The Tianjin Incident
The injustice failed to deter or provoke Falun Gong practitioners, however. Adhering to Mr. Li's teaching of "Other people may treat us badly, but we do not treat others badly, nor do we treat people as enemies," Falun Gong practitioners quietly endured the bullying, and time and again gave those prejudiced people opportunities to understand what cultivation is about and what kind of people practitioners are. Many practitioners, including Communist Party members and government officials, also wrote to the central leadership to testify from their own experiences that Falun Gong is beneficial to society, and not a threat. Those appealing could easily be implicated as "standing in opposition to the Party," "disrupting the Party's normal work," or even "counter-revolutionary." Any one allegation was enough for someone to lose everything, including his freedom, but practitioners stepped forward spontaneously and in large numbers to speak of the facts and in defense of Falun Gong.
The large number of appeal letters prompted a group of senior government officials, led by Mr. Qiao Shi, former Chairman of the People's Congress, to organize investigations in the later part of 1998 to examine the impact of Falun Gong on people's health and on society to provide a basis for solving the controversies surrounding Falun Gong.
Among these investigations were a series of health surveys sponsored by the State Council and the Ministry of Sports and conducted by state-owned medical institutions in several major Chinese cities (http://www.fsccentre.org/Summary of Health Surveys.htm). With over 34,000 practitioners participating, these are the most systematic and comprehensive health surveys done on Falun Gong practitioners to date. The results show that among those surveyed, 98.7% experienced improvement in physical health and 97.7% reported improvement in mental conditions from Falun Gong practice.
Based on these investigations, the group submitted a formal report to the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, with a conclusion that "Falun Gong has numerous benefits to the country and people and not a single detriment." This conclusion, however, felt ill to Jiang Zemin, the General Secretary of the Party, who bitterly wrote on the report: "[The report is] too complicated; I do not understand." With an obvious intention, Jiang assigned Luo Gan to handle the report and related issues.
Luo Gan readily took the hint and looked for opportunities elsewhere. On April 11, 1999, He Zuoxiu published yet another article slandering Falun Gong in a magazine in the city of Tianjin. Since the article was full of fabrications, many Falun Gong practitioners visited the editorial office of the magazine to tell the editors their personal experiences of Falun Gong practice, and ask the magazine to retract the erroneous article. On April 22 and 23, 1999, in broad daylight, armed police forces violently assaulted Falun Gong practitioners in front of the magazine's office and arbitrarily detained forty-five of them. Mysteriously, the police urged Falun Gong practitioners at the scene to go to the central government in Beijing to address their grievance.
The "April 25th Peaceful Appeal" by Falun Gong Practitioners
On April 25, 1999, over 10,000 practitioners appealed outside the State Council Bureau of Appeal in Beijing. Practitioners were orderly, standing on the sidewalk and carefully leaving room for pedestrians and traffic.
Two days later, on April 25, 1999, over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered quietly in Beijing outside the State Council Bureau of Appeal, located in the vicinity of the Chinese leadership compound, to request the release of the practitioners detained in Tianjin and the lifting of the ban on Falun Gong books.
The gathering was peaceful, orderly, and a demonstration of practitioners' kindness. They stood three-deep in rows between the roadway and sidewalk so as not to block the traffic; they advised curious pedestrians to move on so as not to create a scene; they picked up trash that was littered around by cars and passers-by, and even the cigarette butts from the police watching them. The police, however, took advantage of the practitioners' kindheartedness. Soon after the gathering began to form, they told practitioners to follow them to see the central leadership. The police then divided the practitioners into two columns and led them away by separate routes that converged at the gate of Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound. The separate routes resulted in an encirclement of Zhongnanhai, which was later used to incriminate Falun Gong.
According to one participant, Dr. Shi Caidong, Premier Zhu Rongji walked out of the gate and toward the practitioners at around 7:30 a.m., and inquired what the gathering was about. Premier Zhu then invited three practitioners to go inside the compound to have a dialog. It was from this dialog that the practitioners learned that Premier Zhu had issued an instruction a few days before to the State Council not to harass Falun Gong practitioners, but no one knew about this instruction. That afternoon, Premier Zhu met with five representatives of the Falun Gong practitioners, and ordered the release of those detained in Tianjin. Upon learning the news, the practitioners quietly dispersed. Because of this gathering Falun Gong began to receive international attention.
