The Opatiks had stumbled upon a rally protesting the 10 years of persecution of Falun Dafa in China, held across the street from the Chinese Consulate in downtown Chicago early afternoon on Monday.
“Ten years ago on this same day, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime banned the popular spiritual practice of Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) and launched a vicious campaign to imprison, torture, forcefully ‘reform,’ and kill millions of adherents,” said Yi Liu, one of the event’s organizers.
“I wasn’t aware of this persecution and I’m horrified that these people are tortured just for having basic beliefs,” said Mrs. Opatik, a member of a church congregation of 11,000 in Grandville, Mich.
Ms. Opatik was touched that Falun Dafa practitioners were tortured for their faith.
Falun Dafa adherents say they believe and live by the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.
“Unbelievable that there are thousands of people missing,” interjected Mr. Opatik.
“According to State Department’s 2008 Human Rights Report, ‘Some foreign observers estimated that Falun Gong adherents constituted at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in RTL (re-education through labor) camps, while Falun Gong sources overseas placed the number even higher,’” quoted Yi Liu.
“The information about the missing organs is terrible,” Mr. Opatik continued.
Ms. Liu supported the claim of organ harvesting from live Falun Dafa practitioners by citing former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia Pacific David Kilgour and Nazi hunter David Matas. They conducted an independent investigation into the allegations of organ harvesting and published a 140-page report (http://organharvestinvestigation.net/) which concluded that the practice of organ harvesting for profit in China is undeniable.
According to the report, those who practice Falun Dafa have had their organs—organs like kidneys, hearts, corneas—removed, while they are still alive. The organs are then used in a very profitable organ transplantation business that has grown up in China.
Two speakers at the rally shared their stories of first hand torture and detainment in China.
Peter Zheng was illegally sentenced to seven years in jail by the CCP on March 2003. Previous to the sentencing, in 2001, several police abducted him and took him to a hotel where they interrogated and tortured him nonstop for four days and four nights under blinding lights.
“When their threats failed, they stripped me of my clothes. Then they hung me on the window frame so that my feet barely touched the floor. They sealed my mouth with tape. They screamed and yelled as they stuck lit cigarettes into my nostrils,” he said.
“Whenever I became silent, they would either aggressively pull my hair over and over again or abruptly yank my body downward.
“They also hung me on the window frame while twisting my neck. When they couldn’t turn my neck any further, they would fiercely snap it toward the opposite direction. At that very instant, I felt my neck facture. During those four days and four nights, I never once slept or ate. I was continuously tortured and assaulted. I lost a lot of hair, my wrists became black, I had gaping wounds, and I lost a lot of weight.”
Li Yanfang, too, was tortured, but she talked more about her inhumane treatment while forced into slave labor: “Everyday in Zhuhai’s detention center, I slaved for at least sixteen hours making artificial flowers, crafts, ornaments, and colored lights. My fingers were worn and full of calluses. All kinds of strange smells and dust particles permeated the detention center cell.
People were given only 2 meals a day, consisting of discolored rice and a spoonful of steamed water from spinach with two small pieces of pork fat on top. Over thirty people had to squeeze to sleep on their sides in one communal bed of less than 18 square meters.”
Li Yanfang and Peter Zheng count themselves among the lucky ones. They survived and today they can practice Falun Gong in the safety of America.
For Li Yanfang this means that she can enjoy beautiful daffodils blooming in early Spring, yet she can’t bear to look closely at the artificial ones she sees in the supermarkets here. They might be made in China.
The rally, then, gave the Chinese who have escaped the terror to now share it with the world. Or as Mr. Opatik said, to “They can protest here, but there they have no voice.”
But the rally also gave Americans a chance. As Mrs. Opatik shared, “We need to know about this.”
