By Yueran, Clearwisdom.net Reporter in Boston
(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 50th 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. A Half-Century of Achievements in the US are a Strong Contrast to the Brutal
Persecution in China 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." A Strong Contrast Between the US Secretary of Education and the Chinese
Minister of 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: 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. 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. 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.
Posting date: 5/27/2004
Original article date: 5/27/2004
Category: Open Forum
Translated on 5/5/2004
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/4/30/73549.html