Clarifying the Truth at an American University
(Clearwisdom.net) Greetings Master! Greetings fellow practitioners! I am a practitioner and a PhD student at an American University.
I have a lot of personal cultivation experiences in terms of balancing my school
work, research, cultivation, and truth-clarification, but I would
like to focus on sharing my experiences in clarifying the truth at our university, especially facing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) special agents who
tried to interfere with our activities. I started at the university in January 2005. One veteran
practitioner has, for many years, diligently held Falun Gong introductory
workshops every week. In addition to introducing Falun Gong to students, he also
holds truth-clarification activities and tries to plan at least one major
truth-clarification event on campus every semester. Soon after I joined, we started to distribute the English Epoch
Times newspaper on campus at various locations. We distribute around 200-300
papers at different buildings around campus on the day of publication. In early 2005, a
magazine published by the university carried an article about Yahoo kowtowing
to the CCP. The article also included two long paragraphs about the Nine
Commentaries on the Communist Party and its impact in China. It was
obvious that the student reporter had read our articles about the Nine
Commentaries and done some research on his own. We knew that Master was
encouraging us. The same semester, an international conference was held on
campus on China's economic development. Several businessmen from mainland China
attended this conference. During this time, we held a large-scale anti-torture
exhibit on the main campus. Many students learned the facts about the
persecution of Falun Gong, and the college newspaper published a front-page
photo about our activities and our truth-clarification efforts. Chinese and Western leaders often visit our school, so we meet
them and clarify the truth face to face. For example, in early 2006, a forum was
held about freedom in Chinese media. Among the panelists was the managing editor
and anchor for Hong Kong's Phoenix TV and the executive dean of the School of
Journalism & Communication at Tsinghua University. During the Q&A
session, we managed to raise questions about the true state of freedom of speech
and the media in China, the Epoch Times, and the Nine Commentaries.
During the informal dinner afterwards, I managed to talk to both of these
leaders in person and gave them copies of the Nine Commentaries. I told
them, "It will be hard for you to get a copy of this book after you go back
to mainland China. I hope you get a chance to read this book." One of them
told me that actually, he had already seen this book and that it was everywhere
in China. I convinced him to take the book and read it again. In late 2006, we started to approach several student groups
and organizations on campus to tell them about the Chinese New Year Gala. At one
of these meetings with a large student club, we were interrupted by a Chinese
student. At the time, we thought that she didn't know the facts about Falun
Gong, but now we know that the CCP has close ties with the Chinese student
organizations and was trying to interfere with our activities on campus. In early 2007, we held an organ harvesting forum on campus,
which Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former Secretary of State of
the Government of Canada for the Asia Pacific region David Kilgour attended. We
planned and worked hard for the event and contacted all the student groups on
campus. Several of the student group leaders replied to us, saying they
supported us and wished our activities all the best. Overall, we worked closely
with practitioners from across New York and New Jersey to help promote this
event. CSSA INTERFERENCE On the day of the event, something unexpected happened. The
CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars Association) leaders sent out an e-mail to
their club that was filled with CCP propaganda and threatened to disrupt our
forum by force if necessary. We were alerted to this early enough, and informed
public safety officials who confiscated the banners the CSSA students had
brought and told them to be peaceful. When the CSSA students, led by their
president, started to interrupt the forum, the public safety officials sent them
out. The school newspaper ran a front-page article the next day about the organ
harvesting forum and the disruption by the CSSA students. After the incident, we discussed how to handle it. We started
going to the administrators in almost all the schools, and filed several
complaints against the CSSA leaders who had organized the disruption. At that
time, our goal was not really to punish them; we mainly wanted to clarify the
truth to the school administrators, whom we had never had a chance to approach
directly before. This incident gave us the perfect opportunity to meet with the
high-level administrators at almost all the major schools on campus and clarify
the truth about Falun Gong to them. Shortly after the disruption, the CSSA started posting CCP
propaganda against Falun Gong on its public website. These propaganda items were
posted mostly in Chinese, not in English. We continued to approach school
administrators, clarifying the truth and explaining why the CSSA behavior was
intolerable and reflected poorly on the school. Unfortunately, we relied too much on the administrators.
