Epoch Times Editorial Board
When Chongqing’s former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life on Feb. 6 to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, and Chongqing’s Communist Party chief Bo Xilai pursued him with 70 police cars and armored vehicles, the first sign appeared of a power struggle breaking out at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The world has since been offered a glimpse at how the CCP’s leadership operates behind closed doors. The world has also been given the opportunity to understand how the massive and powerful CCP organ called the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) has violated the laws that it is charged with enforcing.
At the same time, the infighting behind the high red walls of Zhongnanhai, the CCP’s leadership compound, has focused attention on the darkest chapter in the history of today’s China: the persecution of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa. That persecution is now seen to be the core issue behind the struggles going on at the top of the CCP.
Operating Outside the Law
After the then-paramount leader of the CCP Jiang Zemin launched the persecution of Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999, he found maintaining his signature campaign difficult. It was unpopular and absurd on its face. Rather than change course, Jiang chose to drive the persecution forward by giving more and more power to the PLAC.
Before Jiang, the PLAC was mainly in charge of domestic intelligence, public security, the safety of the CCP leaders, and the reeducation-through-labor, judicial, procuratorial, and other legal or law-enforcement systems.
Under Jiang, the PLAC’s power was infinitely magnified. The PLAC secretary was promoted to be a member of Politburo Standing Committee—the nine men who run the CCP—and given the authority to utilize the resources of the Supreme Court, Supreme Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, Propaganda Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and other agencies at various levels.
At the same time, the PLAC expanded the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force, giving it the capability to contend with the military. As Epoch Times commentator Wang Hua has explained, the PLAC became the second power center of the CCP.
When former PLAC Secretary Qiao Shi was in office, he used the Armed Police only once in over 10 years, and the Armed Police was subordinate to the police department.
When Jiang Zemin’s trusted follower Zhou Yongkang took over, he used the Armed Police 15 times in a year, and the scale of the Armed Police’s actions got greater and greater. From the forced demolitions of people’s homes to performing security checks at meetings, the Armed Police came to be used frequently. As the PLAC’s power swelled, it proved able to completely disregard the law.
Jiang Zemin feared his crimes in persecuting Falun Dafa would one day be punished, and so he only trusted those who shared his guilt. He knew that officials who carried out his persecution could never call him to account without also condemning themselves.
Rules and policies were ignored, and Jiang forcefully inserted his trusted aides and accomplices into the highest levels of the Party so that they could directly control the legal system and maintain the persecution.
Regarding Falun Dafa practitioners, Jiang gave orders to “defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.” The scale of the persecution, the amount of resources utilized, the severity, the cruelty of the methods used—all were unprecedented.
Yet, Jiang could only push his mad campaign forward by deceiving the nation. Using the CCP’s ability to control all information and flood society with propaganda, Jiang created lies defaming Falun Dafa. Two lies in particular played key roles, the “1,400 cases” and the fake self-immolations on Tiananmen Square.
Propaganda
The CCP’s propaganda machine claimed that Falun Dafa had caused the deaths of 1,400 people through suicide, homicide, alcoholism, drug use, failure to use medical treatment, mental illness, and so on. This lie was spread just as the persecution was launched and was the opening gambit in an effort to turn the Chinese people against this peaceful, traditional spiritual practice.
The regime used threats and bribes to fabricate cases; claimed the deaths of many who didn’t practice Falun Dafa as deaths caused by the practice; used patients at mental hospitals who did not practice Falun Dafa as examples of Falun Dafa’s alleged negative effects; promised reductions in medical expenses to bribe hospital patients into blaming Falun Dafa for their illnesses; and counted some of the Falun Dafa practitioners who had been tortured to death as among the 1,400 cases.
In spite of Jiang’s efforts, the persecution remained widely unpopular with the Chinese people, making it hard to maintain. The Ministry of State Security, under orders from Central PLAC Secretary Luo Gan, concocted a lie so outrageous that people had to believe it was true—no ordinary person is ready to believe that human beings could use one another in this way.
On Jan. 23, 2001, five individuals set fire to themselves on Tiananmen Square. Among them were a mother, Liu Chunling, and her 12-year-old daughter, Liu Siying. Within one hour after the event, CCTV began playing a video of the “immolations.” That video claimed to show Liu Chunling being burned to death. It played nonstop on CCTV, along with follow-up reports, including a bedside interview with the child Liu Siying swathed in bandages.
