By Xin Sheng, a Falun Gong practitioner
It has been more than seven
years since Jiang Zemin and his accomplices in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
began to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The day of the beginning of the persecution
was July 20, 1999. Many kindhearted people are sympathetic towards Falun Gong
practitioners who are cruelly persecuted. But, they cannot understand or relate
to the fact that Falun Gong practitioners continue to brave danger and risk their
personal freedom and even life in order to clarify the truth about Falun Gong,
and expose the CCP’s lies and hate propaganda against Falun Gong. Some people
think it is a lost cause, that it is unnecessary and is looking for trouble.
The
truth is that we Falun Gong practitioners do not clarify the truth to fellow Chinese
people in order to vent our grief and anger. We are by no means trying to be heroes.
This does not mean we have nothing to lose or that we don’t know the value of
freedom and life. We are willing to risk our personal freedom, welfare and life
to persevere in clarifying the truth to the Chinese people for one purpose and
one purpose only: to be kind to our fellow Chinese people.
Since day one,
our revered Teacher Mr. Li Hongzhi taught us to be pure and kind. We are required
to attain “selflessness and altruism” in our cultivation. This is the
very reason why we value other people’s future and welfare above ours.
Out
of our kindness for fellow Chinese people and the rest of the world, we find it
impossible for us to sit comfortably at home and watch millions of fellow Falun
Gong practitioners suffer from the evil CCP’s brutalities.
Since July 20,
1999, Jiang Zemin and his accomplices in the CCP have applied the most brutal
physical and mental tortures ever seen in history on kindhearted Falun Gong practitioners
in order to make them renounce their belief. At present in China, more than 100
different kinds of torture methods are used on Falun Gong practitioners, including
long-term sleep deprivation and shocking practitioners simultaneously with several
high-voltage stun batons for a long time in sensitive places, including the mouth,
chest, armpits, breasts and private parts. They use all kinds of handcuffs and
shackles, such as “smoke pipe cuff,” “wolf fang handcuff”
and “back cuff.” They use rubber clubs, wolf fang clubs, the dungeon,
the water dungeon, the “dead person’s bed” and sitting planks to torture
the practitioners. They use leather whips, copper wires, steel bars, thorny plants,
spiked bamboo sticks and “tying the rope” to torture the practitioners.
They hammer metal nails under the practitioners’ fingernails, they pinch the practitioners’
bodies with pliers; they pull out the practitioners’ nails with pliers and lock
them up in solitary confinement; they force practitioners to sit on metal chairs,
they force-feed the practitioners (using non-medical plastic tubes) with pepper
sauce, concentrated saline solution, human urine and feces. They inject and force-feed
Falun Gong practitioners drugs, which are damaging to their central nervous system.
There are many other forms of torture.
Since July 2000, Falun Gong practitioners
have continuously been tortured, injured, disabled and killed in China. Despite
the CCP’s information blockade, we have managed to verify that, as of August 25,
2006, at least 2,943 Falun Gong practitioners had been tortured to death. 54.47%
of them were female and 56.96% of them were senior citizens. On the average, 34
Falun Gong practitioners are verified as being tortured to death every month.
The deaths occur across China in over 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.
According
to The Falun Gong Report 2002, “In the persecution of Falun Gong, the PRC
government’s violence against women has reached an extreme, both in terms of its
prevalence and of cruelty to the victims. Police brutality against women is so
rampant that very few of the hundreds of thousands of detained female Falun Gong
practitioners have been spared form some form of violations, such as the humiliation
of being stripped naked (sometimes for extended periods), the denial of sanitary
napkins, sexual humiliation and rape threats, or beating and kicking to breasts
and genitals. In more severe cases, female practitioners were raped or gang raped
by police, shocked by electric batons inserted into the vagina, tortured by forceful
scraping with hard brushes inserted into the vagina, or were stripped naked and
thrown into the male criminal jail cells. One woman who has survived these grotesque
tortures said, ‘One cannot imagine the sinister nature of the the police.'”
As
of today, the ruthless persecution against Falun Gong practitioners still goes
on. Additional brutalities continue to befall fellow Falun Gong practitioners
in China. How could we possibly turn a blind eye and ignore such atrocities? We
are risking our personal safety and persevering in our truth-clarification work
because we must awaken the Chinese people’s conscience to stop the cold-blooded
persecution together.
From another perspective, clarifying the truth about
the CCP’s persecution against Falun Gong practitioners is more than stopping the
persecution. By doing so, we are also trying to spare more kindhearted people
from the CCP’s persecution.
Since the CCP took power in China in 1949, it
has been persecuting the Chinese people. The persecution continues to escalate
over time because of the CCP’s brutal nature and because of the Chinese people’s
tacit approval and acceptance. For over four decades of the CCP’s rule, each time
the CCP swings its baton or blade at an innocent group of Chinese people, no victim
dared to step out and put a stop to it or reveal the CCP’s crimes. The victims
always tacitly accepted and endured the persecution. Such tacit approval only
encourages the CCP in its crimes. As a result, the CCP grows all the more unscrupulous
and rampant in its persecution. Looking back at history, that the CCP is capable
of persecuting over 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China has something
to do with the Chinese people’s tacit acceptance and approval over the past four
decades. Tacit approval will only fuel the CCP’s evil. With that in mind, if we
fail to reveal and stop the CCP’s persecution against Falun Gong practitioners,
tomorrow the CCP might persecute more Chinese people. We cannot bear to see other
people suffering the same persecution we have suffered.
