(Clearwisdom.net) On March 20, 2001, Lu Renjie, Zhang Fulu, Zhao Xiucheng, and Jia Xianglun in the Shenli Oil Fields in Shandong Province established an organization called the "Counter-Cults Association" to deceive the public and carry out the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners, following the orders of Jiang and his regime. The association president, Lu Renjie, was a former Communist Party Secretary in the Shenli Oil Fields. He was arrested in Beijing for corruption and was stripped of his position. After the persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999, he took the initiative to found the "Counter-Cults Association" in the Shenli Oil Fields. He became the president and worked closely with the 610 Office.

The name "Counter-Cults Association" is a cover that was intended to deceive the public. The public believed it to be an academic research organization. Its function, however, like that of the 610 Office, is to persecute Falun Dafa practitioners. It has its own system, network, and independent funding with support from the local political offices. It has carried out many terrible deeds. Exercising its power over the local subordinate political organizations, it has instigated unlawful crimes. Its only purpose is to persecute practitioners, going to extremes in harassing them by funding many different kinds of activities defaming Falun Dafa. The more activities they sponsor, the more funding they receive. Its budget amounts to over several million yuan (1) each year.

The association has carried out many horrific activities and "tops the list" of firsts in China in the following three areas: it is the first enterprise publishing company to publish a collection of essays that slander Falun Dafa; it is the first enterprise which set up a website to defame Falun Dafa; and it is the first enterprise that started a large scale exhibit to deceive the public about Falun Dafa. The organization has been established for three years under the direction of Lu Renjie and Zhang Fulu. They employ a network of technology and sponsor many writing competitions, including literary and informational reports and articles. They have offered large sums of money and have worked alongside the 610 Office and the public security office to frame, slander and suppress Falun Gong. Moreover, they had done enormous harm to the people of Shenli Oil Fields and the people of China. Following are some of the criminal acts they have committed to Falun Gong in the past three years:

Because the 610 Office has received numerous public denunciations, it has retreated from the public eye. The "Counter-Cults Association" established in 2001 has taken over the functions of the 610 Office and has achieved "success" beyond what the 610 Office could have achieved. They founded 19 branches spread throughout the Shenli Oil Fields. It has direct control over the deployment of two levels of branches and auxiliary entities to carry out the persecution and has the authority to issue orders and directions. It has permanent mechanisms in place to effect persecution activities and has control over the "brainwashing centers" that have been spawned one after another. To exert more influence on society, they have recruited technical, cultural, educational and public health professionals as members to bolster their organization. These professionals do not participate in the activities.

They started running a website to smear Falun Gong and have published and reprinted over 1,000 articles slandering Falun Gong. In the "Internet and Counter-Cults" conference sponsored by the "China Counter-Cults Association," the Oil Field Association aggressively promoted their website-building experience. The association equipped workers from their organizational departments and offices with computers to let all staff access articles and information defaming Falun Gong.

They assembled a group of inept scoundrels to compile and write several hundred articles to discredit Falun Gong. Some of these articles were published and distributed in Shandong Province and throughout China. Essay competitions were held to encourage the uninformed public to write articles that incriminate Falun Gong. The essays were then presented at the conferences held by various counter-cult associations and were compiled and published into three essay collections: From Infatuating to Awakening, The Sunlight Bud, and Book of Exposure and Criticism. The last was written by Xi Xiuhai, Xu Tonghai, Jia Xianglun, and Zhao Xiucheng. 150 copies were distributed at the eighth public lecture sponsored by the "Chinese Counter-Cults Association" convened in Xi'an in April 2003. It received high praise from He Zuoxia, a local represetative of the Chinese Science Academy, Secretary General Wang Yusheng of the "Chinese Counter-Cults Association," and Vice-Chairman Zhou Zhonghsiang and Si Manan of the "Shandong Counter-Cults Association."

Using government funds they purchased large quantities of the book to give a copy to every staff member of the political affairs department and to all the national petroleum system organizations throughout China. It had a broad detrimental influence. They gave massive payoffs, provided material incentives, and organized domestic and overseas travel to motivate writers to produce a massive number of slanderous articles. At the same time, the association could use the results to apply for more funding and receive more rewards for their personal profit.

The association secretary general, Zhang Fulu, was once the vice-minister of human relations of the Shenli Oil Fields. He was a malicious person, corrupt, cunning and a gossip. He published many books that were full of hate towards Falun Dafa and controlled the operation of a website that viciously attacked Falun Dafa. These people didn't really know anything about the practice of Falun Dafa, blinded by their own bias of ignorance. They used the cloaks of "science" and "atheism" to freely criticize and vilify Falun Dafa. In their writings, they would throw out opinions and labels with no rationality behind them.

They continued to commits acts against Falun Dafa in the oil fields in order to sustain public hatred. Through practitioners' tireless efforts to clarify the facts to the public, many people had learned the truth about Falun Dafa. The association staff employed in this slanderous work to turn the public against Falun Dafa had become clearheaded and had grown tired of the persecution and declined to be a part of it. In order to keep up the momentum of the harassment, they often called "all-hands" meetings and smaller scale meetings to continue rousing support among the staff and to create pressures on the subordinate units to continue their illegal harassment and pestering of Falun Gong practitioners. They obstructed practitioners' effort to call an end to the persecution and to restore their basic human right of freedom of belief.

