4/7/2023 0 Comments Dragon spring falun gong26, 2021 | By Minghui correspondents in Queenslandįalun Dafa practitioners participated in the 72nd Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers in Queensland, on September 18, 2021. This story has been updated to include a response from the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.Ĭhris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network.Sept. Two neighbors and an environmental group filed a federal lawsuit against Dragon Springs in January for allegedly polluting the adjacent Basher Kill stream with sewage runoff. The mountaintop compound features a temple built in the Tang Dynasty style, covered walkways and a 132-foot-high pagoda with Buddhist statues inside. The gated compound in rural western Orange County serves as a refuge and worship center for Falun Gong practitioners and a base for the Shen Yun dance troupe.īuilt since 2008 in the Cuddebackville area of Deerpark, Dragon Springs has a private school for grades 5-12 called Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, and one of two campuses of Fei Tian College, which also operates in Middletown. It took nearly four months for the group to file the complaint that laid out its accusations.ĭragon Springs serves as worldwide headquarters of the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that emerged in China in the 1990s and was subjected to harsh persecution by Chinese authorities as its numbers grew. 1 New Year, accusing the town of "malicious interference" with the religious observance. They lawyers said that was “as much of a sacrilege and intentional harassment as an attempted inspection of a church on Christmas Day or a synagogue on Yom Kippur.”ĭragon Springs had served notice of an impending discrimination lawsuit one week after the Feb. ![]() That ended state jurisdiction over the building and left the matter in the hands of local authorities, Guerrin said.ĭragon Springs' attorneys also accuse the Fuscos of doing “excessive inspections” at the 427-acre compound, and trying to do a “wide-scope inspection” on the Chinese New Year and during a holiday recess period that followed it in February. Jordan Guerrein, a spokesman for the division, said Thursday that it wound up not ordering the closure of the cafeteria building because Dragon Springs claimed it had stopped using the building for college purposes. The Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services has an office that inspects college buildings for fire protection and other safety functions. The November letter warned that the building would be ordered closed unless Dragon Springs provided confirmation by Dec. Expansion plans for the compound in the hills of upstate New York have heightened tensions with neighbors who worry that the religious group could harm the area's environment and rural character by bringing in more buildings, more residents and more visitors. This Friday, March 8, 2019, photo shows the Falun Gong Dragon Springs compound in Otisville. Its lawyers accuse town officials of alerting state officials that the cafeteria building had no certificate of occupancy, prompting warning letters first from the Department of Education in October and then the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services in November. The suit alleges the Fuscos delayed certification for five years by tying it to what they said were problems with the sprinkler system in the attached "residence and reflection building." Dragon Springs denies that sprinkler system is faulty. That approval came in 2016, but the town has rebuffed requests by Dragon Springs since then to give final certification to use the cafeteria building. The lawsuit claims the town granted a temporary certificate of occupancy in 2012 for what is known as the cafeteria building, withholding a permanent certificate until its elevator was approved. ![]() "For reasons known only to them, they have failed to comply with typical requests for construction documents and inspections, and instead have turned to the courts and wrongly claimed discrimination in order to avoid steps required to ensure that safe building codes have been followed." "The town is only interested in protecting the people who live and work in the town, including those in Dragon Springs," Plotsky said.
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