Sixteen years ago, one of the most prestigious universities in China became a forward operating base for an all out ideological war against a peaceful spiritual practice. Secret police in China even set up a brainwashing center in the mostly unused dormitory belonging to the nuclear energy school. There, students were subjected to struggle sessions to force them to abandon their religious beliefs.
Sixteen years later, as the July 20 anniversary of the political campaign approaches, over 30 graduates and former faculty of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, often called the MIT of China, are bringing a legal complaint against the orchestrator of that persecution—former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin.
Picking Rocks From Sunflower Seeds
Winston Liu, 43, is one of them. He is now a control systems engineer at a multinational chemical company in Wyoming; in 1999 he was a thermal engineering student who practiced Falun Gong—a traditional system of personal cultivation, which includes slow-motion exercises, and teaches that the purpose of life is to align with the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
