(Minghui.org) Fan Huiming, a 610 Office staff member in Shanxi Province, was very active in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. He held four brainwashing sessions back to back in November 2011 and told a practitioner who owned a small business, “Report to the brainwashing center, otherwise I will tear apart your shop.”
When practitioners advised him to follow the laws instead of harming the innocent, Fan said he had no choice, “I have to follow orders from the above.”
Such things happen all too often in the course of the persecution of Falun Gong.
Last year, for example, defense attorneys were harassed and detained by the authorities because they dared to defend Falun Gong practitioners. Wang Jingjun, chief judge of Jiansanjiang Court in Heilongjiang Province, received numerous telephone demanding an explanation. His usual reply? “It's not up to me—I just do this job for to make a living.”
Officials frequently seem to think that orders from the above justify persecuting innocent citizens, and their logic is: “I am not at fault because I am following orders”, or, “I am not guilty because I am doing this to support my family”.
Although hardly visible in Western society, the consequences of this false logic in China, where power is wielded by a totalitarian regime, are real and immediate.
How a Country Was Hijacked
The tradition of hijacking strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) goes back to its founding period. The Fourth Red Army was one of the key military forces in early 1930s China. Its fundraising manual listed the following tactics to kidnap wealthy landlords and extort money from them:
• thorough research,• carefully planned kidnapping,• accurate estimate of the amount of money they can afford to pay,• defaming the landlords to terrorize them,• multi-talented agents to undertake the extortion.
Chen Yi, one of the 10 generals at the time, confirmed in his memoir that, “if the amount was not paid on time, houses [of the hostages] would be burnt.”
After the CCP took power, the hijacking did not come to an end. Rather, it became more official, sophisticated, and widespread.
For example, in the land reform movement in early 1950s, officials persuaded peasants to violently rob land and other properties from landlords. During the Cultural Revolution a decade later, the CCP mobilized the country's youth to destroy traditional culture and mistreat scholars.
In both cases, the CCP pushed a large group within mainstream society to the front lines to execute the hijacking. This way, not only the victims were crushed by the powerful totalitarian regime. The people who carried out the wrongdoings also became hostages for CCP's bloody debts, casting a gloomy omen for their future.
A Moral Decision that Involved Everyone
After numerous practices and rehearsals, the hijacking tactics of the CCP reached an unprecedented stage, as reflected in the persecution of Falun Gong.
Compared to previous political movements, this kidnapping reaches almost every corner of the society and bears a more far-reaching moral obligation.
Many people were confused why Jiang Zemin would ban a peaceful meditation group like Falun Gong. This may not be as accidental as it seems. Communist rule is based on violence and lies, thus it fundamentally contradicts Falun Gong's principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. The rapid progress of Falun Gong quickly made it a target of the CCP.
But Jiang's proposal to suppress Falun Gong met with significant resistance in the politburo. After all, the non-political nature of Falun Gong and its consistency with traditional values were well accepted by the society in general.
As the head of the Party, Jiang wrote a letter to politburo members—similar to what Mao did when he launched numerous political campaigns. He claimed that Falun Gong would overthrow the CCP and supported his claim with fabricated intelligence, Jiang successfully forced other top officials to agree with him on the suppression.
But the determination of Falun Gong practitioners in their righteous belief was not weakened as Jiang had predicted. The brutal persecution and practitioners' peaceful manner instead drew sympathy for Falun Gong, making people question whether the suppression itself was justified.
In 2001, Luo Gan, head of Political and Legal Affairs Committee, staged the Tiananmen Square immolation stunt under instructions from Jiang. This pushed the hate propaganda to a new level, which led to a growing genocide of Falun Gong practitioners. It also forced countless everyday people to defame Falun Gong, amid the rampant, nationwide propaganda campaign.
In addition to the top-down implementation of the persecution policy, officials also forced each individual practitioner to give up their belief; otherwise, not only their own career or future would be in danger, their family members could also be terminated from their employment or face other serious consequences.
When officials of law enforcement and the judicial system were told such actions violated basic human rights, their remarks were astonishing. “As a judge, I listen to the CCP and I am not afraid of consequences.” said Wang Dejiu, chief judge of the Yi County Criminal Court in Liaoning Province.
“With backup from the CCP, there is nothing you can do to me.” Yang Dongsheng, deputy chief judge of the Lushan County Court in Henan Province, made this statement after sentencing one practitioner to 10 years of imprisonment.
This happens because they have been brainwashed by the Party. Compared to conventional bandits who hold hostages for money, this type of mental hijacking put the entire nation in danger. Few people in China have the ability to see through the slanderous propaganda, and many thus have confused right and wrong.
Path Forward
Back to the two examples in the beginning of this article, “following orders from above” is not a valid excuse, even according to Chinese laws. Based on Article 54 of the Chinese Civil Servant Law, “where a civil servant fulfills any decision or order that is obviously illegal, he shall be subject to the corresponding liability according to law.”
In the past, the Party itself was able to shirk responsibility for its violent and repressive campaigns by holding the key perpetrators responsible, and executing them. Social tensions were thus relieved, and the masses made to feel that the threat was past.
Supporting one's family is not justification for doing evil, either.
According to traditional values, both in China and Western society, honesty, loyalty, and doing-no-harm form the foundations of basic human morality. Misconduct undertaken to support one's family is not acceptable in either culture, especially when it involves the life and death of the innocent, or even just contravening basic human decency.
Colluding with evil is always doomed to failure. Many believe that the only way out for a Chinese person is to quit the communist party—that by separating his or herself from the CCP, a Chinese person takes a big step toward a brighter future.