Out of our kindness
for the Chinese people and the rest of the world, we cannot sit idly and watch
Jiang Zemin and his accomplices in the CCP ruin the Chinese people’s future by
continuing their persecution against Falun Gong practitioners.
On the surface,
the victims of the persecution are Falun Gong practitioners. In fact, that’s not
true. All people share the feeling that the moral standards of society are going
downhill; and many people are going down with it. The practitioners are reversing
that trend by being good people. As a result, moral standards are improving, which
helps stabilize society. If the persecution does not allow these people to believe
in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, who would want to be kind? Who would even
want to be a good person? How could society maintain moral standards and social
conscience? If people only care about themselves, and do not feel guilty about
doing bad things, how can we feel safe? What will happen to happiness? Therefore,
Falun Gong practitioners are not the only victims; all Chinese people, including
the perpetrators of the persecution and the rest of humanity, are victims. As
people who believe in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, how can the practitioners
do nothing about such a situation?
Out of our kindness for fellow Chinese
people and the rest of the world, we cannot bear to watch people condemned to
Hell because they fall prey to the CCP’s lies or succumb to participating in its
persecution against good people who believe in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
Many
people believe that it is an eternal truth that good will be ultimately rewarded
with good and evil will meet with due retribution. Nowadays, no matter how people
look at Falun Gong, most people embrace Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, which
are the essence of traditional Chinese culture and the essence of humanity. On
the other hand, what does it mean to be against Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance?
Isn’t that embracing lies, evil, and violence?
If you believe what Jiang’s
regime says, and dislike Falun Gong and its practitioners, are you doing a good
thing or a bad thing? Since good will be met with good, evil with retribution,
what will await you in the future? Even if you don’t agree with Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,
doesn’t our constitution give people the right to believe in it? When you are
trampling people’s freedom and rights, is that good or bad? What will await you?
How can Falun Gong practitioners, with their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,
witness people being deceived and used and hurting themselves and their families,
without clarifying the truth to them?
Rulers of the Roman Empire repeatedly
persecuted the kindhearted Christians. By doing so, they brought terrible plagues
upon the Roman Empire, which ultimately destroyed the empire.
According
to history, the Roman tyrant Nero persecuted Christians between 54-68 A.D. Nero
started a fire in Rome and pointed the finger at Christians. To further incite
people’s hatred towards Christians, Nero had Roman theoreticians fabricate vicious
rumors against Christians, such as Christians killing babies, drinking their blood
and eating their flesh when they worshiped God. They also spread the rumor that
Christians were addicted to alcohol and committed incest. They projected all the
Roman society’s sins and vices onto the Christians. Nero even had a large number
of living Christians thrown into ancient Rome stadium and fed to hungry lions.
Ancient Roman moguls laughed heartily as they watched Christians being torn and
eaten alive by the lions. The subsequent rulers of Rome, such as Marcus Aurelius,
Decius and Diocletian continued to persecute the Christians. The persecution was
followed by severe plagues. In the final plague, all the persecutors and their
accomplices suffered karmic retribution and died. The final plague spread to the
rest of Europe. The severe toll on the lives of Roman people finally caused the
Roman Empire to collapse. Those kindhearted people who did not persecute the Christians
were spared from the deadly plagues.
History often repeats itself. Since
July 1999, when Jiang Zemin started the persecution of Falun Gong, natural disasters
have been continuously occurring in China. Think about it. Isn’t it reminiscent
of the plague of the Roman Empire? Isn’t Heaven warning the villains about their
brutalities against Falun Gong practitioners? In fact, since July 1999, many Chinese
people involved in the persecution and their accomplices have received karmic
retribution. Media outside of China have reported their cases. People within China
do not know about this because the CCP regime blocks the flow of information within
and into the country. Falun Gong practitioners do not want more people to be punished,
and therefore, they step forward and risk their lives to awaken people’s consciences
and righteous thoughts.
Like everybody else, Falun Gong practitioners have
families, know the preciousness of freedom, and look forward to a happy life.
Falun Gong practitioners know the price they have to pay for appealing to the
government and telling people the truth. With our suffering, if we can awaken
our fellow countrymen so they can have a bright future, we think it’s worth our
efforts.
A Falun gong practitioner once wrote in an open letter, “Dear
Country, we wish that in our motherland, moral standards could be restored and
people would treat each other with kindness. Only this can bring hope to the country.
For the future of the country, please give Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance
the position it deserves. We don’t wish to emphasize the injustice and brutalities
we have suffered, but we will have no regrets if we can awaken more Chinese people’s
righteous thoughts and conscience with our sacrifice.”
May all the
Chinese people and the rest of the world have a bright future. This is the wish
that comes from the hearts of Falun Gong practitioners.
Posting date:
1/Sep/2006
Original article date: 30/Aug/2006
Category: Open Forum