FDI: As Skateboarder Flies Over the Great Wall, Terror Continues on the Ground

NEW YORK (FDI) -- Last week, professional skate-boarder and extreme sportsman Danny Way captured headlines with his record-setting jump over China's Great Wall.

A day before Way's big jump, an article from Sports Illustrated referred to his attempt as a "great leap forward" that would start a "cultural revolution in China."

For those unfamiliar with recent Chinese history, the Great Leap Forward was a terribly ill-conceived plan to double China's steel production. Between 1959-1961, the nation was essentially turned into one large labor camp. Farmers were forced to abandon their fields and participate in the steel-making. Those who sought to escape starvation-stricken regions or raid food stores in desperation were killed.

Over 30 million people died, most of starvation, and the nation was plunged into an economic abyss.

And what of the Cultural Revolution? Considered by China scholars as the most extreme period of modern Chinese history, the ten year campaign from 1966-1976 sought to eradicate anyone or anything that upheld traditional Chinese culture or education. The campaign reached such a frenzy that children would beat or even kill parents, teachers, and elders; many young people turned their elders in to authorities for torture or public humiliation. Killing became a way to prove one's "revolutionary" status.

So chaotic were the times that rampant cannibalism broke out in multiple regions. "The outside world obtained a glimpse of the violence," according to China scholar Kenneth Lieberthal, only "when trussed-up corpses, many without heads, began floating down the Pearl River into Hong Kong."

Between 7-8 million people were killed or driven to suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

So how could an icon of pop culture, such as Sports Illustrated, readily make flippant references to such horrific historical events as if recalling something as casual as a rock concert or a cultural fair? Has all the hype about China's economy so divorced us from reality that such references go unnoticed, or worse, ignored?

Perhaps these horrors are considered by most to be ancient history? An important and tragic anniversary coming up this week tells us in no uncertain terms that the terror of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is anything but history.

Wednesday July 20 marks the sixth year since China's senior leadership launched a nation-wide campaign to "eradicate" the traditional Chinese exercise and meditation practice known as Falun Gong or Falun Dafa. By the Chinese Government's own estimates, there were 100 million practicing Falun Gong in China.

Beginning in the early morning hours of July 20, 1999, hundreds of people throughout China were pulled from their beds in the middle of the night. Over the next several days, tens of thousands were detained.

Within a week, China's state-run media was saturating the country with stories vilifying Falun Gong, and demonizing those who practice. China's state-run television attacked Falun Gong in broadcasting marathons, some lasting 24 hours each. In one month's time, the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, published 347 articles attacking the practice.

By early 2000, the systematic use of torture was reported across the country, as police and labor camp personnel were, according to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, authorized by the CCP's top leaders to use "any means necessary" to coerce people into renouncing Falun Gong.

Anyone suspected of practicing or merely sympathizing with Falun Gong was forced to go through brainwashing classes where psychological torment, often combined with torture, was used to "re-educate" them. Most would also lose their job or be expelled from school. Many had their homes repeatedly ransacked, their pensions terminated and their livelihood taken away.

While the CCP has toned down its public rhetoric against Falun Gong in recent months in the face of increasing international pressure, the horrors continue behind prison camp walls and inside police detention centers.

To date, and despite the difficulty in collecting detailed information on abuses and deaths in custody inside China--reporting such information to the outside world can itself land you in prison or dead--the deaths of more than 2,600 people in police custody have been verified. There are more than 44,000 cases recorded of severe abuse or torture. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, have been illegally sent to forced labor camps.

On a daily basis, reports of on-going torture and killings of people who practice Falun Gong continue to emerge from inside China. These are not individual violent acts of a corrupt, unmanaged police force, but rather, the result of a deliberate and systematic policy put in place six years ago to destroy Falun Gong.

Today, that policy continues to be carried out.

Sports Illustrated is hardly alone in generating buzz and hype about China. For instance, in the last two months TIME and Newsweek have each had special editions dedicated to China, framing the Communist nation of 1.3 billion people as progressive and on the move.

As we pass through July 20 this year, however, it may behoove us to pause and reflect on the persecution of Falun Gong in China, what it means for China as a nation, and to what extent visions of skate-boarders flying over the Great Wall have overshadowed the reality of what's happening on the ground.

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EDITORIAL - July 20, 2005
Falun Dafa Information Center, www.faluninfo.net

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa (about), is a practice of meditation and exercises with teachings based on the universal principle of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance." Practiced in over 50 countries world-wide, Falun Gong has roots in traditional Chinese culture. With government estimates of as many as 100 million practicing Falun Gong, China's Communist leader Jiang Zemin outlawed the peaceful practice in July 1999 (report). Since that time, the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its propaganda campaign to turn public opinion against the practice while imprisoning, torturing and even murdering those who practice it. The Falun Dafa Information Center has verified details of 2,676 deaths (reports / sources) since the persecution of Falun Gong in China began in 1999. In October 2001, however, Government officials inside China reported that the actual death toll was well over 1,600. Expert sources now estimate that figure to be much higher. Hundreds of thousands have been detained, with more than 100,000 being sentenced to forced labor camps, typically without trial.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER
Contacts: Gail Rachlin (+1 917-757-9780), Levi Browde (+1 914-720-0963), Erping Zhang (+1 646-533-6147), or Christina Chai (+1 917-386-5068).
Fax: 646-792-3916 Email: , Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/

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