On the morning of Nov. 30, Falun Gong representatives were invited to the Population Research Institute (PRI) Conference in Washington D.C. to speak on the issue of the Chinese Government's suppression of the freedom of belief. This was the second time Falun Gong Representatives were invited to speak at the annual conference. Many attendees were specialists and scholars from different regions including those from China. Government officials in charge of religious affairs from the State Department also attended the conference.
Falun Gong representatives cited numerous facts exposing Jiang Zemin authorities' ruthless persecution of the innocent Falun Gong practitioners, which goes against the will of both the people and Heaven. Meanwhile, Falun Gong representatives also appealed to the newly elected U.S. government officials for their support of the legitimate rights of Falun Gong practitioners and for the justice represented by Falun Gong, because whether to support Falun Gong or not is a moral issue.
Falun Gong representatives made a great impact among the participants with their speech and many of the listeners expressed a wish to do something meaningful for Falun Gong.
Reported on Nov. 30, 2000
(Translated on Dec. 2, 2000 from http://minghui.cc/gb/0001/Dec/01/DC_population_conference_120100_shishi.html)
Below is a transcript of the speech:
SPEECH FOR THE POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE [Nov. 30, 2000]
Human Rights in China: A New US Policy for the Next Administration
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I would first like to thank the Population Research Institute for inviting me to speak about the rights of religious believers, and in particular about the rights of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
The other evening, I was watching President Clinton on C-SPAN addressing some of his guests at the White House. It was interesting to watch him speak, as he did so not with great emotion, but with a tinge of nostalgia and sadness. He has had an illustrious two terms, but now that he is leaving, there are things that he must wish he had done differently. And so in keeping with the topic of this conference, I would first like to begin with my first policy recommendation to the next administration (when and if we finally get one...) to: Remember to keep your legacy in mind.
Why do I say this, and how does it pertain to the rights of religious believers, and in particular about the Falun Gong situation in China? Every era has its defining moments, its defining movements. Every once in a while there comes along an issue that forces one to take a stand and decide which side you're going to be on. If the decision is made well, then history will prove it to be so, and a person can proudly tell his or her grandchildren, for example: "I marched with Martin Luther King Jr." or "I fought on the side of the Allies during World War II." If, on the other hand, the wrong decision is made, then one faces only a lifetime of regret and self-justification, or worse.
One would like to think that people make their choices based on an internal compass telling us what is right and what is wrong, but administrations typically take many other factors into consideration as well. In most cases, I would argue that taking the side of what is right IS the side that will ultimately be in the national interest. Think about the decisions that this nation has made about major world issues, and it is clear which ones have made America great, and which ones have compromised its stature. Think about when the United States has intervened around the world unselfishly, and think again about what happens when it steps in only for its own selfish interests. There are decisions that this nation can be proud of, and there are those we barely care to mention.
I believe that the Falun Gong issue in China is precisely one of those issues that will affect the legacy of the next administration and the nation as a whole. Let's stop and think for a moment about what has been happening in China. Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Advocacy Director, T. Kumar, said earlier this year:
"Tens and thousands of Falun Gong members were arrested by the Chinese purely because they were practicing their own belief. These are the people who are ordinary citizens of China. They never harmed anyone... they are not criminals.... It's shocking to see that China can get away with this for the past one year... arresting, imprisoning, torturing and harassing even the people who speak out against these crackdowns."
Human rights groups have recently reported that some 25,000 people have been sent to 'laogai' or 'labor re-education' camps without trial, at least 600 have been sent to mental hospitals, over 500 have been given harsh jail sentences of up to 18 years, and more than 80 persons have died due to torture in police custody. And these are only the cases that have been reported and confirmed.
But the numbers don't tell the whole story. On October 25th, AP reported on one of the many incidents in Tiananmen Square involving Falun Dafa practitioners attempting to appeal to their government:
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"One man, thrown to the ground, was kicked in the stomach and head until blood ran from his mouth onto the gray flagstones. An elderly woman was dragged by her hair for several yards as bystanders pleaded with police to stop."
And this is only what was done in broad daylight. There are countless eyewitness accounts of the tortures and humiliations that practitioners have been subject to over the past year while behind closed doors in detention camps. We are seeing that police are bringing back some of the most inhumane tortures the Chinese culture has had the misfortune to invent, such as sticking bamboo slivers under the fingernails and the torture device known as "Dilao" whereby prisoners are chained down in the most excruciating positions. They have resumed one of the tactics used in the former Soviet Union of sending completely healthy, normal people into mental institutions as a way to insinuate that everyone who believes in this so-called 'evil cult' is insane. Psychiatric institutions are also a convenient place to keep someone detained without due legal procedure, and they keep the practitioners quiet by injecting them with nerve-damaging drugs and sedatives.
One disturbing trend is the total disregard the perpetrators have for women. A large percentage of the practitioners who have stepped forward to appeal to the government are women, both young and old. Policemen think nothing of punching unarmed women in the face and kicking them, subjecting them to all forms of humiliation and sexual abuse.
