Demonstrators hold up a banner in support of the Falun Gong practice, in downtown Kuala Lumpur on April 18, 2008. (Tengku Bahar/AFP/Getty Images)
I often visit a popular website, I'll call it YourTV, to see what people are saying about Falun Gong and the persecution by the CCP. I was talking (writing actually) to one rather foul mouthed person who mentioned that the CCP persecutes Falun Gong because it's afraid of another Taiping Rebellion. I've been doing this for over nine years, but that was the first time I had ever heard of the Taiping Rebellion.
Another time I heard this line about the Taiping Rebellion as an excuse for persecuting Falun Gong was while I was in my local city park. I often go there on weekends to talk to people about Falun Gong and the persecution by the CCP. While I was standing there handing out fliers, two older Caucasian gentlemen came by. They refused my flier and explained that they had recently returned from a trip to China. “Have you ever been to China?” one of the men demanded, implying that I could not possibly know what's happening in China unless I had actually been there. I told him that I had not been to China, but that I have read thousands of personal accounts of the persecution by the CCP on the website www.clearwisdom.net.
The next thing I knew, they were going on and on about what they had “learned” from their tour guide in China. The story involved “some crazy Christian” (those are the words they used) who started a rebellion and ended up killing millions of Chinese people and that now the CCP is trying to prevent another Taiping Rebellion. I was really shocked and hardly knew what to say. I was barely able to mutter out the words “Falun Dafa is good” before they left in a hurry.
I remembered reading something like that in your series Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, so I went there to see what it was about. In the footnotes to Commentary 7, I found a description that says the Taiping Rebellion was a clash between Imperial China (not the CCP) and people who were inspired by a mystic person who was also a Christian convert and that at least 30 million people died.
Perhaps this new tactic works because it's based on an actual event that had such devastating consequences. But, it doesn't make any sense. It's true that rebellions lead to war, and that people die in war. It is also true that some religions use violence to achieve their political objectives. But, none of that has anything to do with us. Falun Gong is a cultivation practice for improving a person's mind, body and spirit. That doesn't make it a religion or a rebellion. Falun Gong isn't a political movement either. We have no interest in political power and we only use peaceful means to try to stop the persecution. Falun Gong is innocent of any crime.
I hope you will print this letter so that more people can see the truth. Falun Dafa is good and is nothing like what the CCP claims. There is no justification for persecuting Falun Gong.
Mark Matthews
San Diego, California
