Freedom Is Not Free

In December 1999, Associate Professor Lili Feng of Baylor College of Medicine went to China to visit her parents and was detained for thirteen days. Her "crime" was that of "disrupting the social order," since she, a Falun Gong practitioner, stayed in a fellow practitioner's apartment in Shenzheng City, Guangdong Province. Later, when talking about why she would risk being arrested to go to China, she said, "An editorial in the North Dakota Grand Forks Herald stated, 'In China, freedom is spelled, Falun Gong'... The spirit with which Patrick Henry proclaimed 'Give me liberty, or give me death,' a spirit that an American felt was worth dying for over 200 years ago, is still worth dying for today, around the world."

Here are some excerpts from her story about going to jail.

"...Yet, those were the thirteen worthiest days of my life, for I experienced the amazing salvation power of Falun Gong on myself and on the people around me. Of the more than fifty inmates that I shared the cell with, most were prostitutes, drug addicts or both. Some of these inmates had been forced into prostitution by their husbands or by their families. Their harsh life had given them an absolutely negative view of the world. Fighting, beating, and abuse were commonplace. On the contrary, I came from a well-off family. To me, the stories told by Hugo, Tolstoy, and others, though touching, existed only in novels, and prostitutes were, after all, people who sell their bodies for cheap and easy money. It was Falun Gong that changed me and gave me the compassion and sympathy for my inmates. Witnessing their suffering, I forgot my own agony and did my best to ease their pain. One day, a seventeen-year old prostitute embraced me and asked, 'Lili, you are an important professor from the United States, while we are the lowest of scum and the dregs of society. Yet, you have treated us with dignity and respect as no one else has. Is it because of Falun Gong? If so, can I learn Falun Gong?'

"During my thirteen days in jail, most, if not all of my cellmates learned Falun Gong. Fighting, beating and abuses were dramatically reduced, and by the time I was released, the three most powerful and vicious inmates announced that they would adopt Falun Gong's principles of 'Truth-Compassion-Forbearance' to run the cell. All the drug addicts in the cell lost their craving for drugs, and they did not even have the usual symptoms associated with drug withdrawal.

"There was an inmate whose jail term overlapped mine by three days. At the time of her release, she begged the police, 'Can I stay for a few more days? I want to learn more about Falun Gong.' When we first met, she was talking about revenge against her neighbors using sulfuric acid, but she told me that she would never do a bad thing after learning Falun Gong. It was she, claiming to be a Falun Gong practitioner, who contacted other practitioners in Shenzhen and made known the actual location of my detention.

"One seventeen-year old girl who, upon her release, promised me, 'Professor, I will never sell my body. The next time I am in jail, it will be for Falun Gong.' A nineteen-year-old prostitute told me that as soon as she was released she would go to Beijing to tell the government that Falun Gong had saved her.

"I cried my heart out for their awakening.

"Falun Gong is simply a popular form of mental and physical cultivation. Like my cellmates, people have come to Falun Gong because they wanted to become the best people they could possibly be. In the short eight years since its founding, entirely through word-of-mouth, Falun Gong has drawn 100 million followers in China and around the world, and helped them to achieve higher morality and total health. As a result, and in return, Falun Gong practitioners have become better family members, dedicated workers and conscientious citizens. They are the good friends, dependable colleagues, nice neighbors and peace-loving people you would want to have near you, and around the world. Upon suppression, the natural response of a practitioner is resistance while committing to Falun Gong's principles, 'Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.'

"Before being thrown in jail, I was asked what I had to say. I said, 'Falun Gong is good.'

"The police exclaimed, 'Is that all you want to say, after coming all the way from the U.S.?' And two of the three policemen questioning me shed tears, asking, 'Is it really worth it?'

Do I love my country?

We came to the gathering not to call for learning Falun Gong and neither is Falun Gong's purpose to solve any social problem, but rather, to make a call to awaken everyone's conscience from numbness and indifference. As I said, this indifference of conscience is destroying our nation. Facing injustice, facing crimes, facing murder and torture, everyone is placing his own position before his own conscience.

After Pastor Niemoller, a victim of Nazi persecution, survived WW II (and lived to age 92), he wrote a poem in confession of his moral failure during the 1930's. The message that he tried to deliver applies equally today:

First they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I did not speak out -

because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak for me.

How painful was the penitence! But it was too late, for he had already found himself in a concentration camp. Being audience to injustice is complicity in the crime! Albert Einstein once said, "In long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to be so bad an unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity."

For each cycle of political campaigns in China's recent history, the ruling government has successfully implemented the "5% vs. 95%" psychology: At any time, in any political persecution, only 5% of the people are targeted, and the other 95% are safe. This brings out the very worst of human nature--cling to the 95% side at any cost, even at the expense of others, and close your eyes to the rights of the 5%. That 5%, of course, was rotated so often that the whole nation was suppressed into submission.

