Chinese Communist Show to Celebrate Torture on U.S. Stage?
Torture Survivors Say CCTV Event in North America Meant to Insult, Hurt, Intimidate
New York (FDI) 12 Jan. 2006 - Survivors of torture and captivity in China’s notorious gulag system have told the Falun Dafa Information Center of darker agenda behind CCTV’s “Same Song” Chinese New Year event to take place in North America.
The event is billed as a celebration and is slated to take place in multiple US and Canadian cities. It takes as its theme song a Chinese hit, “The Same Song” (Tong Yi Shou Ge), and is apparently politically motivated, targeting practitioners of Falun Gong. Firsthand sources explain that the song features prominently in the program of torture and brainwashing that occurs across China’s gulag and prison system.
“This is a sort of sick victory song for the CCP. Captive Falun Gong practitioners are made to sing it under threat of violence. To not ‘sing along’ is to invite beatings with two-by-fours, shocks from electric batons, or force-feeding using feces and sludge. Once a victim is completely broken, prison authorities ‘celebrate’ with a round of this ‘Same Song.’ For thousands it is a song of pain and despair, and it has no place in our communities,” says FDI spokesperson Mr. Erping Zhang. “We also have reason to believe these CCTV performances are meant to lend legitimacy to the song in China, and will be then shown in the gulag to buttress the lie that ‘all the outside world persecutes Falun Gong, too.’”
Survivors of the gulag have told the FDI that the song is bound up with tremendous trauma for them and the hundreds of thousands like them put through usually violent “thought reform” in China. “It haunts you, just hearing it brings me deep pain and sorrow,” said one first-hand source. The song has also become a symbol of the state’s power over spiritual believers, acting as a veiled threat to those who recognize it.
FDI is deeply concerned by CCTV’s choice of theme and song, and the message sent to the many Falun Gong in communities across North America. “This is meant to strike fear in our hearts” said one torture victim. Others described it variously as a “taunt,” a “flaunting of power,” and something analogous “to burning crosses by the KKK… but only here they’re making it look pretty for the public.” CCTV has been a major force in the campaign to eliminate the Falun Gong in China and discredit the spiritual practice in western countries.
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Clearwisdom: My experience of being persecuted with the "Same Song"
Canadian Press: TORONTO 13 Jan. 2006 - A Chinese meditation group says the theme song used to promote Chinese New Year's celebrations in Toronto is used in the torture of dissidents in China.
The Falun Dafa Association of Canada says a song known as ``The Same Song'' in English is sung by labour camp guards after allegedly beating Falun Dafa practitioners in Chinese jails.
The song itself is a much-loved tune and the title of a musical show on Chinese TV and has been chosen by the Chinese consulate for its party on Sunday.
But one Chinese woman who lives in Toronto says it brings back chilling memories of her ordeal in a camp in Beijing in 2001 and 2002.
Cindy Li, a 35-year-old international student, says guards sang the song after forcing Falun Gong practitioners like her to renounce their beliefs.
The Chinese government did not return calls for comment on the use of the song but has denied it detains and tortures practitioners.
The Chinese government says Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is not a religion and that some of its devotees have ``disrupted law and order.''
Falun Gong plans a protest outside the Chinese consulate in Toronto on Saturday.
``It's a very, very demented use of this otherwise benign song,'' said Joel Chipkar, a Falun Gong Canada spokesman.
``The song definitely does have Communist ideology in it.''
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