(Minghui.org) The Chinese authorities announced on November 30 that Jiang Zemin had died.
There is a Chinese saying that “good is rewarded with good and evil meets with evil.” Based on what Jiang had done in his life, including his persecution of Falun Gong practitioners for their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, many believe that he will be punished in the Avici Hell (the worst level of Hell in Buddhism) with endless pain. This is what he feared the most – being held accountable for suppressing Falun Gong and being sent to hell.
Attempts to Avoid Consequences
Jiang was very superstitious. In order to secure his position and extend his tenure, he had three things done based on feng shui theories: adding water to Baiyangdian (a lake located in nearby Hebei Province), increasing the height of the flag pole at Tiananmen Square, and moving away the small hill in Tiantan Park (The Temple of Heaven).
When he started the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, Jiang vowed to eradicate the practice in three months. That did not happen and the brutality of the persecution instead triggered public anger toward the regime. Knowing it was a sin to persecute Falun Gong, Jiang worshiped Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva for protection. According to a Hong Kong magazine report in 2001, Jiang asked his wife Wang Yeping to borrow a copy of Ksitigarbha Sutra. and Jiang then hand-copied it at home.
After Jiang was sued in multiple countries (United States, Belgium, Spain, Taiwan) in 2003 for persecuting Falun Gong, he dispatched representatives to contact an overseas Falun Gong group through private channels, hoping to negotiate a settlement. According to The Real Story of Jiang Zemin published in 2005, Jiang was not truly regretful for his persecution policy. Rather, he offered to kill a large number of 610 Office agents, police officers, and prison and labor camps guards so those lawsuits would be withdrawn. A similar situation happened after the Cultural Revolution, when the communist regime executed some officials to ease public anger. Since Jiang was the initiator of the persecution, the Falun Gong group declined the offer.
Jiang also secretly went to Zhantanlin Temple on Jiuhua Mountain in Anhui Province on June 5, 2004, to worship Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva. Based on overseas Chinese media, Jiang had a dream the night before in which he was tortured in Avici Hell. After people with sins were thrown there, “guards would use hundreds of hot red iron nails to nail in the bones, where flames would come out and burn the entire body. There was also torture in the snow mountain where the freezing wind blows hard until the skin and flesh crack. In addition, one could be thrown from up high down on trees of knives and swords, where the entire body would be smashed to pieces,” wrote the media report, “One would rather die at that moment, which is not possible. Furthermore, these types of punishment happen again and again nonstop. It is terrifying.”
Jiang Had No Regard for Human Life: From the Tiananmen Square Massacre to SARS
Jiang had a track record of human rights abuses and the persecution was his latest – and the largest – sin. Because of suppressing The World Economic Herald, he rose to the top position in 1989. During a press conference in Beijing in 1990, a female foreign reporter asked about a female college student. After being arrested in the 1989 democratic movement, the college student was sent to a reform-through-labor (laogai) farm, where she was gang raped by several police officers. When asked about his position on this incident, Jiang responded, “She was a mobster and she deserved it [the gang rape]!”
To expand his influence and sustain the persecution of Falun Gong, Jiang got his followers, Luo Gan and Zeng Qinghong, into the Politburo Standing Committee during the CCP’s 16th National Congress in 2002. In addition to still holding military power after he stepped down, Jiang also helped Zhou Yongkang become the Minister of Public Security and Deputy Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC).
Right after the CCP’s 16th National Congress, the first case of SARS emerged in Guangdong Province on November 16, 2002. There were two sets of opinions among the top CCP officials. One was informing the public, so that ordinary citizens could be prepared. Jiang dismissed that and insisted that it was worth pursuing economic growth by “maintaining stability,” even at the cost of two million lives.
The CCP then passed on Jiang’s order that wherever SARS was reported, local officials would be removed from office immediately. When SARS showed up in Beijing, the frightened Jiang led his entire family to Shanghai. He also ordered Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu to urge Shanghai residents to protect the city with their lives. But SARS quickly spread to Shanghai in May 2003. Jiang then fled to Liaoning Province and then Shandong Province.
Many people were angry over the SARS cover-up by Jiang and the CCP. Jiang Yanyong, a Major General in the military 301 Hospital, was silenced and punished for requesting to investigate the disease. Jiang ordered the military to block areas where SARS emerged, and any villagers who attempted to escape would be shot. It was impossible to estimate how many died due to cross-infection as a result of the military lockdown. For those who died, their bodies were transferred by police or military directly for cremation. By late June 2003, at least 10,000 people in northeastern China alone had lost their lives to the virus.
