(Minghui.org) Jiang Zemin has died, but his crimes will not be forgotten by his victims or by history. After becoming the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for his active role in the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, he corrupted the entire country, with almost all CCP officials guilty of taking bribes, which resulted in catastrophic moral decline and subsequent social issues.

One example of Jiang’s harming society was his persecution of Falun Gong. Introduced to the public in 1992, Falun Gong is a meditation system based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. By 1999, there were about 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China from all walks of life. As practitioners strove to live by those principles, they became better citizens in their respective professions, such as merchants who were honest, doctors who refused to accept bribes from patients, engineers who worked diligently without complaining about workload, and officials who no longer took bribes. The improvement of so many practitioners' character has benefitted society as a whole tremendously.

Despite the huge benefits of Falun Gong, its ever-growing popularity triggered Jiang's jealousy, and he would not allow anyone or any group to draw huge crowds away from the communist ideology.

He launched a nationwide campaign to target Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, plunging the country into another havoc like the Cultural Revolution. A large number of practitioners have since been arrested, detained, subjected to various forms of torture (such as beatings, electric shocks, sexual assault, and involuntary drug administration), and even had their organs harvested for refusing to give up their belief. Many practitioners have been tortured to death, maimed, or driven insane.

According to information compiled by the Minghui.org website, over 4,000 deaths of practitioners have been confirmed and documented. Due to censorship and the information blockade, the actual severity of the persecution could be much worse than what Minghui has been able to verify and document.

When Jiang started the persecution in 1999, he issued an order to “Defame their [practitioners’] reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically!” The social and moral impact of the persecution has been astronomical, and the victims are not limited to just practitioners themselves. Their families have also suffered tremendously, as the authorities often threatened them with loss of jobs, deprivation of education, and detention of their loved ones. The perpetrators were rewarded for persecuting innocent practitioners, and the Procuratorate and court systems have become rubber stamps to indict and sentence practitioners.

As the general public has been brainwashed to turn against practitioners who live by the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, morality continues to decline in China. Counterfeit goods, poisonous food, and mafia activities have become commonplace. There have recently been many cases of young people gone missing. Given the large-scale forced organ harvesting against Falun Gong practitioners, these young people could have also become victims of organ harvesting.

Despite the ongoing brutal persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have remained peaceful and there has not been a single case of violence committed by practitioners. Instead, they patiently tell their perpetrators and ordinary citizens what Falun Gong is, while clarifying the CCP’s defamatory propaganda about them. In the meantime, they kindly urge the perpetrators to stop doing evil since that will do no good for them and their families. Furthermore, Falun Gong is well received in more than 100 countries and it is suppressed only in communist China. This all indicates that Jiang’s persecution of Falun Gong has caused endless problems in China, which will likely continue unless the suppression comes to an end.

Jiang has died but the CCP continues its suppression of people, including Falun Gong practitioners, other faith groups, and average citizens who have been subjected to military-style lockdowns during the past three years. We hope more Chinese people will join the trend of quitting the CCP organizations. We’d also like to see more support from the international community in helping to end the persecution and disintegrate the CCP, for a better future.