Although dark clouds had been gathering for several months and thunder could be heard off in the distance, few Chinese citizens were fully prepared for the fury of the storm when it finally cut loose on July 22, 1999. Acting through its Ministry of Public Security, the government branded Falun Gong as an unlawful organization, and initiated an aggressive and comprehensive crackdown, the likes of which had not been seen since the repressive days of the Cultural Revolution. Thousands of practitioners were arrested and beaten, homes were ransacked, books and tapes were shredded and burned. The government ratcheted up its propaganda machinery to full strength in order to blitz the nation with fabricated stories and outright lies designed to demonize Mr. Li Hongzhi and his followers. Communication with the outside world was also severely limited, as foreign reporters were restricted from interviewing Falun Gong practitioners.

Various measures were taken to provide a veneer of legality to these activities. On October 9, the Supreme People's Court issued guidelines that encouraged authorities to punish Falun Gong practitioners severely under existing laws. Then on October 30, a hastily crafted law, ostensibly designed to protect society from "heretical cults," was rubber stamped through the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.1 Within this hastily contrived legal framework, the "rule of law" was invoked and the whole weight of the Chinese government descended upon this group of non-political, spiritual seekers. To those in China who had lived through similar persecutions in the past, the days of Falun Gong surely seemed numbered.

But one year later, in the face of continued demonstrations and passive resistance, the government reluctantly admitted that "the fight against Falun Gong will be a long-lasting, complicated, and acute struggle." This editorial, which appeared in the communist party's official newspaper, the People's Daily, went on to say that the government would crack down on the sect with a "firm hand."2 It is quite possible that the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who by this time had been beaten, tortured, and abused in countless ways already felt like they had been dealt with by a "firm hand," but as news stories coming out of China since last July clearly indicate, rumors of Jiang Zemin's intentions to greatly intensify efforts to subdue and eradicate Falun Gong were not exaggerated. Reports of Abuses Intensifying Both In Quantity and Severity In the past four months, the number of practitioners who have been tortured to death has quadrupled over the number of practitioners killed in the first entire year of the crackdown. In addition, the types of abuses and the severity of those abuses have become increasingly violent, grotesque, and deadly. This particular mix of crimes against humanity is hardly new and unique: we have seen them before in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, and China's Cultural Revolution. Perhaps because of individual ingenuity, the blend of atrocities may vary somewhat, but the basic ingredients are the same, and they all point to one thing: a reign of terror against the Chinese people.

For it is the entire human society of China that now suffers under such Draconian measures, as no segment of the population or the economy remains unaffected by the crackdown. By 1999, somewhere between 70 and 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong and studying the teachings of Li Hongzhi. That is a very large number, even by Chinese standards. Moreover, practitioners came from all walks of life, from all age groups, all trades and occupations -- including army officers and government officials -- all social classes, and all ethnic groups. Falun Gong practitioners were not from a particular region, but came from north, south, east, and west, as well as from both the city and countryside. It wasn't like the government was over here, and Falun Gong was over there, and all the government had to do was attack and defeat an isolated enemy. Because Falun Gong practitioners were not something separate and distinct from China, Jiang Zemin could not make war on them without making war on China itself.

American viewers of the nightly news on TV are probably aware that many Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested and detained during the past year, that some have been mistreated in captivity, and that some have even died in captivity. But the casual consumer of news in America is most unlikely to have heard the whole truth, or have any idea of the massive scope of the methods and tactics employed in the effort to crush these gentle people. The government has in fact brought every weapon in its arsenal to bear against its own citizens, including but not limited to:

• Arresting and detaining people without trial

• Holding show trials that produce long prison sentences for minor offences

• Confining perfectly normal and healthy individuals to mental hospitals

• Destroying books and tapes, including public book burnings

• Forcing women to have abortions, and severe abuse of women in custody

• Adding mind controlling/nerve damaging drugs to practitioner's food

• Force-feeding practitioners on hunger-strikes using a tube shoved down the esophagus.

• Publicly humiliating practitioners by parading them around town, with their arms tied and signs around their necks.

• Dismissing people from their jobs

• Suspending students from school

• Punishing innocent family members for transgressions committed by others, thereby pitting family member against family member.

• Levying heavy fines and confiscating property

• Routine and systematic torture, as a government policy, even to the point of death in many cases.

