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We Must Not Let Terror Become the Prevailing Culture
By Oyang Fei
(Clearwisdom.net) In early October of this year, the National Security police
in Shanghai illegally and secretly detained Lin Xiaokai, a Taiwanese Falun Gong
practitioner, for twenty days. The first thing Mr. Lin asked his wife when he
returned to Taiwan was, "Can I trust you?"
This reminds me of a TV series, "Nowhere Man," which I used to watch eight
years ago. The story began by showing the negative of a photograph. A
professional photographer named Thomas Veil exhibited the photograph which
showed military personnel executing a civilian, a photo which he had taken by
accident. A few days later he was having dinner with his wife at a restaurant.
She disappeared while he went to the restroom. When he got home, his wife opened
the door, but acted like a total stranger, and a man appeared from inside the
house claiming to be her husband. None of Thomas's friends or relatives
recognized him. He found that all his records were destroyed. He was forcibly
taken to a psychiatric hospital, which he soon discovered was part of the plot
as well. Holding the secret in the negative, he escaped from the hospital with
the negative and became a fugitive.
"Nowhere Man" is not a horror movie in the conventional sense. But people
should be alert to the profound shock that the sudden distrust among people can
cause. I have seen numerous horror movies with ghosts and monsters, but only
this non-horror movie left me with such a vivid memory of "horror." Even Bruce
Greenwood who played Thomas in the movie said with lingering trepidation:
"Suddenly when I look into the mirror, I do not know if I am the one that I
think I am, or if things that I think have happened really did in fact occur."
This is a realistic portrayal of how Lin Xiaokai felt when he asked his wife,
"Can I trust you?" on returning to Taiwan.
Mr. Lin's recollection
"The first day after I returned to Taiwan I dared not go home, because I was
afraid that the phone at home was bugged or something bad might happen. So I
dared not let people know that I was back while I stayed at the hotel. I only
went home on the second day, but dared not take any phone calls, for fear that
it might be from Mainland China asking me to do things.
"I met a Taiwanese businessman in Macau, who asked me to help him resolve
some problems with his plane ticket. I was a bit scared, not sure if he was an
agent sent by the Mainland to watch me. I helped him with his plane ticket, had
a meal with him and boarded and debarked the plane with him. But I was feeling
awful all the time. I could not help but keep an eye on him to see if he was an
agent who had come to monitor me.
"I have an email message in my computer containing an article that I sent to
Clearwisdom.net, which was not published. What truly puzzles me is that somehow
the Chinese authorities got ahold of it.
"I could not stand it; under the circumstances I was a stranger there, not
knowing anybody, and they meticulously plotted everything. I did not know whom
to trust. I was very confused throughout the whole process. I did not know
whether I should believe anything they said, and I was constantly nervous about
what they were going to do to me next."
In contrast to "Nowhere Man," a fiction, Mr. Lin's experience in the Shanghai
National Security Department is real. In "Nowhere Man," all the acquaintances
could not recognize Thomas, and all the horror was confined to one individual.
In Mr. Lin's case, people recognized him but he was rendered too fearful to
acknowledge them, as part of the attempt to spread fear and terror to others
through him.
The terrorist tactics of Jiang's regime are unparalleled
Mr. Lin believes that the infiltration of the Taiwanese Falun Gong group by
the Chinese party special agents has reached a frightening stage; they have
obtained information on at least 80% of the practitioners.
The real intention behind why the Shanghai National Security Department
terrorized Mr. Lin for twenty days is so that he would externalize his fear and
foster the terror that they had carefully planned, spreading it to the outside
world.
Why did Jiang's regime apply such tactics to Falun Gong practitioners?
This is actually an indication that Jiang is loosing his grip on the
suppression of Falun Gong.
Several years ago when Jiang was at his most rampant, there were arrests and
sentencing without cause in China, brainwashing, burning of Dafa books, guilt
and punishment by association, expulsion from work and schools, the staging of
suicides, homicides and the staged self-immolation incident to frame Falun Gong.
