BEN HURLEY: Seeing Trump's aggressive stance with China and his openness to socially conservative beliefs which Li shares, he has just decided to push the button and get the whole movement on board with Trump.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Much of that support has been given on social media.
Epoch Times ad: "What we know they did was use false information to frame it as Trump colluding with Russia…"
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: The Epoch Times spent close to two million dollars on a Facebook advertising campaign that praised Trump and demonised his enemies.
Epoch Times ad: "…details how the Obama administration conspired against Donald Trump in the 2016 race..."
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: But it wasn't always clear who was behind the ads with many pushed through made up groups like Pure American Journalism or Honest Paper.
Honest Paper ad: "Now that we know Trump didn't collude with Russia, now that that's been conclusively determined…"
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: In August last year, Facebook banned the Epoch Times from purchasing any further advertising. In Los Angeles, Alex Kasprak has been investigating the campaign for the fact-checking website Snopes.
ALEX KASPRAK: Essentially, they were creating a number of Facebook groups or pages that didn't disclose they were part of the Epoch Times publishing group, but still promoted their content through these third party-seeming channels. That's just against, I mean, it's a clear violation, letter of the law of their policy. You cannot do that.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: The Epoch Times denied deceptive conduct, claiming it was obvious they were behind the ads. But in December, Facebook took action again, against a network it linked to the Epoch Media Group. BL or The Beauty of Life had been posting testimonials from supposed Trump supporters who didn't exist – they were just stock photos taken off the internet.
ALEX KASPRAK: It was so lazy. There was a picture of Helen Mirren, the actress, being sold as an American Trump supporter. It's just like, we all know who Helen Mirren is, you're not fooling anybody.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: After Snopes exposed the use of other people's photos, BL doubled down, using software to generate artificial photos.
ALEX KASPRAK: It sounds like the right play, but the technology is not there yet. So sometimes these things will come out with a hole, no eyes, or black eyes. So there was some of these deformed faces, just really sort of dystopian looking stuff. And that was sort of their final hurrah, I would say, was when they were just making a hundred fake profiles a day and throwing them into these BL groups.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Facebook estimates that BL spent more than $9 million US on ads reaching 55 million accounts. Alex Kasprak found the network had been run out of Vietnam by former Epoch Times employees. But Epoch Media Group denies any involvement, saying it had cut ties to Vietnam Epoch Times the year before. Falun Gong still insists it is apolitical.
JONATHAN LEE: Falun Gong never really have a particular, from an organisation point of view, when you used Falun Gong as organisation, do not have a policy that, "Oh, master said you go and vote for him." That person will vote for them, no we don't believe that. We are not really like that.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: Master Li has not been filmed in public for years. But Anna has watched in dismay as his movement grows ever stronger.
ANNA: When I found out that the group was supporting Donald Trump, that was very shocking.
ERIC CAMPBELL, Reporter: She has left the movement. She´s estranged from her mother, but she still fears the power of Master Li.
ANNA: This group is not fading into obscurity. It has a lot more power than I thought, and that is very concerning to me, especially when I think about how many other people are probably going to become indoctrinated. And how many children and families are going to be affected by this.
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