A British Practitioner's Perspective about the April 25 Peaceful Appeal In China

As the anniversary of “4.25” is upon us, I am reminded of the time three years ago that I, a British Western Falun Gong practitioner went with three other British practitioners to Beijing. We were intending to appeal, in a peaceful manner, on Tiananmen Square for the release of Falun Gong practitioners in China, who are held in unlawful detention. As Westerners we wanted to show that there was strong support in the West for their unjust suffering. Our appeal was also to call for the restoration of the right to practise freely in China; and to awaken Chinese people to the fact that Falun Gong is legal in the rest of the World and is practised in at least 60 countries, by Western as well as Chinese people.

We had intended to assemble with at least 60 other Western practitioners from Europe and North America. The arrangements for the appeal and communication amongst practitioners had been done with painstaking attention to security, with as few people as possible knowing about our trip. Even my friends, family and workplace were not aware of the real nature of my “holiday”. Another reason I didn’t tell my mother was because she is inclined to worry and I didn’t want her to worry for my safety. However, a rather more selfish motive was also that I didn’t want her to try to persuade me to not go to China. I thought it might shake my determination.

In spite of our collective secrecy, we obviously had an omission, because we were arrested upon our return to the hotel in Beijing after a day sightseeing at the Summer Palace. A group of angry police stormed into our room, shouting about Falun Gong. Their reaction was hysterical and out of proportion to the situation. We were treated like criminals, when we hadn’t actually done anything illegal. The police searched the room and found a banner with Falun Gong written on it in Chinese. There was more shouting and demands for our passports and they hurriedly ordered us to pack our bags. I was the only female in the British group and two policemen dragged me out of the room, carried me downstairs and out of the hotel, where there must have been about fifty police lining the entrance to the hotel. I thought, “I’ll not be going to Tiananmen Square now, but I won’t lose the chance to tell people the facts about Falun Gong. That is what I’ve come for.” So I called out loudly in Chinese, “Falun Gong is good” as they carried me. Then they put me down and one policeman roughly pulled my hair as he pushed me into a police bus. The other practitioners were soon brought to the bus too.

The bus took us to a hotel converted into a detention centre, near the airport. Some of our valuable belongings were confiscated by the police and not returned. One practitioner lost his expensive camcorder, another lost a minidisk player, I lost a personal tape player and tapes. The police then separated us and interrogated us for at least three hours. I was told during the interrogation that I would be in a lot of trouble if I didn’t answer their questions. Even though I requested to speak to the British Embassy, they said that I hadn’t been arrested so I couldn’t speak to the Embassy. These police completely denied that any police beat up and torture Falun Gong practitioners. They were young and seemed naïve. I suspected that although they were deceived by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda about Falun Gong, they did not know how the police really treated practitioners in the forced labour camps, and that the CCP kept this from them.

With the 4.25 incident it seems there were many levels of deception: Falun Gong practitioners were told to go to their local appeal offices, but the offices were closed. They were then told to go to the Appeals Office in Beijing, yet it was also closed. From reports of practitioners, the police actually directed them to Zhongnanhai, where police organised them on pavements around it. The Premier came out to give reassurance about the situation. Yet later the CCP accused Falun Gong of staging a siege on Zhongnanhai.

It has become apparent that creating confusion by instilling fear and deception are some of the main tools the CCP use against the Chinese people to maintain complete control and to continue to hide the truth of their hideous crimes against Falun Gong practitioners. I also personally experienced this. The CCP has even twisted people’s thinking into believing that if the leader of the government tells lies for the sake of saving face and particularly for the country, that it is acceptable. One young Chinese man told me this in the U.K. How sad it is that the model for the moral standard of today’s Chinese people is a degenerate CCP, whose sole aim is to suck virtues and innate goodness from its own people and replace them with greed, disregard for consideration of the welfare of their fellow man, indifference to others suffering and the belief that lying has a positive effect.. Why? Because that is the CCP’s nature and it can only survive in that environment. It has no ability to nourish people’s compassion so it only promotes selfish gain.

After talking to many Chinese people in the U.K, many say that the CCP has improved the economy and people’s standard of living and so the CCP is therefore good. However, what they don’t consider is that although improving the economy is a good thing, when it is at the expense of people’s lives, where human rights are flagrantly abused, it is like covering a rotten apple with sugar to make it taste better – and in no time the rotten part spreads and can not be sweetened. If a person kills someone, the law punishes the killer. That is the law in every country on Earth. If a government kills many of its own innocent people, the government will, as history has shown, eventually fall and then other countries will hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes. Such was the case in Nazi Germany. I believe such will be the case for the CCP in persecuting to death up to 10,000 practitioners. The CCP can’t deceive people forever that it is not accountable. Yet the more that the CCP commits crimes against Falun Gong, the more crimes Falun Gong practitioners expose. As science says “every action has a reaction.” If the CCP were really not persecuting Falun Gong, how could nineteen lawsuits for genocide against Jiang Zemin come about? Why would so many people in the West condemn this wicked persecution, as they do, with thousands signing petitions to call for an end to the persecution and release of detained practitioners? Why would they believe the CCP to be rotten, as they do?

If the CCP were really so virtuous, why have over 1,000,000 members, including high level officials quit the CCP in the space of only a few months as reported on www.theepochtimes.com?

In my experience, in the West, if any person or organisation strongly condemns a religious group or any group, there will be an independent enquiry of the group. There will be open discussion for and against the group and the media will offer its varied opinions. Different groups are allowed to peacefully express their views and demonstrate, without the government feeling threatened, because it is considered appropriate to question and debate points of view. Those who refuse to debate with others are seen as having something to hide. People are suspicious of and look down on those who relentlessly attack others. The CCP’s tactics to defame Falun Gong would be seen to be extreme and irritating if this method was employed in the U.K media as in China. The British would want to hear the other side before determining their judgement. “One Hall, One Voice” would be seen to be one-sided and fanatical.

Whereas on “4.25” the CCP saw it as a threat for 10,000 people to peacefully exercise their constitutional right to appeal, through my Western eyes, I am filled with admiration for their noble spirits and the compassion they displayed towards their fellow practitioners suffering injustice, such that they were moved to appeal for their release.

It is truly a shame when virtue is misconstrued as vice.