The stunt elaborated on the image of Falun Dafa first planted in the minds of the Chinese people by the 1,400 cases. The video seemed to show Falun Dafa practitioners committing suicide and in effect murdering their children. Jiang sought to eliminate the public’s stubborn sympathy for Falun Dafa practitioners and even to make the public begin hating practitioners.
The public was bombarded continuously with the self-immolation video and follow-up reports. A careful analysis of the videos reveals hundreds of flaws in the story spun by Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan.
Taken together, these flaws prove the incident was a hoax. Take as an example the portrayal in the videos of the man identified as “Wang Jindong.” He was pictured with his clothes on fire, yet his hair was not even singed, even though human hair is very flammable. Between his legs was a plastic Sprite bottle said to contain gasoline, yet the fire shown engulfing him had not melted the bottle, blackened the label, or ignited its contents. A voice analysis of the videos about the self immolations demonstrated that three different actors were used to play Wang Jindong in interviews.
Brutal Persecution
To make Falun Dafa practitioners give up their belief in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, the core principles of Falun Dafa, the Chinese regime’s police have used over 40 types of torture.
Each type of torture used by the police exceeds what the human body can handle. Many people call the reeducation through labor camps and detention centers “hell” or “devil’s dens.” Falun Dafa practitioners are frequently deprived of sleep for days at a time, severely beaten, shocked with electric batons, sexually abused, and force-fed—the most common cause of death by torture. Many have been injected with drugs that damage the central nervous system.
Forced, Live Organ Harvesting
In 2006, Canadian human rights lawyer and Nazi hunter David Matas and former Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific) and crown prosecutor David Kilgour were invited by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong to conduct an independent investigation into allegations that the Chinese regime was forcibly harvesting organs from living Falun Dafa practitioners.
Kilgour and Matas found that in the six-year period from 2000 to 2005, 41,500 transplantation operations took place in China for which the regime could not provide a source for the organs.
They concluded, “We believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Dafa practitioners. … Many human beings belonging to a peaceful voluntary organization made illegal eight years ago by President Jiang because he thought it might threaten the dominance of the Communist Party of China have been in effect executed by medical practitioners for their organs.”
Persecution Exported to the West
Mr. Chen Yonglin, the former Consul for Political Affairs for the People’s Republic of China’s Consulate General in Sydney, Australia, testified in July, 2005, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs about the efforts of the Chinese regime to suppress Falun Dafa practitioners outside China.
“The war against Falun Dafa is one of the main tasks of the Chinese missions overseas,” Mr. Chen said. “The Falun Dafa issue is the priority of the Consulate’s job, and it is a daily, long-term job.”
This campaign against Falun Dafa threatens the rule of law in free societies.
Disorder, Terror, and Dishonor
The persecution of Falun Dafa has brought ruin to China at home and dishonor abroad.
The efforts to enforce the persecution in China have perverted the nation’s legal system. Terror and corruption govern the state in the interests of a clique within the CCP.
The persecution has inflated officials’ power, and officials began using their new power to plunder people’s wealth, causing waves of corruption. Grievances are everywhere, and the rich and the officials are widely hated.
Political scientist Murray Scot Tanner estimates there were 120,000 mass incidents in China in 2008. Professor Xie Yielang of Beijing University, citing the PLAC’s figures, said there were 230,000 mass incidents in 2009. The number of protests is rapidly growing each year.
Meanwhile, officials move their wealth and their families out of China, preparing to escape before the ship of state finally sinks.
The persecution places an unbearable burden on the nation’s finances. In the earlier days of the persecution, Jiang Zemin mobilized the equivalent of one-fourth of the GDP to persecute Falun Dafa. On March 5, the budget for “maintaining stability” was announced as being 701.8 billion yuan (US$111.3 billion), which is greater than 670.2 billion yuan (US$106.3 billion) military budget.
The PLAC’s actions have made a mockery of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao’s talk of a “harmonious society” and due to the PLAC’s influence, Hu and Wen even have difficulty getting their voices heard outside of Zhongnanhai.
Jiang’s transformation of the PLAC was the background behind Bo Xilai’s great ambition to seize the rule of the CCP. The PLAC is a sword of Damocles hanging over all the other CCP officials. It can cut down any of them, including Hu and Wen, at any time.
In the international community, this persecution has heavily damaged the image of the Chinese state. Beijing’s leadership is heavily condemned by the international community, and crowds protest wherever top officials visit. Those deeply implicated in the persecution are sued for genocide and crimes against humanity—Bo Xilai has been sued in 12 countries.
