PureInsight | April 19, 2004
Chapter 14: Good Hearts Amongst Evil Police
[PureInsight.org] When my eyes slowly began to open I saw a lot of the police still there but the superiors were gone and there were some middle-ranked policewomen watching us. I recognized one of them from the Tiananmen Square police station. She was a plain-clothed officer and she recognized me to. So I took the chance to go over and sit down to talk with her. She had a good heart, treated us all fairly up until that point and had a good command of the English language so I really jumped at this chance.
Zenon: I would like to talk with you about something, is that OK?
Policewoman: That is fine. Please have a seat.
Zenon: There was a plain clothes male officer who drove the van that took me from Tiananmen Square to the police station. He was also the man who beat me in Tiananmen Square.
She interrupted.
Policewoman: You have nothing to fear. We will not hurt you. Please don't worry.
Zenon: Please listen to me, I am not worried about myself. I only want to tell that man and everyone else the truth about Falun Dafa. He was wearing a yellow shirt and drove the van I was in off the square. Can you please find him and tell him that I don't hate him. I really don't hate him. I only came here to tell him and everyone else the truth.
My voice got a little shaky and my eyes welled with tears.
Zenon: I am neither against your government nor your people. I think China is wonderful. Your culture is also wonderful. There are many good people here that shouldn't be deceived. That's why I came here to help your people. Can you please find him and tell him that?
Her eyes softened and her eyebrows moved up on her forehead.
Policewoman: I can see you are a good person, are you a student in Canada?
Zenon: No I work and practice Falun Dafa. Well I do take some part time courses. But mainly I try to help your citizens from being persecuted for practicing Falun Dafa. But this time I have also come for the citizens that don't practice.
Policewoman: Will you come back to China?
Zenon: I would love to.
Policewoman: I hope you can visit China again and see more of it. When you come again please don't cause trouble.
Zenon: I am not causing trouble. It is the persecution of Falun Dafa that causes trouble. If I had done this three years ago before the persecution, people would have treated me quite warmly. They would have shouted "Hey, a westerner practices Falun Dafa. Isn't that interesting?." But no, instead the "peoples" police beat me in public
Policewoman: But Falun Dafa is not good.
Zenon: It is good and people enjoy it all over the world. It is only in China where there are too many lies being…
She interrupts.
Policewoman: OK, please no more talking, please go back to your seat.
I sighed and went back to my seat and she left the room. I sat there wondering; maybe it's just too much for them to accept. If they indeed believe me then they have to accept that their own Chairman is lying to their entire nation. That's a tough and rather large pill to swallow when you have put all your trust and life in your Chairman and superiors.
Then the door opened and the plain clothed policewoman came walking back in but this time she wasn't walking to the front table. She came walking straight at me. She sat down beside me. Holding out her hand she offered me some fruit rapped in a paper towel. You could see the goodness in her heart.
Policewoman: Are you hungry?
Zenon: No, I am not hungry.
Disappointment filled her eyes. She knew I hadn't eaten and thought I was being stubborn and enduring the hunger. She wanted to do something nice for me. In retrospect I could have taken the fruit but I just didn't want her to feel OK about what they were doing. She was seeing that we were good people and it made her feel guilty to see us treated like this. If she felt guilty maybe in the future she wouldn't accept Falun Dafa practitioners being treated so inhumanly by other police and at least not "follow orders" to commit crimes herself.
Before I could continue talking with her a senior officer walked into the room and called her over. He grabbed her by the arm and guided her out of the room talking in a low voice directly into her ear. Later she came back in but she was colder and even rude. She walked over and took some papers from one young man from California. They were Chinese poems written by the founder of Falun Dafa translated into English. She put them with another Falun Dafa book that had been confiscated from someone else. We asked for the material back and she said no. So we began asking for a reason. All she could say was - "I will give it to you later." When she was asked to promise she then replied - "maybe." Then we said that there was no "maybe" and that it was our property and she could not have it. We reminded her that she was a police officer that should stop thieves and not become one.
Then one of the practitioners who could speak really well in Chinese said out loud to all the police in the room. "There are many criminals causing a lot of trouble and yet you use over fifty people to guard peaceful and harmless people. You should be going out to do your job." The room was filled with a mild rumble as the police chuckled to themselves as if his telling them all to go do their jobs would get them to leave. Then they were quiet because they realized he was right. There was nothing they could say to any of these things. Every time the plain clothes policewoman was left speechless, she would just tip her head back, look at the ceiling, take a deep breath and sigh. She was wrong and she knew it and there was nothing she could do about it without some sort of reprisal from her superiors. Eventually we got the books back.
Then some more policewomen came in and sat at the front table with her. One of the practitioners said to them in Chinese "Falun Dafa is good." They laughed and said it wasn't. I told them they didn't know what they were taking about. I looked over at the plain clothes policewoman, and reminded her:
Zenon: Earlier you said that I was a good person. The reason I am a good person is because of practicing Falun Dafa.
Policewoman 1: You don't understand China. Falun Dafa is bad in China. If you can practice it at home why don't you just stay home? Why do you have to come to China?
Another practitioner: Because you are torturing and killing people. We wanted to let people know that Falun Dafa is good. So that this can stop.
Policewoman 1: But it's not good.
I was getting a little irritated. They seemed like nice ladies and whenever we try to reason with them they would just revert back to something as simple as "but it's not good." I became very stern with them and was even pointing my finger at them as I made my points.
Zenon: We may not understand China but I understand myself. I know for myself Falun Dafa made me a good person.
Plain clothes policewoman: You were already a good person before you practiced Falun Dafa.
I snapped back very firmly.
Zenon: NO!