Police are also given free rein to break into people's homes at any time of day or night and to take their personal belongings. In some regions, they impose fines on practitioners' families and force them to borrow money to pay them. In their wake, they leave thousands of families broken and destitute. Judging from recent directives from President Jiang Zemin, this was not just an unintended side effect of the crackdown, but a strategic policy encapsulated in the directive: "Exhaust them financially, ruin their reputations, eradicate them within three months."
But of course, that was more than three months ago, and the practitioners in China are still holding strong. Apart from their amazing stamina, what is remarkable about this whole situation is that the practitioners have managed to maintain a stance of non-violence throughout -- they simply don't fight back. They know that you cannot fight evil with evil. As far as I know, never has China seen such a sustained and peaceful resistance in all its years of history. And all these practitioners want to tell the government is that Falun Dafa is a good spiritual practice, and that people should have freedom of faith.
Many of you are Christians or are practitioners of other spiritual practices, so you probably have some understanding of the principle of "you reap what you sow" which we refer to as the principle of karmic retribution. Yes, China has made amazing economic progress, but at the same time, according to Secretary of State Madeline Albright, it is also the largest 'rogue' nation in the world. If the rest of the world just sits back and allows the horrors to continue, then we are very much 'sowing' something, or at least sending the wrong message. Time and time again in history, we have seen that to not stand up to evil is to betray the good.
Many take the stance that economic freedom in China will eventually lead to greater openness and the human rights situation will just improve. That may very well be true, but Professor Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania argues in a recent paper that:
"The notion that a dictatorship can evolve gradually and slowly until a point where, as it were, it closes in on freedom, is fantasy... So convinced are we of the wisdom of our approach that we make constant exceptions for Chinese behavior, most notably in the areas of human rights and nuclear nonproliferation, and we pressure our allies to do the same... Chinas' transition from Communism is only just beginning, if it has begun at all. If we really mean this transition to go our way instead of spiraling into chaos or another dictatorship, we should do better to remember who we are and what we stand for, and act accordingly."
The idea, perhaps, is that China needs to be encouraged and nudged a little to have more incentive to care about the civil liberties of its populace. Which brings me to my next recommendation to the U.S. government: engage constructively not only with the Chinese government but also with the Chinese people themselves.
Governments come and go, and just because it seems that China has always been this repressive regime doesn't mean it always was or always will be this way. The current leadership in China claims that its political dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners are enemies of the state, but I think we all know that it's precisely these members of the populace who care about where China is headed. It's the current PRC leadership that tends to show the world China's worst face that of violence and corruption, and a willingness to waste precious resources on keeping the people down. Unless China can join the 21st century and learn to be civilized, its concerned citizens will continue to point out its flaws. There is a Chinese saying "Hen tie bu chen gang" or "hating the iron for not becoming steel" that describes how many citizens are looking at their nation right now.
There is something twisted and surreal about the way things are in China right now that hark back to the dark days of the Cultural Revolution. It is clear that this is a regime that is kowtowing to the interests of a very few who hold power. The Far Eastern Economic Review recently reported that the Jiang Zemin "single-handedly" ordered the crackdown against Falun Gong. It is he, and not the practitioners, who is choosing to squander the nation's hard-earned resources on a crackdown that many members of the PRC government do not support.
In cracking down on Falun Dafa, Jiang Zemin is also hacking away at thousands of years of Chinese intellectual history. People who choose Falun Dafa as their spiritual path are people who have decided to live their lives in accordance with the principles of Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance principles that we hold to be universal. In the principles of Falun Dafa, we can hear the "Zhen" or Truth of Lao Tzu and the "Ren" or Benevolence emphasized by Confucius. We can hear thousands of years of Chinese cosmology and religious thought in the ideas of repaying ones karmic debts and of how the spirit continues on after death. These are not new ideas; they're ideas that have permeated the Chinese culture, and indeed many other cultures, for as long as anyone can remember. Being honest and compassionate is not being 'superstitions;' these are the ideas that form the bedrock of human faith. As for whether they're 'counter-revolutionary' ideas, that depends on which side you're on... But they're not political ideas by definition. Falun Dafa is unabashedly a spiritual practice, and it is one that is founded on ancient traditions. Just because these ideas have been out of fashion in China for the past 50 years doesn't mean that they haven't stood, or will not stand, the test of time.
When I first found Falun Dafa, something inside me resonated with the words I read in the main text of the teachings, Zhuan Falun, and I have never looked back. Spiritual faith is an anchor when everything else turns murky and the currents are pulling everyone in every direction. And in China, as we all know, the currents are as fickle as they are strong. China today needs nothing more than it needs moral values and a sense of meaning in life that goes beyond the material, and that, I think we all agree, is something that the Party is not providing.
