Falun Dafa Practitioners' Family Member Takes the Initiative to Reason with Community Officials

Two days after a video program explaining the true facts about Falun Gong and the persecution compromised the Beijing Satellite TV System, my father received a phone call at home from the "community," which is not a civic organisation, but the lowest-level administrative unit of governmental agencies, asking about my current situation. My father replied that everything was going well. When they then asked where I was working, however, he immediately turned the questioning back on them, asking, "What do you mean? Are you trying to square old accounts? You arrested my son, which caused him to lose his job. Do you want to find a job for him now?" Hearing this, they were so embarrassed that they evaded the issue and quickly found an excuse to hang up the phone. Afterwards, the more my father thought about the call the more uneasy he felt. So, he rode his bicycle over to the community office to reason with the officials.

Upon arriving, my father spoke directly to the community director who had just made the phone call, saying, "You are the grass-roots level of administration, and I have some thoughts to report to you. I am now thinking in a different way than before. Both my son and my daughter-in-law were arrested simply because they said they would continue practising Falun Gong, and for this they were illegally sentenced to one year of forced labour. At the time, I thought I had no choice but to accept the sentence. But one year passed, and the police still didn't release them until they were on the verge of death. We have spent twenty or thirty thousand yuan on their medical treatments. Only because they practised Falun Gong, were they tortured to such an extent. If they said that they practised, they would be arrested. If they said that they did not practise, they would be released. Is there any legal basis for that? Aren't you really just inventing their crimes?"

The community director kept silent while my father continued, "Nowadays, corruption has become so rampant. On July 4th, 1989, guns and tanks were used in the crackdown on the students simply because they expressed their opposition to corruption. Falun Gong practitioners had done nothing more than practise the exercises and strive to be good people. They were arrested only because they said that they practised. If Falun Gong is so bad, then why has it been welcomed in more than sixty countries? What does this tell us?"

The community director and others present were all dumbfounded. They explained that they had acted on a notice issued by the Political and Judiciary Committee, requesting them to make the enquiry. My father immediately asked them,"Isn't this really 'the people fighting against the people'? So many have lost their jobs, but nobody cares about them. The officials use our money to build forced labour camps in which to detain these good people. What message does that send?"

The community director whined, "We can do nothing about it. Higher-level officials assign us the tasks, so we have to take turns watching the electric poles for fear that people will try to cut the power lines. Do you know how cold it is at night!"

My father said, "Falun Gong practitioners would never cause any damage. Besides that, the tapping of TV signals has nothing to do with the electric poles anyway. You have been given orders that don't make any sense at all."

The community director was again shocked by the righteousness of my father's words, and respectfully heard him out.

When my father returned home that evening, he told us everything that had happened, from beginning to end, and we were all very pleased over my father's righteous action. Finally, he said, "If they dare to ask me about it, I'll write up a report in order to sue them, requesting that they compensate our family for the economic losses they have caused us during the several years of persecution."