They deceived the whole nation into criticizing Falun Gong. Outside China,
practitioners received threatening messages and were beaten up by hired thugs;
their cars were set on fire, telephones were bugged, homes and offices were
broken into and possessions were stolen. Falun Gong websites were attacked and
inundated with junk mail. The persecutors acted viciously as though no one could
do anything to stop them.
But every time they do a bad deed it is an opportunity for us to expose their
wickedness to the world. Over the last several years, Falun Gong practitioners'
persistence in their peaceful resistance and efforts to clarify the truth have
allowed more and more people to see the evil nature of Jiang Zemin. Jiang's new
trick is to apply "terror to individuals," to create a "pervasive atmosphere of
fear." Though this tactic is venomous and wicked, it shows that Jiang is failing
overall. He is no longer able to carry out large scale "acts of terrorism" as he
had wished.
In Mr. Lin's case, their ploy was to have a Shanghai National Security agent
posing as a practitioner go after Mr. Lin, who was clarifying the truth about
Falun Gong to people on the Mainland. The agent gathered all of Mr. Lin's
personal information, exploited his innocence and good nature, and tricked him
into going to Shanghai. Then they arrested him and showed him the detailed
information they had on him in order to instill fear in him. It was especially
unnerving that they knew so much about Mr. Lin, because he usually kept a low
profile. This made him believe their lie that they had acquired detailed
information on 80% of the Taiwanese practitioners.
Mr. Lin was frightened mainly because he had always lived in a normal social
environment, and had not experienced the kind of cultural struggle prevalent in
Mainland China. Over the past several decades, through one political movement
after another, the ruling party on the Mainland has accumulated a wealth of
tactics to deal with people. It is unimaginable that it could be this evil. But
it also provided Mr. Lin and other Taiwanese with a clearer picture of the
evilness of this persecution, and therefore it inspired them to work harder to
expose to the world the Chinese government's persecution and to condemn and stop
Jiang's acts of terrorism.
Lately, the Chinese authorities have started to attack practitioners'
computers with viruses, thereby generating a sense of fear on the Internet. Some
agents spread rumors on the web that they could easily monitor practitioners'
cell phones and described how easy it was to infiltrate the practitioners'
circles.
In fact, the transition from the former bold and open attacks to today's
covert maneuvering indicates that Jiang's regime is approaching its end.
The last time I wrote an article, "When Hate and Enmity Turn Into a Political
Culture" (Refer to
http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2003/12/18/43262.html), I made the
point that Jiang's regime fabricated and spread lies and propaganda in an
attempt to incite hatred and induce external pressures to bear on Falun Gong,
thus lending support for his suppression. This time, Jiang's regime created an
"atmosphere of terror" among Falun Gong practitioners themselves, causing
practitioners to distrust each other, and then spreading this atmosphere to the
entire society. They caused the practitioners to feel frightened so that they
would stay quiet, and they inhibited others from speaking out for Falun Gong.
They used terror to obliterate people's consciences, their morals, and their
longing and support for righteousness.
It can be said that Jiang is creating a "culture of terror" in an attempt to
control people's spirits, to stop independent thinking, and ultimately to
achieve control of people's behavior.
China has a 5,000-year-old culture, one which emphasizes kindness,
righteousness, civility, wisdom, trust, and harmony. To suppress "Truthfulness,
Compassion, and Tolerance," Jiang's regime has endeavored to create a "hate
culture" and a "culture of terror." It is equivalent to infusing a slow acting
toxin into the bloodstream of the Chinese culture. It is truly degrading our
cultural spirit.
An atrocity can destroy a single generation, but poison infused into a
culture will harm many generations to come. I hope that all Chinese people can
awaken in time and not harbor any illusions about the originator and promoter of
the "culture of terror." Whether a society can protect the basic human rights
and the security of its citizens depends on whether each member of the society
can choose according to his or her own conscience. |