(Minghui.org) One day during the “Zero-out” campaign, several officials from the local city Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) came to my home.
The Zero-out campaign is a nationwide campaign aimed to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith. Falun Gong has been persecuted in China since July 1999.
I was unprepared and did not know what to do. Then I remembered the teachings of Master Li (the founder of Falun Gong), and realized this was a test of my faith in Falun Gong and Master. So my mind calmed down.
I asked them what they were here for. An official said they’d come to do a welfare check. I said that things were not easy for us since my husband and I only received 200 yuan each per month. After local governments took over private land for urban development, there was not much land left to for ordinary villagers like me to farm.
When we talked further, he said that the local county officials had submitted a list of Falun Gong practitioners to the city government and that they were now visiting each practitioner on the list one by one.
“As government officials, you want us residents to have good health, right?” I asked. He said yes.
“If so, that is easy,” I explained. “Without Falun Gong, I would have died more than 20 years ago.”
“If you don’t allow me to practice Falun Gong, you can take my head – I am over 70 anyway,” I added.
He listened as I talked throughout the afternoon.
When it was time for dinner, the official asked, “Can I return tomorrow?”
“Please do not come in the morning since I have to do grocery shopping,” I replied hoping he would not come at all.
I kept sending forth righteous thoughts, but he came by the next morning anyway. I realized that Master Li must have arranged for him to come see me again since I hadn’t done a thorough job clarifying the truth the day before. I apologized to Master in my mind for having impure thoughts earlier on and decided to do better.
I first apologized to the official for being a bit combative and having too loud a voice the day before. I explained it was because I had suffered so much over these years because of the persecution of my belief. As an example, I told him that I had a travel agency business, which was shut down by the government because of my faith, resulting in the loss of millions of yuan. In addition to labor camp detention, I also saw my home ransacked many time. Moreover, the police often came to harass me in the evening or at night and even scaled the fence to break in, almost like gangsters.
The official said he had heard of stories like that. I said that the police were supposed to protect people; so how could they arrest law-abiding citizens at will and send them to detention centers, labor camps, or prisons simply for upholding their faith?
I continued, “They probably did not know that after political campaigns such as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executed a large number of officials to ease the public anger. This time, there are many examples of officials facing consequences for their involvement in the suppression of Falun Gong.”
I went on to share my own experiences. “I was paralyzed at age 21, and had numerous other diseases after I got married. When my son was 17 and my daughter 15, I had a major medical emergency and my heart stopped pumping blood. I was told I had mere days to live. Fortunately I came across Falun Gong and I completely recovered.
“After the persecution began in 1999, I became a target of the authorities and was subjected to constant harassment and arrests. I never shied away from telling the police that Falun Gong gave me a second life and made me a better person. Isn’t it so, that the more good people there are in society, the more stable society is?
“Falun Gong practitioners follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to become better people. They should be respected instead of being persecuted. Here is a story: When the persecution first started in my area, officials came to my village asking the Party secretary how many practitioners there were in the village.
“‘I do not know how many,’ the Party secretary replied, ‘But if everyone here practiced Falun Gong, our society would be wonderful since no one would do bad things.’ The officials were speechless with this answer.”
After hearing my story, the official who twice came to my home said he had heard about forced organ harvesting, but he did not know if it was real. “Of course it is real,” I replied. “Just think about it clearly. There are so many organ transplants happening every year. Because of the difficulty with tissue matching, we probably need a huge amount of people as donors. But due to cultural reasons in our country, we have not heard of anyone who would willingly donate his or her organs. Where are all these organs coming from then?”
The official nodded and said, “I want to know more about Falun Gong. Thank you.”
He then asked, “I want to come visit you again when I have time. Will you welcome me?”
I said, “Of course!”
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