Last Thursday I asked Zhou Laoshi (Chinese teacher) what he thought of the whole Falun Gong thing, and he very tactfully explained to us how the Chinese consider it a silly cult just as we consider Scientology a silly cult. He talked about some of their less credible beliefs about higher heavens and gears/wheels inside of us, and then preceded to expound the virtues of the communist state (seriously). He defended the decision to make Falun dafu illegal because higher ranking people in the party were beginning to convert, and in remarkably simple words explained that the party was afraid of the power that the movement was gaining. He then said plenty of people practice Taiqichuan and nothing ever happens to them, it was the organization of Falun Gong that frightened the government.

Let me play the devil. Is organ harvesting really inexcusable?
Granted the most fundamental thing you can own is your body and the most fundamental right you should have is that of self control, but prisoners (especially beneath the world’s less fair governments) lose their rights. Organ harvesting is inexcusable to someone who believes in ‘Rights’ and in ‘Ownership of Yourself,’ but think of it this way—the government was going to kill these people anyway because they refused to let go of their beliefs. Their families weren’t going to be told anyway (and aren’t). If 4,000 people have been killed for their kidneys and retinas and so on, 4000 others have been given a second shot at a tainted life. I think the real problem isn’t in taking the organs of the executed, which in theory I would agree with, but in the fact that they’re executing at all. The problem isn’t that they are taking people’s organs, but that “freedom of belief and expression” is not a reality in China and such a situation arises at all. I feel the dead should save the living from death, but feel too that the living should not be killed in the first place.

The Communist Party relies on mobilizing part of the population against another part every 7 or 8 years (there’s a Mao quote about why this is necessary that I’ve forgotten); on the one hand to give people something to do and on the other hand to give people something to fear. Nothing creates unity in a society like having a common enemy, except perhaps terror. fear. Uncertainty about the safety of your own skin. Most people will join a group of people that does horrible things if it assures them that horrible things will not be done unto them.

Get this: in China it is actually illegal to take someone’s organs unless they or their family volunteers the body for harvesting—however, since 1999, the deaths of any Falun dafu practitioners while in prison are recorded as “suicides” (presidential orders after several self immolation protests) bypassing what on the books is a complicated and humane legal code that has “sworn off the atrocities of the last century”-

A surprising number of people around the world know exactly what’s happening and feel its wrong, but don’t feel like doing anything about it. I’d like to ask everyone here what he or she thinks is an appropriate personal response—what should each of us actually do? …its not an easy question I feel.

posted by Adrian   [6:13 PM]

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