Jiang's Personal Crusade against Falun Gong
On May 26, 1999, under orders from the central government, local authorities in Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province used a high-pressure hose to shoot water on practitioners and force them to leave their practice site.
The peaceful resolution of the April 25 petition was highly regarded by international observers and media. Many viewed it as a precedent of solving social conflict through compromise, a milestone in China's progress towards civil society.
Jiang Zemin, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, however, deeply resented Premier Zhu's handling of the event. Less than three weeks earlier, when Premier Zhu returned from a successful state visit to the United States and Canada and was credited with getting China's effort to join the WTO back on track, Jiang could not even conceal his enmity and was awkwardly missing from Zhu's welcome ceremony.
Apparently seeking to augment his personal authority, Jiang wanted a different way - his way. According to reliable sources, when Luo Gan reported the course of the April 25 Falun Gong petition, Jiang waved his fists and yelled: "Crush it! Crush it! Resolutely crush it!" At the first meeting of the Party's Standing Committee of the Political Bureau to discuss the April 25 petition, Premier Zhu pleaded: "Just let them practice…" Before Zhu could finish, Jiang pointed a finger at him: "Foolish! Foolish! Foolish! It will lead to the destruction of our party and nation!"
Premier Zhu fell silent. He knew all too well what it meant to defy a paramount chief of the Chinese communist power. In 1966, Liu Shaoqi, then heir-apparent to Chairman Mao, fell from power. He died three years later in handcuffs and tied to a wooden board naked, after suffering extensive torture and inhuman treatment. In 1971, Lin Biao, Mao's second heir-apparent, fled for his life but was mysteriously killed in Mongolia. In 1976, Deng Xiaoping, Mao's right-hand man, was stripped of power and "expelled from the Party forever." Deng was fortunate enough to have survived and later rose to leadership; however, he duplicated what Mao had done to him, sacking his own handpicked successors Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang in 1987 and 1989, respectively. All these were too familiar to those at the meeting, and no one opposed Jiang further.
While most officials in the government would not openly oppose Jiang, his high-handed policy was not popular either, for many government officials practiced Falun Gong or were sympathetic to Falun Gong. Some government officials wrote to Jiang and other top leaders to suggest more conciliatory approaches. To heighten the pressure, Jiang gave a speech on June 7, 1999, to the full assembly of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.
Jiang's June 7 speech was soon distributed to all Party branches as a Central Committee document. It was significant in several respects. The speech accused Falun Gong practitioners of "fighting with the Party and the government to win the people's favor," established "the Party's position on Falun Gong," and mandated "severe treatment" of those who refused to comply with the Party's position. Following Jiang's speech, the Central Committee made the decision to persecute Falun Gong.
Chinese authorities and media staged public destructions of hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong books and materials across the country. The words on the steamroller read "Smash Falun Gong's printed materials."
More importantly, Jiang had already sensed that the existing government and Party structure would not fully support his personal crusade against Falun Gong. In the speech, Jiang appointed Li Lanqing, Ding Guangen, and Luo Gan to form a body specifically for handling the Falun Gong issue. This was the origin of the infamous "610 Office." Three days later, on June 10, 1999, according to Jiang's instructions, the "Central Committee's Leadership Group on Handling the Falun Gong Issue" was formed, with Li Lanqing as the head. Serving the Central Leadership Group was the "Central 610 Office," the real operational entity, with Luo Gan in charge. The Leadership Group and the "610 Office" were set up as independent organs within the Party and the government, with absolute power over the Party and the government. It has the authority to directly issue orders to the military, security forces, police, the judiciary, and the propaganda ministry, and the power to command all government resources and systems. Below the Central Leadership Group and the "Central 610 Office" are the leadership groups and "610 Offices" at all levels of the Party and the government, from federal to municipal, with corresponding power to direct resources and systems at their levels. Simply put, the "610 Office" system is Jiang's personal network for controlling the whole government.
With everything under his control, Jiang's crusade against Falun Gong was in full operation.
Falun Gong Practitioners' Nationwide Petition on July 20, 1999
The result of Falun Gong practitioners' petition is arrest and detention; practitioners are herded together and sent to different detention centers and labor camps.
