The crackdown on the Buddhist qigong movement founded by Grandmaster JinBodhi continues.
by Zhao Zhangyong
Last month, Bitter Winter reported on the national crackdown on Bodhi Gong, called abroad “Bodhi Meditation,” and presented a short history of the successful Buddhist-qigong movement created in 1991 by Di Yuming, known to his followers as Grandmaster JinBodhi. The headquarters of the movement are now in Canada, where the founder escaped in 1999.
Bitter Winter has now learned that two devotees of Bodhi Gong, Liu Haibo and Tian Sufeng, have been sentenced respectively to three and two years in jail by the People’s Court of Wucheng County, under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Dezhou, Shandong Province. They were sentenced in February but it is now common for the Chinese authorities not to immediately publicize decisions involving religious repression, and they may become known to relatives and co-religionists only after several months. On the other hand, police activities such as seizures and arrests are proudly publicized.
According to the decision, the authorities in Shandong are very concerned about the spread of Bodhi Gong, and in 2021 created a special investigation group to crack down on the religious movement, which soon started cooperating with police in other provinces as well. Liu and Tian were identified as key members, in direct contact with Grandmaster JinBodhi and the headquarters in Canada.
Liu was not unknown to the police. In 2012, he had been already identified as a Bodhi Gong practitioner by the Panshi City Public Security Bureau of Jilin Province and arrested, but escaped with the mild punishment of ten days of administrative detention.
Despite the continuous police surveillance looking for Bodhi-Gong-related activities, it seems that Liu was able to distribute books and religious objects and to play for years a cat-and-mouse game on social media, creating short-lived accounts and continuing to disseminate the movement’s teachings.
Believers report that Liu is resisting attempts at “reeducation” in jail and remains firm in his faith in Bodhi Gong. Meanwhile, it seems that the CCP anti-xie-jiao police has discovered a new “xie jiao emergency,” and is now trying to find underground Bodhi Gong cells in various provinces and in Beijing itself.
Uses a pseudonym for security reasons.
