By Tang Ming and Gisela Sommer
Epoch Times Staff
Epoch Times Staff
Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong have faced a new round of intensified persecution at the hands of authorities prior to the 18th Party Congress. But through years of “telling people the truth,” many ordinary Chinese citizens, and even some police, have come to understand the persecution campaign for what it is.
Falun Gong practitioners and human rights lawyers in China have reported increases in abductions to brainwashing centers, torture, long prison terms, and greater pressure on those in detention to “transform,” according to the New York based Falun Dafa Information (FDI) center.
Practitioners are generally “abducted” by security forces when someone reports them for handing out information pamphlets about the persecution.
Over the years, these homemade pamphlets have nevertheless been very effective in clarifying the truth to the Chinese people, who are increasingly seeing through the propaganda spread by authorities about Falun Gong. More and more reports are telling of practitioners being supported by ordinary citizens, and even of some police protecting practitioners.
The Epoch Times recently learned of such a story from Mr. Zhou, a practitioner residing in Kunming City, the capital of Yunnan Province. He said a dozen Falun Gong practitioners had spontaneously joined in festivities in parks and other locations for many months prior to the 18th National Congress. They were singing songs of hope composed by Falun Gong practitioners, and also “clarifying the truth” about the persecution to the audience.
“Many in the audience had tears in their eyes when they learned the facts about the persecution and the live organ harvesting crimes committed by the Communist Party officials in China,” Zhou said.
Dozens of such events happened in various parts of Yunnan Province, Zhou said, and no one in the audience, including the plainclothes police and security guards at the site, reported them to the police.
But one day in March, at a park in Qujing City, someone did call the police, and a dozen people were arrested.
Zhou and some other Falun Gong practitioners managed to escape, and Zhou decided to return to his hometown of Chongqing. There were many police checkpoints along the way, but he was able to bypass them all and avoid detention because an anonymous caller always warned him ahead of the raids.
The caller told him: “I know the truth now. I am a policeman who has quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
Zhou said the policeman also told him that top-level authorities in the CCP knew about their singing events, and since he was the lead singer, the Central Political Judicial Committee was working to get him arrested.
Zhou said he had no choice but to leave China during the 18th National Congress. He was not optimistic that the repression would ease after the congress concluded.
“The CCP will never change for the better,” Zhou said, adding that communist officials without a conscience support the violent security apparatus controlled by former security chief Zhou Yongkang. “But they could not catch an unarmed man like me.”
“The truth about Falun Gong can transform people,” Zhou said. “The spreading of truth is unstoppable.”
According to the FDI, former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin launched the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, because he feared the practice’s growing popularity among the Chinese people was overshadowing his own legacy.
Read the original Chinese article.
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