Upholding the Most Precious Spiritual Values

Zhao Ming graduated from the Computer Science Department of Beijing’s Qinghua University in 1993. He enrolled as a Masters Degree student in Computing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, in March 1999. In July 1999, Jiang Zemin’s regime started persecuting Falun Gong. After returning to China to visit his parents at Christmas and to appeal to the Chinese Government for an end to this irrational persecution, Zhao Ming was illegally arrested and his passport was confiscated. This rendered him unable to return to Ireland to continue his studies in January 2000. In May 2000, Ming was illegally imprisoned in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Beijing and his prison sentence was extended for an extra ten months after the first labour camp sentence expired. In the labour camp, Ming frequently suffered maltreatment, including cruel torture, abuse with electric batons, forced hard labour and so on. At the same time, he also endured different kinds of spiritual abuse, such as the brainwashing attempts to force him to give up his belief in Falun Dafa.

After the efforts of people from all levels of the international community, Zhao Ming was eventually released on the 12th of March 2002 after nearly two years of detention. He returned to Ireland on the 23rd of March. During the next two years, Ming visited many countries around the world and told his experiences in Chinese forced labour camps to the United Nations, the European Union's politicians, many countries’ government departments and various non-governmental organisations. He made many appeals to the international community to pay attention to the Jiang regime’s irrational persecution of Falun Gong. Below is Zhao Ming’s testimony made in January 2004 at the International Conference on ’Genocide in New Era’:

“In July 2000, I was moved to Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp. I was subjected to a very severe beating during the first month in the labour camp by ten inmates, who later told me they had done this on the instructions of the guards. I was kicked and punched on my thighs and body. My thighs were black with bruises afterwards and I was unable to walk for two weeks. I was made to adopt a squatting position and when I could not maintain that position due to my weakened state I was forced under a low bed in a doubled up position. The other inmates sat on the bed pressing it down on my back. The staff in the labour camp said, “We must force you to be transformed.” The consequence of this kind of corporal punishment is that until now the middle part of my thigh downward is always numb. I feel pain if I stand still, even for a short time, and my feet suffer from a lack of sensation.”

After he returned to Ireland in March 2002, Zhao Ming said, “I feel I have to tell people the truth about the labour camp system. I am lucky because I have been rescued by the international community due to my background, but there are thousands upon thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China who are suffering persecution even more brutal than I experienced.” Zhao Ming wants to help these Falun Gong practitioners by working hard to expose what is really happening in the Chinese labour camps.

It is hard for anyone who has met Zhao Ming to imagine that he has had such a horrific experience. His eyes are still so bright and clear, even after witnessing such evil things. The soul that had once been “murdered” by violence does not bear even the smallest grudge against those who brutally mistreated him.

Due to firmly believing in the principle of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance”, Zhao Ming and thousands upon thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China maintain their peaceful protest under enormous pressure without resentment or hate. In a lawless country, under a campaign of nationwide propaganda launched by Jiang’s regime through the state-controlled media, they are constantly in danger of losing their jobs, education, homes families, freedom and lives.

In present day Chinese society and even in the rest of the world, any other organisations’ response to this kind of brutal suppression has been one of two options: an armed uprising or keeping silent. Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, two people who made brilliant contributions to world peace in modern history, very clearly realised that their movements were built on a basis of trust in democratic ideas. Martin Luther King once said that all his efforts could be in vain if he were confined in an autocratic country’s jail.

The Chinese Government, which the Chinese Falun Gong practitioners face, is exactly this kind of autocratic government that sends people to jail at will. Its tyrant Jiang Zemin issued the order "beating practitioners to death counts as suicide", providing free reign for the killing of Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China. He disseminated rumours about Falun Gong to different countries overseas and used the temptation of economic benefits in vain attempts to destroy Falun Gong worldwide. Facing the most brutal persecution, Falun Gong practitioners’ protests are always peaceful and rational. They exhibit the most precious human moral value and the most wonderful side of humanity: Goodness!