(Clearwisdom.net)

In China, a propaganda campaign is not needed to prove why people should fight corruption, because people have had personal experience of the harm caused by corruption.

A campaign to convince the public to eradicate drugs, gambling, organized crime and prostitution is not needed, because people have personally experienced the harm they have imposed on society.

Even less needed is a campaign to fight deceptive and fraudulent trade because people themselves have been the victims of such practices.

The government does not need to explain why the targets of the aforementioned campaigns are bad, because the general public agrees, on legal and moral grounds, that they should be eradicated. The campaign organizers can proceed with their efforts without having to justify them .

With regard to the persecution of Falun Gong, however, Jiang Zemin's group has been trying repeatedly for the past few years to convince the people of one thing, e.g., that Falun Gong is "not good." This is not working, because Falun Gong of course IS good.

Jiang Zemin's persecution of Falun Gong is based on the following slogans: "Destroys the Party and the Country," "Damages Society," "Harms Lives" "Damages the Country and Its People," and "Endangers Our Country's Security and Our People's Peaceful Existence." People who are familiar with China's political movements all know that these empty and intimidating "labels" simply express the persecutor's eagerness to put those being persecuted to death.

Introduced to the public in 1992, tens of millions of people from all walks of life had taken up the practice of Falun Gong by 1999. If it were as terrible as Jiang Zemin's lies indicated, if it were truly "endangering the country's safety and peoples' peaceful lives" and adversely affecting the "life and death of the nation," it should be easy to demonstrate the validity of the claims. Why had tens of millions of people been turning a blind eye to such a big "disaster"? Instead, the government has been squandering its resources for the past five years to repeatedly attempt to instill the idea in the mind of the public that Falun Gong has been causing damage.

The reason is very simple: Falun Gong does not pose any harm to society at all. On the contrary, by practicing Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance, a person becomes healthy, enjoys a happy and harmonious family life, gets along better with his neighbors, works diligently but does not complain, does not take bribes or graft, is honest, sincere, kind, forbearing and conciliatory--this is the impression people have had of Falun Gong practitioners in their daily lives.

It is indeed very difficult to prove that a "good thing" is actually a "bad thing," let alone to prove that it is a "most terrible thing that endangers everyone." Therefore, Jiang Zemin's group has had to repeat their lies over and over again.

In the early stage of the persecution they unleashed a massive bombardment of lies on TV and in the newspapers. Later, they came up with scandal-mongering, sensational cases like "suicides," "self-immolations" and "murders" to make slanderous remarks and ridiculous exaggerations. If you asked a person who claimed that Falun Gong was not good why he thought so, he would tell you, "That's what the TV and the newspaper said."

Obviously, the government has had to campaign vigorously to instill resentment and hatred in people whose real life experiences tell them otherwise.

Exactly because Jiang Zemin's persecution is based on the media's false fabrications, as soon as the rumors stopped, Jiang's group began to feel that the "rationale" to maintain the persecution was weak and powerless. In the face of Falun Gong practitioners' rational and peaceful truth-clarification, Jiang's group felt even more desperate and hopeless about the future.

The government still depends on the mouthpiece media to massively and directly fabricate lies, and people have gotten bored. In 2001 the so-called "Million Signature Campaign" was implemented in schools. This year Jiang Zemin's group has again extended its underhanded means to school students by aggressively launching the so-called "Anti-Falun Gong Campaign."

The scope of this campaign extends from the countryside to the cities, from elementary to middle and high schools, to every alley and street, and from flourishing coastal cities like Beijing and Shanghai to the Xinjiang Military Construction Army Troops.

The thrust of this campaign is both visual and participatory. Pre-designed, pre-approved posters are posted on school bulletin boards and in school newspapers. Propaganda movies, videos and pictures are exhibited to the students, who are truly "captive" audiences. Signature collection events, essay competitions, lectures, quiz competitions, book and picture exhibitions, popular science exhibitions, and themed meetings are scheduled. Promotional editorial columns are printed, and the students are organized to go out on the streets to spread propaganda by distributing VCD's, CD's and flyers.

Zhejiang Province's Wenling educational system came up with a Great-Leap-Forward style slogan: "Achieve the goal of educating one student to influence one family and the entire society."

The Central Party Political Ministry Committee even sent out notices to request brainwashing elementary and middle school students in order to impact students' parents, openly using students as tools to slander Falun Gong throughout the entire country.

The central government delivered part of this campaign's promotional materials free of charge, but part had to be shouldered by the local finance bureaus. In the Xiangxi Autonomous Region of Hunan Province, for example, in addition to the government-supplied free materials for the "Anti-Falun Gong Campaign," the local government spent two hundred thousand yuan to print propaganda materials.

These propaganda materials contain only slanderous comments and fabrications, in particular, about the staged self-immolation in Tiananmen Square. Many times Falun Gong practitioners have intercepted China's satellite TV system to broadcast "the truth of the staged self-immolation," which panicked Jiang Zemin's group. Many practitioners who were involved were tortured to death. Others received severe sentences and were subjected to all sorts of torture.

