Thailand: Overcoming the Attachment of Fear to Distribute the Nine Commentaries with Dignity

Thailand is usually the first destination choice of Chinese tourists. Every day, thousands of Chinese tourists come here. Over the last several years Falun Dafa practitioners in Thailand have been continuously exposing the persecution to the Chinese people.

Since the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party¹ was published last November, we have printed it in different formats and distributed it in places where lots of Chinese tourists like to visit. Chinese government officials oftentimes attempt to instigate the local police to create obstacles to prevent practitioners from distributing materials clarifying the truth about the persecution to Chinese tourists. There have been spies mixed in with the Chinese group tour guides who have reported practitioners to the police several times trying to stop the practitioners' peaceful efforts to expose the persecution. Some said that our materials are dangerous and that if Chinese people read them, they could be sent to jail. Some fabricated that we distributed the newspapers in a forceful manner. Some said that our newspapers created litter. The police or security guards interrupted us frequently.

In order to guarantee the smooth distribution of the Nine Commentaries, fellow practitioners who can speak Thai submitted application letters to the city government and clarified the truth face to face to government officials. But under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s unreasonable pressure, the Thai officials were afraid of officially approving our written applications. They just said, "You are good people. If you want to distribute the newspaper, as long as nobody is complaining, we are not going to interfere." Their attitude was ambiguous.

In order to overcome the language barrier and have the Thai officials know more about Falun Dafa practitioners and the contents of our newspapers, we prepared letters in Thai, Chinese and English, as well as an introductory brochure of the Nine Commentaries in Thai. When we met police officials who didn't know the truth, we would hand the materials over to them. We've received good results with this approach.

There have been different levels of the attachment of fear exposed amongst our practitioners. Some practitioners thought that since we did not succeed at getting official approval for our activities they didn't feel that what we were doing was legitimate. When the police came to threaten or arrest us, or snatch our newspapers away, we often didn't know how to respond and were often very passive. Some practitioners didn't want to distribute the materials again the next time due to the attachment of fear. Some persisted, but they could only do it in one place and had to change to another place the next time. Only when there were no police to interfere, would they distribute. If the police appeared they would go away. Due to a lack of righteous thoughts and not enough Fa group study, our activities of distributing the Nine Commentaries were often interfered with. Especially when we had internal conflicts amongst practitioners, the interference would be even worse.

On October 3th the CCP spies disguised themselves as tour guides. They found an excuse to interfere by complaining that were using palace pictures on the cover of the pocket-sized Nine Commentaries booklet and told the police that this was disrespectful to the palace. Fellow practitioners heard of this situation and decided to temporarily stop distributing that edition.

On October 4th, as usual, several fellow practitioners went to the tourist sites to distribute newspapers. There were a couple of unidentified people (they might have been plain clothed police) that appeared all of a sudden to snatch the newspapers from practitioners. Our practitioners gave them the explanation letter and the Nine Commentaries introduction brochure in Thai but they didn't accept it. One of them even threatened the practitioners with handcuffs. Before long, a police car came. Two policemen jumped out of the car and snatched some of the newspapers, but found none of the pocket-sized Nine Commentaries with the palace on the cover. Disappointedly, they hurried to leave, but the practitioners stopped them from leaving and talked to them with benevolence. One practitioner tried to talk to the police in simple English, saying: "Thailand is a great country. Thai people are kind. Please don't do this." Two female practitioners blocked the police car from leaving. The police car started and tried to push away the practitioner in front of the car. The police panicked. They forcefully pushed her aside and left in a hurry. Two male practitioners had the thought: "We are here, so the newspaper has to be here" and asked the police to return the newspapers. Later, we realised that the police didn't want to arrest anybody; they just wanted to stop us from distributing newspapers. If we didn't make efforts to clarify the truth the old forces would take advantage of our attachment of fear to interfere with us all the time. Physically it's very easy for the police to confiscate our newspapers. If we were to passively accept this arrangement, we would give the police the newspapers every time, (as long as they didn't arrest us), and then they could easily deal with us. On the other hand, if they did arrest somebody, the wrongdoing on the part of the police against Falun Dafa would be even more severe. An arrest would require them to issue a conviction first since, unlike in China, they have laws that they follow. Practitioners didn't think too much at that time. They only had one thought: never let the CCP's malicious interference succeed. With this one righteous thought, practitioners had righteous actions. After the negotiation, the police agreed to return all the newspapers and admitted that there was nothing wrong with distributing them. After checking the practitioners' identifications and passports, the police found no problems, so they had to let the practitioners go. Still, to save face the police asked the practitioners to turn in some nominal fines. Afterwards, we realised that we shouldn't have paid any fines.

On October 5th, practitioners went back to the tourist sites and continued to distribute the newspapers. At the beginning, everything was good, but when practitioners were getting ready to go home, a security guard in uniform (one who was there the day before) appeared suddenly. He snatched 30 newspapers from the practitioner's hands and drove away on his motorcycle. Several practitioners followed him up the block and asked him to return the newspapers. He refused. Two other practitioners followed him to a nearby police car and continued to talk to him and ask for the newspapers back. The practitioners' actions were beyond their expectations. They had probably never faced a group of people who were not afraid of them, and reasoned with them continuously. They decided to take the two practitioners to the police station and put them into custody. That same night, the police contacted the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (the two practitioners are refugees protected by the United Nations). Later we heard that they were sent to the immigration prison and that they would not be released.