Instead of clarifying the truth to try to save them, we got enmeshed in the
situation and relied on them to take action to take down the bad material. As
Master said in "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia,
U.S.A.": "That kind of thinking isn't wrong in the ordinary
society, but it's not right for a cultivator. With a Dafa like this, how could
so many magnificent future Gods, magnificent Dafa disciples, who've been
forged through Dafa cultivation put their hope in some ordinary person?" What manifested on the surface was that the administrators,
who had been initially very supportive of us, turned their backs to us. They
expressed that they were not able to do anything since the CSSA material was
hosted on an external website and they could not control it. Our understanding
at that time was that perhaps because the CCP had invested a lot of money in
the university directly and indirectly, and put pressure on the school
administrators, they refused to help us. Also, at that time, only the few
practitioners at the university were involved in this effort, and the
practitioners in the greater New York area were not aware of the situation. In March 2007, NTDTV's International Dance Competition was
held at New York University. The CSSA at NYU tried to disrupt the event in a
manner similar to that at our university, slandering Falun Gong and NTDTV
on its website and circulating a petition to stop the dance competition. The
CSSA at our school followed along, copying verbatim NYU CSSA's
propaganda. At this point, it became clear to the greater body of
practitioners that the CSSA in both schools were actually acting as agents for
the CCP and the Chinese Consulate. The CCP was actually using the organizations
to extend its persecution of Falun Gong overseas. After realizing this fact, practitioners across New York
mobilized quickly. Flyers were made and distributed at New York University
clarifying the truth about the CSSA and how it was acting as an agent for the
CCP in its attempts to persecute Falun Gong overseas. Very quickly, many
students in NYU learned the truth. One practitioner got a chance to talk
directly to the university president, who listened attentively. After in-depth
truth-clarification, NTDTV was finally able to hold the dance competition at
NYU. In fact, several university officials who originally were not interested
came to watch the competition and congratulated NTDTV for hosting such a
wonderful cultural event. Meanwhile, at our university, the CSSA continued to post
slanderous information on their website. Practitioners cooperated
with practitioners in New York City to clarify the truth on campus, just as
Master had said in his comments on a practitioner's article titled "Expose
the Evil Happening Locally to the Local People" on Clearwisdom: "Exposing the wicked policemen and bad persons and
publicizing their evil deeds is extremely effective at shocking and
restraining those irrational, wicked people. At the same time, by clarifying
the facts to the people on a local level it most directly exposes, and
generates public awareness of, the wicked persecution. It is also a great way
to save the people who have been poisoned and deceived by the lies." In response to our first wave of truth-clarification, the
CUCSSA president put up another notice on their website, which was a little more
defensive but still contained very strong words slandering Falun Gong. We were a
little worried since our initial complaints with the school administrators were
not successful, and we were not sure how to proceed. At this time, a few practitioners who had done TV reporting
called me and asked if they could interview the CUCSSA president directly about
his actions. I took them to the CSSA president's lab with the simple idea of
talking to him directly about the CCP's involvement and why he was posting all
the vicious information about Falun Gong. The CUCSSA president was shocked when we went to his office
to directly ask him questions. In response to the questions, he argued with us
and shouted at us for 10 minutes, and then he called in public safety officials.
But after clarifying the issue, the public safety officials allowed the film
crew to leave with their video of the interview. However, I had a little apprehension and fear over the whole
event and wondered if the CUCSSA would react and target me. That evening, my
loopholes were taken advantage of by the old forces. The CUCSSA president posted
a public notice and e-mailed the entire CUCSSA member list saying that we had
barged into his office and broken some equipment. He also filed a complaint with
the school. I was confused and asked some fellow practitioners for help.
I was looking for support, and some practitioners helped me, but several other
practitioners told me that it was my loopholes and mistakes that had caused this
tribulation. I felt even worse, and I couldn't look inside or exhibit tolerance.
