Interview with Zhao Ming in Vienna

Zhao Ming is a former post-graduate student of Computer Science at Trinity College, Dublin. He now resides in Ireland as a refugee. Because he practises Falun Gong he was unlawfully arrested when he went back to China for Christmas in 1999. Zhao Ming was imprisoned for twenty two months. He suffered unimaginable torture daily, which included forced feedings, prolonged periods of sleep deprivation, severe beatings from inmates, and sessions of being shocked with electric batons (cattle prods) by several prison guards simultaneously. In March 2002 he was released from prison and he returned to Dublin. Ever since then he has been informing the international community about the unlawful persecution in China. Recently, he came to Vienna to participate in several activities in an effort to raise awareness about the persecution of Falun Gong.

Q: Which organisations helped rescue you from the labour camp in China?

Zhao Ming: The rescue effort started from Trinity College in Ireland – students and fellow practitioners, and also the Irish section of Amnesty International. The Austrian Section of Amnesty International also organised a large scale petition letter campaign on my behalf. I want to take this chance to thank them for their kind efforts. These efforts did relieve the pressure on me in the labour camps a lot. The direct reason I was released was because the Irish Premier Mr. Bertie Ahern spoke directly with the Chinese Government about my case. Mary Robinson, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the former Irish president, personally raised my case with the Chinese Premier every time she went to China.

Q: When you see the activities that Falun Dafa practitioners do, such as candle light vigils in front of the Chinese Embassies, demonstrations, press conferences, etc… in an effort to expose the persecution, what do you feel?

Zhao Ming: These activities in overseas countries are very good. In China, we do not have the freedom to do this. I feel that the level of awareness regarding the genocide of Falun Gong practitioners in China is far from enough. In 1989 I experienced the massacre in Beijing during the student demonstrations. At that time, the Chinese Regime violently brought tanks to the streets and the brutality was very obvious for the world to see. But this time with the genocide towards Falun Gong they are even more vicious in that they kill people in labour camps and prisons while spreading lies to cover the truth, which has made the whole International Community very slow and numb about this issue. Many western governments have kept silent.

Q: Looking back to the recent past, do you feel hatred towards the Chinese police who tortured you?

Zhao Ming: No, that is not the case in my heart. What I hate most is not the Chinese police, but this kind of system of hatred incitement. I would have never expected to be regarded as an ‘enemy of the country’, but the propaganda incites such hatred from one part of the population against another part of the population. That is the most vicious thing. Many people ask me why the Chinese Regime persecutes us. In fact, they have been doing this throughout history, which is to totally control people’s minds. That’s the only way the Regime feels safe.

Q: Do you mean since the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or before?

Zhao Ming: Since 1949, since the establishment of the Chinese Communist Regime the People’s Republic of China. When I was in the labour camp, the police knew very well that Falun Dafa practitioners are good people, well educated and kind. They actually admired us, but still they knowingly persecuted us. In China, when people’s moral values have been wiped out and the government tells them to oppose some group in the name of “protecting the country”, they would trample on the group disregarding all human rights, the law, and moral principles.

The Chinese education system has also hidden the secret of human rights. After I got out of the labour camp and returned to the free world, I was shocked when I discovered that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made so early in 1948. This has been kept a secret in China. We Chinese people have never known that we have all these rights.

The regime teaches Chinese people that every government in the world maintains their political power this way. So the Chinese people countenance all the regime's human rights violation. Yet, at present there is no other country in the world to have such state-authorised persecution. The United States soldiers tortured Iraqis. But the US government apologised and sentenced the US soldiers for their crimes. But in China there is nowhere to seek justice because the persecution is authorised by the highest authority. Domestically, the regime wipes out all other traditional ideologies. Externally, the regime does not want any western ideologies, including democratic ideas and western religions, to influence the Chinese people either. The regime’s way is to wipe out both internal and external ideologies and to incite hatred, that is to incite hatred against the domestic ideologies and spiritual groups and at the same time to incite hatred against all western developed countries.

