July 20th Commentary: Practitioners’ 23 Years of Persistence Has Changed the World’s Opinion

(Minghui.org) The past 23 years in China were no ordinary times. While everything appeared normal with the usual hustle and bustle in society, a large number of innocent people were being detained and tortured for their faith inside the detention centers, labor camps, and prisons.

They are practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation system based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, numerous practitioners have been targeted for striving to be good citizens. Many detained practitioners were subjected to physical torture, forced labor, mental abuse, involuntary drug administration, and even forced organ harvesting.

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The CCP started the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. At that time, the world stayed quiet and many people outside of China did not even know what Falun Gong was.

Twenty three years later, due to Falun Gong practitioners’ tireless efforts in exposing the CCP’s persecution, people around the world have understood this ancient Buddhist mind-body exercise and the suffering that its practitioners endured in China.

Over 900 dignitaries from 35 countries and regions signed a joint statement in December 2020, urging the CCP to stop its persecution of Falun Gong. The International community is also building up sanctions against the perpetrators in China.

This was quite a change – in the past, the world was mute on the issue of Falun Gong, and some countries even helped the CCP to silence Falun Gong practitioners’ protests per CCP requests.

Falun Gong Practitioners Protest Against Persecution During CCP Official’s Visits

Jiang Zemin, former head of the CCP, visited Dresden, Germany in 2002. Jiang requested the host not to let any protesters in yellow (Falun Gong practitioners often wear yellow clothes) show up in his sight. The German authorities sent out 725 police officers to block Falun Gong practitioners. They questioned anyone dressed in yellow and searched their bags, and even their bodies. The police also sent out helicopters to monitor protesters from the sky.

The police in Paris detained several dozen Falun Gong practitioners during the event to celebrate the Sino-France Culture Exchange Year in 2004. They even handcuffed some practitioners, only because they were wearing yellow scarfs with characters of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” and “Falun Dafa” on them.

According to the Minghui website, among the 20 official visits to 15 countries by 11 CCP high-ranking officials, the CCP managed to impose 17 persecution methods to Falun Gong practitioners in the hosting countries. These persecutions included driving them away, beating, harassing, taking banners away, spreading false information to slander Falun Gong, and providing hosting countries with black lists of practitioners to be targeted.

Secret “Bilateral Human Rights Talk”

When the CCP first launched the persecution of Falun Gong, some Western lawmakers and officials asked the CCP to stop the persecution.

To silence the global voice, the CCP developed a “bilateral human rights talk” trick. It requested any country who wanted to speak for Falun Gong to discuss the issue in a secret, closed-door, one-on-one meeting. These meetings, without public pressure or multiple participants, had no effect on the CCP. Sometimes these meetings even became negotiation chips.

Without much international pressure, the CCP was able to openly arrest and torture Falun Gong practitioners during the first decade of its persecution. Hundreds of thousands practitioners were arrested, illegally sentenced, and monitored. The Minghui website has verified that 4,828 practitioners in China have been persecuted to death as of July 23, 2022.

As the international pressure became bigger over time, the CCP shifted its persecution from “open” to “underground.” It carried out more secret arrests of and closed-door trials against practitioners, to hide the persecution from the sights of the Chinese public and the international community.

Letter Pleading for Help Appeared in Slave Labor Product

Many Falun Gong practitioners in the CCP prisons or forced labor camps were forced to perform intensive slave labor work. Some practitioners sought opportunities to expose the persecution to the world.

Julie Keith found a letter pleading for help.

Julie Keith, a resident of Oregon, found a letter asking for help when she opened a box of Halloween decorations she bought in 2012. The letter, folded carefully, came from a forced labor camp in China.

Mr. Sun Yi wrote the letter. He was sent to the now-defunct Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in Liaoning Province in 2008 due to his belief of Falun Gong. He suffered long-term torture and forced-slave labor. He wrote over 20 letters pleading for help and put them inside the Halloween decoration boxes that would be sold in the U.S.

Julie uploaded the picture onto social media. CNN, FOX News, New York Times, and other major media followed up and reported her story.

This letter made the world take seriously the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

The international media had seldom covered Falun Gong issue before. But the help letter shocked the world as it showed people that the persecution truly existed and was still going on. From then on, the international community started paying attention to Falun Gong practitioners’ situation in China.

The documentary film “Letter from Masanjia,” based on Mr. Sun’s true story, came out in April 2018.

FOX TV created and broadcast an investigation episode “Sister’s Salvation” in May 2019. It reported that Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wang Kefei was tortured to death, but her body was still frozen in a forced labor camp twenty years later, and her family was unable to bury her.

