(Minghui.org) I used to work in the government in China. I took up Falun Dafa in 1997. Many of my coworkers knew how great Falun Dafa is and the benefits it has in improving one’s physical and mental wellbeing.
But because of Falun Dafa’s enormous popularity in China, especially among members of the Communist Party and the military, the regime banned the practice of Falun Dafa in July 1999.
Now 23 years have passed. Countless practitioners have been arrested, sentenced and tortured for not giving up Dafa. I’m also one of them. I witnessed how the perpetrators who participated in the persecution against their own conscience have become victims themselves. On the other hand, those who quietly protected Dafa practitioners tend to enjoyed much different outcomes.
My Classmate Zhao
I have an old classmate surnamed Zhao. His family wasn’t very well off. His parents were often sick and his wife didn’t work. As I was doing well back then, he often borrowed money from me.
After the communist regime started the persecution, I kept my Falun Dafa books at his home. Everyone in his family is very kind and they took good care of the books until I picked them up.
Blessed by his kindness, my classmate was later given an opportunity to run a convenience store in a high school. The store had very good business. And he also took over the management of the school cafeteria. As his business kept growing, he opened another store and cafeteria in another high school. The business at the second school was also very successful.
The Director Assigned to Monitor Me
After I returned from appealing for Dafa in Beijing, I was demoted at work. The higher up appointed a deputy director to monitor my daily life. During that time, he didn’t say anything to slander Dafa or report the things I did. I was later given a labor camp term and a prison term, but he was never implicated for covering for me. He instead was promoted several times at work.
Two Managers in My Department
As both my wife and I were persecuted for practicing Falun Dafa, our salaries were also reduced. With our parents and young child to support, we had to live on a very tight budget.
Knowing the difficulty we were facing, two managers in the department I worked at visited us during the Chinese New Year and gave us much needed 2,000 yuan to show their support.
When I finished serving the labor camp term and returned to work, the two managers continued to help me as they could. Later, both of them were promoted together.
My Direct Supervisor
With the onset of the persecution, my former direct supervisor was transferred to the propaganda department and was in charge of slandering Dafa. When my department nominated me as the star employee, he disapproved it and said I didn’t pass the political review.
In fact, before the persecution took place, I worked with him for several years. He had promoted me from a regular employee to a department manager. He knew how Dafa changed me into a better person and all the benefits I received from the practice. During a district-wide meeting, he once said to all the meeting attendees that I was the best and the one he trusted the most.
One day in the spring of 2003, he suddenly died at home. He was in his 50s.
The Former Police Chief
In 2007, a former police chief of a local police station was promoted and worked in our region. He worked with the local 610 Office to continue to persecute Dafa practitioners. Dozens of practitioners were arrested and later sentenced. Some saw their families falling apart. He took it as a major victory against Falun Dafa. Just as he was planning to celebrate his accomplishment, he had a car accident and died.
The 610 Office director continued to arrest and sentence the practitioners. One of his own relatives is also a Dafa practitioner, who persistently urged him not to participate in the persecution. He didn’t listen and claimed that he didn’t believe in and wasn’t afraid of retribution.
In June 2010, while he was driving a new Audi on a very wide road, he ran into a tree. He called his wife and asked her to call the ambulance for him. But when the ambulance arrived, he was already dead.
Another Two Directors
There was another manager in my office who was very smart and had a promising career. He often verbally abused Dafa and taunted me. I told him that the Taoist sage Lao Tzu once remarked, “When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud. If he didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Tao.” He remained silent. This person later got a higher position in the provincial office. But he was soon investigated in a corruption case and he jumped to his death as a result.
Another deputy director, Sun, at my workplace also scorned Dafa practitioners and slandered Dafa from time to time. Sun was a classmate of my homeroom teacher in middle school. At their class reunion, he said to my teacher, “One of your top students (I graduated from middle school with the highest grades and was admitted to a top high school) practices Falun Gong and he has ended up in prison.”
Not long after that, Sun was sentenced for taking bribes and sent to the same prison where I was incarcerated.