Criminal Justice System Used as a Tool for Persecution

We begin by taking a look at how the criminal justice system in China is being used as a means of advancing the current regime's narrow political goals. After Falun Gong was outlawed last year, a small group of practitioners took the extraordinary step of holding a news conference to tell their side of the story, an activity that was sure to attract the wrath of the Chinese government. Jiang Zhaohui, who organized both this news release and the 1999 Guangzhou Experience Sharing Conference, was arrested and detained for six months, at which time he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Charged with promoting a cult activity, Jiang was told he was not allowed to plead innocent to the charges. Nine Hong Kong journalists were also detained for trying to cover the two-hour trial. This is a common occurrence, and it continues unabated to this day. In addition, practitioners who attend the trials of their comrades often find themselves in jail by the end of the day, just for showing up in the courtroom.3 Now let us fast forward eighteen months to November 20, 2000, and review a Reuter's News Service story which reveals that Teng Chunyan, a Falun Gong practitioner who resides in the United States, will be sentenced to prison after a secret trial. Mrs. Teng holds a United States "green card." The information center for Human Rights and Democracy stated that this case marks the first time a U.S based practitioner has been detained for more than a brief period. The "espionage" for which Teng was punished involved gathering information about China's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in mental institutions. The article also points out that Teng's sentencing was designed to send a warning signal to overseas Falun Gong practitioners, and that neither Teng's American husband nor the U.S. embassy had been notified of her trial.font FACE="Garamond" SIZE="2">4 These two stories reveal the way in which the current regime has mobilized the legal institutions of the country to serve its political purposes by severely punishing people either for minor offences or for no real offence at all. That a person's punishment should be proportionate to the severity of his or her crime against society is a fundamental principle of justice in the civilized world, particularly in Western democracies. But in China, Falun Gong practitioners are arrested and detained for long periods of time simply for standing up for such basic human rights as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to openly practice their spiritual beliefs. Finally, it should also be noted that it is official government policy in China that no legal council may offer services to practitioners of Falun Dafa without first reporting to the central government.5 Practitioners Confined To Mental Hospitals

Another preferred method of persecution not often mentioned in the nightly news is that of sending perfectly healthy, intelligent people to mental hospitals for treatment with mind-altering and nerve damaging drugs. One can only speculate as to why any nation would tie up scarce and valuable resources in its medical facilities for the sole purpose of punishing its citizens. Only when viewed as an aspect of terrorist policy do these actions take on a certain logic. People have different strengths and weaknesses. Practitioners-- or would be practitioners-- that might be courageous enough to endure the various beatings and tortures administered to the physical body might recoil from the prospect of having their central nervous systems destroyed by powerful psychotropic drugs.

We have so many documented reports of this type of activity that it is hard to pick a representative sample. We have chosen the following story because it reveals the comprehensive nature of the government's campaign against Falun Gong; that is, it illustrates the way in which multiple pressures are brought to bear upon citizens from different angles simultaneously.

Su Xiurong and Liu Shuxing, a married couple from the Fangshan district of Beijing have made the following statement regarding their experiences last December:

On the evening of December 1, 1999, the District police came to ask my husband and I to have a chat at the police station. Then they took us to the Fangshan Detention Center, claiming that we were to be detained for 15 days. Six days later, we were sent to the Zhoukoudian Mental Hospital. The director of the hospital told us, "the District Police sent you here and asked us to keep you until Macau is returned to Chinese rule." [In other words, a very long time.] We don't have any mental illnesses, but we are kept here with no freedom, very little food and we are being treated like criminals. We've been kept for over 40 days, without any legal procedures. No one has ever come to talk to us. Keeping us in the hospital also made our children suffer. Our three kids are under great pressure at home. The electric power supply at our home has been cut off for over a month now. They were also threatened with being thrown into the mental hospital. Our oldest daughter had to quit her job to take care of her young brother and sister. We are not only suffering economically, but our kids are also pressured to an unbearable extent. There is another villager named Liu Shuxing. She was forced into the mental hospital while staying at a relative's home. She was kept there for over 20 days before being bailed out by her family. Because of this, her husband keeps abusing her physically and mentally. She is devastated.6 <

This story, which dramatically illustrates what thousands of Falun Gong families are going through at this very moment, reveals the shotgun approach of abusive tactics brought to bear on practitioners: 1) placing healthy and mentally sound people in mental hospitals, 2) breaking up families, 3) punishing innocent relatives or family members for the "crimes" of others, 4) destroying people financially, 5) causing people to lose their jobs, and 6) pitting members of the same family against each other. For a more recent and detailed account of what actually goes on in these mental hospitals, please refer to the article in the "Reports from Inside China" section of this issue called: "Female Party Member Tortured, Sent to Mental Hospital, Poisoned with Drugs." Additionally, see the article entitled "International Concern Grows Over Psychiatric Abuses in China" of this issue for more information about action being taken by the world Psychiatric community regarding this problem.