On the morning of July 20, the state-run media began to bombard the nation with anti-Falun Gong hate propaganda, saturating the airwaves and print media with fabrications and invectives. The propaganda machinery also broadcast tearful "confessions" and "denunciations" from "transformed" Falun Gong practitioners to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners, their families, and those who were sympathetic to them. The night before, in a nationwide blitz of arrests, the authorities had detained all Falun Gong practitioners they thought of as key to the Falun Gong "organization." From their past experience, the authorities were confident that without these "key leaders" the Falun Gong "organization" would collapse in disorder and the 100 million Falun Gong practitioners would simply disperse due to the high pressure.
For the next few days, however, in every major city in China, Falun Gong practitioners came spontaneously by the tens of thousands to petition the city and provincial governments. Large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners also traveled to Beijing spontaneously to appeal to the central government. Witnesses estimated that millions went to Beijing in the first two days. They came with kind hearts and with trust in the government, and they came for one very simple reason: to testify to the goodness of Falun Gong from their personal experiences, and to urge the government to correct its mistake of launching a persecution based on groundless incrimination.
The authorities were not interested in hearing what Falun Gong practitioners had to say, however. The peaceful petitions were met with violence from the police, who had the heart to wield clubs at 80-year-old ladies, to kick pregnant women, to slap preteen children, and to strip the clothes from young women in broad daylight. In contrast with the violent police, Falun Gong practitioners remained completely peaceful; not a single Falun Gong practitioner in the whole nation retaliated.
It is not known how many Falun Gong practitioners participated in the petitions on July 20, 1999. What is known is that the number was so large that there were not enough detention centers to hold them. Instead, the police forcibly herded practitioners into sports arenas and large warehouses, where they demanded the practitioners to provide their names and identify their work units. The kindhearted and unsuspecting practitioners felt that they had nothing to hide and complied, not knowing that the information would be used for further persecution. The police then ordered the work units to come and pick up the practitioners.
As darkness fell, July 20, 1999, went down in history as the beginning of an unprecedented persecution. Amidst this sudden descent of terror, Falun Gong practitioners came forth with courage; amidst the storm of violence, practitioners exemplified peace. As the contest of courage and terror continues to unfold for a few more years, July 20, 1999, will be remembered as the beginning of Falun Gong practitioners' journey of peace.
Solemnity and Heroism on Tiananmen Square
On September 29, 1999, practitioners demonstrated the Falun Gong exercises at Tiananmen Square as a peaceful appeal to the general public. Policemen rushed over to force practitioners into the police van.
Throughout the persecution, Tiananmen Square in Beijing has been a focal point. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Falun Gong practitioners have come to the vast square from all over China and the world to stage petitions, unfurl banners declaring the innocence of Falun Gong, demonstrate the Falun Gong exercises, and simply proclaim: "Falun Gong is wonderful!" For this simple and peaceful expression of opinion, they have suffered tremendously. Almost all were beaten by police or hired thugs, who felt no inhibition in the presence of thousands of tourists on the Square; some were beaten to unconsciousness, while some were beaten to death on the spot; children and the elderly were assaulted with full force; pregnant women were kicked in their abdomens. The attacks were usually so violent and forceful that the victims were silenced in less than a minute. Yet, for just that brief moment, practitioners kept coming and coming, despite the consequences. This seemed puzzling to foreign journalists: Could it be worthwhile? What was this all about?
For Chinese, Tiananmen Square, the "Heavenly Peace Gate" Square, is sacred. The modern history of China is considered to have begun with a student-led patriotic demonstration in Tiananmen Square back in 1919. Several other demonstrations with historical impact, including the 1976 and 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations, also took place in the Square. Tiananmen Square is therefore regarded as a sanctified ground for patriotism, sacrifice, and the last resort to appeal to public conscience.
The sudden descent of terror threw the lives of Falun Gong practitioners into a tailspin, but could not take away their internal conviction and commitment to being good people. After the initial shock, and trusting that the government would halt the persecution if they could clear up the officials' misunderstanding about Falun Gong, practitioners all over China started to converge at the State Council Bureau of Appeal to hand in their petitions, explaining how Falun Gong is beneficial and can only make positive contributions to society. The kindhearted practitioners soon discovered that the State Council Bureau of Appeal had been turned into a detention center: the "State Council Bureau of Appeal" sign was taken down, and those who asked for directions were tricked into waiting police vans and escorted to detention centers, with no chance to submit their petitions.
