Newark Star Ledger: Some Very Different Emotions Flowing from 'The Same Song'

Friday, January 20, 2006

Gong Lee, a survivor of China's forced labor camps, calls it "the torture song," an anthem he said his captors sang as they brutalized him and other followers of the Falun Gong religion.

For Chinese pop fans, it's "The Same Song," an ode to love and unity that became a hit in the 1990s and is now the title of a blockbuster weekly concert series on China's Communist-run TV station, CCTV.

Now that a version of the show, produced by CCTV, will appear Monday at Radio City Music Hall, Falun Gong adherents such as Lee, a Camden County resident, have been protesting, claiming the show's title and its inclusion of the song is a painful reminder of their persecution -- and a form of propaganda. They want the show canceled.

"The song to me is a nightmare. It's linked to the worst day of my life," said Lee, who lives in Winslow Township. "When you sing that song, it means you're in line with the Communist regime."

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Falun Gong [practitioners], however, want to keep it out of New York.

Every day this week, between 25 and 100 [Falun Gong practitioners] from New York and New Jersey have been staging news conferences and protests outside Radio City Music Hall and the Chinese Consulate, in which they re-enact scenes of torture from the labor camps.

"I just hope the Chinese people will know the truth behind the song," said Li Li, an Edison resident who heads the Human Rights Organization to Rescue Falun Gong and has been protesting the show outside Radio City.

According to an Amnesty International report, more than 700 followers of [Falun Gong] had died as part of the government's campaign.

Lee, who works for a mortgage company in South Jersey, was sent to a camp for 18 months in 2000, he said. He was shocked with electricity, deprived of sleep and forced to lie underneath a wooden board while guards jumped on his back, he said.

Fearing for his life, he gave in to guards' demands that he join them in singing the "The Same Song" used by guards to signify that a prisoner had renounced their faith, according to Lee.

"I just pretend to sing it," said Lee, who was freed months after singing the song. "In my heart, I hate it."