Thank you all for giving me this opportunity to speak. Although I have the courage to stand here, my heart feels heavy. Mixed feelings arose after I finished reading the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party published by The Epoch Times. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done devastating damage to the Chinese people and caused the deaths of numerous good people throughout its history. It is now high time to bring the CCP to justice.
Unjustly Labeled as "Counter-Revolutionary"
The CCP caused my father's death and made my mother suffer immeasurable misery and to die bearing hatred. The five siblings in my family were unjustly labeled by the CCP as "counter-revolutionary family members." Now I want to loudly state my case against the CCP. I want to tell people around the world that the CCP is an evil murderer.
I want to use my personal experiences to detail how the CCP persecuted my whole family physically and mentally. The physical persecution was still bearable, but mental damage can never be erased and is beyond description in any language.
My father was originally a high-ranking official of the Kuomintang (KMT) party. He did not retreat to Taiwan in 1948 because he was a dutiful son and had to provide for his big family. He personally believed that the CCP could do nothing about him because he was a scholar involved in high-tech business and a Sino-Japanese War hero whose legs had been wounded during the war. My father had no idea that the CCP would have no mercy even on a good person.
When the CCP launched the "Three Anti Campaign and Five Anti Campaign," and my father was condemned for his "reactionary history," and had to serve a two-year sentence at home and two years under the surveillance of the public security service. My family members were defamed as "puppet officials," labeled as "counter-revolutionary family members" and held in contempt by people.
Despite all the defamation, my father, an elevated intellectual, was able to find a better job as a general engineer in a factory. As a result of being in a decent job, my family was adequately provided for. But the good times did not last long.
In 1957 the CCP launched an anti-rightist campaign. The evil party started by consulting the non-party member intellectuals about possible reforms. In reality, the consultation was a façade intended to eliminate political dissidents who were later called anti-party members or rightists.
The Day My Father was Taken Away
I will never forget October 8, 1958. On that afternoon when I arrived home from school, I saw the gate to our house left wide-open and a group of people crowding around my home. I inquired what had happened. A middle-aged woman told me, "Your father was taken away." I felt as if I had been struck by lightning and almost fainted. I saw my mother, sisters and brother crying as I entered our chaotic home.
In my eyes, my father was the kindest, most handsome and most loving father. He was a tall and handsome man who often took us outdoors to fly kites, taught us to skate and swim, and to play basketball. In addition to English, he mastered six foreign languages and also played the violin.
Why would such a good father be arrested? Later, my mother told us, "You are now grown-ups. You have to understand your father. He is a good person. Because the communist party wants to initiate a class struggle, they forced him to submit suggestions for reform. If he proposed nothing, the questioning would continue. These sessions had already gone on for over a year. They were waiting for your father to say something. Realizing that he was unable to put it off, finally your father made a suggestion. They classified him as a rightist, arrested him, and sentenced him to ten years in the prison."
We were forcefully separated from our father and did not know his whereabouts for over a decade. We kept searching for him, but were only told that because of his involvement in high-tech business, the CCP wanted to make use of his expertise and detained him in a secret place to do secret work.
After my father's arrest, all our relatives and friends distanced themselves from us. Even our aunt drew clear boundaries between herself and us. Fearing that she might be entangled in the struggle, she terminated all contact with us. At that time, we five children were quite young. Therefore, my mother—who seldom went out when my father was with us—alone shouldered the burden of providing for us all.
Mother Swept Streets for 10 Years
My mother started the most difficult times of her life with five kids. My mother was also an intellectual. In order to feed the whole family, she had to give up her job as a commune recorder because the earning was sparse.
She asked her friend to help her find a job at the Sanitation Bureau as a street sweeper and cleaner because there was a little more grain ration at that job. She would go to work at 2 a.m. and collect garbage from the streets during the day.
She was always tired and suffered from back and leg pains as well as large bleeding blisters on her palms at the end of every workday. Though she didn't know how to use the big broom properly, she still had to sweep the streets for four hours straight in a day.
She said the good thing about working late at night was that she could look at the sky in the quiet streets and let her tears running down without being seen by anyone. So she insisted on taking sweeping streets as a job for 10 years and finally developed thick callus on her palms.
Soon the terrible Great Famine came, and people from mainland China can all remember the year 1960. The CCP deceived people by calling the three years of Great Famine as "Three Years of Natural Disaster."
The CCP claimed it was natural disaster and that we had to overcome the difficulties. It was not actually natural disaster, but a disaster caused completely by humans.
During those few years, millions of people starved to death, but our family was fortunate enough to survive and not succumb to starvation. Each person was provided only 100 grams (0.2 lb) of food for each day. Upon seeing us being so hungry and thin, on her free time, my mother went to vegetable plots to pick kohlrabi leaves to boil in order to feed us.
In the spring when elm fruits were plenty, the older siblings went to elm forests brought back the elm leaves. My mother mixed it with flour, and steamed them to make many cakes. We survived by eating tree leaves and picking edible wild herbs.
All Books in the House Had to Be Burned
Just after this difficult time was over, the horrible Cultural Revolution arrived. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, mother was scared to death and said, "We will be punished again." One night, she told all of us, "You have to be very careful when you are outside, talk less and work more. Don't join any kind of rebel group because our family is considered part of the 'five black categories1'."
While mother was saying this, she turned on the stove and started burning all the books—classical, modern, Chinese and foreign—in our house.
By then our family had collected lots of world famous novels and my father's technical books. Mother said that they were not to be kept and she was going to burn all of them as she threw one after another into the fire. Seeing the novels that we liked being burned like this, we all felt like crying. It took us three days and three nights to burn all the books.