Government Destroys Books, Tapes, and other Falun Gong Literature

It is difficult to conceive of how public book burnings could still be an occurrence in modern society, particularly in the most populous nation in the world. Still, this is exactly what is happening in China, and the images of these book burnings have been carried by most world media, including CNN. To this end, a significant part of the government's efforts to crush Falun Gong has been its attempt to confiscate and destroy all books, tapes, and promotional literature related to the spiritual practice. This policy, which is so reminiscent of Hitler's Germany, began early on in the persecution and continues to this day. The first nationwide destruction of Falun Gong publications began on the afternoon of July 28, 1999. Massive confiscation efforts throughout China yielded over one and a half million books, videotapes, and cassettes for the bonfires. In order to obtain these materials, authorities employed various illegal means such as breaking into print shops, warehouses, bookstores, and ransacking the homes of practitioners. CNN Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon captured powerful video of books being thrown into a pulping machine in Shanghai.7

Practitioners Fired from Jobs

Another spoke on the wheel of Jiang Zemin's persecution of Falun Gong involves attacking practitioners at the level of their livelihoods--in other words, making sure that practitioners are not able to make a living, or participate in the nation's economy. For many, not only does this mean loss of job and career, but also the loss of one's position in society. For example, on September 2, 1999, Communist Party members were ordered to give up Falun Gong. Those who refused were given three choices: voluntarily withdraw from the Party, withdraw at the Party's request, or be expelled from the Party. Thousands of loyal, dedicated Party members are now suffering in labor camps because they refused to renounce and give up their practice of Falun Gong.

Practitoner Li Zhi, a middle school teacher in Xindou, was forced to resign from her job and divorce her husband last January in order to avoid bringing trouble to her supervisors and her family. She was sent to a "Transformation Study Class" and later to the detention center, but she still would not renounce her faith.8

Sometimes practitioners are treated fairly by their immediate supervisors, only to be persecuted by someone higher up. Fifty-one year old Geng Xinping, who worked in the warehouse of the China Railway Construction Co., went to appeal to the government on October 30th, 1999. Since she was hard-working and performed well on the job, her supervisor tried to protect her. However, due to pressure from the company leadership, she was suspended. Then on July 12, 2000, she went again to appeal to the government. This time she was fired altogether, and sent to a labor camp. Her work unit then proceeded to collaborate with the police to extort a large fine from her family as a condition for her release.9

Colleges and Universities Become Pawns of the Government

Suffering from wave after wave of persecution, the colleges and universities in China have also been hard hit by this intense political campaign. Students are routinely expelled from their schools and faculty members fired. Chinese intellectuals are suffering from the most severe persecution since the Cultural Revolution. At Tsinghua University, October 21, 1999, police arrested 14 students who were attending an "experience sharing conference" on campus. These students were beaten up, handcuffed, and physically tortured. Those who refused to sign a statement giving up their practice of Falun Gong were forced to withdraw from school. A Ph.D. student who was thought to be an "organizer" was detained for 30 days. A few days later, 25 more students were suspended, and two graduate students had to relinquish their membership in the Communist Party. Early in December, the university asked the suspended students to write confessions. These confessions had to meet certain requirements, such as admitting that Falun Gong was an "evil cult;" and if the university was not satisfied, it would not reinstate the students. Wang Dazhong, the President of Tsinghua University stated that "this struggle with the students is a long-term project and it needs to be carried through."10

Relatives of Practitioners Also Punished

We have already seen how the Chinese criminal justice system under Jiang Zemin administers punishment that is disproportional to the offences committed. More indications of the injustice that exists in the current justice system can be illustrated by the following stories, which describe how China not only punishes practitioners, but often their innocent family members as well.

Cheng Zhan and Li Xiaojun, two Falun Gong practitioners from Chengdu, were arrested and sent to prison. Their homes were trashed, and the local police proceeded to arrest a dozen of their family members and relatives. They were all given 15 days of detention, and were released only after their workplaces or family members paid three thousand yuan (which amounts to three months salary for an average Chinese worker). Many of them had bruises due to police tortures and beatings by the criminals in the prison. While in police custody, they were forced to do hard labor for 18 to 19 hours every day, and they were given just enough food to keep from starving.11

In Changchun, the government is pressuring Falun Gong practitioners by appointing their family members as guarantors. Now, if a practitioner goes to Beijing to appeal, his guarantor will be fired from his or her job or be dismissed from school. One practitioner's daughter, who is a second year high school student, was appointed as her mother's guarantor. If her mother goes to Beijing to appeal, she will lose the opportunity for future employment.12