Jiang Zemin has taken advantage of school students by imposing upon their already busy schedule a well documented, well programmed, and carefully crafted system to instill these fabricated lies and justify the government's systematic persecution.

The so-called "Falun Gong issue" is a product of Jiang Zemin's unpredictable emotional outbreaks fueled by his jealousy and his concern for personal power. There are all sorts of different societal conflicts in China, but Jiang Zemin's "Falun Gong issue" has never been one of them.

During this year's Two Party Meetings, CCTV International conducted a survey of the most important issue to viewers. The results: Corruption was the most important to 17% of those surveyed, the Three Agriculture-related Issues 15%, unreasonable educational costs 12%, the social welfare system 11%, judicial integrity 10%, minimizing the gap between cities and rural areas 6%, the others are: protection of personal property, public safety, economic reform, government-run businesses reform and public order and safety.

On the Internet the Beijing Economics Reference Newspaper and Xinhua Net conducted a joint survey of the Two Party Meetings issues. The ten issues the Chinese Internet users were most concerned about were: corruption, farmers' income, unbalanced regional development and income gaps, unreasonable educational costs, how to break through the monopolization in the telecommunications and railroad industries, public order and safety, further improvement of social welfare, job employment and re-employment, surplus farm workers' legal benefits and how to protect them, and Taiwan's public vote.

The "Anti-Falun Gong Campaign" targets young people. What then are young people most concerned with?

According to a large-scale survey conducted by Beijing's Meilande Information Company on young people in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Xiamen and Qingdao, the top ten issues that most concern today's young people are: economic reform (47%), Taiwan's situation (46%), public order and safety (40%), education (36%), corruption (34%), social welfare (30%), environment (29%), unemployment and re-employment (25%), moral standards (25%) and traffic (15%).

At Shanghai's Education Committee request, Fudan University conducted the "2002-03 Shanghai College Students' Development Report." These college students are most concerned with employment (74.6%), choices and challenges after China's entering the WTO (34.8%), and corruption (24.8%).

Of all the surveys, none has anything to do with the "damage" Jiang Zemin claims has been caused by Falun Gong. For the past several years Jiang and Jiang's group have made up numerous lies, but they have not been able to wipe out Falun Gong, putting them in an awkward dilemma. Now they are trying to pass on their awkward dilemma to the people, school students included.

Psychological problems are becoming a serious issue for young people in China today. Currently there are sixteen million mental patients in China. Mental illness ranks as the number one "disease" in China's entire patient population. There are about thirty million adolescents under the age of 17 who are troubled by emotional and behavioral problems. However, there is an unparalleled phenomenon: at present the number of people with an awareness of mental health and mental disease prevention comprises less than 30% of the people. Juvenile drug addiction has also become a serious problem. More and more young people are becoming addicted to computer games ("electronic heroin") which adversely affects their health. China's AIDS epidemic has become more severe. Sexually transmitted diseases mainly affect juvenile populations between the ages of 15 and 24.

Jiang's group controls the country's educational system. Rather than truly paying attention to young people's development, Jiang Zemin has abused the educational system by devoting manpower and resources into slandering and defaming Falun Gong among young people in an effort to create hatred. To society, this is a waste. To the average person and to school students, this is a crime.

Today's school students are faced with multiple pressures: human relationships and character development, their learning and academics, dealing with their parents and the future, economic realities, and their health.

Their teachers are all aware of the fact that students who practice Falun Gong follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance in their personal conduct and are good students, which is very beneficial to their mental health and very helpful when they are faced with so many kinds of pressure. Practicing Falun Gong is a real plus, not only for the individual but also for the school and for society. The so-called "Falun Gong issue" has been forcefully imposed upon people from higher authorities since 1999. Schools have had to organize activities to expose Falun Gong practitioners and collect signatures. The "Anti-Falun Gong Campaign" has mobilized additional resources and continues to poison the minds of school students.

The "Anti-Falun Gong Campaign" mainly uses "scientific" explanations to undermine people's faith.

Everyone knows that in the West, as important as science is, religion continues to exist and plays a very active and positive role in society.

Jiang Zemin once asked the president of the United States, "In the West where science is so advanced, why do people still believe in religion?" This is exactly what Jiang Zemin doesn't understand.

When President Bush visited China in 2002, he made the following remarks in a lecture he gave at Beijing's Qinghua University, "America is a nation guided by faith. Someone once called us 'a nation with the soul of a church.' Ninety-five percent of Americans say they believe in God, and I'm one of them." "Freedom of religion is not something to be feared but to be welcomed, because faith gives us a moral core and teaches us to hold ourselves to high standards, to love and serve others, and to live responsible lives." " For centuries, this country had a tradition of religious tolerance. My prayer is that all persecution will end, so that all in China are free to gather and worship as they wish."

Jiang Zemin's group not only persecutes the belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance, but also incites hatred in the entire society and especially among young people, twisting science to use it as a tool to blaspheme Gods and oppose Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance. Young people are not the only ones who have been victimized. China's whole future is falling victim to this persecution.

(Reported by Minghui Reporter Ouyang Fei)

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/4/28/73415.html