After hearing the news about Charles Li being abused by Chinese officials, some contact people in Canada had a short conference call. Master has mentioned that the US is first in doing very well. I see this in that American practitioners have been able to handle such enormous things as suing Jiang, which reflects the practitioners overall, not just individuals. However, there are some potentially big problems too that have not been resolved, so I will try to point them out frankly because I feel the time is really critical and we have to recognize the problems, face them and improve. Please don't take offense as this is an effort to be responsible.
The situation is in a crisis overall, and in the US most obviously. Charles is enduring enormously and he relies on us to be rescued. At the same time, the Chicago legal case is in a most critical time as well. These are most important issues.
I think we need to pay attention to the following alarming phenomena:
1. There is an urgent need for more practitioners to help out in clarifying the truth and other activities in Chicago, but fellow practitioners from other areas have not done enough to help out the situation in Chicago.
2. A US citizen is in a very critical situation. However, it was in Canada that practitioners organized a nation-wide hunger strike for Charles this weekend in front of all the Chinese consulates/embassies, while I don't see the same large scale public events happening at this critical time in the US--where Charles is from.
3. We seem scattered. Even articles on Clearwisdom are not connecting the Jiang case with Charles' case adequately. We cannot treat all incidents as isolated ones, otherwise we will not be able to cover all of them well.
4. Practitioners must be able to see the most important battle in front of them and cannot be busy with "their" things or with other "important" things to too great an extent. The importance of the legal case against Jiang in the US cannot be equated with anything else. Charles' situation is directly related to this and it is a big wake up call. This must be addressed by one body of practitioners direcly, not by "other" practitioners. What are you busy doing?
In our discussion, we felt that if US practitioners come out strongly as one body and determinedly exposed the case against the head of the evil in this opportunity with Charles Li and draw more and more attention to it, neither the Chinese nor the US governments would be able to bear it.
The current situation is that of a decisive battle. We can't miss this or not be fully clear on its importance and what is required of us.
Relatively, Canada has a lot of shortcomings in different areas, and there are things we have not done as well. However, we have managed to work together well as one body, as I recall Master mentioning in Vancouver. For example, with the case of Zhang Kunlun, practitioners across the country used this as an opportunity to continuously clarify the truth, and the wealth of media attenion really produced a rigtheous pressure on the government and the evil, and he was released. We did not focus only on the specifics of Professor Zhang's case, we widely used this to clarify the facts about the persecution, and major media had front page news for days on end with different practitioners' persecution stories and information about the persecution on the whole, not only professor Zhang.
While there are so many remarkable things US practitioners do, there seems to be something lacking in terms of coming together and confronting critical and urgent things as one body. This may be one reason that the situation with Charles continues like this, and it may also have a big impact in the legal case.
At the same time, the US legal case is not an issue only for US practitioners. We all need to treat it as our own issue and actively take part and recognize it as a priority.
