(Clearwisdom.net) On December 6 of 2004, the Chinese Embassy in Bern, Germany withheld my passport when I wanted to add my husband's surname to it. I told them that if they didn't return my passport within a week, I would expose this matter to the public. Several days passed and there was no reaction from the Embassy. I thought that I shouldn't wait any longer, and whether the Embassy returned my passport or not, this incident should be exposed anyway. This was a good opportunity to clarify the truth regarding the persecution.
I exchanged views with some fellow practitioners who had the same experience previously. Then I wrote an article called "Before Christmas, My Passport Was Detained without Reason" and sent it to Clearwisdom.net to expose this matter. I also wrote an open letter in German. My husband wrote a letter to the Embassy and sent it together with truth-clarifying material. After that, I contacted a newspaper office, and the local newspapers reported this event with a story titled "Humiliation of Bern".
On December 29, the Embassy called and asked me to pick up my passport. I said, "You have promised to mail it to me, and I can't go to pick it up since I live so far away from the Embassy. (I was afraid that they might play tricks with me, and in addition even the fastest train would take a whole day round trip.) Please mail it to me." They asked for an envelope and postage. I put money in an envelope and sent it out right away, together with some truth clarification material. After that, we heard nothing from the Embassy.
My father-in-law is not a cultivator of Falun Gong, but he knows the tyranny and evilness of the Chinese Communist Party. His opinion was that the reason the Embassy didn't return the passport to me was because they didn't like the truth-clarifying material. I thought there was nothing wrong with doing this, since they are entitled to know the truth. After that, I sent faxes and made phone calls to the Embassy, but there was no reply.
During this period, my husband and I went to the Division of Administration of Foreigners. I wanted to apply for a temporary ID. Because they had never handled such a case before, they stalled the process. This made me see my omissions--I depended on the German government to solve the problem for me. Their attitude gave us another chance to clarify the truth. We made phone calls to other newspaper offices, some of which had never heard of Falun Gong before. One journalist gave us an interview at our house after studying some Dafa material and published a report titled "No Returning Home in This Lifetime".
When we went to the Mayor's office, he had on his table this report, which had been published a few days prior. Quite obviously he had read about this matter in the newspaper and seemed to know that we would come to him. He said he once heard the name "Falun Gong" and considered it very mysterious. He said he knew very little about this qi gong practice and didn't understand why it would be persecuted in China. We talked for more than half an hour and answered some of his questions. Before departing, we left him with some Dafa material including CDs. This young mayor listed some things to do that could be helpful to me. After that, the director of the Division of Administration of Foreigners wrote to the Embassy, telling them that if there were still no reaction from the Embassy, they would very likely give me a temporary ID.
Meanwhile, I contacted two well-known human rights organizations, hoping that they could look into this matter. International Human Rights had helped Dafa disciples before. This time they quickly wrote a letter to the Embassy and sent a copy of the letter to me, as well. In the letter they wrote that if the Embassy insisted on not returning my passport, they would take the next step, reporting this to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Bureau of Foreigner Administration.
One of my professors, whose expertise is the Chinese economy, also wrote a letter to the Embassy. I guess they might have received these three letters at around the same time. On February 25, I received my passport in the mail. The application for adding my husband's surname to the passport was also approved.
For the past three months, I have been clarifying the truth about Falun Gong to people like reporters and officials. This was something that I had no chance and no courage to do before. During this process, I rectified my thoughts and told myself not to solve problems just for the purpose of solving problems, but to clarify the truth to people. From this event I knew more clearly that the evil was getting weaker and weaker, and I saw the power of clarifying the truth.
