An Appeal for Others in China that Led to Persecution

ZHONGNANHAI: A map shows where the petitioners were on April 25, 1999, when Falun Gong practitioners went to appeal to the Chinese Communist Party. They were calling for the release of practitioners who were unlawfully arrested. The Chinese regime later u (The Epoch Times)

Ten years ago on April 24, when Jinying Gao took a train to Beijing from her hometown in Liaoning Province, China was a different country.

Gao, who has practiced Falun Gong since 1994, set out on a mission of faith with little more than the shirt on her back for the six hour journey to her country’s capital. With her husband, also a practitioner, beside her, they arrived in Beijing in the middle of the night. Thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners were at the train station, waiting for dawn to arrive.

The travelers, whose numbers would eventually swell to 10,000, had come from all corners of China to appeal to the central regime about a case of 45 imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners in the city of Tianjin. The imprisoned practitioners were beaten and arrested by police on April 24, 1999, after days of appealing over a youth magazine’s slanderous article against Falun Gong.

“In China, the media blocked the news of [of the arrests],” recalls Gao who is now 64 years old and escaped to the U.S. close to 17 months ago.

Falun Gong is the most popular qigong practice in China. By 1999 it was estimated that between 70 and 100 million Chinese people were practicing it. But in the China of ten years ago, as today, to be popular with the public is to be suspect by the communist party.

Three years earlier, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and then-head, Jiang Zemin, began to view Falun Gong’s popularity as a threat. The Beijing Youth Daily had listed the practice’s main book, “Zhuan Falun” as a bestseller in 1996. Not long after, the regime issued a nationwide notice forbidding the distribution of all Falun Gong publications.

There were other problems during those years that eventually escalated to a full-blown, state-sanctioned persecution. Various state-controlled media outlets began broadcasting and publishing negative reports about Falun Gong. Reports from the Guangming Daily in 1996 and Beijing Television in 1998 directly slandered Falun Gong.

Despite growing restrictions and attacks by state-controlled media, the practice continued to grow in popularity.

“Falun Gong is so good—after practicing I benefited mentally and physically, I felt very, very happy,” says Zhenyu Jin, who also traveled to Beijing in April, 1999 to appeal. “I knew how to be a good person, and my family became harmonious.”

The practitioners appealing in Beijing had three basic goals, which they were eventually able to communicate to then-Premier Zhu Rongyi.

“We wanted to tell [the government] the truth about Falun Gong,” says Gao. “Also, to let the [Falun Gong] books be published, and to release the practitioners in Tianjin.”

The appeal was successful, and those arrested in Tianjin were released on the evening of April 25. But the events of that day were soon used by the CCP to frame Falun Gong as “protesting” and “surrounding” Zhongnanhai, the Party’s compound that sits near Tiananmen Square.

However, numerous eyewitness accounts, video footage, and photographs of the day’s events, which lasted from sunup to sundown, contradict the position taken by the regime. No banners, slogans, or protesting can be seen in the numerous video footage and photographs still readily available on the Internet.

“The CCP report said we had 10,000 practitioners surrounding Zhongnanhai,” recalls Gao, who adds that the accusations meant to convey aggression on the part of the petitioners were false. “We were not at or near Zhongnanhai, we were lining Fuyou Street.” The well-known street is to the southwest of the compound they were accused of surrounding.

After that, the situation for Falun Gong practitioners in China rapidly deteriorated. Several of those who had gone to Beijing to appeal over the arrests in Tianjin soon found they were being monitored, watched, and followed—including Gao, who even had a coworker assigned to monitor her every move during the day.

On July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin ordered it illegal to practice Falun Gong, making it a state law. Tens of thousands of practitioners were summarily rounded up, detained, and arrested—some for years, including Gao.

“On July 20, they searched the house and arrested me,” says Gao, whose husband was not home when she was taken. She was imprisoned for a year, months of which were spent in solitary confinement.

“In China the police are very evil,” she says. “They need no reason to arrest you.”

But knowing what she knows now, Gao doesn’t show any regret for her decision to appeal over the Tianjin arrests. When asked if she had it to do over again, would she still make that six-hour train ride, she simply says, “Yes.”