"Someone in China just poisoned my toddler son." This is the thought that flashed through my mind as I read in the New York Times about the latest recall of products from China—this time it was Thomas the Tank Engine toys that were painted with lead paint.
In the last few months, we have seen at least 50 people in Panama die from medicine manufactured in China. Dogs and cats in the United States died from contaminated Chinese pet food. Toothpaste manufactured in China was recalled —the main ingredient of antifreeze had been used as a sweetener. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese-made tires were recalled after two deaths were blamed on the manufacturer for not building the tires according to specifications. The FDA banned fish raised in China because they contained cancer-causing drugs.
And these are just the scandals that have made the front pages lately. In fact, these scandals are not exceptions—they are part of a way of doing business. For instance, Chinese farmers often grow food for their families separately from what they sell on the market. Why? They want to keep their families safe.
How did China get to this point where human life is knowingly sacrificed in order to make extra profit? I believe the date July 20, 1999, is critical.
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On that date, then-dictator of China Jiang Zemin began the persecution of Falun Gong. Jiang's orders were to destroy the reputations of Falun Gong practitioners, to bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically. He expected to "eradicate" the practice in a few months' time.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual discipline whose practitioners do five meditative exercises and live according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Falun Gong practitioners seek to live selflessly, to think of others in all they do, and to examine their own thoughts and behavior first if something does not go smoothly.
Living according to such principles was once common in ancient China. The public teaching of Falun Gong in China, which began in 1992, can be understood in part as a return to the best traditions in China's profound civilization.
Practitioners of Falun Gong report extraordinary health improvements. A study of over 12,000 practitioners done in Beijing before the persecution began showed 80 percent had experienced improvements in health, with 58 percent having recovered completely from diseases they had before practicing Falun Gong.
This study also showed the mental state of practitioners improving dramatically. In general, Falun Gong practitioners report a reduction in stress, a happier, more peaceful state of mind, better interpersonal relationships, and improved morality.
Because practitioners experienced such improved quality of life, Falun Gong spread very rapidly. Remarkably, this happened without any advertising. One person who discovered the practice would tell another, and by word of mouth, soon everyone in China knew about Falun Gong.
By the spring of 1999, Chinese regime officials estimated the number of practitioners to be in the range of 70 million to 100 million.
When Jiang set out to "eradicate" this practice, he set the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at war against about 5 to 7 percent of China's own population. But more importantly, he set the CCP at war against the attempt to live according to universal principles of conscience, principles recognized in faiths around the world as constitutive of human excellence.
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This war has been comprehensive, systematic, and brutal. The CCP has set out to identify every single practitioner of Falun Gong in China, and to force him or her to renounce the practice.
Every part of society is used to bring pressure on practitioners. Families and workplaces are held responsible if someone practices Falun Gong. Practitioners or their families stand to lose jobs, apartments, pensions, and schooling. The regime has even confiscated farmers' tools and seed. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been detained. At least 100,000 have been sentenced to China's labor camps.
Practitioners who are detained are typically abused and subjected to brainwashing. Torture is common. Women are routinely subjected to sexual abuse, including the use of electric shock clubs on the genitals, rape, and gang rape.
The Falun Dafa Information Center has confirmed 3,024 deaths from torture. Based on estimates provided by figures inside the Chinese regime, we believe the true death toll is somewhere around five times this number.
As horrible as we had known the persecution to be, in March 2006, we discovered atrocities that exceeded all that we had imagined. We learned that throughout China large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners were being held as a kind of living organ bank used by a network of transplantation centers and hospitals.
When a patient presented at a hospital for organ transplantation, the records of imprisoned practitioners would be searched for a blood and tissue match. If the match was made, that practitioner's organs would be taken while he or she was still alive.
David Kilgour, a former Canadian Secretary of State for the Asia-Pacific region, and David Matas, a human rights lawyer, did an independent investigative report on the organ harvesting. They concluded that these atrocities were indeed taking place on a massive scale.
Kilgour and Matas identified 42,000 organ transplant operations that had been done in China since the persecution began for which the Chinese regime's records can provide no source for the organs used. They believe these organs came from Falun Gong practitioners.
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Organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners has been fueled by the huge amount of money to be made from the transplantation business.
And here we see the connection with Thomas the Tank Engine and my toddler son.
The CCP set out to destroy people's desire to live by the traditional principles of morality. In their place, the CCP has only had selfishness to offer. It is a common saying in China today that "money is everything."
If the regime that controls every aspect of a nation's life sets itself against religion and morality and exalts selfishness, then there is no reason not to paint a baby's toy with lead paint.
There is poison in China today. Unavoidably, that poison is spilling out—in insulin in Panama that destroys the kidneys and nervous system, in catfish and shrimp that cause cancer, and in pet food that kills dogs and cats. These poisons are now threatening everyone.
We can ban the seafood, ship back the medicine, inspect the pet food, but none of this will remove the danger. The source of the poison is the CCP.
The doctor says my toddler is going to be fine. On July 20, I suggest we all think about removing the poison coming to us from the CCP.
Right now the Chinese people are withdrawing from the CCP. One person at a time, they are disintegrating this monstrous thing. As the Chinese people succeed in reclaiming China's future, so too are we coming into a safer and saner world.
The Falun Dafa Information Center provides news and information about the persecution of Falun Gong.
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