A policeman grabs one practitioner's unfurled banner, as other Falun Gong practitioners unfurl their banners nearby.
As more and more practitioners came, the authorities issued a ban on coming to the State Council Bureau of Appeal to petition for Falun Gong and ordered local governments to enforce the ban. This was another unconstitutional order and a shocking step back to the Cultural Revolution. The State Council Bureau of Appeal was set up after the Cultural Revolution as a way to help resolve those "frame-up, sham, and unjust cases" and for the wronged to address their grievances. There were literally millions of such cases at that time, and establishments at different levels tried to cover up and escape responsibility. In response to the outcry from the whole society, the State Council Bureau of Appeal was established to receive complaints directly from the victims, circumventing layers and layers of obstacles. Referred to as "heaven's ears" by Chinese citizens, this mechanism played a key role in settling the social discontent that resulted from the Cultural Revolution, and the right to address grievances to the State Council Bureau of Appeal was subsequently written into China's constitution. The brazen stripping of this constitutional right, and the appalling beatings of practitioners caught traveling to Beijing by different levels of authorities, unmistakably signaled to the practitioners that the government was not at all interested in what they had to say. The practitioners were left with no choice but the last resort of appealing to public conscience - and where more symbolic than in Tiananmen Square?
The first known demonstration by Falun Gong practitioners was on September 29, 1999. The night before, a group of practitioners from different parts of China gathered at Tsinghua University, calmly took pictures, wrote down what they were going to do, e-mailed their plans to people they knew overseas, and the next morning, they went!
On the Square, they chose to display the second set of Falun Gong exercises. This was probably the longest demonstration practitioners were able to stage; according to one participant, time seemed to freeze at that moment. Completely unprepared, the police took a while to react; and unprepared for how to react, the police showed their true face, kicking, beating, wrestling, and eventually manhandling all of the peaceful practitioners. We do not have a complete name list of these practitioners, and we do not know their whereabouts; however, their heroism and that solemn moment are imprinted in history forever.
The public demonstrations in Tiananmen Square were disastrous for Jiang Zemin. From August to October, 1999, Jiang traveled abroad frequently. Among other things on his agenda, he tried to sway world opinion with his version of "handling the Falun Gong issue" and entice other governments' cooperation with his persecution through giving away business interests and territory claims. Feeling confident, and contrary to his later rejection of international criticism as "interfering with internal policy," he personally passed out booklets that smeared Falun Gong to leaders of other governments, and offered interviews on the subject of Falun Gong to the international media, thus inviting international attention to the Falun Gong issue and to his ability to handle crises.
The continuous demonstrations by Falun Gong practitioners not only deflated Jiang's claim of having solved 98% of "the Falun Gong problem," but also unmasked his fairy tale of "education and affection" in "solving" the "problem." People, including international reporters, started to wonder: if the police can be this violent in broad daylight, what will they not do behind the closed doors of jails, detention centers, and labor camps?
The practitioners' sacrifices, however, were tremendous. Not only were those on the Square brutalized, but those suspected of having the "inclination" to travel to Beijing were rounded up by local authorities and coerced into signing the so-called "double pledges": pledge to renounce Falun Gong and pledge not to appeal for Falun Gong. Those who refused to comply were tortured, some to death.
Two policemen kick and drag one practitioner who is appealing on Tiananmen Square, while a plainclothes officer grasps the practitioner's yellow banner.
However, Falun Gong practitioners continued to stage petition after petition on Tiananmen Square. In October, an enraged Jiang ordered the Chinese national legislature to pass a law to legitimize a tougher persecution. The Washington Post noted in an article on November 2, 1999, that "When [China's Communist leaders] found themselves without the laws they needed to vigorously persecute a peaceful meditation society, the Party simply ordered up some new laws. Now these will be applied - retroactively, of course... By these standards, Stalin was a scrupulous observer of civil rights."
At the same time, Jiang ordered all levels of government to stop practitioners from going to Tiananmen Square, and those officials who failed to do so would be demoted. Precious resources were diverted to set up checkpoints at airports, train and bus stations, public highways, and even hotels to intercept Falun Gong practitioners. To pass the checkpoints, travelers were required to curse Falun Gong, or to spit on or step on Falun Gong books, and anyone who refused would be detained.
