(Minghui.org) Jianming (alias), in his 50s, is a deputy director of a police department in China. His main job is to maintain the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) concept of “social stability.” After the CCP started to persecute Falun Gong 21 years ago, he felt he had no choice but to participate in the persecution.
Jianming did not know much about Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) initially. Whenever orders from the higher authorities instructed the police to monitor or arrest practitioners, he would take the lead in completing the assignments.
Falun Gong practitioners living in the area spoke to him on many occasions, explaining the benefits of the practice and exposing the lies spread by the CCP, but he refused to listen. Practitioners subsequently reported his wrongdoings to the Minghui website. Practitioners living outside of China made phone calls from abroad to try to persuade him to not participate in the unjust suppression of law-abiding citizens. These calls kept him in check to a certain extent.
On one occasion, Jianming met an older woman who practices Falun Gong while attending a relative’s wedding. She sincerely asked him to stop mistreating practitioners, because practitioners are good people. She also told him that because Falun Gong is a cultivation way from the Buddhist school, he would suffer the consequences for his role in the persecution. She asked him to renounce his membership in the CCP, but he said he couldn’t because he was afraid he might lose his job.
Although he did not quit the Party, Jianming gained a better understanding of Falun Gong from speaking with this practitioner. He had dealt with many practitioners over the years and had found them to be very kindhearted. He once led several officers to a practitioner’s home to arrest her. The practitioner wasn’t home, so her teenage daughter ran out to warn her mother that the police were there to arrest her. Jianming did not stop the girl, and, in the end, the practitioner avoided arrest. Later, Jianming was not as proactive in persecuting practitioners and followed orders from his superiors only sporadically.
In 2018, he attended the trial of a local practitioner. After listening to the defense lawyer’s not guilty argument, he finally understood: it truly is not illegal to practice Falun Gong in China after all. He realized that his involvement in trying to suppress the practice for all these years had actually been against the law. This was another great revelation for him. But he still held onto one last notion: the CCP is a one-party dictatorship. He asked himself, so what if I acted illegally? So what if practitioners didn’t break the law? The court will sentence them to prison regardless.
Then Jianming became ill. A medical examination showed cancer cells in his body. Although it was not life-threatening at this stage, it was nevertheless a great blow to him.
Quite a few of his acquaintances, including coworkers at the police department, the head of a police station and rank and file police officers, had passed away in recent years. “Why is it that all these people died at a young age?” he wondered.
Jianming gradually became overwhelmed by fear. He recalled something practitioners had said to him: “If people cannot bring the evildoers to justice, heaven will.”
He did not let other people know he was sick because he was afraid that they would say it was retribution for the things he had done. He went to work as usual. Around this time, a friend’s wife who practices Falun Gong talked to him again about quitting the CCP, and this time he agreed to quit.
Police officers from the Domestic Security Division arrested an elderly female practitioner one day for putting up messages about the practice in public places. Jianming ran into them as the woman was being taken to a detention center. He recognized her as the practitioner who had asked him to quit the Party at his relative’s wedding. He told the division head, “Just go through the motions.” The division head understood what his statement meant, that the deputy director didn't want to persecute practitioners.
As it turned out, over the years, officers in the Domestic Security Division had learned the truth about Falun Gong and no longer wanted to be involved in the persecution. However, they were under pressure to follow orders from above. Now that the director had spoken, it was alright to do him a favor. The officers got the woman’s son to take her home after completing the paperwork.
Towards the end of 2019, Jianming’s subordinates phoned him when he was out running errands. They told him they had received orders to harass practitioners. One of them asked, “If practitioners refuse to sign our documents, should we detain them?” He replied, “Do you find pleasure in doing such things? You still take these orders so seriously in times like this?” His subordinates understood what he meant. They went to the practitioner’s home and then turned back without even knocking on the door.
Nowadays, Jianming hardly goes to the office, except for meetings. The Wuhan virus made him believe without a doubt that everything practitioners had told him was true.