A Groundless Persecution
In Jiang’s obituary, the CCP referred to him as a determined Marxist. As mentioned above, Jiang indeed followed communist dogma closely by ignoring life and killing innocent people at will, similar to the Soviet Communist Party. But the obituary did not mention that Jiang was superstitious and jealous.
Falun Gong, a meditation system based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, was introduced to the public by Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992. Its miraculous health benefits and uplifting moral improvement quickly attracted many people. Among them were high-ranking CCP officials, even including Jiang’s wife Wang Yeping. It was easy for people to see how the communist ideology of falsehood, evilness, and class struggle went against Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Jiang was jealous of Falun Gong’s popularity and feared losing control of the people, so he decided to suppress Falun Gong.
Many persecution policies came directly from Jiang. After Tianjin police arrested dozens of practitioners in April 1999, about 10,000 practitioners went to the State Council’s Appeals Center in Beijing on April 25, 1999, to demand the release of the arrested Tianjin practitioners. After seeing this himself in a bulletproof car, Jiang reprimanded then-premier Zhu Rongji, saying the latter’s peaceful handling of this appeal would endanger the CCP. In June of that year, he wrote a letter to the Politburo to confirm his intention to persecute Falun Gong and then launched an extrajudicial agency on June 10, 1999, to systematically implement his persecution policy. The agency was named the 610 Office.
Jiang formally launched the persecution on July 20, 1999. A large number of practitioners have since been arrested, tortured, or even had their organs harvested. When interviewed by the French newspaper Le Figaro on October 25, 1999, Jiang bluntly declared Falun Gong as a cult. Although his remark lacked legal basis, the CCP-controlled news media followed closely and parroted the message throughout China.
Several days later, on October 30, Jiang manipulated the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) to pass a resolution banning cult organizations and punishing cult activities. On December 31, 1999, the NPC passed implementation rules of Article 300 of the Criminal Law, which states that anyone using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, neither the resolution nor the implemented rules explicitly mentioned Falun Gong. The implementation rules listed six characteristics of cult organizations but none of them applied to Falun Gong. Under the totalitarian rule of the CCP, however, police, court, and procuratorial systems were instructed to cite the resolution and the implementation rules to justify their arrests, indictment, and sentencing of Falun Gong practitioners.
Jiang also exhausted the country's resources to spread lies. During his speech in Politburo on June 7, 1999, Jiang urged to collect negative information about Falun Gong. He also gave orders to defame Falun Gong and compile brainwashing materials against the practice. When attending the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in September 1999, he handed a pamphlet slandering Falun Gong to the head of every state.
In the past 23 years, tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been discriminated against for their belief. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners were put in prison, and millions were sent to labor camps or brainwashing centers. The tragedies happened all because Jiang ordered to “defame their [practitioners’] reputation, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.”
The persecution of Falun Gong is worse than any other human rights abuse in China for several reasons. First, Falun Gong practitioners are being suppressed for their faith in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Second, besides detention, physical torture, and psychiatric abuse, Falun Gong practitioners also became victims of forced organ harvesting. Thirdly, anyone who dared to expose the brutality would be punished. After practitioners in Changchun intercepted television signals to expose the persecution (when legal channels of appeal were all blocked), Jiang issued an order to “kill with no mercy.” Lastly, Jiang and his followers highly praised those who were active in the persecution such as guards at the now-defunct Masanjia Labor Camp. It was in this very facility that 18 female practitioners were stripped and thrown into the cells of male inmates.
Religious persecution always comes with grave consequences. Yuwen Yong, Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou (543 – 578), actively suppressed both Buddhism and Taoism. He ordered the burning of Buddha scriptures, the destruction of temples and Buddha statues, and forcing monks to return to secular society. Not long after that, he became severely ill and died at age 36 with ulcers all over. Du Qi, head of the capital city, died in 588 and came back to life three days later. Du said he had seen the emperor in the netherworld, where he suffered tremendously because of suppressing Buddhism and Taoism. The netherworld emperor also asked Du to pass on the word, so that others could learn this lesson and not do bad deeds.
Throughout history, China had been blessed with traditional Chinese culture that valued personal improvement and spiritual enlightenment. Such a culture sustained the Chinese civilization for thousands of years. In merely a few decades since the CCP took power in 1949, it has killed innumerable innocent lives and wiped out nearly all traditional culture. Among the CCP’s victims are Falun Gong practitioners. Jiang’s tenure was the darkest chapter in recent history and his crimes against humanity and genocide against Falun Gong practitioners will be a serious lesson for the future.
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Category: News Commentary