A Chinese writer once said, "During the Cultural Revolution in China, when it was time to stand up (for justice), every citizen kneeled down in submission. After the Cultural Revolution, however, when it was time to kneel down (to repent for their silence in face of the persecution), everyone stood up and claimed to be a victim!" After the Cultural Revolution, everyone blamed the "Gang of Four" for everything. Seldom would one reflect upon what he himself did when facing persecution and injustice. The whole nation has been audience, but only the writer, Mr. Ba Jin, had the courage to set himself on trial for his crime of "complicity" in moral court.

Today, for the first time in Chinese history, Falun Gong practitioners have courageously broken out of this pattern. They are not afraid to be that 5%. They stand up for their beliefs, and for a society with justice, regardless of whether they are on the side of 5%, 1%, or alone! Throughout thousands of years of Chinese history, the response of Chinese people to persecution has been one of two options: Armed uprising as with Chen Sheng and Wu Guang; or keeping in silence. The Falun Gong practitioners' persistent and nonviolent resistance to persecution is creating a new history in China. This is not about politics, but about justice, about freedom, and about every human being's conscience.

Once again, however, Falun Gong practitioners are not against the Chinese Government, but we are against the draconian persecution, the injustice and the terror inflicted by a government. For Falun Gong practitioners, it is not important whether or not the ruling government be whatever Party. The key is not economic development, freedom of media, or a good legal system. Imagine, when facing injustice, facing crimes, facing persecution, be it a robbery or murder, or political persecution, if every citizen would stand up and say "NO!" That would make a big difference! The key lies inside everyone's heart.

Yesterday, a message in this list stated that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement was about fighting for "color." If so, I am afraid he would not gain recognition so widely around the world, virtually in all races and cultures. Dr. King's movement was, in my humble opinion, about freedom, about rights, and about human dignity. Likewise, Mahatma Gandhi's movement was not just for independence of a nation. Neither is today's Falun Gong merely about freedom of belief. Dr. King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

The suppression of Falun Gong continues to see thousands of practitioners unlawfully thrown into prison, humiliated, tortured, and even murdered. Against this dire backdrop, tens of thousands of practitioners have made efforts to fulfill their commitment to the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance."

Undeterred, they continue their journey, enduring hardships, humiliation and torture. They understand that what is at stake is not so much individual interests, but rather the well-being of a higher principle, and the understanding of that principle by others. They have, in their sacrifices, done all that is possible to be worthy of Falun Gong.

As citizens who cherish freedom, peace and justice, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out for the Falun Gong practitioners in China, as they have lost the freedom to speak for themselves.

Several times, while introducing Americans to the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, I was asked, "What did the Chinese people do during this persecution?" This was a hint for me to realize, "Yes, too many of my own countrymen have been deluded by the lies and propaganda, and thus remain indifferent." So I came, with a few of my fellow practitioners, to attend the gathering, for one, and only one purpose. To deliver a strong and clear message to the community and to representatives of the Chinese Government: "Stop the brutal persecution! SOS! Urgent: Rescue Falun Gong Practitioners Persecuted in China!"

Frankly speaking, I knew well ahead of time the potential for hostility, due to misunderstandings among some in the Chinese community. As a person, I don't like to be misunderstood, I don't like to be taunted, and I also feel wronged when criticized as a traitor to China. But when I thought about those courageous fellow practitioners suffering in detention centers, labor camps and jails, and about the death of eight-month-old infant Meng Hao, I feel so greatly encouraged, I feel so strongly that I AM THEIR VOICE! I have a responsibility to speak the truth to the world, at any cost. Just in a mere two weeks prior to Chinese National Day (October 1st), twenty practitioners died due to police brutality. I asked myself, "If not me, then who speaks out for them? If not now, when?"

So my wife and I spoke with Consul Jiang Bo about the killing and tortures, about the staged Tiananmen self-immolation incident, I even discussed details like "how could the twelve-year-old girl have sung a song when she had an incision in her trachea?" But he just blindly denied everything and said, "No one died," "No one has been beaten." Until I told him that I had personally seen the bruises of my fellow practitioners, and witnessed the torture in person when I went back to China in 1999, he would always change the subject.

My heart was crying watching the sinking of his conscience, and of his soul. He knew the truth, but he was lying to his own conscience, the conscience that Falun Gong practitioners have sacrificed their lives to awaken. When this page of history has been turned, when Falun Gong cases are redressed, I wonder how he could face the question raised by his son or grandson,"Father, what did you DO at that time?"

Truly, all we did was tell the truth about the persecution, for the sake of those persecuted, for the sake of everyone's conscience, and for a better China, one in which peace and justice prevail. Whether or not to practice Falun Gong is everyone's free choice and we have no intention to impose our faith upon anyone. But one's choice of what to do when facing injustice, facing crimes, facing evil, is critical to one's life, to everyone else's lives, and to the lives of our next generation.

So, with all that I have done, I believe that, like all of you, "I love China," within reason.

Sincerely,