The emergence of a large, highly organized and well disciplined group of committed followers shocked China's leaders, who need look no further than their own successful Communist revolution in 1949 to understand the power of such movements. President Jiang Zemin has been baffled by the depth of the belief in Falun Gong, and the lack of international support for China's crackdown on the group. Jiang said the group has been responsible for the deaths of 1,400 followers, most of whom he said rejected needed medical treatment or committed suicide. State-run television showed the four defendants looking calm and showing little remorse. The defendants' relatives said their loved ones should not be blamed for those deaths.
People are free to believe what they want.
It's not like they held a knife to people. It's not a cult. It's a belief. He said the court simply rejected any evidence offered by the defendants or their lawyers that the judges did not agree with. According to Frank Lu Siqing, spokesman for the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China, it was no accident that the people sentenced today are all Communist Party members.