Rare Historical Opportunity
While bringing disaster to China, the persecution has failed and will soon end. Jiang Zemin’s vow in July 1999 to “eliminate Falun Dafa in three months” has proven to be so many empty words.
Tens of millions of Falun Dafa practitioners inside China persist in believing in truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. In spite of the brutal persecution, they have continued to peacefully and rationally explain to the general public what Falun Dafa is and how it has been persecuted.
In spite of the CCP’s tight blockade on the news and the Internet in China, the facts about the 1400 cases, the Tiananmen Square self-immolations, and the live harvesting of organs from Falun Dafa practitioners are now spreading widely in mainland China.
The current infighting has forced a choice upon Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. Either they will prevail over the faction led by Zhou Yongkang, or they will lose power and perhaps also lose their lives.
In this choice lies a great and obvious opportunity. If they and other high-ranking officials use their authority for good; publicize the facts regarding the crimes of Jiang Zemin, Zhou Yongkang, and Luo Gan; and end the persecution of Falun Dafa, then they will help restore normalcy to Chinese society.
This will be good for the nation and for the people. Having leaders with the moral courage to do what is right will restore the trust of the people and stabilize society. Hu and Wen will be showered with gratitude.
Such a historical opportunity will never exist again.
If Hu and Wen miss their opportunity and continue to sit idle, this most inexcusable crime—the persecution of Falun Dafa—will haunt them remorselessly.
A New Foundation
The more than 100 million Chinese Falun Dafa practitioners, their family members, and the hundreds of millions Chinese people who are awakening to the evil of the CCP and the goodness of Falun Dafa comprise the most stable foundation for Chinese society.
Such a large population also reflects the public will for a peaceful reform in China’s political regime. There is no way for Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to prevent the CCP from ending, however hard they might try. But they have the chance to save themselves and numerous CCP officials from the misfortunes that will accompany the CCP’s collapse. All depends on how they deal with the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners and the criminals responsible for that persecution.
The whole nation will find a new path toward its future. As long as the Chinese people recover their traditional moral values, the society will definitely be more stable. A new China with kind people will never break down into disorder.
Justice Will Be Served
When the Soviet Union collapsed, people around the world were stunned.
The CCP has killed over 80 million Chinese and persecuted hundreds of millions. It is still brutally persecuting kind-hearted Falun Dafa practitioners. With the continuous rise in the frequency of protests and with more than 100 million people having renounced all affiliations with the CCP, everyone can see the disintegration of the CCP is inevitable—and coming soon.
People inside and outside of China need to prepare.
Justice has long arms. The major perpetrators—Jiang Zemin, Zhou Yongkang, Luo Gan, and others—will be brought to justice, and their crimes will be exposed. Bringing the major culprits to justice and punishing all the criminals involved is a necessary step after the persecution ends. The world’s people need to witness the heavenly principle that good will be rewarded with good and evil will receive punishment.
For those communist officials who had been or still are actively involved in the persecution, but still have a bit of conscience left, we suggest they repent sincerely and stop doing evil immediately: Retain all the evidence of the persecution, and at the same time use appropriate channels to publish the evidence of other officials who have committed crimes against Falun Dafa practitioners.
The examples of Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai may help these officials realize that their crimes will be exposed sooner or later, either by conscientious people, or by their fellow communist officials in a power struggle.
As soon as officials feel their personal safety is threatened during the infighting, they will act like Wang Lijun and bring the evidence against their former accomplices to the attention of the world.
We hope those communist officials who are still evaluating the situation will come to understand the horrific, mafia nature of the CCP and foresee that it will disintegrate in the near future. Withdrawing from the CCP and distancing oneself from the CCP is the wisest course.
Individuals, groups, and nations around the world face at this moment a test of their morality and conscience. Will they support the persecuted Chinese people? Will they make use of the evidence they have in hand, either collected by themselves or received from Chinese communist officials? Will they uphold justice and fundamental human rights?
Every individual, organization, and government has a role to play. We hope everyone will choose righteousness and kindness, paving the way to a beautiful future. An enormous change is unfolding before us.
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大家都来看”九评共产党” ( VCD, 书)!
Let’s find “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party”(VCD, books)!
快上大纪元声明退出共产党和共产党其它组织(/团/队)，抹去邪恶的印记!
Quit the Evil Chinese Communist Party or its affiliated organizations today!