I shouted back at one of the practitioners, saying that I could take the
persecution from CUCSSA, but not from my own fellow practitioners! For the next
couple of months, I fell into a very bad state where I could not study the
Fa well, and my negative thoughts and resentment became worse. For a
few months, I stopped working with my fellow practitioners on campus and doing
any direct truth-clarification at the university, except for meeting with school
administrators to resolve the incident. The incident did actually allow us to meet with several
higher level officials of the administration, whom we had not been able to meet
personally before, but because of my lack of righteous thoughts, I think the
effect was not as good as it could have been. The result was that the school
found that no equipment had been broken and cleared me of the charges, but I was
still given a warning and told not to confront the CSSA leaders again. At this time, practitioners from around the New York area and
even around the world mobilized together to expose the CSSA issue. Practitioners
wrote in and faxed letters to school administrators, local VIPs, CSSA leaders
and others, clarifying the truth. In addition, several practitioners in New York
City tirelessly came to the school to hand out special flyers about the CCP
special agents almost every day for 6 weeks during the time when the Fall
semester started. I would like to use this opportunity to thank them for their
tireless hard work in clarifying the truth. On one weekend shortly after the Fall semester started,
CUCSSA organized a BBQ party for new CUCSSA students. Several Western
practitioners went to the event and handed out truth-clarification materials
directly to the Chinese students and the CUCSSA leaders. That same week, one
school Dean informed us that he had met with the CUCSSA board members at his
school and had seriously warned them that the actions against the Falun Dafa
Club were not welcome in the United States, and they would meet severe
punishment if they continued to take such action. Facing this massive amount of truth-clarification, the
university's CSSA leaders started to back down. First, their special
sections on the website that were devoted to news items slandering Falun Gong
started being filled up with other general news items. At both NYU and our university, very few students,
faculty and administrators had taken much interest in Falun Gong, but after the
incidents with the CSSA, it seemed that almost everyone on both campuses started
to understand the truth about Falun Gong, the evil nature of the CCP, and the
Chinese Consulate's mobilization of special agents to export its persecution
overseas. In short, things over those several months happened exactly
as Master said in "Fa Teaching at the U.S. Capital" in 2007: "So whether it is vilifying us or doing bad things,
it's the same as telling the whole world to look at its wickedness while
simultaneously promoting Falun Gong for us and expanding the influence of
Falun Gong on the thinking of people everywhere." In early September 2007, the old CSSA
website was completely shuttered and a new CUCSSA website was put up which had
no slanderous material. On the surface, the reason was that the CUCSSA had a
yearly election and replaced its board members, but we know that it was
practitioners' tireless efforts in clarifying the truth, directly and
face-to-face, that completely turned the situation around. It was exactly like Master said in "Fa Teaching at the
U.S. Capital" in 2007: "The vast majority made it through, helped the immense
tide of Fa-rectification to turn the whole situation around, and in the end
helped cause those mouthpieces that are completely controlled by the evil
Party to no longer dare vilify us around the world. They no longer dare to
fabricate things because they know that the Dafa disciples they face are
capable of exposing them. As soon as the evil Party creates more lies or does
something bad, Dafa disciples expose it and set things straight around the
world, allowing the whole world to see the evil for what it is and helping
more people know about it." There are several other efforts that we are still continuing
on campus to clarify the truth and assist with Fa-rectification. For instance,
while promoting the Divine Performing Arts Spectacular this year, we ran ads in
the college newspaper using our own money as well as ad exchanges for tickets.
The results were very good, as many students and faculty
came to the Spectacular and gave positive and supportive comments. We also continue to have events on campus every semester to
clarify the truth, and put up posters on bulletin boards. For instance, very
recently, we put up large posters about NTDTV's entrance to cable TV in New York
City. We still encountered some behind-the-scenes interference from some CUCSSA
students, but we will continue to clarify the truth. To be brief, I would like to conclude my experience sharing
in clarifying the truth directly in face of interference
and pressure from the CSSA and the Chinese Consulates. We still have a lot of
shortcomings, need to improve, and work as one body. We hope we can do better. Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!
Chinese version available at
http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/5/27/179270.html
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