Today is Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rooster, 2017.
I left Beijing in January 2009; I have never returned to China since. “Stay away from Falun Gong and other … you know the consequences (jail)!” was the parting warning from a Communist Party secretary when I left the university I used to teach in China. I suffered psychological trauma, the definition of which is individuals experiencing (subjectively) a threat to life, bodily integrity, or sanity. (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995, p. 60)
This intimidation is like a ghost that has haunted me for years. I avoid any contact with people who practice Falun Gong; I have not watched the magnificent Shenyun performance that the Chinese Embassy in the United States calls “a tool of the cult and anti-China propaganda.” The Chinese government even warns the American audience that “Such show (Shenyun) denigrates and distorts the Chinese culture, and deceives, makes fool of and even brings harm to the audience.” (Retrieved on January 29, 2017, from http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/xglj/flgzx/)
Falun Gong was a religious group founded by Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Falun Gong means “Dhama Wheel Practice,” a name derived from Buddhism. The practitioners believe in Falun Dafa (literal translation is “the Greatest Law of the Wheel of Laws”), which refers to truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It is a Chinese spiritual practice that combines meditation and qigong exercises (a series of slow body movements) with a moral philosophy centered on the three tenets.
Although the practice initially enjoyed considerable support from the Chinese government, by the mid- to late 1990s, the Communist Party and public security organizations increasingly viewed Falun Gong as a potential threat due to its size, independence from the state, and spiritual teachings. The crackdown started from 1999, when the Chinese government estimated there were 70 million practitioners. In April 1999, over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered peacefully near the central government office buildings in Beijing to request legal recognition and freedom from state interference. Following this demonstration there was a horrific persecution that shocked the world.
In 2006, Canadian human rights activist David Kilgour and his colleague David Matas published an investigative report about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. According to their allegations, a large number of Falun Gong practitioners had been killed to supply China’s organ transplant industry. Ethan Gutmann (2011) estimated 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed from 2000 to 2008 to harvest their organs. In 2008, United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their requests for “the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the source of organs for the sudden increase in transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000“.
The survivors of that genocide started the Shenyun Performing Art Company in New York in 2006 on the suggestion of the founder of Falun Gong. The company’s mission is to use performing arts to revive the essence of Chinese traditional culture, and to raise funds through the show business to continue supporting the Falun Gong practice. In the United States, they enjoy freedom of expression and use their dance and music to tell the world their true identity –people who are not afraid of the Communist Party and believe that the authentic Chinese arts should never be controlled and manipulated by the government for the purpose of propaganda.
Even in the land of the free and the home of the brave, these artists cannot escape from the persecution of the Chinese government. In the third year of Shenyun’s performances around the world, the Chinese Communist Party ordered its embassies and consulates to send representatives call, write to, and visit local theatres in the United States, Asia, and Europe, to urge them not to sign contracts with Shenyun or to nullify existing agreements. They even threatened theatre managers that if they did not comply, their country’s political and economic relations with China would suffer. Free countries see that attempt at intimidation as a bad joke. Contracts were not cancelled and Shenyun’s show business has been booming.
This year, I purchased two tickets for my American friends as a gift. I did this for two reasons. One, I wanted to conquer that psychological trauma I suffered for years, and openly tell the world that I support Falun Gong practitioners, who have been persecuted but bravely defend their religious freedom. Two, I want to show my gratitude to the American people. America is the land where dreams come true, not only in the sense that immigrants like myself can pursue their happiness by working hard in this country, but also in that this country was founded on the idea of the sanctity of human rights and the fight “against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” (Thomas Jefferson, 1800).