Besides publishing websites and books, the association conducted various dishonorable activities designed to twist the facts, encourage hatred, and harm human consciences by holding large scale exhibits to vilify Falun Dafa in 2001 and 2004. They held essay competitions offering large rewards to entice people to write articles slandering Falun Dafa and published the writings in order to maximize their poisonous effect. They sponsored dramatic performances defaming Falun Dafa and broadcast them on TV and held contests with questions targeting the suppression of Falun Dafa. They made their staff form into teams and participate. They also built billboards in residential neighborhoods to post propaganda slandering Falun Dafa.

They even extended the persecution onto school campuses. They forced the school teachers and students to setup signature drives defaming Falun Dafa, produced vicious propaganda, and compiled songs smearing Falun Dafa for the innocent school children to sing. Their activities poisoned the youth and tremendously damaged the children.

In 2002, they directed the schoolteachers and students to write articles to smear Falun Dafa and advocated a student movement to "say no to cults." They selected 208 articles out of the 1775 submitted and held a presentation which was compiled into a collection called The Sunlight Bud, the first student counter-cults essay collection. In 2004, the book was selected by the "China Association for Caring" in an attempt to distribute the books internationally in order to extend its poisonous effect overseas.

On October 15, 2003, the association offered prizes in a questionnaire contest designed to smear Falun Gong and published the answers in the Shenli Daily newspaper. The departments that implemented the contests were evaluated and given monetary rewards. In September 2001, they conducted a large-scale "Counter-Cults for Civilization" exhibit, and Lu Renjie cut the ribbon. On August 26, 2004, sponsored by the "Chinese Counter-Cults Association," the "The Oil Field Counter-Cults Association" mounted a so-called "Promote Science, Uphold Human Rights, and Counter Cults" exhibit. Again Lu Renjie cut the ribbon and gave a speech.

But a lie is a lie. No matter how much they tried to deceive the public, the lie couldn't be sustained. Those who knew the truth were clearly resisting the efforts to stir up hatred. There were only a very few people who went to see this year's exhibit, so they had to urge the office staff to go. Practitioners in Gudao assembled to send righteous thoughts when they opened the exhibit there. On the second night of the exhibit, the exhibition windows were smashed, leaving the room a mess. However, the door and room windows were intact with no sign of a break-in. They could not figure out what had happened, so they quickly cleared out the exhibits and left.

In recent years, the "Oil Field Counter-Cults Association" has contributed to every facet of the persecution. It has masterminded all kinds of schemes and tricks to torture practitioners. They established a system to reward the public when they report on practitioners' truth-clarification activities and severely punished the practitioners. They award 10,000-50,000 yuan to any prison guard or staff member who transforms a practitioner. They are directly responsible for the recent practitioner arrests in the oil fields.

The association has direct control of the brainwashing centers in the oil fields and implements the brainwashing activities. Practitioners who were unyielding in their practice and who resisted the transformation effort with hunger strikes were severely punished and imprisoned for a very long time.

They instigated the transformed practitioners or "collaborators" (2) to persecute practitioners. These helpers were used as tools to deceive the public. The association participated in provincial and national activities and was recognized as the most "progressive" unit in their campaign experience of the persecution. Based on their criminal experience in persecuting practitioners, they taught the local police how to establish a brainwashing center and how to force-feed (3) practitioners who were on hunger strikes.

Falun Dafa practitioners' tireless truth-clarification efforts had helped the general public to become clearheaded, making it more difficult for the association to deceive the public. Thus, they devised a scheme of rewards for reporting Falun Gong activities and widely publicized it by posting flyers, broadcasting it on television, etc. It enticed some people to betray their conscience for personal profit, and they consequently became part of the persecution by committing the crime of selling out practitioners.

In July 2004, the association broadcast the rules for getting the "reward for reporting Falun Gong activities" on the Shenli TV station and websites and also distributed flyers and established an office to implement it. In October 2004 they held a ceremony to give out the first batch of rewards ranging from 1,000-5,000 yuan. Over 20 people were rewarded. At least 17 practitioners had been arrested and sent to brainwashing centers or labor reform camps.

The association is a temporary organization with the power to arrest and detain citizens. It harasses them and violates their human rights and even goes so far as to use brutality in dealing with civilians. In the past three years, the association and its members have played a major role in persecuting Falun Dafa. They have deceived and harmed the kindhearted residents in the Shenli Oil Fields while causing irreparable harm to Falun Dafa practitioners, their family members, and relatives.

Notes:

1. 500 yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China.
2. "Collaborators" and "helpers" are former Falun Gong practitioners who have gone astray due to brainwashing and torture.
3. Force-feeding: This is a torture commonly used by police against practitioners, and it is the number one cause of practitioner deaths. Almost every practitioner who has gone on a hunger strike in detention has suffered from force-feeding. Many practitioners not even on hunger strikes have also been tortured using this method. The purpose of police force-feeding is never to nourish but rather to punish practitioners and to cause so much pain that they will renounce Falun Gong practice. To that end, the police have used many different means to cause excruciating pain and injury including inserting and withdrawing the feeding tubes repeatedly, leaving the feeding tubes in the stomach, knocking out teeth, tearing apart practitioner's lips, or poking holes in practitioner's cheeks in order to insert feeding tubes, force-feeding concentrated salt-water, force-feeding vinegar or liquor, force-feeding hot pepper oil, mustard oil, or boiling water, and force-feeding urine or feces.