When this happened there were different opinions amongst practitioners. Some practitioners thought that persisting in asking for the newspapers was not wise. The resultant arrest of the practitioners caused a loss after all. They thought that there must have been loopholes in what the practitioners did; otherwise the practitioners could not have been arrested. Some practitioners thought, if they didn't want us to distribute the Nine Commentaries, we could do something else or go to a different place to distribute it. Now that the practitioners were arrested, it caused losses for Dafa. Some other practitioners said that we were refugees, and lots of practitioners from all over the world made great efforts to rescue us, therefore we shouldn't cause more trouble for them. Some other practitioners believed that this place was a very important window to clarify the truth to Chinese tourists, and we couldn't lose it. Plus distributing the Nine Commentaries was not illegal according to the immigration officers. The evil just didn't want us to distribute it and save sentient beings by doing so. We concluded that we should continue to go there and distribute.

On October 6th, after hearing the news of the practitioners being arrested, several fellow practitioners realised that they should step forward and validate the Fa using their actions so they took a long bus ride to meet with local practitioners and help to distribute the Nine Commentaries to the Chinese tourists. Fifteen minutes later, a group of policemen came and took away all practitioners who were distributing newspapers. Altogether it was nine practitioners including adults and children. The Chinese Consulate even instigated a local Chinese newspaper that kowtows to the CCP to go to the police station to "report" the arrest of the practitioners. Later, a weird report came out that neither mentioned Falun Gong nor the Nine Commentaries. They merely used this report for accomplishing tasks for the CCP. Practitioners clarified the truth peacefully and benevolently in the police station and sent forth righteous thoughts at the same time. Most of the policemen got to know the truth. A female police woman who was originally rude to practitioners regretted what she did and cried after she heard the truth and saw practitioners' real demeanour of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance." The same night, after negotiating with the Thai practitioners, the police agreed to release everybody. Our shortcoming in this was that some practitioners were anxious to save fellow practitioners and paid fines.

On October 7th, the two practitioners who were arrested two days prior were released without conditions. When asked why they arrested the practitioners, the police said the practitioners didn't have passports. In fact, lots of UN refugees don't have passports. They had what they should have with them, which is the proper refugee identification. Hence, the police didn't have any legitimate reasons for detaining them. At last the police admitted, "We didn't want to arrest you. It was the Chinese Consulate that forced us to do so."

Master said,

"Don't be afraid that the consulates or the special agents will stir up trouble. As soon as they do that you should use the opportunity to let more people know about the truth. (Strong applause) Actually, you're Dafa disciples, so hey, their plots are playing right into your hands! (People laugh) When they stir up trouble you'll have an opportunity to clarify the facts and expose the evil, right? 'As soon as you evil beings come near, I'll grab you and I'll let the world's people know'--that's the perfect time to expose them." ("Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference")

This paragraph of the Fa helped to clarify local practitioners' understandings. After studying the Falun Gong teachings and sharing, most practitioners came to the same understanding. The practitioners who were involved in this incident looked inward, self-reflected and found some shortcomings, such as submitting fines. Additionally their mood was not calm; it didn't meet the requirements of benevolence and forbearance at the beginning when interacting with the police; then when police arrested practitioners, they immediately reached out to the American practitioners for help and dragged too many practitioners into the incident.

Still, looked at from an overall standpoint, practitioners had righteous actions. They turned the situation from passive to active during their interactions with the police. Every interaction with the police became an opportunity to clarify the truth. Soon after that, two Thai practitioners went with several practitioners who had been severely persecuted in China, to the city government and police stations, and they clarified the truth using their own experiences. They succeeded in getting understanding and sympathy from the Thai officials. People from the city government even invited us to teach Falun Gong.

After the police heard the truth they said, "We know you are all good people. Distributing the Nine Commentaries is no problem. Thai people don't like the CCP." They also accepted Zhuan Falun in Thai from us as well as the truth-clarification CDs. The guards at the detention centre also said, "In the future, no matter who detains you here, we will not accept it."

It's such a pity for the CCP's diplomats. Every time they stir up trouble, it always turns into great opportunities for Falun Dafa practitioners to clarify the truth. When they bullied the Thai government to do bad things for them, it only made the Thai people even more clearly recognise the true evil nature of the CCP and this expedites the CCP's inevitable ending. In fact, the CCP diplomats are pathetic. They know clearly that they are assisting an evil party, but for the sake of job security, they are still committing disgraceful acts.

Note:

1. Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party: Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party is a series of essays published in late 2004 that reveal the true nature of the Communist Party. The Nine Commentaries have led millions of people to renounce their membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and come to gain a clearer understanding about the wrongful persecution against Falun Gong. "A book that has shocked all Chinese around the world. A book that is disintegrating the Communist Party." http://ninecommentaries.com