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CHINA'S CONSCIENCE: Gao Zhisheng is seen during an interview at his office in Beijing on Nov. 2, 2005. Gao has been arrested several times and been subjected to severe torture, in particular because of his speaking out against the persecution of Falun Gong. He was last abducted on Feb. 4, 2009, and his whereabouts are unknown. (Verna Yu/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK—Twenty unidentified men burst through the front door, forcing a woman and her 80-year-old mother to the ground. Without identifying themselves, the men proceed to ransack the home. 36-year-old human rights lawyer Wang Yonghang is taken away along with his wife and held in a detention center. While his wife is released the next day, Wang continues to be held, and is subsequently tortured. Four months later, on November 27, 2009, Chinese authorities bring the lawyer before a kangaroo court and after a few hours of proceedings “sentence” the lawyer to prison for seven years.
His crime? Presenting a legal argument that the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong is illegal under China’s own laws.
Sixty-one years ago—on Dec. 10, 1948—the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), yet millions of ordinary citizens across China who practice Falun Gong remain in danger of arbitrary detention, torture, and death. And as more and more lawyers bravely step forward in their defense, they are meeting with a similar fate.
A Brutal Suppression Unfolds
When former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin ordered Falun Gong to be “eradicated” in 1999, tens of millions of ordinary Chinese overnight found themselves rendered “criminals” by virtue of their peaceful faith. A brutal state apparatus was turned against them, proactively seeking to prevent them from pursuing a traditional Chinese path of physical self-improvement and spiritual fulfillment that had become a fundamental part of their identity.
Any avenue they might use to stop this assault was closed off—the state-run media would only spew horrific anti-Falun Gong propaganda claims, petitioning offices were turned into detention centers, and Party-appointed judges were hardly going to depart from the official line.
Nearly a decade later, hundreds of thousands remain in labor camps, according to a recent estimate by researcher Ethan Guttmann and testimony collected by human rights groups. Thousands more are in prisons following sham trials. They are beaten, shocked with electric batons, and injected with various drugs, sometimes causing paralysis or death. Multiple investigations have revealed evidence that adherents have been killed so their organs could be sold for profit. Untold numbers are left destitute, refugees in their own country, unable to return to their homes or jobs for fear that local police will take them away.
Branches of the 610 Office—an extra-legal task force created in 1999 to lead the campaign against Falun Gong—remain active across China. Official websites, eyewitness accounts, and research by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China point to the unit’s presence not only in security agencies and government offices, but also in private companies, universities, and neighborhood watch committees.
Unsung Heroes Respond
Communist Party leaders and state-run media claim that Falun Gong has been crushed. But this raises the question–why then would a nationwide apparatus like the 610 Office remain active and growing? Why would labor camps continue to fill with practitioners?
The reality is, today Falun Gong practitioners across China continue to resist Party efforts to “eradicate” them. They persist in their faith, produce underground newsletters, hang banners, and simply talk to people in day-to-day conversations. They explain the innocence of Falun Gong, the horrific abuses being meted out against adherents, and the Party’s broader history of persecuting the Chinese people—all in an effort to awaken the consciences of fellow citizens. This is crucial when the state controls media and uses it to dehumanize Falun Gong, mobilizing the rank and file to implement the policy of wiping out the practice.
Falun Gong practitioners’ efforts are starting to bear fruit with the result that practitioners are no longer fighting the battle to end the persecution alone. A generation of daring, world-renowned lawyers has risen to defend them, risking their careers and physical safety to defy Party orders. They plead their clients’ innocence with defenses based on the Chinese Constitution and the UDHR. Some have published open letters challenging the legality of the persecution as a whole. In so doing, they are blazing a trail in China that so many lawyers have carved out elsewhere to challenge unjust regimes.
As we mark the sixty-first year of the UDHR, it is time we outside China learn some of their names: Gao Zhisheng, Wang Yonghang, Li Heping, and Jiang Tianyong. Like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Thurgood Marshall and others, these lawyers will, in time, be known for using legal and peaceful means to oppose injustice and dedicating their lives to secure human rights. China and the world will be a better place thanks to their efforts.
Levi Browde is Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, which is based in New York City.
