Exclusive Interview with Mr. Hao Fengjun 12/06/05

BACKGROUND: Hao Fengjun, 32, a former police officer of the 610 Office of the Tianjin Bureau of State Security, sought political asylum in Australia after he fled China in February, 2005. He left his work because he no longer wanted to be involved in the persecution of Falun Gong and other religious groups. Encouraged by the recent events related to the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” and Chen Yonglin, Hao decided to step forward and tell the public the truth. The following is a transcript of Hao Fengjun’s words about why he chose to escape from China.
- In His Own Words: Hao Fengjun Explains Why He Escaped from China, Part I. See also… Part II Part III

An Exclusive Interview with Mr. Hao Fengjun 12/06/05

1. Mr. Hao, Could you please tell us your life in China? What is the social status of a policeman in China?

Hao: In mainland China, the police force as a profession is paid quite well and is treated better than other professions, as long as you obey the CCP’s leadership, you won’t have any danger of being laid off. The total welfare of a policeman is considered to be on a higher status in the society. At work they provide us with a car to use. Our monthly salary is equivalent to 3-4 times of an ordinary worker. The living conditions is quite well-off, the recreation life is also quite colorful.

2. You have lived in Australia for more than 3 months now, could you please tell us your situation in Australian? Where do you work at? What kind of money do you earn? Is it enough to meet the daily expenses?

Hao: Life in Australia is tougher than that in China. I have just found a manual labor job and the pay is not that good. Life differs a lot between here and China.

3. Did you foresee this kind of situation before you left China? If you did, then why did you still choose to leave China?

Hao: Yes I did. But I do not come here to seek a better material life, but to look for a way of extricate oneself from the heavy burdens. My work back in China was a high pressured one. Also I believe that by living in a free and democratic country, I am able to expose the dark nature of the CCP to the whole world.

4. You talked about the heavy burdens you had while working in China. Can you tell me what type of burdens were they?

Hao: I was a public security police officer in China, and in my mind being a policeman was a sacred job. Since my childhood I dreamt of becoming a policeman. After graduating from university my dream came true. I thought the police should view the wicked as their personal enemies, attack and arrest criminal offenders. However, after I was transferred to the 610 Office, all I did was to keep surveillances on Falun Gong practitioners and other dissident groups. I felt intense pressure in my heart and I did not think this is what a police officer should do.

5. How do your colleagues think of 610?

Hao: The general view of the 610 police within the public security system: when I returned to the sub-bureau where I used to work, everybody I met would say: “look, Comrade 610 is here”. All of them described the 610 officers are lunatics; since they do not do proper job (not doing what a police officer should do). At the beginning, a lot of people did not know what the 610 Office was. People would ask, what is 610 doing? Oh, dealing with Falun Gong. 610 has become the synonym of not attending to their proper duties.

6. Has 610 had more power over other units inside the public security system ?

Hao: That’s correct. Originally there was only one office within the provincial public security bureau, the Tianjin Municipal Security Bureau Office. Now we have 610 Office which has a wide range of powers. It can arrange and inspect the work of offices at the same level, even give them instructions and orders.

7. Since you were young how did your parents educate you?

Hao: My parents are from the working class, they taught me to be honest and do the right thing. Since I was a child my parents instilled into me such moral values. After I became a police officer I use these principles as my criteria in dealing with other people as well as my work.

Are there any examples?

In my early days of being a police officer, when I told my father that at work we had captured some drug dealers or drug users, he would always told me not to use corporal punishment and not to extort a confession by torture. He always remind me to kindly educate them and try to change the way of thinking.

Does extort a confession by torture commonly used in China?

Yes, in Chinese public security system, to extort a confession by torture is a common practice.

Now let’s come back to your childhood. Was there any other example to show the kind of education your parents gave you?

I remember that in my childhood, when I went to a shop one day and saw a lolly fell from the lolly pot and dropped on the counter, I picked it up, put it into my pocket and brought it back home. My father found the lolly in my pocket when washing my cloth. He punished me heavily upon knowing the truth. He warned me “never eat anything that did not belong to me”. This was the only time when my father hit me. Afterwards, I returned the lolly to the lolly shop.

8) Some people accused you of betraying your country? How do you respond to this?

Hao: In Australia, if the Green Party or the Labor Party disagrees with the policy of John Howard, do you think they are not patriotic? I love my country and the Chinese people, but I am against the way the CCP treats the Chinese people and against its prosecution of its dissidents.

9) Nowadays many Chinese people and oversea Chinese reckon that CCP is China, how do you look at this?

Hao: I think such thought and ideology are the results of CCP’s brainwashing over a long period of time. After I was transferred to work at the 610 Office, no mater it is the persecution or crack down on Falun Gong or other dissidents I had always followed the orders by the CCP but that did not represent what the country needs me to do so. I have taught that without the CCP there will be no new China when I was in primary school, therefore, I do not feel astonished that these people would still think this way.