Practitioners Bankrupted

Another weapon in the Chinese government's arsenal of persecution is to simply bankrupt practitioners and their families by imposing exorbitant fines on them at every opportunity. If they are arrested, they can be hit with a heavy bail. A practitioner from Baoding went to Beijing to appeal last February and was arrested. His bail: 10,000 yuan, about a year's salary. If a practitioner goes to jail, not only is it expensive to get out, it's also expensive to stay in, as prisoners or their family members are required to pay for their "room and board." Chang Sha, Mimi Tan, and Fei Feng were detained last August for selling Falun Gong books. Family members were not allowed to visit them, but they were required to pay 1,000 yuan per month to the detention center.13

Professional people who also happen to be Falun Gong practitioners are under constant threat of losing their businesses and their careers, even when they are providing valuable and necessary services to society. Dr. Miao, from Wuguiquia, had her clinic confiscated by the police department after going to Beijing to appeal. She is now being held in detention, and society has one less doctor to take care of the sick.14

As we have seen, sometimes the government punishes innocent people for the offences of others, thereby creating conflict between people where none existed previously. For example, take the case of two schoolteachers from Longquanyi who went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and were arrested. They were required to pay a 40,000 yuan penalty after being escorted back home. In the meantime, the local government announced that the 30,000 yuan bonus which had been scheduled to be awarded to their school would be cancelled because the school authorities failed to prevent the teachers from appealing in Beijing. Longquanyi District is located in the Long-quan Mountains. Most of the schools are located in remote areas, and teachers there have low incomes and lead very hard lives. They had all been hoping for a bonus in time to celebrate the Chinese Spring Festival, but because of the decision of the local communist government, they were made to suffer along with the Falun Gong practitioners.15

Practitioners Paraded through the Streets

Persons who lived through the Cultural Revolution thirty years ago still dread their memories of those days and live in constant fear that they will come again. Unfortunately, for the Falun Gong practitioners at least, and for many others as well, those days have returned . Proof of this can be found in the types of punishments being meted out, some of which we have already discussed, some of which are yet to be revealed. One tactic often employed during the Cultural Revolution was to dishonor, embarrass, and humiliate people by parading them through the streets in front of their peers. On January 21, 2000, fifteen practitioners from Pengjia Town who had appealed in Beijing were paraded bare-foot through crowded streets on Market Day. Also last January, practitioners in Guangrao were forced to stand in the back of trucks posted with signs slandering Falun Gong. Each practitioner's name was painted on a board hung around his or her neck.16

"We Would Rather Arrest A Thousand People By Mistake than Let One Practitioner Go Free."

On October 1, 2000, which was the important National Day, practitioners made a strong showing at Tiananmen Square, tarnishing the government's "all powerful" image both at home and abroad, and causing the government and its minions to intensify their brutality toward Falun Gong. At the same time, they began taking stronger measures to hide what they were doing. For example, several days after the National Holiday, uniformed police officers became scarce at Tiananmen Square, as the government began to rely instead on plainclothesmen and hired "muscle" to seize practitioners' banners and force them into police cars. The intent here was to fool tourists into thinking they could help the police by stopping other practitioners from practicing the exercises or unfurling banners. Once inside the police cars and out of sight of the tourists and their cameras, however, the police would beat the practitioners violently--men and women alike. Some people who neither entered the square nor protested were also pushed into the vans and beaten. The police said, "We would rather arrest a thousand people by mistake than let one practitioner go free." Plainclothes police are being used more frequently as time goes by and the government becomes more and more concerned with the tyrannical, totalitarian image being broadcast to the outside world. Now, sometimes practitioners are not attacked immediately upon unfurling a banner or assuming an exercise posture on the square, but instead are followed surreptitiously by secret police, then arrested and beaten once they are well out of sight of the cameras.17

Beatings, Torture, Abuse of Women The beatings usually begin behind closed blinds in the police vans, then intensify at the police stations and then intensify once again at the prisons and detention camps. The repeated beating of defenseless people is abhorrent to almost everyone in Western nations, and news accounts detailing the beating of women, children, and the elderly are very difficult for us to even believe. And yet these stories are true, and they are increasing in number as the persecution becomes more intense and more pervasive with the passing of time.

Consider the case of Huang Xiuling, a fifty nine year old female practitioner who was confined in Tongzhou's Qiaozhuan Detention Center four months ago. When she refused to recite the prison regulations, and insisted instead on practicing her Falun Gong exercises, the guards brought three or four male prisoners into the cell to beat her up. First she was handcuffed and chained. Then they stomped on her feet and used electric batons to shock her body. Not satisfied, they held up her breasts and pinched the tips of her nipples. Later, Huang said that it was so painful she couldn't breathe. They kicked her in her genital area, stopping only when they were too tired to continue.

