10/6/2001

On September 30, I attended the Chinese National Flag-raising ceremony held by the University of Colorado, Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). My wife and another veteran Falun Gong practitioner also attended this event. My wife wore a T-shirt with the message reading "China: Free the Jailed Falun Gong Practitioners," which generated controversial opinions among CSSA members. This is an edited message sent to the CSSA mailing list, to clarify any potential misunderstandings about Falun Gong. See http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2001/10/3/14365.html)

First of all, I am a CSSA member and a Chinese citizen. It is natural for me to attend Chinese National Day and the customary Mid-Autumn Festival celebration. I actually made some friends who are alumni from my college and from my graduate school. Secondly, because I understood that Chinese Consuls from Chicago were going to be there, I believed that this might present an opportunity for me to let all people know about the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China, to help stop the persecution, to call for justice and ignite the consciences of everyone. Because my wife also strongly feels this obligation to inform people of the truth, she wore a Falun Gong T-shirt to deliver a clear message to our government representatives: "Stop the persecution!" (I believe people have a right to wear any T-shirt they want.)

Some people wondered, "Why? Is it really so urgent? On Chinese National Day? Do you still claim you love China?"

Yes. Let me explain. In August 2001, in the Agenda item 6 of United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Fifty-Third Session, International Education Development (IED) defined the Chinese Government's persecution of Falun Gong as "State terrorism" against its own people. Why?

Consider the poor twelve-year old girl, Liu Siying, and her mother, Liu Chunling, who were non-Falun Gong practitioners, yet were tricked into making the Tiananmen Self-Immolation scenes to invoke hatred among Chinese people and dissent against Falun Gong. Yet the girl was later murdered in the hospital to conceal the truth, and her mother was murdered on site. (She did not die from the staged burning. Isn't it unbelievable? Who would allow themselves to be tricked into risking their own lives? See analysis of CCTV video in texts, photos, and video: http://falun-co.org/zf or send me an email and I will be more than willing to offer you a VHS tape. We are planning to produce more VHS tapes, out of our own personal funds, in order to provide information to the local Chinese communities.)

Consider the case of Ms. Chen Zixiu (Wall Street Journal, 4/20/2000): "The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Gong. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle prod, the fifty-eight-year-old stubbornly shook her head. Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness, and died on Feb. 21."

Consider the case of Yu Xiulian (Radio France International, 10/1/2001) who was severely beaten for hours before being thrown to her death from the fourth floor of a building. To cover up any evidence of police brutality, authorities declared her death a suicide.

Consider Wang Lixuan, 27, and her infant son, Meng Hao, only eight months old, who died in Tuanhe Reeducation Labor Camp on November 7, 2000. Upon the coroner's examination, it was found that Wang's neck and knucklebones were broken, her skull was sunken and there was a needle stuck in her waist. There were two deep bruises on her son's ankles. There were two black and blue spots on his head and there was blood in his nose. It was deduced that the bruises might have been caused when the thugs handcuffed the ankles of this little eight-month-old and hung him upside down.

Over 300 innocent Falun Gong practitioners have died from torture; 100,000 more have been illegally detained; 20,000 practitioners are held in labor camps; and millions of families are in misery. In an effort to force practitioners to renounce their belief, over forty methods of torture are being utilized in the crackdown, including: piercing of nails with bamboo sticks, the shocking of female genital areas with electric batons, stripping women of their clothes and jailing them in cells with male criminal prisoners, rape, sleep deprivation, and intravenous injection of nerve damaging drugs. Ms. Ding Yen recently died in a "Water Chamber" (a torture cell, Shui Lao) in Shijiazhuang City, Hubei Province. In order to cover up the truth, the local authorities refused to allow her family to see her body, and then they cremated it, leaving the family only her ashes.

All the above cases have been or are in the process of being documented and provided to the UN Human Rights Commission. However, many more cases are sealed inside China because of the tight media control.

Some say that if you love China, you should resolve these problems inside China instead of spreading these facts in the U.S. I feel China's image has been tarnished by these horrendous violations of innocent practitioners who only want the freedom to practice their spiritual belief.

Well, I can clearly see how the propaganda works. "China," "Chinese Government" and "Chinese people" are completely different concepts. But often times we refer to all of these categories by simply saying, "China." When you believe "Chinese government" = "China" = "Chinese people," as a Chinese citizen, in the attempt to defend yourself, you tend to defend whatever the Chinese Government is doing, regardless of whether it is right or wrong. Speaking of "tarnishing China's image," this is a common excuse for the Chinese Government to conceal their wrongdoings. How could you respect a Japanese person who just blindly denies the Nanjing Massacre by their government, or a German who denies the concentration camps and gas chambers of Nazi Germany? You cannot. These are other governments who killed other innocent people. However, is a government killing its own people on the basis of belief any better? No, never. On the contrary, don't you respect the American who revealed the LA police beating African-American Rodney King? Did he "tarnish" the image of America? Don't you respect the Cambodian journalist who revealed the great massacre by his government? Did he "tarnish" the image of his country? Don't you respect Nelson Mandela who opposed the discrimination policy of his government? Don't you respect Dr. Sakharow who exposed to the world the cruel persecution of the people of Soviet Union by Stalin? Do you really believe that the Chinese people constitute China? When the government is murdering Chinese people, do you believe you are showing your love for China by covering up the killing of those innocent individuals who, in part, constitute China?