(Minghui.org) The first two directors of the Huanggang City 610 Office in Hubei Province, died within two months of assuming the post, and other Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials have since tried to avoid taking the job.
The 610 Office is a security agency in the People's Republic of China, named for the date of its creation on June 10, 1999. It was established solely to coordinate and carry out the persecution of Falun Gong, similar to the Gestapo in Germany in WWII.
Many people who worked for the 610 Office, including police, prosecutors, and court system personnel, have died since the CCP launched the persecution of Falun Gong. Some people have even called the 610 Office director position a “death post,” because those who have actively persecuted Falun Gong seemed likely to meet with retribution.
The first director of Huanggang City 610 Office was Zhang Shiming, who was also the deputy secretary-general of the Huanggang City branch of the Chinese Communist Party. He had a heart attack and died on February 13, 2005, at the age of 48.
His family said after he died, that they regretted Zhang didn’t listen to Falun Gong practitioners' advice. Practitioners had tried several times to talk him out of persecuting Falun Gong. At first he exercised some restraint, but later went back to following orders, and eventually died.
The second director of the 610 Office was Wang Kewu, who was diagnosed with liver cancer the year after he started working in the office. He died on April 2, 2005, shortly after being promoted to the position of director.
The first two directors of the city 610 Office dying within two months of each other did not go unnoticed by Party officials. Since both of the directors died young, no one wanted the job. The Huanggang City branch of the Chinese Communist Party had to promote officials from lower county levels.
The third director, Fang Chongzheng, was from Macheng City. He held the position for only a short time before being transferred. The fourth director was Xiong Minghua, who held the position on a part-time basis. The current director is Chen Xuanming, who was promoted to the position from a post in Wuxue City.
In Huanggang City, no CCP official is willing to be director of the 610 Office for long. Even those eager to climb the ladder of success are unwilling to lead the 610 Office. They are afraid of retribution for persecuting Falun Gong or of being exposed and sued in foreign countries.
Some of those who work in 610 Offices have the wisdom to avoid executing orders from their superiors. They say, “Falun Gong cultivates Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, which does not violate the law. Falun Gong's reputation will be restored someday. If I persecute them today, I will be held accountable then. It will also implicate my family.”
Party officials certainly have reasons to avoid heading up a 610 Office. The CCP central government discipline committee announced on December 20, 2013, that Li Dongsheng, head of the central government 610 Office, who also held a concurrent post of deputy minister of National Public Security, was being investigated and had been dismissed from his posts. Li Dongsheng is a close ally of Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. Before Li fell, former head of the national 610 Office Zhou Yongkang was said to be under investigation, and was about to be brought to justice.
After the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the so-called “second central government,” formally known as the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, was reduced in stature. Many high-ranking officials of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee were subsequently dismissed and investigated, with a total of 392 officials being arrested nationwide. Many officials with the Political and Legal Affairs Committee at different levels of government committed suicide.
According to Hong Kong magazine Qianshao Monthly , in February 2011, Jiang Zemin, the then Party head and chairman of the Central Military Commission of China, had two regrets in his life, one of them being the persecution of Falun Gong. Analysts said that the article was a signal that Jiang and his allies were worried about the CCP's collapse, and feared being brought to justice.
Foreign media reported that Jiang Zemin had sent a representative to negotiate with Falun Gong representatives in the United States, offering to sacrifice one police officer for each Falun Gong practitioner who died in the persecution, in exchange for not being sued for his personal responsibility in the persecution of Falun Gong, after he stepped down from the post of chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2004. His request was refused.
While Jiang looks for scapegoats for his crimes, many lower-level authorities in the police and judicial systems are kept in the dark, not aware that their superiors are ready to trade their lives for their own safety. When the time comes that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who have been illegally incarcerated in forced labor camps, jails, and brainwashing centers sue the authorities, it is not hard to see why no superior is willing to be accept responsibility for the persecution.
As with the public trials of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, “just carrying out orders” is not a valid excuse.
After the Cultural Revolution in China ended in 1976, the CCP had an internal investigation of those who actively followed orders to persecute other officials. Liu Chuanxin, then chief of Beijing Municipal Public Security Department, committed suicide. A few hundred officials in the police and judicial systems, and military advisers in civil organizations who actively followed the orders of the “Gang of Four,” were executed secretly in Yunnan Province, while their families received notices only stating that they died in the line of duty.
As the proverb says, “Good or evil is always followed by retribution, just like a shadow always follows an object.” We urge those who work at all levels of the Chinese government to evaluate the situations with wisdom, stop doing evil deeds, and help Falun Gong practitioners to compensate for their wrongdoings.
