| Chinese oppression
can affect us all
SO much is terrifyingly wrong with the world - impending
war against Iraq, nuclear proliferation in North Korea, David
Beckham's cut eyebrow - that anyone could be forgiven for
turning away from yet more grim news.
The story I want to tell you centres on a religion totally
unlike Judaism, evolved from a culture which is remote from
the Jewish world, that is now banned in a country thousands
of miles from Britain. And yet I believe you should care -
because if you don't nobody will.
And in this far-off country, the brave and devout worshippers
of that strangely alien religion will continue to be persecuted
and even tortured to death.
You may not even have heard of falun gong. It's a new phenomenon
in China, no more than a decade old. Its followers cannot
raise their voices in protest against the government clampdown,
because protest leads to arrest and disappearance and death.
We do not face those threats. Nothing exists to stop us from
shouting our protests - unless we are prevented by our own
apathy. Don't turn away. This story is indeed grim, but I
believe you have energy and compassion enough to hear it.
And when you have heard it, I believe you too will want to
speak out.
I first learned about Zhao Ming from Jonathan Guinness, the
third Baron Moyne of Bury St Edmunds. He and his partner,
Shoe, have become good friends of my family recently - he's
a frequently outrageous man, with strident political views
and an infectious laugh.
His stepfather was Oswald Mosley and, if that were not enough
to make him an unlikely pal for an Israeli-born Jew, his grandfather
was murdered by Zionists during the Second World War.
What we share in common is enthusiasm. Lord Moyne has colossal
energy and, when he began to tell me about Zhao Ming, he steamrollered
through my doubts. I was forced to see the effects of Chinese
repression are reaching all over the globe.
First, Jonathan explained about falun gong, a spiritual doctrine
based on ancient Chinese culture which was publicly expounded
for the first time by Li Hongzhi in 1992.
Its universal principles are truthfulness, compassion and
tolerance and it combines meditation with exercises similar
to yoga and t'ai chi.
''Falun gong is entirely non-political, aiming at self-improvement
through exercise and study,'' Jonathan told me.
''The underlying philosophy is difficult for many Westerners
to understand, but the key is that this is a peaceful system.''
The Chinese government's response was not peaceful. In 1998,
seeing that tens of millions were seeking for spiritual inspiration
from some source other than the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin's
regime ordered a crackdown.
All the instruments of state repression were wielded without
mercy - illegal arrests, beatings, torture, starvation, slave
labour, forced abortions and rape.
I have written in these pages about China's vicious campaign
to stifle Tibet. The brutality against falun gong is just
as foul and murderous and its target far harder to define:
everyone in China is at risk from being denounced. Simply
to know a falun gong follower, to live with or work with someone
who walks this peaceful spiritual path, is enough to put your
life in danger.
Jonathan and Shoe knew one such seeker for spirituality,
Zhao Ming, a 30-year-old postgraduate in computer science
who was studying at Trinity College, Dublin.
My friends lived nearby in the late Nineties and they were
intrigued by Zhao's open-air exercises.
''Nobody could be more inoffensive and respectable as he
quietly practised his exercises in Merrion Square,'' insisted
Jonathan.
Zhao returned to China for a holiday in December 1999, and
was promptly arrested. His passport was confiscated and he
was ordered to his home town, Changchun. When he was discovered
in Beijing instead, looking for work, Zhao was arrested, accused
of being a falun gong 'ringleader' and sentenced to a year
in a forced labour camp.
Severe mental and physical torture followed - sleep deprivation,
beatings and electric shocks with high voltage batons. The
brutality he describes - documented by photographs smuggled
out of the camp by other inmates - are beyond description
in a family newspaper.
''The director of the medical office force-fed me through
the nose,'' Zhao revealed. ''He pulled the tube in and out
constantly. His deliberate cruelty caused a lot of blood to
flow from my nose. He even pushed the tube into my windpipe
intentionally. I immediately had trouble breathing. He said,
'Because you make me mad, I will choke you to death'.''
Zhao was one of many thousands. By May last year, observers
calculated that 100,000 people had been illegally arrested.
More than 500 faced jail terms of up to 18 years, and a further
1,000 had been incarcerated in mental institutions.
The labour camps had been swelled by 20,000, and an estimated
1,600 had been killed. Zhao Ming was saved by an outpouring
of condemnation around the world.
His friends in Dublin co-ordinated a campaign of letters
and personal appeals, from political heavyweights such as
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, Jack Lang,
the French Minister of Education, and European MPs Patricia
McKenna and Paulo Casaca.
Last March, Zhao was released. But many others, without the
benefit of friends in the West, are dying in the labour camps.
In Pasadena, California, last weekend, dozens of Americans
marched to demand the release of Charles Li, a Chinese-American
who had lived locally before his arrest in China.
He is, ludicrously, accused of sabotaging a TV station. His
real offence, of course, was to practise falun gong. If you
believe Li and tens of thousands like him should be freed,
there is only one way to achieve it: do what Zhao's friends
did, and protest. You are free to do this. Use that freedom.
The Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain is Mr Zha Peixin,
49/51 Portland Place, London W1N 3AH Tel: 0027 636 5179.
Email
him at urigeller@compuserve.com
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