A child is the mother’s heartstrings. This old Chinese saying expresses how a mother is heartbroken at the thought of her child suffering physically or mentally. Zhuoxuan, the 16-year-old son of detained Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wang, is under house arrest. I can’t imagine the sadness of this mother. Based on my life experience in China, I know the police did not only tell her the disturbing news, but also callously intimidated her by letting her know that they would torture her son.
Ms. Wang is a brave Chinese woman who deserves all our respect for speaking up and defending the oppressed. She defended an economics professor whom the Chinese government had accused of inciting separatism in his native Xinjiang region and sentenced to life in prison. Her brave actions triggered the wrath of the government. She was arrested in July during a nationwide crackdown in which more than 220 other people were summoned for questioning.
As a Chinese national born and raised under the Communist regime and living now in the United States, it never ceases to amaze me and, honestly, fluster me the huge gap and even complete disconnect between the reports by the government-controlled Chinese media and those by foreign journalists from news organizations such as the BBC and VOA. It is puzzling to me that this “discrepancy” leads many American intellectuals to be skeptical of the news delivered by any western TV or newspaper, de facto giving more credence to what the Chinese government says.
In Ms. Wang’s case, the Chinese central government TV reported that she was “rudely and violently yelling at the court and disturbing the order of legal procedure while defending her clients.” On the other hand, Michael Forsythe, a highly respected reporter from The New York Times, gave a very different account in his article dated Oct. 13, 2015. “Her detention –he wrote- is part of a widespread crackdown under President Xi Jingping of human rights activists and the lawyers who represent them. In many cases, as with Mr. Bao (Ms. Wang’s son), their families become pawns as the police try to pressure the detainees…”
I do not have hard evidence to prove which report is accurate, but having lived in China for over 40 years gives me a vantage point to say, with little margin of error, that the Chinese government uses widespread intimidation and often threatens to torture the families of dissidents or those who for whatever reason fall from favor.
When I left China, the Party secretary of the university at which I taught openly threatened me and told me that “You know what will happen to you if you contact Falungong people and other human rights activists.” My experience is no different than that of other Chinese living overseas who one day decided to leave behind the dark world of fear and intimidation in which they (we) lived and embraced God’s mission– learning to do right and defending the oppressed.
The Canadian representative to the Miss World Canada contest disclosed recently that her father was threatened by the Chinese government because she openly told the world that she supported religious freedom in China. On Oct. 6, Reuters reported that at the UN, the Chinese government used intimidation tactics to silence Chinese right activists. It is not a secret that the Chinese government sent agents to the United States to intimidate Chinese nationals the government views as enemies.
Some time ago, Jesus found me and I decided to place my trust in him, but fear and intimidation are very much part of our lives as Chinese citizens living out of China. Ms. Wang’s case is a painful reminder of that reality and has brought home, poignantly, the perils of my own situation.
As I continue to raise my voice to denounce human rights abuses against Christians and non-Christians alike in China, I worry sick about my own son; will he become a victim of the Communist government’s retribution against me? In fact, I worry so much that, with a broken heart, I stopped contacting him a couple of years ago in an effort to protect him that may very well prove futile.
The world needs to know the truth of the brutal nature of persecution in China, and world leaders need to stop pretending, for political expedience, that “All Is Quiet on the Eastern Front”…because it is not. And may God have mercy on us, the voice calling in the wilderness, and on our children.