Nor can the Chinese government provide adequate health care to its people. There are far from enough hospitals in China for its population of 1.3 billion, and the cost of healthcare is also rising beyond what many can afford. It is no surprise, then, that the Chinese people have sought out alternative forms of medicine and healing like Qigong, despite the government's taboo against what it considers to be 'superstition.' It's an open secret that the PRC leaders themselves actually use certain Qigong masters as their primary form of healthcare. For years now, millions of Chinese people have gathered in parks all over the country every morning, doing all forms of exercise as a way to stay healthy and fit. Falun Dafa was introduced to the public in 1992, and, almost exclusively by word of mouth, the practice just kept growing. At first, it was because, for example, an elderly man would stumble upon people practicing it in the park, and so he would learn it. By diligently practicing and studying the teachings, gradually his aches and pains and chronic ailments would go away and he would become noticeably healthier. Then his wife and neighbors and friends would wonder what was going on and give it a try for themselves.
While I'm not here to make any claims about the healing powers of the practice, there is definitely something to it the U.S. News and World Report ran a story in February of last year before the crackdown in which an official from the PRC Sports Commission said:
"Falun Gong and other types of qi gong can save each person 1,000 yuan in annual medical fees. If 100 million people are practicing it, that's 100 billion yuan saved per year in medical fees. Premier Zhu Rongji is very happy about that. The country could use the money right now."
That comes out to more than ten billion U.S. dollars a year no small sum.
But not everyone in the leadership was so happy with Falun Gong's unadvertised but rapid rise in popularity. The Communist Party apparently did a survey on the practice in early 1999 and were shocked to find that the number of practitioners of Falun Gong alone was an estimated 70 to 100 million people. To put that into perspective, that's roughly a third of the U.S. population. These people are just ordinary citizens of all ages and from all walks of life, from farmers to professors and even government officials. Before the crackdown, they led ordinary lives, the only difference being that they would do exercises and hold themselves to certain higher principles, and as a result, many of them seemed particularly healthy, happy, and productive. It would make sense that any government would be pleased with that situation. But to a few of the hard-liners in power, these numbers were simply too much of a potential threat.
As many of you are people who follow a spiritual path, be it Christianity or other another religion, I'm sure you can relate when I say that practicing a spiritual faith like Falun Dafa doesn't mean blind faith. This is one of the biggest misunderstandings of this whole situation the idea that it's Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of the practice, directing people to go to Tiananmen Square and to sacrifice for the practice. Mr. Li hasn't taught in China since 1994, and the vast majority of practitioners have never laid eyes on him. People are stepping forward because they have benefited from the practice, not because someone told them to do it. Practitioners are supposed to think for themselves and cultivate themselves to attain greater wisdom. I don't think you could pay someone to have courage and stand up to brutal tortures unless they themselves wanted to in their hearts. There are always going to be certain practitioners who are more likely to come up with ideas and are able to communicate their ideas effectively who become 'key people' as a result, but even after they are arrested, the resistance still continues. The network is vast and loose. And many practitioners are not stepping forward because they don't want to endanger their families and because they don't want to make life harder for themselves. That, too, is their choice.
Rabbi David Saperstein, former Chair on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, has said that religious freedom is indivisible, that without a commitment to religious freedom and freedom of conscience, you cannot have all the other freedoms that we cherish under international human rights schema. This is why freedom of faith is so crucial given all the other civil and political freedoms that everyone has been talking about at this conference. Freedom of faith is essentially the freedom to think for oneself. And it is a right that is particularly precarious right now in China. Saperstein has said:
"...when we see groups like Falun Gong attacked for what they believe and practicing what they believe, that requires democratic countries to speak out. We're particularly concerned with China, because China in this past year...has significantly worsened the condition of religious freedom across the board. For Muslim leaders, for Tibetan Buddhists, for the underground Protestant and Catholic churches, and for groups like Falun Gong. In that sense, Falun Gong has almost become the symbol for the struggle for religious freedom more broadly."
There are those who say that Falun Gong is a 'controversial' issue. But in reality, Falun Gong is a moral issue, and it is a clean issue. Do you think it's right for elderly men and women to be detained and tortured because they believe it's good to be honest and kind to others? We hope your answer is a resounding 'no.' I certainly don't have to be Catholic to believe that it's wrong for Chinese policemen to imprison and physically abuse an 82 year-old Catholic priest until he falls into a coma. Contrary to the moral relativism of our time, we who have a faith know that some things are just universally right and some things are universally wrong, and sometimes expedience has nothing to do with it. And we hope that the next administration can remember to always keep that bigger picture in mind as it navigates the next four years.
I would just like to end by quoting Mark Palmer, the Vice Chairman of the Board of Freedom House. I think he sums it up better than I can:
"You can't dismiss this, any more than you can dismiss Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or any other great spiritual movement. [Falun Gong] is in my judgment, the greatest single movement in Asia today. There is nothing that begins to compare with it in courage and importance... Falun Gong deserves the world's support... I feel very strongly that this is a special moment for China now. A time to get rid of the backwardness, the dictatorship, the oppression, and to join the modern world."
Thank you very much.