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By Matthew Robertson 30/04/2010
When tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners peacefully assembled
on April 25, 1999, in Beijing to ask the Chinese communist state to
stop its harassment of Falun Gong, they took the first steps in what
would become the largest and most sustained civil disobedience movement
in modern China. The practitioners also set in motion changes that are
shifting how Chinese society relates to the ruling Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), according to leading Chinese dissidents.
Falun Gong practitioners gathered around Zhongnanhai to silently, peacefully appeal for fair treatment on April 25, 1999.
Through the power of the example of civil disobedience dramatically
displayed on April 25, and then employed on a daily basis after the
persecution began on July 20, 1999, Falun Gong practitioners have shown
dissidents how to oppose the Chinese regime, while giving them
inspiration, hope, and support, these dissidents say.
Mr.
Zhong Weiguang is an expert on totalitarianism who now lives in
Germany. He says that after the practitioner’s peaceful appeal on April
25, “I started thinking of what a scary society Chinese society is. The
Chinese Communist Party, like all communist parties, uses lies and
terror to rule the country.”
Not a Falun Gong practitioner
himself, Mr. Zhong has come to greatly admire the effect Falun Gong
practitioners are having on China, admiration that began with the
events of April 25, 1999. Eleven years later, Mr. Zhong says he
realizes the meaning of the appeal on April 25 is “so much deeper” than
he initially realized. “Among Chinese dissident movements, there has
never been a movement like this,” he says.
Mr. Guo Guoting, an
exiled Chinese human rights lawyer now living in Canada, is also not a
Falun Gong practitioner. Like Mr. Zhong, he also sees Falun Gong as
unique in Chinese society. “Under the whole violent, totalitarian CCP,
there has been wave after wave of crazy persecution and attacks, but
there has never been an organization or group that openly stands up and
protects its legal rights,” he says.
According to Mr. Guo, “The meaning of April 25 is just the spirit of civil disobedience.”
Mr. Guo says that since seizing power in 1949 (and even before then),
the CCP has carried out political campaigns using propaganda, thought
reform, linguistic engineering, social pressure, violence, and sheer
terror; one segment of the population is labeled by the Party and the
rest of the population is supposed to “struggle” against them.
The same model, Mr. Guo says, has been used to stigmatize, attack, and attempt to break Falun Gong.
Previously, none of the groups or professions targeted in this way have
dared or known how to defend their rights, according to Mr. Guo. “So
when Falun Gong started doing this, every Chinese person was taken off
guard,” he said. The unwillingness to be cowed by the CCP is part of
what made Falun Gong’s efforts so unusual, he says.
“The other
point is that this isn’t a hotheaded resistance that is quickly over,”
says Mr. Guo. “It’s been an ongoing process, an extraordinarily
tenacious process of protecting their rights to their beliefs, a
display of persistence and dauntlessness.”
Benchmark
Falun Gong practitioners near Zhongnanhai on April 25, 1999. (Photo courtesy Clearwisdom.net)
According
to Mr. Zhong, the peaceful, rational methods used on April 25 have
given Chinese activists a great model to follow, one that is both a
benchmark and inspiration.
Mr. Zhong says that the Falun Gong
practitioners have helped make it possible for China’s dissidents to be
heard. According to Mr. Zhong, Falun Gong practitioners, by
establishing independent media companies, have given Chinese dissidents
a platform from which they can project their own voices.
In addition, the Falun Gong example can help the democracy activists understand their own movement better.
According to Mr. Zhong, “Because of our own internal disorder, and
internal conflict, and our inability to work hard long term toward a
goal, the overseas democracy movement has moved step by step to being
ineffectual.”
The example of Falun Gong practitioners’
persistent work to defend their own rights has held a mirror up to
Chinese democracy movement so that they can examine their own behavior
more clearly, says Mr. Zhong.
Rights Defense Movement
Over the last
several years a rights defense movement has developed in China. It
includes protests by peasants whose land has been taken away, by laid
off workers, and by people whose homes have been taken from them. It
also includes human rights lawyers who have sought to develop the rule
of law in China by demanding in court that the CCP obey China’s
Constitution and laws.
“From many angles it can be said that
if there was no resistance from Falun Gong, today there would not be so
many Chinese people defending their rights, and there wouldn’t be this
rights defense movement today,” Mr. Zhong says.
Mr. Guo says
that just as Martin Luther King and Gandhi promoted nonviolent
resistance, so, "In China this movement of nonviolent civil
disobedience is precisely Falun Gong. And this disobedience began right
on April 25. I think it has given every sector of Chinese society an
extremely meaningful and effective path: peaceful appeal and protest,
peaceful noncooperation.”
Mr. Guo sees in the path of civil disobedience blazed by Falun Gong practitioners hope for China’s future. “This movement, I think, this kind of thing is what can finally put an end to the CCP’s violent rule. And this can stop the whole society from falling into chaos, or descending into barbarism, or descending into violence, or massacre, or ‘blood running like rivers.’”
Moral and Cultural Meaning
The model provided by the Falun Gong practitioners goes beyond an
example of effective social action to matters of the human spirit and
the culture of China.
“Before Falun Gong’s civil disobedience
began, as a Chinese intellectual I felt that we were very lonely,” Mr.
Zhong says. “In terms of the communist culture, that whole CCP stuff,
the way of life it forced on us, I can’t accept that. And if you don’t
accept that in Chinese society, you’re very lonely.
“But after
Falun Gong practitioners appeared, because their beliefs naturally set
them apart from the CCP, they have with them a new kind of culture, and
due to its inclusiveness and inner meaning, it has given the whole
dissident movement enormous support,” says Mr. Zhong.
“Every
Chinese person, everyone knows that in everyday life in Chinese
society, in people-to-people relationships, people’s ethics and morals,
and the morals of society, and the ethics of those who go overseas—all
of this is already rotten,” says Mr. Zhong.
“The CCP’s rule is
not just an issue of the CCP’s rule, but it has made every Chinese
person used to lies, and not just used to them, but also made them
participants in the lies. So we see that today in Falun Gong
practitioner’s existence in Chinese society that there’s honesty and
uprightness. There are people following traditional ethical values, and
living their lives in this way,” he says.
The Chinese human
rights lawyer Mr. Gao Zhisheng in an open letter in December 2005 to
China’s paramount leader Hu Jintao and head of the state bureaucracy
Wen Jiabao, said: “In contrast to the current situation where the
humanity, conscience, morality, compassion, and responsibility of our
society is suffering an overall deterioration, these [Falun Gong]
cultivators, as a group reborn from the old nation, have impacted all
of these areas in a positive way. One can feel the powerful way in
which faith can change one's soul. Indeed it has allowed me to see a
spark of hope for rescuing our nation from its current depraved state.”
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