Falun Gong: Turning of the Tide?

Turning of the Tide?

Torture and Killings Remain Rampant, Yet Signs of Hope Point to End of Falun Gong Persecution in China NEW YORK (FDI) – Five years ago today, men and women throughout China were taken from their homes in the middle of the night to face an indoctrination process consisting of scare tactics, brainwashing, and other forms of coercion meant to break their beliefs.

Some were eventually tortured to death, while others sent to forced labour camps for up to 18 years. To date, there have been over 30,000 documented cases of severe abuse and torture of Falun Gong practitioners. According to information from sources inside the Chinese government the death toll could be well over 5,000; details of over 1,000 have already been documented. Yet, after five years of violent suppression, there is something on the horizon rarely seen amidst such terror: Hope. This hope is ushered in and reaffirmed by three developments.

1) Jiang Zemin’s crimes against the people of China, which include leading the campaign against Falun Gong as well as a hand in the SARS cover-up, fomenting hostilities with Taiwan, and embezzling enormous sums, have to some degree been uncovered and reported by major media such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN. Jiang is increasingly regarded as a cancer within the Chinese leadership for his abuse of political power. Untold millions have been spent hounding peaceful Falun Gong practitioners in Jiang’s name, while so many of China’s needs suffer as a result of the depleted resources.

2) Millions of Falun Gong practitioners inside China – engaging in perhaps the largest grass-roots effort of civil disobedience in history – have worked for five years to unravel the web of fear and hatred spun by China’s state-run media. By hanging posters and handing out flyers in villages and cities across the country, posting articles online, and most of all talking with fellow citizens heart-to-heart, gradually the people of China are coming to tell the facts from the fallacies. The people are realizing the extent to which state-run media have distorted Falun Gong and just how far Jiang’s faction has gone terrorizing peaceful, non-political citizens.

3) Falun Gong practitioners, their families and supporters, and concerned government officials around the world have dedicated countless hours to penetrate the iron curtain of China’s information blockade. A newfound awareness is growing about what happens behind closed doors in China’s police stations and forced labour camps. Through these efforts, the crimes of Jiang’s faction have received greater and greater scrutiny, and are now being brought before courtrooms around the world. Indeed, the scales of justice are – for the first time – beginning to judge Jiang and those who have followed him.

At this very moment, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of Falun Gong practitioners continue to languish in China’s forced labour camps, so many being tortured, and enslaved. In July’s first weeks alone, a dozen Falun Gong deaths were verified, with many further cases of abuse and torture coming in. And so we are called upon to not lessen our efforts in remitting these wrongs, and inspired by knowing that everything we do – be it writing a letter, making a call, or supporting a congressional resolution – is felt throughout China. Lives can be saved as the powerful deterrent of international scrutiny and the promise of – in time – rule of law, gives pause to would-be tormentors as they are forced to reflect that, in the end, there will be no impunity.

The days of Jiang’s campaign are numbered. It is painted in bright yellow hues on walls and passageways throughout China, reading, “Falun Dafa is great!” It echoes throughout Beijing and its suburbs, gasped in collective, indignant sighs of “Enough!” It is pledged in a growing chorus of voices among some Chinese police and even government officials.

The tides are turning. May we see to it they turn sooner, surer. In this there is great hope.

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