To further diminish practitioners' ability to travel to Beijing, Jiang issued an order to "destroy their reputation, bankrupt them financially, and exterminate them physically." The cruelty of this order was amplified by the greed of local officials, who took the opportunity to loot or seize practitioners' homes, personal property, and businesses, and to extort large amounts of ransom from the families of those they arrested. The oppression by local tyrants sometimes had the effect of compelling practitioners to go to Beijing, because they could not safely remain at home and had nothing left but grievances to address.
Plainclothes police seizing Falun Gong practitioners at Tiananmen Square during their peaceful appeal.
With no money, no help, no map, and no compass, many practitioners started to walk or bike to Beijing. Scaling mountains, crossing the wilderness, sleeping under trees, begging for food, and avoiding checkpoints, they went to Beijing step by step and one by one. Along the way, they were intercepted by ferocious policemen, by misinformed locals, and by patrol teams recruited to hunt them. But they were also helped by kindhearted people, by those who were willing to listen to their side of the story, and by those who looked in their eyes and found not bitterness but peace. After their few seconds on Tiananmen Square, they refused to give out their names and addresses to the interrogating police, or they would be escorted back and it would be months before they could walk to Beijing again.
It is important to note that these appeals all happened spontaneously. From its past despotic experiences, the Chinese government thought it could paralyze the Falun Gong "organization" by arresting all the important "leaders." What the government could never understand is that Falun Gong genuinely has no organization. While practitioners may know each other, their decisions and actions are completely from their own hearts, their own initiatives, and their own determination to speak the truth.
Torture and Killing
Two policemen from the Longshan Labor Camp used three electric batons to shock Ms. Gao Rongrong's face for seven hours. This picture of Ms. Gao's burnt face was taken ten days later.
For more than fifty years, the Chinese communist regime has had its way in destroying people's wills and crushing non-conforming groups through terror and deceit; it had never failed at any previous persecution. The continuing appeals by Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square, and the insistence on the right to practice by millions upon millions around the nation, made it clear that Falun Gong practitioners will not yield to the persecution. Embarrassed and enraged, Jiang instructed through the "610 Office" system that "No measure is too excessive against Falun Gong," ordering the use of extreme torture. As the persecution continued to meet practitioners' peaceful resistance, Jiang's personal crusade became a personal vendetta.
Since July 20, 1999, from information that has leaked through the tight control of the Chinese government, we know that millions of people have suffered arbitrary incarceration, almost all under inhumane conditions; hundreds of thousands, including pregnant women, the elderly, and young children, have been put into labor camps; thousands have been detained and severely tortured with nerve-damaging drugs in mental hospitals. Thousands have died in custody, while countless others are still unaccounted for. The scope and severity of the atrocities are difficult to fathom.
The worst atrocities are usually those of genocide. Genocidal killings are done to physically eliminate a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, and so they generally result in a large number of deaths.
The persecution of Falun Gong by Jiang Zemin and his "610 Office" system uses a different kind, arguably a worse kind, of killing: the killing of people's minds. Its goal is not to physically kill a large number of people, although the death toll is of no concern to the murderers. The purpose is to force a victim to choose between a physical death and a mental demise - the giving up of his will, his fundamental values, and his conscience.
Torturing to the brink of death, therefore, is a necessary ingredient of this kind of killing. The Chinese police have openly told Falun Gong practitioners: "We will make you beg for life while dying, and beg for death while living!" The only way out? To lie and say that Falun Gong has done harm to them and to society, to say Truth-Benevolence-Forbearance is evil, and to thank and applaud the government for saving them from Falun Gong. Tell lies to live, or tell the truth and die.
Due to the Chinese government's blockage of information, we do not know how many practitioners have been tortured to death in police custody. From the reports describing over 1,300 deaths of practitioners in the hands of the police, we see an almost unimaginable picture of tragedy: some died from their bodies being ripped apart by slowly pulling the limbs; some died after being locked in "water cages" and immersed in filthy water for months; some died from prolonged electric baton shocks on or in their genitals; some were frozen to death; some were burned alive. In extreme cases, an eight-month-old infant was killed with his mother, a 75-year-old grandmother was murdered, and a disabled man with a hunched back was killed when police forcefully "flattened out" his torso.
