(Minghui.org) Five years after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to persecute Falun Gong, the book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party was published in November 2004. Within 18 months, 10 million people declared their separation from the CCP and its affiliated organizations. The number has reached 200 million as of April 15, 2015.
In addition to CCP members, the above numbers also include those affiliated with the CCP's junior organizations, namely the Youth League and Young Pioneers. Through reading the Nine Commentaries, people have awakened from the decades of brainwashing and began to recognize the violence as well as harm the Party has brought to the nation.
This aligns well with a global trend of communism fading. Ukraine's parliament voted last month on April 9 to ban “propaganda of the totalitarian communist and Nazi regimes.” Under the legislation, the communist government that ruled during the Soviet era is condemned as a criminal regime for policies of state terror.
Several weeks later Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a law on May 15 condemning communist totalitarian regimes and banning propaganda of all their symbols in the country.
The Central Party School is the highest institution that develops top CCP officials. In a letter addressed to the Epoch Times in May 2005, 25 staff members in this institution announced their intention to quit the CCP organization. “We are from different departments in the Central Party School with ranks from ministry and bureau-level, all the way up to general staff members. Some of us have followed the Party for decades and some are highly educated intellectuals. We all wish to renounce our CCP membership.”
Because of work and family reasons, their names were aliases. “As far as we know, among over 2,000 staff members in the Party school, at least 90% are willing to quit the CCP organization if their lives were not in jeopardy.”
That letter was sent six months following the publishing of the Nine Commentaries, which underscores the failure of the CCP's attempt to sustain its rule.
This trend is closely related with the persecution policy against Falun Gong. Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat in Australia, was responsible for monitoring Falun Gong practitioners. Having access to highly classified information on Chinese intelligence activities in Australia, Chen knew how tightly the regime controls Chinese people even outside of China. But learning about the peaceful nature of Falun Gong eventually led to his defection on May 26, 2005.
In a letter explaining his defection, and why he and his wife chose to quit the Party, Chen wrote, “Separating ourselves from the CCP is conscience-awakening for all of us Chinese. And that is the hope for our future as a nation.”
Hao Fengjun, an officer from the Tianjin City 610 Office, used to work at the police department. After being assigned to the 610 Office, a steering force for the persecution against Falun Gong, he witnessed how officials used defamatory videos to brainwash practitioners. He also saw how officials tortured practitioners when they refused to give up their belief.
Upon declaring his decision to renounce his CCP membership in June 2005, Hao said quitting the Party was an inevitable trend. “It is changing China, and it will save China.”
Han Guangsheng, the Shenyang City Judicial Bureau chief, defected in Canada and explained why he chose to quit the CCP, “Chinese communists put its own interest ahead of everything else. It's barbaric, totalitarian, weak, and rotten to the core.” He said he left China because he did not want to continue persecuting innocent Falun Gong practitioners.
People choose to quit the CCP organizations because that is how they find hope for the future.
Huang Xiaomin, who won a silver medal for 200-meter breaststroke swimming during the 1988 Olympic Games, was the first Chinese swimmer to earn Olympic medals. She renounced her CCP membership in December 2004, “Nine Commentaries helped me to see through the essence of the CCP. I am now ashamed of once being a member of the organization.”
Although Huang joined the Party against her own will and she had not attended any related activities or paid dues for over a decade, she wrote that it was important to formally renounce her CCP membership. “Only by quitting the vicious organization can we completely eradicate its toxic influence on our body and soul.”
Another person is a retired senior official from the State Council and Ministry of Public Security who joined the CCP in 1930. When announcing to separate himself from the CCP organizations, he wrote, “Through the years we have witnessed so many political campaigns, one after another, that put a large number of people in tragedy. And now, the persecution against innocent Falun Gong practitioners convinced me that the Party is completely hopeless.”
Current CCP officials are also changing. After a police station chief heard the facts about Falun Gong from a practitioner, he visited him at 3:00 a.m. Bowing three times to the picture of Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, he apologized for the wrongdoings he had committed in the past. The police chief not only promised to protect practitioners later on, but also asked the practitioner to help his entire family quit the CCP organization.
When a Hong Kong practitioner asked a Chinese tourist to quit the Party, the tourist, a teacher from Guangdong Province, gave the practitioner a list on which were more than 1,000 names he had collected from those willing to quit the Party.
Many Falun Gong practitioners are working hard to tell others about the brutal persecution—to safeguard the basic rights to practice their belief, as well as explain the importance of quitting the CCP organizations. After all, when the Party falls for its bad deeds, anyone associated with the regime will also face serious consequences.
The recent playbook of China's politics echoes the quitting the CCP movement, as many key perpetrators of the suppression have recently been taken down one after another.
Wang Lijun, police chief of Chongqing City, was convicted in September 2012, on charges of abuse of power, bribery, and defection. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Bo Xilai, former member of the Central Politburo and Chongqing City's Party chief, fell after Wang's incident. In September 2013 he was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Li Dongsheng, Vice Minister of the Public Security Ministry and director of the 610 Office, was reported to be placed under investigation in December 2013.
Xu Caihou, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China's top military council, was detained and put under investigation in March 2014. He was facing a court martial and then died of cancer in March 2015.
Zhou Yongkang, former member of the Politburo Standing Committee and Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC, 2007-2012), was charged with bribery, abuse of power and the intentional disclosure of state secrets.
Although the charges were primarily bribery or abuse of power, these above officials were all heavily involved in persecuting Falun Gong. The PLAC and the 610 Office, in particular, are key organizations that have directed the 15-year-long brutal persecution.
But the tiger-catching efforts are far from over. Luo Gan, former Secretary of the PLAC between 2007 and 2012, and Zeng Qinghong, another key ally of Jiang Zemin, both played instrumental roles in implementing Jiang's persecution policy against Falun Gong.
Even for Bo and Zhou, both involved in organ harvesting from living practitioners, their announced charges did not include such claims. This indicates that the CCP officials refuse to publicize the brutality the regime had committed against innocent people. Soon though, the CCP will come to an end.