Many overseas followers
Falun Gong has been proscribed in China since 1999 and largely uprooted there through harsh repression. But it has built an extensive network of followers overseas. Its reclusive founder, Li Hongzhi, now lives in selfimposed exile in New York. Unlike exiled Chinese democracy campaigners, who have mostly faded into obscurity or become mired in infighting, Li and his supporters have formed a highly organized, disciplined and mysteriously well-funded movement.
The organization’s deep pockets help fund a media empire including New Tang Dynasty Television, a satellite broadcaster; a newspaper, the Global Times; and the Sound of Hope radio, which is affiliated with Machali’s station in Batam.
In its letter of protest, the Chinese Embassy asserted that Falun Gong headquarters in the United States ordered followers in Indonesia to use Batam as a broadcasting base to “fulfill their plots” in Southeast Asia. The movement, it said, has a “growing tendency toward violence and terrorism.”
Falun Gong has no record of terrorism and denied taking instructions or money from overseas. Machali said he and two other Indonesians founded the station on their own initiative and with their own cash. It operates from a hilltop villa purchased by one of the founders, a businessman. Revenue from advertising is thin, but the station still employs seven full-time staff members.
A civil engineer who also runs a small construction company said he’s put about $11,000 of his money into the venture. He is also the head of the Indonesian branch of Falun Gong, which had its application for formal registration rejected but hasn’t been banned.
Erabaru Radio broadcasts largely in Chinese, which is incomprehensible to most Indonesians, including Machali, but is understood by Batam’s community of ethnic Chinese and residents of nearby Singapore. Much of its daily programming avoids politics, but its news reports sometimes feature stories of Chinese repression of Falun Gong activists and others. It has also broadcast the group’s “Nine Commentaries,” a lengthy denunciation of the Chinese Communist Party.
“If we just broadcast Falun Gong stuff all the time, it gets boring,” said Raymond Tan, one of the founders.
Determined to broadcast
Machali, the man on trial, said he never had much interest in China until he stumbled across a Falun Gong meeting in 2001. An immediate convert, he started doing breathing exercises, gave up booze, dumped his mistresses and stopped paying bribes. He also embraced the movement’s loathing for Chinese leaders, whom he now calls “evil thugs.”
When the station first applied for a license in 2007, it got a preliminary thumbs-up from the Batam arm of the Indonesia Broadcasting Commission. But after Chinese diplomats protested, officials in Jakarta rejected the application.
Widiyanti, the broadcast chief, said Erabaru Radio lost out to other stations because it broadcasts largely in Chinese, in violation of Indonesian law.
Erabaru paid no heed and kept on broadcasting. Fed up with the defiance, authorities raided its studios last year. Erabaru shut down for six days and then started up again.
Tempo, Indonesia’s leading newsmagazine, and newspapers have protested China’s role, as has a vice president of the European Parliament. That official, Edward McMillan-Scott, wrote to the Indonesian president that he was “deeply troubled” that China, a country “with such a poor human rights record could lobby and influence the Indonesian government to close down its own free domestic media.”
