Friday, September 15, 2006

Last spring, we witnessed the shout heard around the world: Wenyi Wang cried out "Stop the persecution of Falun Gong" to Chinese leader Hu Jintao while he delivered an April 20, 2006 speech at a welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. Her distressed expression played on all the major media networks the next day.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on Wang. Some think she's a hero. Some think she's irrational, rude or disruptive. Yet the important thing is not whether what she did is right or wrong; it's why she felt the need to protest as she did. As someone who has protested in a similar way to what Wenyi did, I hope I can shed some light on this.

In February 2002 (my freshman year at Georgetown), I took an unannounced week-long leave of absence from school to travel to Beijing. My purpose: to protest against the brutal persecution of Falun Gong -- a Chinese spiritual movement. I went to Tiananmen Square, unfurled a banner that said "Falun Gong is good!" and also called out loudly for an end to the persecution. I was quickly grabbed by policemen, detained, hit in the face, interrogated for hours and deported to the United States without a chance to further explain myself.

Upon returning to the Hilltop I, like Wang, encountered a broad spectrum of opinions on my actions. Many people came up to me and praised me for my efforts, some could not understand why I protested in China -- what good it would do? -- one professor even insinuated that I had a mental problem.

All of these opinions have their merits (well, except for the mental problem one). The point is, though, that both Wang and I were trying to stop a massive, ruthless persecution and didn't know what else to do.

I was deeply worried about the beatings and torture inflicted on my fellow Falun Gong practitioners in China, but as an American, I didn't know what I could do. I hoped to do something -- anything -- to inform the Chinese people about the persecution -- to wake their consciences and stir them to action. Knowing little about China or its society, I chose Tiananmen Square as a well known location to make my appeal.

Even though the torture that I tried to deal with in 2002 has not abated, what drove Wang to protest at the White House is an even more deadly and urgent situation.

Reports from The Epoch Times, Associated Free Press, the Washington Times and other media organizations have revealed a massive organ-harvesting system in China. In labor camps all over China, people extract organs from still-living Falun Gong practitioners. The organs are then used for transplants, and the bodies are thrown into cremators to destroy evidence of the procedures.

China's grotesque practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners has been known of for years, but these reports suggest that Falun Gong practitioners have been detained and killed expressly for their organs.

Annie and Peter, two Chinese who were witnesses at a camp in Shenyang City in northeast China called Sujiatun, recently went public with their knowledge. Annie, whose then-husband was an eye specialist at a hospital near the Sujiatun camp, said in interviews that he was forced to harvest the corneas of living Falun Gong practitioners, and that as many as 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners were detained there at one time.

Moreover, in many other Chinese hospitals, doctors openly admit that they use Falun Gong practitioners' organs in transplants, and both photographic evidence and testimony from family members of the deceased confirm this practice.

Wang has worked closely on this issue. Thanks to her background as a physician, she was able to help determine the veracity of reports on this issue. She was deeply distressed not only by the fact that her spiritual brothers and sisters were being killed for profit, but that so much of the media or government refused to talk about it. Facing continued silence on this urgent matter, she felt that she had no choice but to protest.

Whether Wang's actions were appropriate or not is irrelevant at present. What matters is that there is a persecution so brutal and enormous that it moved a well respected doctor to risk her career, reputation and safety in order to stop it.

Wang calls her protest "a cry to awaken our conscience." It indeed has awakened our collective conscience; so many people have been moved to action by her deeds, and the repression of Falun Gong is in the media like never before. Instead of talking about whether Wang was right or wrong, let's take up her cry in ways we think best and stop these crimes against humanity.

Brian Marple graduated from the College in 2005.

http://www.thehoya.com/viewpoint/091506/view5.cfm