These documentaries shocked and moved the Western world.

CCP’s Suppression of Hong Kong Residents and Cover-up of COVID Information

A series of big events happened in 2019, which further helped people to understand the nature of the CCP.

The first event was Hong Kong residents’ protest against the extradition bill to send “criminals” (including possible political dissidents) to mainland China for prosecution. Over a million Hong Kong residents held an anti-extradition march in June. Their peaceful protest was met with the CCP’s brutal suppression in front of the world. A video of 1,400 scenes of the CCP’s violence against protesters, which a young man in Hong Kong edited, shocked the world.

China Tribunal made the verdict on June 17, 2019, that the organ harvesting against prisoners of conscience still exists in China.

Around the same time, the independent China Tribunal issued its final judgment in June, 2019. It concluded that the CCP is guilty of live organ harvesting and that it has taken Falun Gong practitioners as one of the main sources of organ supply. Though it did not attract worldwide attention initially, the tribunal believes that the judgment will eventually be recognized by the world.

Then at the end of 2019, the “CCP Virus” spread in Wuhan, Hebei Province, China. The CCP hid the information and allowed the virus to spread to the rest of the world. The Wuhan local government held a “ten thousand people banquet” event despite the virus. Local residents were forced to attend the event, further aggravating the situation.

The CCP’s suppression in Hong Kong, and its spreading the “CCP Virus” to the world, awakened many people around the world. They started to see and understand the true nature of the CCP. The United States and many countries in Europe banned the Confucius Institutes, which the CCP used to spread its ideology to the world in the education field. The U.S. government also declared some CCP media as CCP agents and started a series of sanctions against the CCP officials.

A force of justice against the CCP started forming.

“I Want to Apologize to Falun Gong Practitioners”

Many employees of The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) are Falun Gong practitioners. Their courage and dedication to reporting the truth to the public have been recognized by more and more people. Many Hong Kong citizens changed their attitudes towards Falun Gong after seeing how these practitioner reporters stayed with the anti-extradition protesters in front of the police assaults and suppression.

A young woman in Hong Kong, during her interview with a Minghui correspondent in 2020, said, “I want to apologize to Falun Gong practitioners and The Epoch Times media. I was influenced by the CCP’s propaganda, and I used to think you were a cult. I was against The Epoch Times. But after I took part in several protests last year, I was moved by The Epoch Times’ and NTDTV’s reporters’ determination to be on the front lines to report what was happening.”

Many Hong Kong citizens also left comments on social media platforms to show their support and apologize for misunderstanding Falun Gong in the past. Below are some of their comments:

“In the past, I refused to believe the CCP was taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners and selling them for a profit. I want to apologize to practitioners.”

“After living through the protests, I now realize how brutal the CCP’s persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners is.”

“After truly witnessing the CCP’s brutality, I came to believe that Falun Gong has been truly persecuted.”

“Falun Gong, I’m sorry (to you)!”

Minghui Report: The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China

The book Minghui Report: The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China by Minghui Publishing received a silver award from the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), the largest publishing trade association in the United States. The IBPA award, with over 160 voting members, is considered the highest national level awards for independent publishers. The Minghui book won the silver award for the publishers’ first books in the nonfiction category.

Minghui Report: The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China

Zhang Lin, a renowned Chinese dissident and writer, congratulated Minghui on the award and said, “Among all groups persecuted by the CCP, Falun Gong practitioners know the (CCP) regime the clearest.”

Conclusion

As the truth is revealed piece by piece to the public, justice is certainly coming.

After the U.S. congress passed the Magnitsky Act, 29 other countries followed suit and enacted similar laws. These laws allow these countries to sanction human rights perpetrators in other countries, with actions such as rejecting their visas or freezing their assets.

The U.S. government stopped issuing visas to the CCP members involved in human rights abuses and their family members. It also sanctioned a police officer and an official of a 610 Office for their persecution of Falun Gong. For sanction purposes, Falun Gong practitioners also delivered to 38 countries a list of 9,300 names of agents working at the 610 Offices, offices established by the CCP for the sole purpose of persecuting Falun Gong.

For the past 23 years of the CCP’s persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have always expressed their persistent pursuit of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” and exposed the truth about the CCP’s cruel persecution in a peaceful and non-violent manner.

Through their tireless efforts, the voice of justice is spreading over the world, and “Falun Dafa is good” has been heard throughout the world.

The bitter winter is gone, can spring be far away?