(Clearwisdom.net) "Brown vs. the Board of Education" was a landmark case in shaping the US legal and educational system. Recently, Dr. Rod Paige, the US Secretary of Education, attended the 50^th Anniversary of the "Brown" ruling at Harvard University, where he gave a speech -- "Beyond Brown: Unfinished Business." As a person who was born in a middle-class African American family, Dr. Paige reviewed the atrocities that the policy of racial segregation brought to Black communities, fifty years ago. He appraised the achievements in abolishing segregation and pointed out the problems Americans are still facing today.

(Dr. Rod Paige has served as the US Secretary of Education since January 2001. Photo from http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/paige-bio.html)

Among the attendees of the anniversary event were some fellow practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, who brought to the audience's attention the on-going discrimination and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. They pointed out that in China the whole educational system has been involved in the persecution of Falun Gong. In fact, many teachers and students in China have been subject to illegal imprisonment or expulsion from schools. Moreover, getting the "correct answers" on exam questions often means agreeing with the Party's propaganda campaign against Falun Gong. The Falun Gong practitioners asked Dr. Paige if he could help with their ordeal. Dr. Paige thanked them for bringing the issue to his attention, and he made very clear his unwavering concern about human rights abuses around the world. Finally, he gave some advice regarding how to seek further help.

Here is a brief background on the landmark case, "Brown vs. the Board of Education." In 1954, in response to the complaint of a black student, named Linda Brown, against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas regarding forced racial segregation in school, and to similar lawsuits in South Carolina and Virginia, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs: "We hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment." After that, the segregation of black children from white children in public schools was gradually abolished and children of different colors could attend the same schools. Take Dr. Rod Paige as an example. He went from being an ordinary African American student to receiving his Ph.D. in education, and from an ordinary teacher to the US Secretary of Education, which clearly demonstrates the great achievements of the US in the past half-century.

However, contrary to the tremendous advancements in the educational systems of most countries around the world, in China, where "respecting teachers and Taos" has been a tradition for thousands of years, the educational system, headed by the Party Minister, Chen Zhili, has been carrying out a policy of discrimination and even brutal persecution against Falun Gong practitioners. This is not a suppression based on race, but rather, on belief. Falun Gong is a traditional system of belief based on the universal principles of Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance). Chen Zhili is actively implementing Jiang Zemin's (Party politburo member, Head of the Central Military Commission and former Head of State) campaign to "eradicate Falun Gong."

According to numerous reports on the Clearwisdom.net website over the past five years, many children of different ages have either died as a result of persecution they received, been imprisoned, or were expelled from school as a result of their practice of Falun Gong. At the same time, teachers who were supposed to be educating children in classrooms were instead put in prisons, or even tortured to death for their belief in Falun Gong. In particular, among the 958 Falun Gong practitioners (as of May 2004) reported on the Clearwisdom.net website to have died in the persecution, 61 of them were teachers and 6 were students. The death toll of Falun Gong practitioners within China's educational system is one of the highest.

In addition, according to preliminary statistics from the "World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong," in 2003 alone, at least 435 Falun Gong practitioners at 210 colleges and universities were sent to various brainwashing programs, forced labor camps, or psychiatric hospitals solely based on their belief. The authorities in the education department have been mainly assisting in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by exploiting the means at their disposal, i.e. depriving teachers of their right to teach, and stripping students of their right to graduate or to enroll or advance in school. Since 1999, at Tsinghua University (one of the most prestigious universities in China) alone, over 300 professors, teachers, undergraduate students, Masters or PhD degree holders have been imprisoned, forced to attend brainwashing classes organized by members of the university, dismissed from their positions, expelled, or directly sent to forced labor camps. There is no question that this systematic persecution has violated the provisions of China's own "Education Law," which states that, "Regardless of their ethnicities, races, genders, jobs, financial situations, and religious beliefs, citizens shall have the equal opportunity to receive education."

The biography of Dr. Rod Paige, the US Secretary of Education, can be easily obtained from the White House web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/paige-bio.html). As a former teacher and a soccer coach, Dr. Paige began working with students early in his career. He then served for a decade as Dean of the College of Education at Texas Southern University (TSU). In 1989, he was sworn in as a trustee and an officer of the Board of Education of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Now, he is leading the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), to further make it possible for every American child to have the chance to learn in school, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

On the contrary, in March of 1998, Chen Zhili, who had no prior experience working in education, was appointed by the Party to serve as the Minister of Education in China. According to a report in "Cheng Ming," a monthly magazine in Hong Kong, the presidents of the most prestigious universities in China, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang Univesity, and Fudan University, etc., collectively filed a written appeal during a national conference organized by the State Council asking for the dismissal of Chen from her position as the Minister of Education.

In spite of her notorious reputation in educational circles, Chen hasn't been trying to change her image as an incompetent educator, but has instead been putting her effort into persecuting Falun Gong, suggesting that her appointment as the Minister of Education is merely for political purposes. According to a report from the "World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong," Chen has been trying to carry out the policy of "eradicating Falun Gong" mainly in the following areas:

1. Mentally and physically persecuting teachers and students who practice Falun Gong (as described above)
2. Instigating hatred towards Falun Gong practitioners; mobilizing and exploiting students to join in the persecution of Falun Gong

Chen has been exploiting huge national resources to brainwash hundreds of millions of children and young adults by spreading lies and instigating hatred towards Falun Gong practitioners. In line with Jiang's goal of "eradicating Falun Gong," Chen has launched massive anti-Falun-Gong movements by mobilizing those who did not know the truth about Falun Gong to turn against Falun Gong. For example, on February 1, 2001, just after the government-staged "Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation" incident, Chen, leading the Party Committee in the Ministry of Education and together with the Party Youth League of the Central Government, issued an order to launch a widespread "anti-Falun-Gong movement" in every college and university directly associated with the Ministry of Education. The national anti-Falun-Gong movements, which swept the country, started subsequently, even igniting vigilante and mob-like violence against some Falun Gong practitioners.

3. Mobilize significant national resources to suppress and demonize Falun Gong

Taking advantage of her power, Chen Zhili has been exploiting financial resources, which are supposed to be used for the advancement of China's educational system, to spread lies, to filter and block positive information about Falun Gong, and to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. For instance, Chen ordered university programs in China to further develop technologies for filtering and blocking the Internet, to focus their resources on the software and hardware for such information filtering, and to provide technical support for screening all information on Falun Gong. She encouraged and sponsored various on-campus and off-campus "seminars," picture displays, shows, community activities, and publications that all slandered Falun Gong. Furthermore, she spread the slanderous publications to an even broader segment of the public.

4. Extending the persecution beyond domestic borders

Chen also put in effort in persecuting Falun Gong overseas. In the name of "Cultural and Educational Exchanges," Chen has spent huge amounts of money sponsoring activities in other countries to spread the Party's lies. Her purpose was to vilify and attack Falun Gong in the international community. In spite of the difficult situation in China where tens of millions of children live in poverty and cannot afford to go to school, Chen used her power as Minister of Education to spend money extravagantly overseas for the sole purpose of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners in academic circles overseas.

Half a century has passed since the case of "Brown vs. the Board of Education" was ruled on in the US. That bit of history has demonstrated, once again, that any act of violating basic human rights will always fail in the end, no matter how high-and-mighty the violators pretend their reasons to be. With the same token, the on-going suppression in China is going against the historical trend and therefore, will not last long.