Ms. Wang Xia was just skin and bones as the result of the relentless torture. At the time of this picture, she weighed only about 45 pounds and lapsed in and out of consciousness.
In addition to external injuries, the police also inflict internal pain through horrific force-feeding. These torturous force-feedings are not at all meant to nourish, but to cause excruciating internal pain. Policemen, guards, or convicts who are ordered to do so will jam a firm plastic tube into the victim's nose and force it down to the stomach; sometimes it enters the lungs instead. The tube is often pulled out and re-inserted several times, causing internal bleeding. Boiling water, urine, feces, hot pepper oil, concentrated vinegar, mustard paste, and other irritating liquids are then poured through the tube. Of the known cases of killings of Falun Gong practitioners, this is by far the number one cause of death.
The mass killings of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese authorities have been reported by many journalists and human rights organizations. For example, in a Wall Street Journal report on December 26, 2000, Mr. Ian Johnson (who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his series of reports on the persecution of Falun Gong) wrote:
"WEIFANG, China - Rising out of the North China Plain... this is an unremarkable Chinese city in every respect but one: local police regularly torture residents to death. Since the beginning of the year, when police killed a 58-year-old retiree, at least 10 more Weifang residents have died in police custody. Weifang, which has less than 1% of the national population, accounts for 15% of those deaths."
Since Mr. Johnson's report, at least twenty-one additional Falun Gong practitioners have died at the hands of the Weifang police.
It is important to note that the killings carried out in Jiang's persecution against Falun Gong aim only to demolish the minds and consciences of the victims, but they also result in the moral destruction of the torturers. Deceived by the hate propaganda, driven by government instruction, encouraged by promises of impunity, and enticed by financial rewards, police carry on torture and killing completely devoid of humanity, as some openly yelled at Falun Gong practitioners, "We are reincarnated little devils from hell, and we'll beat you into hell as well."
It is a killing of conscience, indeed.
"Transformation"
Mr. Zhao Ming
Horrific as the tortures and killings are, the most sinister aspect of the Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong is the so-called "transformation" - the brainwashing of practitioners so that they go against their own wills to publicly renounce and condemn Falun Gong. Human language cannot express the evilness of "transformation." For victims of the persecution, the most painful memories are invariably of "being transformed."
Mr. Zhao Ming, who suffered twenty-two months of torture in six different detention centers and a labor camp, wrote, "After being given electric shocks for over half an hour, a thought came to my mind, 'That's it. I don't want to bear it anymore. I can disclose their crimes after I get out.' Because of this thought, I gave in… Many fellow practitioners asked me what pained me the most in the forced labor camp. This is it… The wounds from the physical torture can heal as time passes by, but the mental pain from this persecution can haunt a person for his entire life."
Through international pressure, Zhao Ming was freed and allowed to continue his studies at Trinity College in Ireland. He recalled, "I stepped out of the labor camp without any happiness, hope, or relief, because my spirit had been murdered."
Another Falun Gong practitioner wrote about her haunting experience: "On October 10, 2000, I had reached my limit of enduring the torture, and was forced to write the pledge to never again practice Falun Gong. The hurt is beyond description. At that moment I felt that my whole life, all the essence of my being - everything - had vanished from me, and all I had left was an empty shell. I mumbled incessantly: 'I am transformed, I am transformed, I am…' Two years have passed, but I still have not completely walked out from the shadow and shame of being forced to betray my beliefs and barter away my own principles. From my own personal experience, I can attest to how those who are forced to 'transform' have been tortured beyond the limits of what any person can bear."
The "transformation" process embodies and distills all of the sinister nature of the Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong. To force Falun Gong practitioners to give in, the police spare no trickery or coercion. They bring in practitioners' families to beg them to give in and "go home"; they torture practitioners in front of others until the others submit; they even plead with practitioners that they be "sympathetic" to the officers' "hard work." To soften a practitioner's resolve, one police officer will inflict savage beatings and another will act sympathetic. Once the "tender" approach fails, the police do not hesitate to resort to torture. They even use nerve-damaging drugs to subdue practitioners and then press their fingerprints onto prepared "pledge letters."
