(Minghui.org) Mr. Zhai Hui, a practitioner in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, was arrested in April 2012. Due to long-term mistreatment, he became emaciated and unable to eat or walk. Guards had to carry him to the courtroom for his trial in December 2012.
His daughter, who is in middle school, was bewildered when she learned that her father had been charged with “divulging state secrets,” because all he did was install a satellite dish.
“How can average people like us 'leak state secrets' by installing and watching satellite television?” she asked. “Plus, since satellite dishes are allowed to be made in China, and people around the world can watch satellite television, why is it considered a crime?”
The girl is not alone in being taken aback. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has put an incredible amount of effort into covering up its brutal suppression of Falun Gong over the past 15 years, including defaming the practice in all of its news media outlets, and even school textbooks.
Anyone who passes on the truth about the persecution is severely punished, especially if they are caught doing so using overseas media.
One example was an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding Ms. Chen Zixiu, a Falun Gong practitioner in Weifang City of Shandong Province, who had been tortured to death. Ian Johnson, the author of the article, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2001.
But three days after the article was published, Ms. Chen's daughter was arrested for relaying her mother's experience to Mr. Johnson, and charged with “divulging state secrets.” She was detained for one year in a detention center, followed by three years in a forced labor camp.
Ms. Wei Xingyan, a graduate student at Chongqing University, was raped by a police guard in front of two female inmates at the Baihelin Detention Center in May 2003. After this was reported overseas, the Chongqing 610 Office did all it could to suppress the story.
More than 40 people were arrested in the aftermath, and at least ten were sentenced to imprisonment, with terms of between 5 and 14 years. They were all charged with the crime of “divulging state secrets.”
Even those who wrote articles were persecuted by the CCP. Several practitioners (Zhao Hu, Cui Hai, Shen Xuewu, and Chen Gang), who were either college professors or high-level corporate managers, were arrested in Wuhan City in Hubei Province in later 2012.
Because they had written the unflattering truth about the government, they were charged with “divulging state secrets” and “attempting to overthrow the government,” and were sentenced to from three to five years of imprisonment.
Killing innocent people, torture, and rape are blatant crimes. But the Chinese regime considers them "state secrets," and conceals them from the public.
The CCP brutality does not end there. Because "leaking state secrets" cases are often considered confidential, the CCP takes advantage of this and abuses the legal system even further to mistreat practitioners.
After Mr. Cui Hai was arrested, officials did not inform his family until two months later. Even then they did not tell them where he was being detained, and prohibited any family visits.
During that time, Mr. Cui was transferred between the detention center, the brainwashing center, and the mental hospital. He was often in critical condition, but his family was never informed.
When several practitioners from Qingdao City, Shandong Province, were arrested in 2013, for taking pictures that depicted methods of torture used on Falun Gong practitioners, officials refused to allow family visits or consultations with an attorney.
When family members asserted that such requests should be approved since the charge was only “sabotaging law enforcement,” officials changed the charges to “divulging state secrets” and “subverting the government.”
Barring attorneys from seeing their practitioner clients by charging them with “divulging state secrets” is a tactic often used by officials throughout China. This allows them to torture, frame, and sentence practitioners while keeping the public in the dark.
Mr. Zhang Hua, a gold medal winner in the Second NTD International Chinese Culinary Competition in 2009, said he tried to attend the competition a year earlier, but was detained for “defying national interests” and “divulging state secrets.”
“I did not know that my good cooking divulged state secrets,” Mr. Zhang said, “but my mantra has always been to 'cook genuine dishes and be a genuine person.'”
A Falun Gong practitioner was arrested for shouting “Falun Dafa is good” at Tiananmen Square, and was sentenced to a 7-year prison term. When his attorney questioned the judgment, the judge said he had committed the crime of “divulging state secrets” because “Falun Dafa is good” was a state secret.
Some police officers said in private that they had received instructions to charge practitioners who distribute Falun Gong materials with “divulging state secrets.”
Several such cases have been reported. For example, a couple of Falun Dafa Association members were sentenced to more than ten years in a detention center, but the sentences were never made public. Many instances of severe torture were also labeled “state secrets” and never revealed.
These cases help us to understand the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party, and they coincide well with descriptions in the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, “The decision process within the Party operates like a black box, as the intra-Party struggles must be kept in absolute secrecy. Party documents are all confidential. Dreading exposure of their criminal acts, the CCP frequently silences dissidents by charging them with 'divulging state secrets.'”