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Internet Freedom Provides Hope (Photo)

April 5, 2010 |   By Huang Yu-sheng

(Clearwisdom.net) On March 23, 2010, Google announced it would end censorship of its service in China and move its server to Hong Kong. Upon hearing this news, Ms. Liao Pei-ju in Taiwan was pleased and hoped that the increased freedom of information on the internet will bring hope to more people.

Ms. Liao Pei-ju (middle), her mother (left) and sister (right) all practice Falun Gong

Ms. Liao is an English teacher in Shulin High School in Taiwan. In April 2004, she was a 25-year-old Ph.D student at Purdue University in the USA. She had rheumatoid arthritis, a painful disease that is hard to cure. She wrote her will and booked a flight to the Grand Canyon, where she planned to commit suicide.

She recalled her desperate days. She searched online via Google for information about rheumatoid arthritis. Suddenly she came across an article entitled, "Miraculous Recovery from Rheumatoid Arthritis." She clicked the article link and found it was an experience sharing article from a Falun Gong practitioner in mainland China. She then clicked other links on that webpage, which listed many articles on how people recovered from incurable diseases after practicing Falun Gong. She thought she would give it a try and downloaded a Falun Gong exercise instruction video.

Now she lives a happy life without needing any medication. She has a three-month-old baby. Before practicing Falun Gong, her doctor advised her not to become pregnant due to her poor health. Recalling the huge change in her life, she appreciated the article on the Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net). From her online search via Google, she was able to get a new life in her time of desperation. All information on Minghui is free and Ms. Liao thinks everyone should be able to access this website.

But Google had removed all positive information on Falun Gong on its service in China when it yielded to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Such an information blockade makes many people in China unable to obtain the same hope of a new life. Instead, what people would get from searching in Google China was all negative information about Falun Gong from the CCP's propaganda. Such information searches even misled people to believe that Falun Gong was persecuted around the world.

Based on an investigation by Dr. John Palfrey, a Professor of Law at Harvard University, reporting on the Chinese internet blockade, and the search of a reporter from The Epoch Times, the rate of website blockage in China is as follows: pornographic websites, 10%; websites containing information about the June 4, 1989 massacre of students on Tiananmen Square, 48%; websites containing information against the CCP, 60%; Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, 90%; and websites with positive information about Falun Gong, 100%.

The CCP's internet blockade of the truth about Falun Gong reveals its persecution of Falun Gong. When people come to know the truth, this persecution, which is based on lies and propaganda, will stop.