(Minghui.org) Although the Party's smear campaign against Falun Gong is not as pervasive as it once was in China's newspapers and TV stations, its policy of persecution remains firmly in place.
The persecution now continues under increased secrecy, a trend identified by this website. For example, propaganda demonizing Falun Gong is now less frequently seen in China's national media, but it remains quite prevalent at local levels, such as on community bulletin boards controlled by Party agencies at the lowest levels.
On the 65th anniversary of the day the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took control of China, sources in China report that material slandering Falun Gong was prominently placed on Party-controlled bulletin boards in numerous locales across the country. (October 1 is National Day in China, the anniversary of Party rule)
Recent anti-Falun Gong bulletin board messages appear to be rehashed from older 610 Office propaganda materials. (The 610 Office is tasked with executing the CCP's persecution policies. Actions taken at the community bulletin board level are often at the bidding of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee and other Party administrative agencies.)
However, the grassroots level (the level at which those who maintain and read community bulletin boards are from) happens to be where the positive effects of truth-clarification efforts by Falun Gong practitioners are most visible.
The contents of some 29 community bulletin boards recently sampled in one area offer a glimpse of how the official policy of persecution stacks up against people's awakening consciences at the grassroots level. (These 29 bulletin boards appear at the Party's lowest levels, those that have the most numerous branches: street offices and residential committees whose job it is to maintain files on every citizen.)
An Unscientific but Telling Study
The author of this article visited 29 bulletin boards: four maintained by street offices and 25 by residential committees. This simple random sampling found that the information on only 4 of the bulletin boards slandered Falun Gong (14% of those sampled). Of the four bulletins that followed the CCP's persecution policy, three were controlled by residential committees and one by a street office.
In other words, one out of four street office bulletin boards followed the persecution policy (25%), while only three out of the 25 residential committees did (12%). Residential committees rank one level lower in the Party hierarchy than street offices.
This small sample suggests that the lower you go in the Party hierarchy – the more grassroots the level is – the more likely it is that people defy the official persecution policy. This, we believe, is a trend that can be observed across China and can be attributed to practitioners' persistent efforts to clarify the facts of the persecution.
Below is an example of letters practitioners wrote to their local residential committee, delivering it to both the Party office and its neighbors:
Dear Sir/Madam at the Residential Committee:
Greetings. You have posted slanderous contents about Falun Gong and announced rewards for people who report practitioners. We have removed the slanderous information, but you keep posting new ones.
Maybe you don't know what your posting entails. We think this is because you don't know the truth about Falun Gong. As of November 2014, Falun Gong has spread to over 100 countries on five continents. More than 100 million people around the world practice Falun Gong. They are from all walks of life, as well as from many different ethnicities.
The values of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance are endorsed around the world, except in China. These principles would have been what we Chinese would be most proud of if there were no persecution.
The persecution of Falun Gong in China is an irrational political persecution, caused by the Party's fear of the large number of citizens who practice it. Many of these practitioners have gotten rid of their bad habits and become good people that benefit our society.
Unfortunately, the CCP began a 15 year long persecution. Over 3,500 deaths have been confirmed. Even organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners has been confirmed by independent investigations.
Do you know that if bad people report Falun Gong practitioners, what kind of harm it will cause to the practitioners and their families? We are all neighbors. What goes around comes around is a truth that will never change. Many people in our city who have persecuted Falun Gong have already met with misfortune, often quite grave.
We hope that you will make the right choice, for your family and yourself, after learning the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution. Thank you.
