Falun Gong Practitioners: Enduring Darkness and Radiating Light

[xtypo_dropcap]E[/xtypo_dropcap]leven years ago this week, Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), started an all-out persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. The years since have been extraordinary for Falun Gong practitioners, the people in China, and free nations around the world.

In the past 11 years, the world has witnessed the pain and suffering Falun Gong practitioners have gone through. The CCP, in addition to spreading outrageous lies, has tortured Falun Gong practitioners with means of torture used only in the darkest eras of humankind, such as the needle club, steel wire, copper whip, bramble whip, genital beating, rape, and the like.

A report by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture listed at least 40 types of torture used by the CCP against Falun Gong practitioners.

According to reports on Clearwisdom, a website run by Falun Gong practitioners, there have been at least 3,300 confirmed deaths of Falun Gong practitioners; over 100,000 have been sentenced to labor camps; thousands more have been sent to mental hospitals where the tortures may include nerve-damaging drugs.

Untold numbers of practitioners have been forced to attend brainwashing classes, and untold numbers have been beaten, made to stand for hours or days on end, and extorted by law-enforcement officials.

Because of the CCP’s information blockade, only a fraction of the abuses suffered in the ongoing persecution are known.

Moral Test Faced by All

The CCP has used its enormous political, economic, and diplomatic resources against Falun Gong, forcing everyone inside and outside of China to choose whether to side with the persecution or to oppose it. The persecution stands opposed to modern civilization, and so its continued existence only highlights the persecutors’ cruelty as well as the moral dilemma that our era faces.

The contest between good and evil always determines the course of civilization. For instance, by the end of World War II, freedom had prevailed over fascism. Civilization has been built on a set of universal moral principles, and when such principles are destroyed, civilization will cease to exist. The sharp decline in morality visible in China today is precisely due to the CCP’s destruction of traditional morality.

When the CCP persecutes a group that believes in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, it actually attacks the most fundamental standards of human morality. If the CCP were allowed to have its way, our moral heritage and our civilization would collapse.

The CCP’s attempt to persecute Falun Gong and the efforts to stop this persecution are a battle between good and evil. To keep silent in the face of the persecution is to stand idly by while the foundation of civilization is under attack. That this persecution has been allowed to last 11 years is an enormous shame for our age. The sustained persecution tries our conscience.

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Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.