Many "transformed" practitioners have suffered further humiliation from being forced to read their "pledge letters" to brainwashing classes or on publicly broadcast radio or television programs. To show that they are "sincere" in their "transformation," some practitioners have been forced to assist the police in coercing their fellow practitioners to "transform": to use their own experiences of "being saved by the government" to persuade other practitioners, to curse others as they have been cursed before, and to use on others the torture devices that they have been subjected to. In this way, they "show in action" that they have "completely broken away from Truth-Benevolence-Forbearance."
One can only guess at the guilt, shame, and self-loathing that "transformed" practitioners have endured. What helps them to recover, in the end, is Falun Gong. Mr. Chen Gang's experience is typical: "When I was in desperation, it was again Falun Gong that lifted me up. No matter how much I felt like a damaged lonely boat striking out in the storm, I felt that I still had a pure and harmonious space inside my heart, the perfect harmony and serenity that I had experienced, and the pure land of Truth-Benevolence-Forbearance… Gradually, I found my self-confidence and my direction, and recovered my serenity and caring state."
Coercion cannot change one's heart. Since the persecution began, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have published "solemn declarations" on the Clearwisdom web site, a site created by overseas Falun Gong practitioners. These solemn declarations are practitioners' avowals that whatever they succumbed to saying or doing against Falun Gong under duress and deception is null and void, and that they will resolutely continue to practice Falun Gong.
A Staged Self-Immolation and the Deception of World Opinion
One of many picture clips that the Chinese Central Television Station had to explain after its initial publication. A policeman dangling a fire-extinguishing blanket with one hand stands calmly next to an "immolator," as if posing for a perfect shot. The plastic bottle remains, unaffected by the heat, on the "immolator's" legs. CCTV later explained that the 7-UP bottle was placed there afterwards as an example of the container of gasoline used in the "immolation." Note also the snow clumps on which the "immolator" sits. Their survival from the heat was not explained.
At the same time as the violent persecution, Jiang's regime also launched a far-reaching campaign of disinformation to justify its persecution and to escape world condemnation. State-run media flooded the printing presses and airwaves with fabrications about Mr. Li Hongzhi and Falun Gong. As with all lies, the propaganda fails miserably in the details. For example, the Chinese government made up claims that the practice of Falun Gong caused 1,400 people to die or to become insane. This number, even if assumed to be true, divided by 100 million practitioners, would be many orders of magnitude below the national average. In another example, the Chinese government claimed that Mr. Li Hongzhi had falsified his date of birth, and even produced a "hospital record" to prove that his mother was treated with oxytocin in 1952, before his birth. Oxytocin, however, was not to be identified until 1953.
In early 2001, the authorities attempted an outrageous stunt: a staged self-immolation of five people in Tiananmen Square. No less devious than Nero's shift of blame for the Great Fire of Rome to Christians, the state-run media alleged that the immolators were Falun Gong practitioners and incited hatred in society towards Falun Gong. This staged self-immolation, however, has been analyzed by neutral reporters and by careful observers of the same videotape that was published by the Chinese government:
o An investigative story published by the Washington Post reported that no one had ever seen Ms. Liu Chunling, one of the "immolators," practice Falun Gong.
o Police were mysteriously patrolling Tiananmen Square with dozens of pieces of firefighting equipment that day.
o Liu Siying, the 12-year-old girl "immolator," was purported to have had a tracheotomy, but spoke and sang clearly to the interviewing camera, a medical impossibility.
o Ms. Hao Huijun, another "immolator," was reported to have graduated from Henan Music College in 1974. That college's own website reveals that it did not admit students between 1962 and 1984.
o Mr. Wang Jindong was shown to have been badly burned; hair burns and plastic melts extremely rapidly; however, his hair and the plastic 7-UP bottle that he had "used to dowse gasoline" remained miraculously intact.
These holes prompted International Education Development, a UN NGO, to issue the following statement during the 2001 session of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: "The regime points to a supposed self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001, as proof that Falun Gong is an 'evil cult.' However, we have obtained a video of that incident that in our view proves that this event was staged by the government." (For an analysis of the CCTV footage of the staged immolations,
please visit:http://www.faluninfo.net/tiananmen/immolation.asp)
The Chinese Government's Global Coercion of Conscience
Hong Kong police violently arrest practitioners peacefully appealing outside the China Liaison Office in Hong Kong on March 14, 2002.
