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Cries of "No more Chinese Communist Party!" rang out in downtown Auckland on Saturday as around one hundred people from various organisations celebrated the withdrawal of 10 million members from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and associated organisations.
Delegates from the Quit the CCP Service Centre, Chinese Democracy Movement, and practitioners from the spiritual practice Falun Gong gathered for the bittersweet celebration.
The obvious joy expressed in the rally regarding the imminent fall of China's communist regime was marred by the reasons for the urgent call for renunciations. Graphic placards lined Queen Street, taking the public through a horrific journey of 57 years of torture, rape, beatings and killing by the CCP.
A lone man stood holding a picture of his wife who had been tortured to death while 3 months pregnant for her belief in Falun Gong, a practice based on Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. His five-year-old daughter told us she missed her mother.
Rally host Riki Robinson explained that the Chinese Communist Party has consistently spent up to a quarter of its Gross Domestic Product during the height of its persecution of Falun Gong beginning in 1999. Buddhists, Christians, Tibetans and pro-democracy advocates have all been severely persecuted, in fact, "I believe there is no one today living in China who has not been badly affected by the CCP," Mr Robinson stated.
The 25,000 Chinese nationals renouncing their membership from the Party each day certainly share this sentiment. And this trend of resignations makes one thing clear—communism in China is fast on the way out.
Mr Pan Qing of the Chinese Democratic Movement in NZ joined Saturday's rally celebrating the great tide quitting the CCP but urged the public of New Zealand to "please step forward to help release the Chinese people from the CCP—because if we keep showing indifference these crimes will continue."
Speeches made, the entourage marched to Aotea Square with great yellow and white banners imparting urgent pleas for help and shocking tales of abuse. Public reaction ranged from those almost impervious, to those who shed tears for the plight of the people in China today.
Falun Gong practitioners then created a re-enactment depicting the disturbing scene of an illegally-detained prisoner of conscience having their organs harvested and sold for profit. Since early March, when The Epoch Times broke the story of concentration camps harvesting organs in China, there has been mounting evidence exposing this most brutal practice carried out by the communist party.
Thirty six such camps are detaining hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, while customers can browse the internet and purchase an organ, guaranteed to be supplied within a week of the request being made.
In 1999 when the CCP launched its genocide campaign against Falun Gong, 100 million adherents of the spiritual practice were branded as criminals. Under CCP rule a criminal's organs can be taken and transplanted—creating a gigantic living donor pool for the CCP to make millions of dollars from.
After almost 57 years of systematic persecution and the killing of 80 million of their own citizens, the Chinese Communist Party's days are numbered.
In this massive battle for freedom the people of China are not fighting as armed rebels in the streets. Rather, it's being fought over the Internet, via fax, email, phone, and even messages written on banknotes; one person at a time, rescinding their name from CCP membership.
It started in late 2004 when a series of editorials called Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party published by The Epoch Times began a movement to quit the CCP. Fast-forward to the present, and the number of CCP renunciations has reached 10 million.
ACT leader Rodney Hide last week expressed his delight over the 10 million withdrawals:
"I think it's fabulous and I think it's going to make for a better China and a much better and safer world. We've got very, very brave people who are resigning from the Communist Party and standing up for human freedom and human dignity."
In an interview with New Tang Dynasty TV, Mr Hide said, "It is not the Chinese people committing these atrocities, it's the government, and it [crimes against humanity] happens when you have a totalitarian power not subject to democracy and a press that's controlled by those same people. We need democracy [in China] and we need a free press because they serve to safeguard us from those with power and act as a check."
New Zealanders may find it difficult to imagine the elaborate and sophisticated means in which the authorities in China have created blanket control over information.
According to a Freedom House report, "Access to politically threatening internet sites and web logs is blocked; uncensored satellite television is not legally available to the general public; foreign radio broadcasts are scrambled; and the sale of publications with content critical to the regime is restricted."
A most recent example was the incident two weeks ago when Wang Wenyi disrupted China's president, Hu Jintao, at the White House press conference. This incident was immediately blacked out in China and will most likely never see the light of day under the communist rule.
In a world where the CCP exerts complete control over the country's 358 TV stations and 2,119 newspapers, the Nine Commentaries is leading the charge in exposing the CCP with unprecedented clarity and depth.
The Communist Party has tried vigorously to block the spread of the Nine Commentaries with the editorial series quickly becoming the number one censored item on the Chinese Internet, according to a joint study carried out by Harvard, Cambridge, and the University of Toronto.
Chinese caught carrying the Nine Commentaries are arrested. Guo Lifang, a 54-year-old woman and Falun Gong practitioner from Xingtan City, was found with a copy of the Nine Commentaries. She was tortured to death in custody. The danger of reprisal has led most Chinese to use an alias when quitting the Party.
Ms. Cathy Jiang, coordinator of the Epoch Times special website for quitting the CCP, oversees 50 volunteer editors who process the resignations and an additional staff of 30 who are responsible for checking emails. "Every single [resignation] has been thoroughly reviewed by our workers," says Jiang. "We would rather go with less [we are sure of] than have something more."
Kerry Chen of the Quit the CCP Service Centre is encouraging all people to read the Nine Commentaries and believes it will change China and affect the whole world. She said every withdrawal from the Chinese Communist Party will be celebrated and every effort made to inform the New Zealand public of what truly goes on behind the Red Wall of China. "We are all, without exception living in times of great change."
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