Police and Crime Commissioner Shows his Sensitive Side

New Commissioner, Sir Graham Bright, cut the ribbon of The Art of Zhen Shan Ren at the Cambridge Guildhall, showing that the holder of a tough job can have a sensitive side.

Sir Graham Bright about to cut the blue and yellow ribbon to open The Art of Zhen Shan Ren International Exhibition at the Cambridge Guildhall. Eddie Aitkin, Co-Director of the Exhibition in the UK, can be seen in his family tartan in the background and two ladies in Tang Dynasty costume are ready to welcome the visitors. Among these is Miatra Miraftabi of Lotus Flower School who also helped organise the Exhibition and a Chinese Cultural Night on the day in the Guildhall featuring Chinese instruments, dance, food, medicine, and demonstration of Falun Gong exercises as well as first hand information on the persecution from a practitioner who was imprisoned and torchured for more than two years. Simon Gross/The Epoch Times

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire made it obvious that the holder of a tough job can have a sensitive side by opening a painting exhibition steeped in culture, tradition, and spirituality. 

The world touring collection, titled The Art of Zhen Shan Ren, depicts the history and practice of Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual discipline, from its inception to its persecution in China today.

The new Commissioner, Sir Graham Bright, cut the blue and yellow ribbon at the Cambridge Guildhall, on November 26 only four days into his tenure. He was in the first batch of Commissioners to be elected in the UK on November 15 this year, though their posts officially started on November 22

Sir Graham has been to China as a businessman and saw how China had grown its economy and industry.

“But I also saw China because I was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to our Prime Minister [John Major],” he said.

 He was aware the view he was given of Communist Party China by Communist officials was a narrow one. “We saw all the heads of state and went to the banquet and everything else but we were only shown what they wanted us to see and it was quite obvious to us at the time that we were shown what they wanted us to see.

“I was itching to try and see behind the scenes but, of course, we weren’t allowed to see that,” he said.

Now, he is seeing some of that behind-the-scenes view as forced organ harvesting, imprisonment, torture, and the ransacking of practitioners’ houses are pictured in the work. 

The paintings are very represenational, almost photographic, though with hints of symbolism, for instance in colour where evil is represented in dark and murky tones.

Yellow, or gold, and blue, (featured in the ribbon cut by sir Graham) are worn in the costumes of Falun Gong practitioners when in parades to draw awareness to the persecution and killing of practitioners in China. Yellow and gold were reserved for emperors in the past and in Taoism, one of the traditions amalgamated into Falun Gong, blue signifies trust, calmness, immortality. 

There is peace in the paintings, he said, but there is the darker side which is trying to silence those people in the most gruesome sort of way you can imagine.