(Minghui.org) After the communist regime launched the “Zero-Out” harassment campaign last year, the local police, and the two local residential committees in charge of my residence and my family-owned storefront often came to harass me, my husband, and our son. They frequented our home and storefront, especially since October, trying to force the three of us to sign renouncing documents to give up our faith in Falun Dafa.
Initially, five or six officers showed up at our storefront. They took a picture and left without saying anything. Then people from my workplace came with the renouncing statements. The residential committee staffers also came, but they didn’t have any statements with them. They simply said they were here to collect our signatures and take our pictures. It was clear they were just going through the motions in the campaign aimed to force every Falun Dafa practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith.
No matter who came, we all treated them with compassion and clarified the facts about Falun Dafa to them. We reminded them what they were doing was illegal and advised them to remember “Falun Dafa is good and Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” We also printed out and laminated an article from Minghui that talked about how persecuting Falun Dafa has no legal basis and what consequences the perpetrators may face. We placed the article on the counter of our storefront. A residential committee staffer even took a picture of the article. We also talked to our customers about Falun Dafa to help them understand the facts as well.
Even though the harassers seemed receptive to our truth-clarification, they kept coming back and insisted that we sign the renouncing statements because they were given the task to get us to renounce our faith.
In early November, six people from the residential committee in charge of our storefront came to our store and asked my daughter-in-law Yan to sign a document. They said her name was also on the list of Falun Dafa practitioners. She refused and asked who put her name on their list? They could not answer and left.
In fact, in our family, Yan is the only person who doesn’t practice Falun Dafa. In the past ten-plus years, Yan has endured many difficulties as my husband, my son, and I was being targeted for our faith. Yet she was not afraid when facing harassment and pressure from many fronts and often defended Dafa and protected us. Sometimes she helped us clarify the truth to people, just like a Dafa practitioner.
Days later, two staffers from the residential committee in charge of our residence came and asked Yan to go to their office, as the community director wanted to talk to her.
She wasn’t afraid and went with them.
“You must know why I wanted to talk to you. Your in-laws are stubborn, but you young people are reasonable, easy to communicate with,” the director said.
He began to talk about the propaganda he had heard about Falun Dafa. After he finished, Yan refuted the propaganda one by one. She also talked about how much she had changed after she married into our family and how much she also benefited from Dafa even though she did not practice.
“You need to believe in science,” said the community director, implying that practitioners were superstitious.
“We are not against science,” Yan replied, “But there are always things that science can’t explain.” She told them that on the back of the first published version of Zhuan Falun (the main text of Falun Dafa), there was a lotus flower bud. In recent years, some Dafa practitioners found that the bud had bloomed and turned into a beautiful flower.
“Could anyone explain it with scientific reasoning?” she asked them.
The director and the two staffers were dumbfounded and speechless. The director admitted that he actually believes in the existence of Buddhas and he has a copy of Zhuan Falun at home. He said he’d take a look at the book.
Yan asked why the other residential committee put her name on the list of practitioners to be targeted in the zero-out harassment campaign. The director said my husband had always said, “Our whole family practices Falun Dafa.” Well, since Yan had always behaved like a practitioner, both my husband and I considered her a quasi-practitioner.
The conversation lasted one hour. Yan clarified the basic facts about Falun Dafa. The director didn’t pressure her to sign any documents. When she left, the director commented that Yan was like a seasoned practitioner. She took it as a compliment.
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