10) You have been working in 610 Office which is specialised in persecuting Falun Gong partitioners. The CCP’s propaganda always claims that it treats Falun Gong practitioners very well, just like how a mother treats their children and a teacher treats students. What is the real situation according to your personal experience?

Hao: Let me put it this way. Will a mother starve her children? Or will a teacher beat the students to death? Just ask Li Ying how did the CCP’s public security system and the forced labor camp treat her parents and younger brother then you would know the truth. When I went to the forced labor camp I did not witness the torture there. However, in ShuanKou Forced Labor Camp of Tianjin city, I saw Falun Gong practitioners had no freedom of movement at all. They were forced to walk with their head down and sit still. As I mentioned before about practitioner Xun Ti, after being interrogated by the 610 policeman Mu Ruili, practitioner Sun Ti’s back had turn black and blue in colour. There wee also two 20cm long cuts on her back.

11) The CCP’s media only broadcast the image of very clean and neat labour camps, policeman treat Falun Gong practitioners very kindly and even some practitioners said they appreciated what have been done to them. What are the real situations down there?

All those scenes are fake. Those people you see might not be genuine Falun Gong practitioners. I witnessed one fabrication of such program. I saw a CCTV reporter interview Falun Gong practitioner Jing Zhanyi, which was shot at our bureau. Even the 610 policemen thought what Jing Zhanyi had said were very much untrue. I witnessed how the head of our bureau “teach” Mr. Jing what to say before the interview. He treatened Mr. Jing if he fail to say what he was told, Jing would face the extension of detention. As a result in the interview, Mr. Jing was only reciting his lines like an actor.

12) The Australia government was told by the CCP that only the key Falun Gong members would be dealt with and ordinary practitioners would not be punished, is this the case?

Hao: If it only targets key members, it should be limited to a small scale operation and not involve the police force at every level. And of course the authorities would not care about the practitioners in other parts of the world including Australia. However, the fact is that Falun Gong practitioners around the world are all under CCP’s surveillances. I personally received intelligence information about the Falun Gong practitioners in Australia, the United States and Canada.

13) What is the purpose for the CCP to collect oversea practitioner’s information?

According the document I brought here with me, we can see that its purpose is for the CCP to work out the strategies and plans to dissolve Falun Gong group internally, eventually eliminate the group.

14. Media reports say that the CCP is not very popular in China? How do you comment on this?

In Mainland China, the general public dared not to oppose the CCP openly. What I heard were the complaints of CCP from my colleagues and friends. But Australia is a true democratic and free country. The Chinese people in Australia can have a true understanding of what the CCP really is. They face no pressure. After watching “the Nine Commentaries on Chinese Communist Party” (by the Epoch Times) and the documentaries made by NTDTV, I have learnt and understood a lot of facts. Before I did not understand what the political campaigns called “The Movements against the three evils” (corruption, waste and bureaucracy) and “the Movement against the Five Evils” (bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts and stealing of economic information, as practiced by owners of private industrial and commercial enterprises). Now I understand. At present in Mainland China, the gap between the poor and the rich has becomes wider and wider. The workers and the peasants are looked down upon and treated as a lower class of the society. A lot of people are not happy about this situation but dare not to speak out. But privately there is a saying circulating among the people: “The Qing Dynasty lasted for three hundred years, but the Communist Party would not last even for 100 years.”

15. I learned that you quit the CCP. Can you tell me why and how do you feel now after quitting the CCP?

When I just graduated from university, I had a big hope on the CCP. The policy of opening to the outside world and the economic reform improved the people’s life a little bit. But the unemployed kept increasing. I, as a policeman, was treated increasingly well. But after I was assigned to work in the 610 Office, I had the chance to see how the CCP persecuted the dissidents. After I came to Australia, I read “Nine Commentaries on CCP”. I was very much shocked. And this time the Diplomat, Chen Yonglin stepped out and exposed what the CCP had been doing in Australia. This has further increased my determination to speak out what I have known about the CCP. At the same time I decided to quit CCP. Several days ago I quit the CCP and other CCP related organisations – the Youth League and the Young Pioneers. All of a sudden I felt so light and so relieved. I also felt so refreshed just like the green grass still with dews in the early morning.

16. Can you talk about the role the Chinese media played in the persecution of Falun Gong?

Hao: As the world knows, there is no freedom of speech in China. The media is nothing but the mouthpiece of the CCP. Of course every State needs the media to spread its ideology and increase the communication between the government and the people. But the Chinese media only conveys what the CCP wants. They install the ideology of Communism, its theories, its way of thinking and its way of expression and behaviour etc into the minds of the general public. Unknowingly and unconsciously the Chinese people formed this concept in their mind that CCP is China.

The general public is not able to see the true facts of the persecution on Falun Gong. What they see are the propaganda reports on how Falun Gong harms people and the lies made up by CCP. The unceasingly reporting on the incidents like Self Immolation in Tiananmen Square and the killings of the beggars lead the general public to believe that Falun Gong is an “evil cult”. The media blames almost all of the bad things happened in society to Falun Gong. They fabricated stories and incidents and then held Falun Gong responsible for all of it.

