(Minghui.org) Last year, middle school teacher Liu Dongmei was sentenced to three years in prison for telling her students about the communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong.
Ms. Liu explained that it was her duty not only to teach students knowledge but also to develop their conscience and morality so that they can contribute to their families and society. In one lesson, she discussed the writing of a Song Dynasty judicial official who argued on behalf of a prisoner and prevented him from being wrongly sentenced to death. Ms. Liu connected the story’s values of upholding justice to the plight of Falun Gong practitioners today who are brutally persecuted for their belief in Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
The Gaoyang County Police Department regarded this as their most important case. After arresting Ms. Liu, the police spent more than four months questioning her students, including those who had graduated, to find out how many students and their parents Ms. Liu had talked to about Falun Gong. The interrogations extended even to some of the students in her study hall rotations. In total, the investigation involved hundreds of 9th graders from over three townships.
While interrogating Ms. Liu, an officer told her, “The public security bureau is an agency of violence. Police officers are the tools for carrying out violence.”
Ms. Liu was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2017 and fined 6,000 yuan following a show trial without a lawyer or her family members present.
Fearing that other teachers who also practice Falun Gong would also talk to students about the practice, the authorities in Gaoyang County barred all of them from entering classrooms and reassigned them to other tasks.
Since coming to power, the Chinese Communist Party has relied on indoctrination, fear, and censorship to maintain its totalitarian rule. It employs the same tactics in its persecution of Falun Gong. By imprisoning a teacher and interrogating her students for a lesson on following one’s conscience to fight for the fair treatment of others, the Party displays not only the very injustice it perpetrates but also its fear of a student developing his or her own moral compass.
Related report:Teacher Sentenced to Prison for Telling Students about Falun Gong
Category: Perspective