Then some other practitioners interrupted me, telling me to calm down and be compassionate. But at this point I felt I was. I told my fellow practitioner not to worry and that she didn't understand Chinese people. This behavior is intolerable to a North American but quite acceptable to most Chinese people. So I continued.
Zenon: NO! You don't know me and you don't understand my life. I do! So you can't say anything about it! You said I was a good person and I am telling you why. You can't have an opinion on this because you don't know. I will tell you again. The reason I am a good person is because Falun Dafa made me this way. It is because Falun Dafa is good. This is something I know, not you. That is why I am telling you.
The point needed to be driven home and my firm tone didn't phase them one bit, but it did make them listen. There was nothing they could say so one of them teased my poor Chinese, the other giggled and then they went quiet. I felt the need to speak firmly and fast so they didn't have a chance to interrupt. Each time they interrupted they would miss their chance to hear the simple truth. Although it is difficult for them to accept and it is one of the major reasons for their need to argue with us, it is my responsibility to let them hear the truth, as this was real compassion for them. Even if I was a little impolite on the surface I was still thinking of them before myself.
Over the course of the night whenever we wanted to go to the washroom we were escorted and we weren't allowed to close the door to our stall. One time a young man was quite polite to me, opening the door for me and he turned his back while I was on the toilet. He turned the water on at the sink so I could wash my hands. When I was done I turned around to find him standing prim and proper with his left hand behind his back and his right gesturing to the paper towels. It felt like he was a washroom valet at the Ritz Carlton, not a policeman in China assigned to monitor me. He even had a small smile on his face. Maybe he was one of the police who knew that Falun Dafa was good. He seemed roughly the same age as me so he could have admired my courage to stand up for the truth in Tiananmen Square. But at that point it didn't matter much. I was just happy for him that he wasn't being a mean or abusive person.
After a while, the four of us who knew Chinese sat up at the front table where these four policewomen sat to watch us. We began discussing the issue of Falun Dafa in detail. It was quite good because two of the four could speak quite well. The two of us with a stronger command of the Chinese language sat speaking to the plain clothes policewoman and two others who could not speak English very well. While a young male practitioner and I sat across from "Policewoman number one." He was explaining to her that Falun Dafa has made him very healthy that he hasn't needed to see a doctor and that even though they left the lights on and he didn't sleep all night he felt quite good. It seemed he was boasting a little and she didn't respond too well and told him to leave her alone and "go practice your exercises then." Right away he said loudly, "OK, everyone, they want us to practice, lets all practice." Then she got angry and said, "NO, STOP. If you don't calm down then we won't talk anymore." Yet it seemed she wanted to keep talking so I continued. The young man calmed down and I said to her please understand that we didn't come here to cause any trouble, we just wanted them to know Falun Dafa is good.
Policewoman 1: But Falun Dafa told people not to take medicine and over 1400 people died because of it.
Zenon: That is not true, Falun Dafa has never told people not to take medicine. In the book Zhuan Falun, Mr. Li even explained that Falun Dafa is not for healing illnesses and that if you have a serious illness to " go to the hospital without delay." In his teachings it is clearly stated that Falun Dafa (Gong) is not for healing illnesses. What you have heard are all lies.
Policewoman 1: How do you know?
Zenon: It is printed clearly in the book. OK, lets say that what you said was true. It is an absolute lie, but lets pretend that it is true for just a moment. In Canada there is a population of about 30 million people and in one year about 200,000 thousand died in hospitals. I am not saying hospitals are bad it's just a fact. Yet there was an estimated 70 to 100 million people practicing Falun Dafa in China. That is over 3 times Canada's population. Furthermore it was practiced publicly for seven years before the persecution yet only 1400 people died without taking medicine. Then according to this comparison you are promoting Falun Dafa as with so many people practicing there are still so few that had died. It is so obviously a lie because it doesn't make sense. These lies are used to control people's thinking about Falun Dafa. Yet if you could see it for yourself you would see in black and white in the teachings that Falun Dafa is not for healing anyway.
Policewoman 1: Well nobody controls my thinking. I don't listen to the government or to Falun Dafa practitioners. I know for myself Falun Dafa is not good.
Zenon: Have you ever read the book Zhuan Falun (the fundamental teachings of Falun Dafa)?
As if I was trying to offend her.
Policewoman 1: NO!
Zenon: Than how do you know if it is good or not? In fact, you don't even know.
She didn't say anything.
Zenon: Well, if you never tasted spaghetti and someone asked you if it was good, your only answer could be "I don't know, I've never tried it." You shouldn't comment on things you don't know about, you can harm yourself and others at the same time.
Policewoman 1: But I know it's not good.
I realized I had to get a little more firm with her.
Zenon: You have already said that you have never read the book that explains what Falun Dafa is, so how could you know? You say that you have your own mind to make your own decision. You think you're not controlled? If you can make your own decisions then why not decide to investigate Falun Dafa for yourself. Why not go and get Zhuan Falun and read it yourself. Do you make your own decisions? You know you can't because they control you. If you did you could be arrested just like me. How can you say you know for yourself?
She wasn't offended at all. Instead she just sat there speechless. She tried to remain stubborn but it was useless. Her very nature was being completely deceived and I wanted to help her. After softening my tone once the point was driven home, we talked for about fifteen minutes. When I glanced behind me I saw all my fellow practitioners sitting in meditation. Then I looked at two beside me talking to the other plain clothes policewomen and two others. Then I looked at the policewomen and I couldn't believe my eyes. Their faces were relaxing. Their skin was getting brighter and their cheeks began to turn a rosy red right in front of my eyes. It was so beautiful. I did a double take, then a triple take. I just couldn't believe my eyes. They stopped being rude and talked with us with interest. I don't remember how long it lasted but it was amazing.
