Conversation with a Veteran Cadre

During the Chinese New Year holidays, I heard a story from a famous senior Party member, a veteran cadre who was also member of several city and county People's Congresses.

A friend of this veteran cadre suffered hepatitis and several other diseases and he could not afford the medical bills. Under the desperate situation, he tried to practice Falun Gong and regained complete health after practising. As a result, his whole family started practicing Falun Gong. After July 20, 1999, they could not accept the slander against Dafa by CCTV and went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa. This friend was detained for more than six months and fined more than 10,000 Yuan [Yuan is the Chinese currency. The average monthly salary of an urban worker in China is 500 Yuan] for his appeal. Since then, whenever it was a holiday or so-called sensitive dates, this veteran cadre worried about the safety of the friend and his family.

The veteran cadre sighed after telling us the story and said, "Recollecting about every political movement by the Party, such as the Anti Right-wing in 1957 and Cultural Revolution, none of them were beneficial or welcomed by the public. These days the governmental officials and law enforcement departments are so corrupt that our society is in great danger. Falun Gong promotes 'Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance,' teaches people to be good people, helps practitioners to be healthy, all practitioners' righteous behaviour can also improve society's morals and so the government should support rather than persecute Falun Gong. Isn't it better to have more good people, why be afraid of good people?"

This veteran cadre's conversation reminded me that in the past several years of persecution of Falun Gong, there were more than 300 people arrested in the Wenquan and Xian'an areas of Hubei Province. Dozens of them were sentenced to forced labour camp and each Falun Gong practitioner was fined thousands to tens of thousands Yuan. Lots of Falun Gong practitioners lost their jobs, some were forced to leave homes to avoid being arrested, and their family members also were constantly assaulted and abused.