She then went on a hunger strike. By this time, she had already been injured over her whole body. Her face and knees were dark purple, and her insteps were mutilated. The guards force fed her with a tube, which they inserted into her nose and pushed down into her stomach. It was extremely painful. Adding insult to injury, they demanded that she pay 10 Yuan for the single-use disposable tube. Since Huang didn't have any money, the guards left the tube in her body so they could use it again. In the evening, the pain became unbearable and Huang pulled the tube out. The next day, when she was force fed again, the guards tied her hands behind her back and filled the tube. One end of the tube was left in her stomach, the other end protruded from her nose. That evening, Huang developed a high fever so they gave her some medicine. But Huang's fever did not recede, and she started vomiting. When the guards realized that Huang's life was in danger, they were afraid she would die in the detention center, so they hastily sentenced her to a labor camp for one year and sent her away.18

In another incident, six policemen stepped on a young unmarried woman's abdomen when she refused to give her name and address. They stepped so hard that it made her vagina bleed and her face turn pale. Then they threatened, "If you continue to keep silent, we will strip you and rape you!"19

Death

Yang Guizhen, 40, was from the village of Taojialin in Shandong Province. She was arrested in September for distributing Falun Gong flyers and sent to the Zhucheng City Detention Center. She was interrogated on September 14th, and because she refused to sign a form that declared her to be a member of an "evil cult," the guards directed some inmates to give her a terrible beating. After the beating, she was handcuffed to a chair for four days and four nights, during which time she was not given any food or water, and was not allowed to go to the bathroom. When she was finally allowed to go to the bathroom, she was no longer able to walk on her own. She fell to the ground unconscious and stopped breathing. A guard revived her by pinching an acupuncture point, but as soon as she regained consciousness, they handcuffed her to the chair again. A short while later, she died. After her death, an information blackout was imposed right away. Trying to prevent the news from leaking out, police surrounded her village, kept a close watch over her relatives, and arrested all practitioners who had known her or were trying to find out what had happened to her.20

Conclusion: One of History's Darkest Moments

At the time of this writing, one hundred and twenty five practitioners have died while in custody, and the numbers go higher every month. Worse yet, the rate at which people are dying is also increasing, giving us little hope that the situation will improve any time soon. The vast majority of these very good and decent human beings were tortured to death. The government's policy, openly declared by the highest authorities to those in the field, is that "no measures are too extreme that do not cause death." 20 Some might misinterpret this statement as meaning that subordinates should be careful not to kill people. That's not exactly what they are saying. Rather, they are saying this: "We don't want a lot of dead bodies on our hands, because that presents a public relations problem. But we do want results, so 'no measures are too extreme' to be used against them. You have a license to be as merciless and brutal as your hearts' desire. Just try not to kill them."

One hundred and twenty five people have now died, and this is tragic, but for every one of those practitioners who has died, there are most likely at least a thousand who have been seriously and permanently injured by the horrendous abuse being meted out to Falun Gong practitioners in captivity. Unpleasant though it may be, we have to tell the truth, and the truth is this: that when the historical record of the twentieth century is completed, and all the crimes against humanity have been duly recorded, the accounts of China's persecution of the peaceful Falun Gong practitioners will go down as one of its darkest chapters.

Randall W. Effner, Dipl. C.H. (NCCAOM) lives in rural Jamestown, Missouri, where he oversees a family business, and spends his spare time writing.

1 http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/nov/china1109.htm

2 http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000/july/21/MR072100_7.html "China Ready for Long Fight After Crackdown on Sect" Associated Press Story

3 http://abcnew.go.com/wire/World/ap20000124867.html

4 http://uk.news.yahoo.com/001120/80/apjzp.html

5 Need reference to news story here stating this idea.

6 http:hrreport.fldf.net/book2e/eb202.html

7 http:cnn.com 7/29/99

8 http://hrreport.fldf.net/book2e/eb204-2html#2

9 http://hrreport.fldf.net/book2e/eb209.html

10 ibid.

11 ibid

12 http://hrreport.fldf.net/book2e/eb209/html#2

13 ibid.

14 ibid.

15 ibid.

16 http://hrreport.fldf.net/book2e/eb201-2.html

17 http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000Nov/23/LNC112300_1/html

18 http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000/Oct/14/NFL101400_2.html

19 http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000/Nov/14/LNC11400_1.html

20 http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000/Nov/22/EWA112200_1.html

21 http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000/Sept/12/MNC091200_1.html