The regime has allowed some freedom in the economy, but they allow nothing more than that. The evil nature of the regime to monopolise people’s minds has never changed. Maybe the western countries want to neglect this and just turn a blind eye and trade with them, but the Chinese Regime does not rest. For example, the Chinese Regime is directly or indirectly controlling the US Chinese-language media. Even at the UN, they can buy the silence of the United Nations and successfully silence them. Since the persecution began, the UN has never passed a resolution despite reliable reports and clear evidence of the persecution.

In the UN Human Rights Commission Session in Geneva, human rights specialists said that hatred-inciting education was the fundamental reason for long-lasting wars and violent conflicts in the Middle-East. In China, with such a huge population having its moral values wiped out and its concept of human rights filled with hatred, it is really a horrible thing. It’s like a buried bomb that will be triggered sooner or later. This is a real threat to world peace. I told the people at the United Nations during this year’s UN Human Rights Commission Meeting that if any violent conflict or war is triggered between China and the west, the Chinese would all resort to suicide bombing very bravely to kill you western guys because we are all brought up with this kind of education.

However, when the practise of teaching people “Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance” is being persecuted, when Falun Gong practitioners facing torture and death are resisting the persecution in non-violent ways, the western governments are trading with China and keeping silent. They are actually not responsible for themselves and not responsible for world peace.

Q: How can they live that way?

Zhao Ming: To keep such a big, hatred-filled population peaceful is not an easy thing. On the one hand, the regime carefully guides and limits people’s hatred only towards the authorities' specified enemies. When the regime wants to attack some group, they connect people’s interests. money, status, reputation, etc, with the group that they want to eliminate. The Regime forces everyone to show the correct attitude towards the group being blamed and hated. Furthermore, the majority of the population has been threatened at one time or another by round after round of persecution over so many years and dares not raise any complaints any more. So Falun Gong practitioners’ peaceful campaign to resist the violent persecution from such a powerful regime has shown enormous moral courage. This will be remembered by history.

Q: What would be your advice for the Chinese people?

Zhao Ming: Realise that there is no enemy at all.

Q: Do you have any hope for China?

Zhao Ming: In such a society and at every level of society, people do anything for money, nobody can solve all kinds of social problems. So for such a society with Falun Dafa to teach people how to behave and be good, it is like the body’s immune system solving such problems automatically. It is the last hope for this country.

Q: How would you explain how this “immune system” (of Falun Dafa) works?

Zhao Ming: Currently people don’t regard behaving well as being very important; they do not know why they should behave well because they can get money anyway. They regard moral values as a man made way of compromising with each other to maintain common interests, but Falun Dafa teaches people that “Truth, Compassion, Tolerance” is the characteristic of the universe and that every living being has this characteristic and has to assimilate to this characteristic of the universe. It’s the guarantee of the existence of all living beings in the human world. One’s fortune is decided by how well one can assimilate to “Truth, Compassion, Tolerance”, so when such a cosmic truth is taught to people it has touched hundreds of millions of people’s hearts. It is the truth that has never been taught before. So after learning Falun Dafa, people behave well automatically from their hearts, without being forced or monitored, and this brought about a very good social effect in China before it was banned.

Q: Do you think that the Falun Dafa activities that are taking place in Vienna will have some effect?

Zhao Ming: When a regional war is going on somewhere, the whole world focuses on that. If we had treated the Chinese officials or police in the same way that they treated us, you would have seen top news everyday from China of killing and bombings. Yet sadly, when a hundred million people are suffering in China, when we are resisting the persecution in a peaceful way, the world has not shown enough attention and support to them. Humans cannot only learn lessons after it is too late to prevent the wrong things. People cannot wait until a massacre happens. This persecution happening in China and our peaceful campaign should be the highlight of this world right now.