The last one was a hardcover English-Chinese dictionary. My mother held it in her arms and didn't want to throw it into the fire, but eventually did after much hesitation. She said this book was our father's and we couldn't keep it. If the CCP saw it, who knows what kind of infamy they would put on us, so we had better throw it into the fire.
After a little while, mother wanted to pick it out of the fire, but it was too late. She cried and said that it was your father's treasure and how difficult it would be to tell him about this in the future. To this day, I still can't forget this scene. However, our family still didn't escape the evil party's ransacking. One day, I arrived home from work and I saw a big poster outside our door. I walked inside immediately without even looking at it carefully. Mother was crying, when she saw me.
She said, "A moment ago, residential community people led some Red Guards to our home and had it ransacked." I asked mother what they took away. Mother said, "Our home is so worn out and they found nothing to take away. After a long time searching, they still took away the jewelry boxes I prepared for you for when you get married. Mother is so sorry." Seeing her crying and becoming more and more upset, I held her and said, "The only thing we want is for you to stay healthy and stay with us."
Nobody Wanted Us Because of our Family History
The Cultural Revolution became more and more intense. Mother saw that her four daughters and one son were growing up more and more attractively. Although she was very happy, she worried a lot. The situation outside was getting worse and worse, and it was common for people to be assaulted and things to be smashed or stolen.
Mother worried that something would happen to us, so she asked friend's help to find a husband for my eldest sister and me so we can go away to avoid the danger. During that time, although I and my other sisters suffered a lot, we all had our own special skills due to the diligence of our parents. Because of the CCP's category theory, we were not allowed to go to college.
My eldest sister took an examination for entry to the Academy of Music and passed the skill test, but was denied because she failed their political investigation. My third younger sister played piano very well, and she also applied for the Academy of Music and passed the skill test, but she was also denied because of the political investigation.
I liked sports a lot and I was very good at skiing. I wanted to apply for entry to the Academy of Sports but I gave it up because of my bad category.
Because we were born into a family with bad history, nobody dared to marry us. Finally, my eldest sister found a Tsinghua University graduate who was worked in another city. My mother asked me to change our family's customary moral standards and way of life by marrying a worker. Workers were quite popular by then. My boyfriend at school left me because of my bad category, so I eventually agreed to marry a worker.
When all the girls were married, only my sixty-year-old mother and my almost fifteen-year-old brother were home. One day I went back to see them and upon entering the door, I found all the neighbors there.
A neighbor told me, "Your mom and your brother were beaten by Lao Ma's sons, who live downstairs." I asked why, and he said, "Because your family is anti-revolutionary, a perfect target." I rushed inside and saw my mother and brother sitting on the bed weeping!
Outraged, I was going to rush out to fight the culprits downstairs for justice. My mom stopped me by holding me tightly, and saying, "You cannot go. You are a girl, and you won't win. There's no justice in this world. Who else deserves to be beaten more than us? We must tolerate this."
Looking at my mother's misery, I had to give up. I held my mother and brother and cried out loud. There was no place to appeal!
Through the Cultural Revolution, the CCP has persecuted many innocent people. Our family was lucky that none of us died. But its cruelty has left deep wounds in our young hearts.
In 1969, the CCP played another trick: it claimed the cities were too crowded, and people who led an idle life should move to the countryside. My family was "anti-revolutionary," and my mother and my brother couldn't work because she was too old and he was too young, so my family had no choice but to move to the countryside and became peasants.
Seeing My Disabled Father
In 1973, we suddenly received the release notice of my father. It was great news for our entire family. My eldest sister and I went to pick him up from the prison. When we saw him, I was shocked. Standing in front us was a disabled pale old man. One of his legs was completely disabled while the other twitched, and his hands also shook. Is this my father?
The handsome father I held in my memory for 15 years? I was too shocked to walk over and embrace him. He recognized us first and limped over, calling our names. Then we called him, held him and cried together. Everyone watched us cried. I can never forget the scene. The wicked party tortured my father for 15 years, and didn't release him until he could not take care of himself any more!
Upon arriving at home in the countryside, my father told us that he had escaped from danger several times. The CCP had been playing tricks on him the whole time. They told him he could receive a sentence reduction if his performance was good. He believed them and worked very hard to earn credits, with only the hope of seeing his children for the last time.
One day, while working on a construction site, carrying two big baskets of bricks and walking over a narrow wood bridge on the fourth floor, he fainted and fell to the ground. When he woke up, he was in the hospital. He was so lucky that he didn't die, because he had such a strong wish in his heart to see us.
The CCP used him to translate between German and Chinese. He had to work for more than ten hours a day everyday until he his hair turned white.
However, instead of being released early, his term was extended. When he was finally released due to his medical condition, he had already been imprisoned for 15 years.
In prison, he had been hoping for the day he could see his family, but when he finally saw them, he was so disappointed, because they had been turned into peasants. He was dissatisfied to see his only son become a farmer for the rest of his life. His heart was so pained. In 1976, he died of cerebral hemorrhage.
My father left us forever. It was the wicked CCP that killed him. The evil CCP has broken our family and killed our family members. I want to condemn this ruthless devil.
The evil CCP not only persecuted our physical bodies, but devastated our spirits as well. It has deprived us of dignity, self-esteem, and youth, and thrown us to the very bottom of society. Just like what was said in the Nine Commentaries, it is an evil specter. We must disintegrate it completely. I believe that one day, it will be brought to justice in the trial of history, and this day is not far off!
May the souls of my parents and all the good people who have died as a result of the evil CCP's persecution rest peacefully in Heaven!
Thank you.
Note [1]: Landlords, rich peasants, reactionaries, bad elements, and rightists
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