On my way home from a day at Uni I boarded the bus at central as usual and got out my laptop to study during the upcoming journey home. The traffic was extremely bad and whilst traveling through the city (on George St) the bus was moving at a snail pace through heavy traffic. As we approached town hall I looked out and noticed a couple of banners and Chinese people approaching strangers with clip boards. Since we weren't moving much, I took in the scene in more detail.
The banners depicted Chinese people being tortured with various devices with the heading "Persecution of the Falun Gong". It seemed that the people running the awareness campaign were trying to get signatures to support their cause. As I had just completed some work for Global Citizenship, I immediately opened up Google and began researching the Falun Gong.
From my research I learnt that the Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) was nothing but a peaceful and spiritual discipline introduced in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. The direct translation of Falun Gong is Law Wheel Practice as it promotes the virtues of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance in conjunction with medication and slow qigong exercises. It is an advanced self cultivation practice of the Budha school.
The spiritual/religous movement gained a lot of momentum and by 1999 was estimated to have in the ten millions of followers. Over 10 000 peaceful Falun Gong protesters gathered outside Bejing to peacefully request legal recognition and freedom from state interference.
What followed was the nationwide crackdown on Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party which intended to eradicate the existence of Falun Gong. It was declared a heretical organization, that threatened social stability. Many Falun Gong practitioners were abducted and practicing Falun Gong was outlawed. Hundreds and thousands of innocents have been imprisoned extra judicially with an extreme violation of basic human rights. Many followers were sent to "Re-education Camps" where guards attempted to torture followers out of their beliefs. The torture included live organ harvesting, beating with electric rods, burning with hot metal rods, breaking bones, intensive toil (20 hours a day of hard forced labour), sexual abuse, force feedings, starvation, beatings and much more.
A brief introduction to Falun Gong can be found here "http://en.falundafa.org/introduction.html"
A list of torture techniques used at ONE of the re education facilities can be found here "http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2013/7/10/140957.html"
After learning all this, I was already on the M2 and needless to say, did not feel like studying anymore. I spent the rest of the bus ride thinking about what I had just learnt.
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