17. The CCP says democracy does not suit China, because each country has its own condition. For China, the actual condition is to feed 1.3 billion people and that is the best democracy. How do you comment on this?

I have been in Australia for several months. The thing that touches me most is that the Australian general public can express at any time what they think, their joy and their anger. But in China there is no way that the general public can express their joy and anger. There is no channel for them to give vent. They do not have such right. They can only bear their sufferings silently. Unless the government wants you to be in a parade or in a demonstration otherwise the Chinese people have no such right. But the Chinese people are just like the Australian people. They are all humans. They have the same needs to express their feelings. Since they are the same, then Chinese people also needs democracy.

18. I learned that when you were at the Heping Police Sub-bureau you were a model policeman but when you were in the 610 Office you became a disqualified policeman. Why is that?

When I was working as a policeman in the Heping Sub-bureau of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, I caught many drug traffickers and burglars so I was awarded every year during that time. But after I was transferred to work in the 610 Office, I had to use all the dirty tricks to persecute those innocent and unarmed Falun Gong practitioners. I was getting sick of the job with each passing day. In the end I adopted such method that I was present at the office but I did not do any work.

Over 30,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Tianjin have been registered in the police database. Every year the police will be given a quota of 10% by their superior. This means that the number of people the police detain, put into forced labor camps or juveniles re-education camps or the brainwash classes must reach 10%. Take 30,000 Falun Gong practitioners for example. Ten percent is 3,000 practitioners. I was put in charge of overseeing the 610 Office in three police sub-bureaus. Since I was unwilling to monitor their work and the officers down there were unwilling to do the job, I have no way to fulfil my annual quota. Therefore, I became an unqualified police officer in the 610 Office from a proud police officer who obtained awards every year while working in the police sub-bureau. In the 610 Office, of course, there were people who worked very hard because the more Falun Gong practitioners they arrested, the more bonus they get.

But the most lucrative business in the system is to collect intelligence information from overseas. Each security agents not only get substainial fundings but also bonuses whenever the intelligence information they collected has been used in the persecution. (been published in the internal documents) Therefore, all levels within the Public Security Bureaus are keen to do this job. The overseas intelligence information is classified into four categories according to its value. Among them, the award for the top category intelligence will be awarded hundreds of thousands of yuan (Chinese currency). The lowest category of information are worth 3,000 yuan.

………………………………….

(an extra bit - Fan)

Actually the staffs in the branch levels are not willing to do such things because they live among those people they detain each day. Falun Gong practitioners can just be their next door neighbours. How could they possibly detain them? Especially in Hangu, such a small seaside town. There are only 4 police stations there. Anyone you get a hold of, might know you personally. Your wife may work in the same workplace as the wife of whose husband you detain. You may just live downstairs to a Falun Gong practitioner. How could you possibly go back to the police station and drive a car back to the detainee that just live upstairs? For the local policemen, they would not detain anyone from where they live. So I was not able to complete the quota. I felt a lot of pressure and this job was just a big burden because I did not think that this was the job that a true policeman should do.

I said to my superior officer that I was not able to perform this job anymore. And then I worked as a driver.

The Value of the Falun Gong Information

Info on Falun Gong in China: one piece of info that leads to the detention of a Falun Gong practitioner worth 200 Yuan. This is only a small money. 200 Yuan.

For example, the information about Li Ying, this was the info from overseas. Once the Ministry of the Public Security adopted it. It gave funds to the City Bureau which in turn gave funds to the Branch. The Branch would contact the informant (such person called Special Intelligence Agent) and the money given to him are in the form of year-end bonus.

Overseas Special Intelligence Agent - Branch - City Bureau of Tianjing - Reported to No 26 Bureau. Once the No 26 Bureau used it (which means this piece of info was sent out to other bureaus around the country), it worth 10,000 Yuan. This kind of fee was called Special Fund.

Special Category: less than one million. Not every province or city get it. But Tianjing, Beijing and Shanghai certainly have it.
First Class: 40,000 – 50,000 Yuan
Second Class: 3000 – 10,000 Yuan
Third Class: 3000 Yuan

The Funding of 610 Office:

There are three sources:

1. Salaries: from the Financial Department of the Municipal Government of Tianjing City

2. Activity Fund: Every City Bureau has activity fund each year from the No. 26 Bureau which belongs to the Ministry of Public Security. For example, Tianjing City Bureau gets activity fund of 250,000 Yuan. This fund includes the entertainment fee for the staff of 610 Offices and the entertainment fee for the 610 Office Staff to entertain the Special Intelligence agents from overseas and the activity funds for the Overseas Special Intelligence Agents as well.

3. Bonus from providing information: fund was from No 26 Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security. Example was the above mentioned four categories

ENDS

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