For whom the Gong tolls

By his own admission, Sterling Campbell is not a particularly political person. Although the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, he is mainly a musician – the drummer for Soul Asylum, Duran Duran and, for the past few years, one of the guiding hands behind the resurgent career of David Bowie. But he is also a follower of Falun Gong, the Chinese movement that takes the physical empowerment of Thai Chi and adds a spiritual, moral element. It has provided Campbell with much needed calm in a crazy world. It also led him to be in Beijing a couple of years ago and go through an experience that would change his life.

Campbell was in China to take part in a mass protest in Tiananmen Square against the government’s brutal repression of a movement that they deem to be a powerful sect.
“The government did a survey and it was estimated that seventy to a hundred million people practice it,” Campbell explains. “It seems that that anything that doesn’t go with the communist ideology is deemed a threat. They like to squash things like that. If you look at their history, there’s been so much revolution, but this was nothing to do with that, this is basically a huge amount of people doing this practice. Even people inside the communist party would openly practice it. There was nothing covert about it. People would practice out in the parks, like they do Tai Chi. It was just that the number of people was growing on this large scale.
“As I’ve been doing this practice I’ve come to understand a lot more how this government works. Even Christianity there is based on the communist party; they take out pages that they don’t deem correct. They control the Christian movement, they control the Buddhists – in other words they control thoughts. They have such a heavy hand, they’re using Falun Gong as an example; from torture to beatings, to illegally entering people’s houses, even police stations get penalised if they can’t eradicate this situation. All the world’s eyes are going to be on China over the next couple of years so they’ve gone into atrocity level to try and sweep it all under the carpet.”
Campbell’s words are based on first hand experience. Picked up by the authorities, he was, he says, subjected to a vicious period of questioning and beatings before being thrown out of the country.
“The things they’re doing to those people are terrible,” he insists. “It’s an incredible story on the part of these people who are practicing in China because they are not letting up. They’re putting their lives on the line all the time. It is coming to a head and it’s frightening. They’re going to such extents to cover themselves up, I’m very concerned about what’s going to happen as the Olympics approach. What are they going to do next? I was beaten. I watched a woman being dragged by her hair and kicked. That was just to Westerners, what they do to their own people is far worse. If you dig deeper you just wouldn’t believe it.”
While the international community has still been slow to act, Campbell feels that he can at least make a start i raising awareness about the crackdown on Falun Gong.
“I’ve come across people like Bono, I even spoke to Kylie Minogue about it,” he reveals. “All I can do is plant the seed in the world but everything like this seems to have to be a trendy thing. It needs some kind of media interest to kick it into gear. China controls everything that comes in and out of the country. Even when I was being arrested we heard of photographers being taken away. I just found out that the staff from a cosmetics company from Texas had to sign a document saying that they wouldn’t practice Falun Gong and those who wouldn’t sign it were fired. They don’t even know the whereabouts of the people who spoke up against it. It really is like that. They have a specific office to deal with Falun Gong issues.
Campbell’s memories of his own ordeal are vivid.
“When I was detained there was a guy who looked like he was from the Gestapo. When he came into the room everything changed. He approached me about my passport and to get information from me. Eventually he and two other police officers just beat me to the ground. It was like that the whole trip. They were just trying to get into your head, it was really surreal. It was like trying to reason with a great white shark, they have so much blood on their hands already.”
Was there any point when he didn’t think he’d make it out alive?
“No, I didn’t think that. There had to be some parameters because we were westerners but for the Chinese people… oh man, they do some horrible things. People are executed by being slowly beaten to death.”
Ironically, Campbell expresses sympathy for some of thoe obliged to enforce the crackdown.
“It’s really confusing for them,” he says. “They saw the peaceful reaction from everybody but they had been told that this was an anti-government sect and all this crazy stuff. This one cop was taking me to my hotel to collect my belongings and he had his mobile phone, he was playing with the buttons. Eventually he nudged me and showed me a message. It said ‘I’m really sorry, our president is a very bad man. My mother practices. I wish there was something I could do’. He knew what was going on, most people know. The dark stuff is coming from the government. They’ll beat people to death and cremate the bodies so the families don’t know what happened.”
For Sterling Campbell, there is a moral onus o the west to take a stand. Not that he sees any sign of that at present.
“What’s baffling is that everybody knows what’s happening. There’s a lot of business going on and they’re turning a blind eye to it. They’re already shaking hands with the president. The message is that if you want in with China then you keep your mouth
shut.”