.png)
Hon. David Kilgour speaks at the opening reception of the art exhibition featuring the paintings of artists who are practitioners of Falun Gong, on Sept. 9, 2010. (Ross Gillis)
Remarks presented during the opening reception of the Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance Art Exhibition held at Studio Gallery, Faculty of Education, at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, on Sept. 9, 2010.
Since 2004, this exhibition has toured more than 200 cities in 40 countries. The pieces were done by artists who practise Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa), an ancient discipline which seeks to improve body, character, and ethics. It contains the essence of traditional spiritual systems, like Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism), combined with a set of gentle exercises. Its core principles are “truth, compassion and forbearance.” It today evidently has millions of practitioners of diverse backgrounds in more than 100 countries.
70-100 Million Practitioners
In China where it first became public in 1992, Falun Gong grew within seven years to 70-100 million by the government’s own estimate. Party leaders in mid-1999 panicked at seeing practitioners engaging publicly in a form of exercise which had an underlying belief system different from communism. The exercises can be done anywhere at any time, singly or in groups, indoors or outdoors. The amorphous nature of the discipline meant that it was impossible for the Party to control it.
The early vilification of Falun Gong by elements of the Party seeking to ban it led to protests by practitioners, mobilized through cell phone and Internet coordination. This enraged Party bosses in Beijing. For them, persecuting Falun Gong became a crime easier to get away with than doing the same to better known spiritual groups. Falun Gong practitioners in China often lack Western connections and Western languages. The decade-long incitement to hatred against them across China in party media has had many tragic consequences.
The Party has repressed Falun Gong with savage brutality continuously since July 1999. Torture, rapes, beatings to death, detentions in forced labour camps, brainwashing—all have become the daily lot of many Falun Gong practitioners across China. Practitioners have put up a non-violent, principled, and energetic defence of human rights in China and in the other countries where practitioners now live.
In an effort to end the barbaric persecution, Professor Kunlun Zhang and other artists decided to express their personal understanding of the universe in this exhibit. Realism oil painting, or New-Renaissance, was chosen as the genre for its narrative capabilities, accessibility, and purity.
Party-State Today
Let me suggest a few things to keep in mind about the party-state in China, based on an important book published this summer, The Party, by Richard McGregor, former China bureau chief of the respected Financial Times newspaper.
Many writers have looked at China’s economy, appalling human rights record, history, and relations with the world, but McGregor addresses the key issue: how the Party functions. The Party has a vise-like grip on every aspect of daily life across China, including its huge cities and tiny villages, media, culture, courts, religion, and the economy. On the economy, consider in the context of hundreds of millions of desperately poor citizens, just one of the book’s points: “In 2007, personal consumption was just 35 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, China was investing 11 per cent of GDP in low-yielding foreign assets…consider that the net transfer of resources abroad was equal to a third of personal consumption.”
The Party controls similarly the continuous corruption accusations against its members, is deeply hostile to the rule of law and accountable only to its own internal tribunals. McGregor points out that despite the numerous anti-graft campaigns since 1982, about 80 per cent of the 130,000 to 190,000 officials disciplined annually for malfeasance by the Party received only a warning. Only 3 percent of the 6 percent criminally prosecuted went to jail.
China’s leaders probably know that the main threat to their authority is corruption, yet their practices in every sphere make it inevitable. McGregor notes that corruption has become a sort of “transaction tax that distributes ill-gotten gains among the ruling class…It becomes the glue that keeps the system together.”