(Minghui.org) It has been 22 years since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to persecute Falun Gong in July 1999. The persecution remains unabated, with many practitioners given heavy prison sentences and elderly practitioners not spared. To effectively rescue the arrested practitioners and deter the perpetrators, we need to expose their crimes. The following is my opinion on how to better expose the persecution based on my experience in rescuing local practitioners.
Carefully Research Information and Promptly Expose the Persecution
The more factual the persecution report is, the more powerful it is in deterring the perpetrators. When I started to write reports on the local persecution, I merely reorganized the information other practitioners forwarded to me. I received feedback from a practitioner saying that my reports were dry and didn’t contain the personal information and photos of the persecuted. Another practitioner told me that my reports should have the names, phone numbers and the job descriptions of the perpetrators.
My first thought after I received the feedback was, “I know, and I want to have that information too!” I started searching online for relevant information. Surprisingly, I found useful information on the CCP’s own websites and reports. To make it easier for other practitioners to send truth-clarification letters to the perpetrators in relevant offices, I also included details of the address and postal codes in the articles.
Sometimes I found personal information of the persecuted practitioner from the website of his workplace. But one must pay a lot of attention to security issues when doing such searches. I renamed the files that contained the information I downloaded and saved them to a USB flash drive. Immediately after I finished doing research, I erased my search history. I then quickly transferred the content from the flash drive to a secure computer before I encrypted and reformatted the disc. In this way, my search history and the record of the documents I once had on the disc wouldn’t be easy to access.
In the process of contacting the practitioners and their families and lawyers, I paid special attention to details and found different ways to collect information over time.
In the annual work reports of the procuratorate and courts, the officials and judges often mention how they “stabilized society” and “combated cult practice” in detail. Some procuratorates list the cases they’ve handled. And some courts publish on their websites verdicts against Falun Gong practitioners. These are all evidence of their participation in the persecution.
One time a practitioner was arrested and I didn’t have his personal information on hand. I remembered that I once saw an introduction of him with his picture at the place he worked. I quickly went to his workplace and took photos of his information and made a timely report on his case.
The Bureau of Justice in my region set up a brainwashing center and most of the people who work in the center are police officers. The system has worked this way in the past 20 years. It was hard to get information from the brainwashing center, as it didn’t have any contact information. We eventually discovered evidence showing that the bureau of justice funded the brainwashing center from the bureau’s annual financial statements. Later we obtained the name of the person in charge of the brainwashing center and the addresses of some of its staff members. We also took photos of the information.
Quickly we exposed the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners inside the brainwashing center and the information of the culprits in the center. We then got our hands on the evidence of how the brainwashing center unlawfully detained the practitioners and the contact information of the person in the justice bureau who gave orders. We exposed all the information and filed complaints against the perpetrators.
Most of the time we keep an eye on the information released by the agencies that participate in the persecution, such as the Criminal Police Brigade, the Legal Brigade, and Pre-trial Brigade of the Police Department; the Investigation and Supervision Division, the Public Prosecution Division, and the Criminal Enforcement Prosecution Division of the Procuratorate; the Case Filing Division, Criminal Division, and Enforcement Bureau of the court; and the detention center.
As the phone numbers of these offices normally stay the same, in the process of rescuing a practitioner, we published the phone numbers of the relevant local police station as well as the number of the officer who handled the case. Later we heard from the police department that the police dropped the practitioner’s case. An officer said that the two phones received a massive number of calls from overseas every day. The same thing happened to the prosecutor and the judge. We thank the overseas practitioners for their diligent effort to clarify the truth.
Provide Feedback and Warn Practitioners in Time
When we store persecution information in electronic devices and ignore security issues on the surface, it is likely the police could take and use the information as evidence against us. From what I saw, the practitioners who did not encrypt their computers all received prison sentences.
Encrypting the computer and storing sensitive information in encrypted systems or discs significantly lower our possibility of being arrested and sentenced. The police arrested a local practitioner for distributing truth-clarification materials. Because that practitioner stored his VPN software in an encrypted disc, the police didn’t find anything when they checked his computer. As a result the police didn’t confiscate his computer and his case was dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Two local practitioners carried encrypted flash discs with them when the police arrested them. The police did not get their hands on any information. Later the prosecutor didn’t approve the arrest of one practitioner and dropped the case against the other practitioner, even after a court hearing.
There are other cases where the practitioners failed to pay attention to security. After I found out their situations, I quickly provided my feedback to these practitioners and sent sharing articles about their situations to Minghui.org to remind other practitioners not to repeat the same mistake.
We need more practitioners to participate in reporting persecution cases because the number of cases that got reported was significantly fewer than that published on the CCP’s websites. There were no reports on many local practitioners who were arrested, detained, and sentenced. A practitioner was sentenced to over 10 years in prison and I couldn’t find his case report. Another was given 8 years and only one sentence in practitioner-written report mentioned the case.
The lack of reporting of persecution cases by practitioners exists in other areas as well. A handful of practitioners in a city were sentenced to 8-10 years and no reports came from the local practitioners. In another city, the police arrested 8 practitioners at once and there was a lack of systemic reports. Some schools aggressively participated in the persecution of their students and faculty, with one school incorporating the propaganda that slandered Falun Gong into its curriculum. Normally I tried to report these cases as detailed as I could based on the information I had.
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Category: Clarifying the Truth
