(Minghui.org) There was a saying in ancient China, “When something is doomed for destruction, it will become insane.” Similarly, Greek playwright Euripides said, “Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.”

These sayings recall the history of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire acquired large territories ranging throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Emperor Nero set a great fire and blamed it on the Christians. He used this as his excuse to persecute Christians and throw them into arenas so animals could tear them apart. He even had Christians set on fire to light his gardens at night. In the end, Nero's tyranny triggered public outrage. Soldiers and citizens surrounded the palace looking for him. The Roman Senate announced he was an enemy of the state and anyone was allowed to kill him. Finally, Nero committed suicide. The Senate ordered damnatio memoriae to remove anything related to Nero from statues, buildings, or wherever references to him appeared. After plagues and other catastrophes, the once seemingly all-powerful Roman Empire came to an end.

Similar things are happening in China today. After Jiang Zemin's regime started to persecute Falun Gong in July 1999, genocidal policies were implemented, such as “ruin their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.” Many types of torture were used on practitioners, including beatings, electric shock, tying up, burning, hanging up, the death bed, sexual abuse, rape, and others. For example, Ms. Wang Xia is a practitioner from Linhe City in Inner Mongolia. When she was in the Inner Mongolia First Women's Prison for her belief, guards repeatedly beat her and electrically shocked her. They even inserted broom handles into her vagina and shoved nails under her fingernails. Ms. Wang was then further abused in a mental hospital. As a result she suffered a mental collapse and ended up in a vegetative state.

To mislead the public, the communist regime sought to discredit Falun Gong with the self-immolation hoax. After several investigations, this media "event" was deemed suspicious. The discrepancies prompted International Education Development, an NGO affiliated with the United Nations, to issue the following statement during the 2001 session of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: “The regime points to a supposed self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001 ... However, we have obtained a video of that incident that, in our view, proves that this event was staged by the government.”

In the massive, systematic persecution of Falun Gong, many communist leaders went even further. When Bo Xilai was governor of Liaoning Province and Wang Lijun was the police chief, they used all means to persecute Falun Gong, including harvesting organs from living practitioners.

Everyone has to pay for the bad deeds they have committed. The Falun Dafa Association in Argentina tried Jiang in absentia in 2005 and charged him with genocide and crimes against humanity. The court handed down an order for Jiang's arrest. Bo and Wang were sued in China in 2012 for bribery and other crimes. Bo has been sentenced to life in prison.

We hope Chinese officials learn from the lessons of history and stop following the regime to do bad things. Otherwise, as with the once seemingly unstoppable Nero, they are doomed to fail.