In addition to deceit, the Chinese government has also repeatedly made threats of economic sanctions against countries, states, cities, and businesses that dare to criticize its persecution of Falun Gong. This creates a fear, a fear of being left out of some economic gain, a fear of speaking for conscience. With this tactic, the Chinese government has induced several major Western news media corporations to apply self-censorship in reporting China's human rights violations, forced cities in a number of countries to rescind their moral support for the victims, and even coerced some democratic governments to stifle the voices of Falun Gong practitioners. In France, Germany, Iceland, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, and a few other countries, there have been cases in which local police forces were pressured into arbitrary and wrongful detention of Falun Gong practitioners who were merely exercising their rights of peaceful demonstration.
The Chinese agencies, however, do not stop at blackmail. Canadian Member of Parliament Rob Anders had the following to say about being physically assaulted by Chinese diplomats in February 2000:
"I wore [a T-shirt that talked about Falun Gong] out to a function that was being hosted by the People's Republic's embassy here, in this building [Parliament]. I stood at the back of the room, and then all of a sudden I had four or five men surround me and start to harass me, and point fingers, and jostle me physically, saying that I had to leave, that I wasn't welcome, go home, you know, cowboy, you don't know what you're doing… and what crossed my mind immediately was four or five people that comprise a gang on behalf of the People's Republic of China think they can get away with doing that to me as a Member of Parliament, on Canadian soil, in my place of work, in the House of Commons - can you imagine what they're doing to people back home in their own country? It was absolutely over the top! And then when a media reporter came over with his camera, they started to grab his camera, they tried to force it down to the ground, they told him to go away… They were issuing orders to a member of the free press here in Canada. … It was absolutely outrageous. And it just proved what Falun Dafa is up against. ... We're at a very critical moment. If we don't take a stand now, history will look back at us and sigh."
Similar incidents of intimidation and assault have also happened in the United States, Iceland, Germany, Australia, Russia, Romania, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, and many more. Simply put, the Chinese regime has exported its persecution to the world as a global campaign of evil against conscience.
Murder Attempt on Falun Gong Practitioners in South Africa
Top picture: Mr. David Liang's feet after the shooting in Africa.
Bottom picture: Mr. Liang, in a wheelchair, tells his story at a press conference in Sydney, Australia.
On June 28, 2004, at around 8:30 p.m., five Falun Gong practitioners were driving from Johannesburg International Airport to Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, when a white car came up from behind and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle. The practitioners tried to change their speed to dodge the attack, but the assassins kept speed with them and continued to shoot. The practitioners' car and driver were hit and forced off the road; the injured driver managed to stop the car in a field. The gunmen stopped and watched for a few seconds, then fled the scene.
This shooting was by no means a simple homicide attempt. The victims were among the group of nine Falun Gong practitioners from Australia who were there to file a lawsuit - charging China's Vice President, Zeng Qinghong, and the Minister of Commerce, Bo Xilai, who were visiting South Africa from June 27 to June 29 - with torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Even before they left Australia, one of them had received two threatening phone calls. When they arrived in Johannesburg International Airport, they noticed a suspicious-looking man following and watching them. In addition, Mr. David Liang, the driver who was shot, was wearing a Falun Gong jacket. The South African police noted that the shooting site was not a high-crime area. The gunmen obviously did not want to rob the practitioners. These factors point towards a political motive for this shooting.
A hasty statement on June 30 by China's embassy in South Africa only adds to the suspicion. As the representative of Chinese nationals in South Africa, the embassy showed no sympathy towards Mr. Liang, who suffered gunshot wounds in both feet and bone fractures in the right foot. On the contrary, the embassy claimed that the incident was a Falun Gong conspiracy, and warned the international media not to make any "irresponsible report about the incident."
This shooting was by no means an isolated attack on Falun Gong practitioners. To stifle overseas Falun Gong practitioners' efforts to reveal the brutality in China, agents of the Chinese government have resorted to violence and hate crimes to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners. In the USA alone, there have been multiple incidents of physical assault against Falun Gong practitioners by Chinese nationals with close ties to the Chinese consulates in Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City. In response to these blatant infringements of civil rights, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution (House Concurrent Resolution 304) on October 4, 2004, calling on China to immediately stop persecuting Falun Gong inside and outside China.