Jason Pomerleau is a 24-year-old American from Maine. In 1998, during his senior year in college, he discovered Falun Dafa, which is also called Falun Gong. It is a spiritual self-improvement practice that had been brought to the United States from China. Jason had an interest in Eastern culture and philosophy. After he started practicing Falun Dafa, this interest grew deeper. He took a course to learn Chinese and made plans to visit China. In the summer of 1999, he was offered a teaching job in Beijing.

That same summer, on July 20^th, 1999, the persecution of Falun Gong and its practitioners was officially declared in China. False stories defaming Falun Gong filled newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts by the Chinese media. Across the country, Falun Dafa books were confiscated and burned, homes were ransacked, and thousands of practitioners were arrested and imprisoned. Reports of torture and police brutality soon reached the west.

[Mom] They had the crackdown in July and Jason left in August. I was kind of concerned about that because it was really getting dangerous.

[Daniel] My parents especially were concerned then. . Before he left, they had started a couple of months before he left, It had been in the news a lot so my parents heard about it. Practitioners were being arrested and rounded up and put into labor camps.

Despite the situation in China, Jason went as scheduled. When he arrived, he discovered that behind the apparent normality of daily life in Beijing, the atmosphere was quite tense.

[Jason] There weren’t any practitioners to be seen out in public. It was an era of big suppression there, just like a heavy curtain. And…People are afraid to talk about Falun Gong or to share their opinions or ideas, not just in public, but even in private.

[Jason] When I first got there, I even had my Western colleagues telling me that I couldn’t talk about things at a restaurant table and that I had to use code words to talk about Falun Gong. I was really surprised.

However, Jason felt that he should speak honestly, and talk directly and openly from his heart. He’d learned by following Falun Gong’s principles of “Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forebearance” that he should be truthful in any situation

Jason started his teaching career in China. He taught conversational English to junior high school students and adults. Jason made a lot of Chinese friends, some were Falun Gong practitioners, some not. It was no secret to his friends that he practiced Falun Gong, and he openly talked about Falun Gong in his classes.

[Jason] People were very shocked to find out that I practice Falun Gong that people other than Chinese people practice Falun Gong. They had a hard time believing that this is practiced all over the world by so many people, by so many different races, and that the books have been translated into 10 languages. The government there just presented the picture that it’s only a few Chinese people doing it. So they were really surprised to see pictures of people in Switzerland, France practicing Falun Gong exercises.

In China, what people see, hear, and read is all propaganda generated by the state-controlled media. Even internet access and email are monitored and controlled by the government. Today in China, Falun Gong practitioners are prohibited from speaking, meeting or distributing information. With government propaganda being the only source of information, people are unable to form their own opinion about Falun Gong. Jason was in a unique position to offer information from the viewpoint of a practitioner and a Westerner.

[Jason] One time someone made a bad comment about Falun Gong, I didn’t say I practiced Falun Gong. I said: “Falun Gong is really good. My mother practices Falun Gong.” They were really surprised by that.

Very soon, Jason’s open discussion of Falun Gong caught the attention of the local public security bureau.

[Jason] The person who is my boss and also my colleagues… they a few times called me in to tell me that they had another report from the public security bureau…. and that I really need to change my behavior.

That winter, Jason received a package his brother had mailed to him months before from the States. It was a videotape called “Falun Gong – The Real Story.” When Jason received the package, it had been opened.

[Jason] . I got a slip saying to go pick it up at certain location. I went and got it. After that I was pretty aware that I was being monitored. And After a little while I was very sure that my apartment was being closely monitored, either by videotape or most definitely there are some bugs in the room some place. And the phone line was definitely not safe. Ya…I definitely had the feeling that everything I was saying and doing was monitored.

Jason knew that he was being closely watched by the public security bureau. He felt that he hadn’t done anything wrong so he decided to continue on as he was doing. Because he was a Westerner, he was treated “politely” compared to other Chinese practitioners. Jason witnessed how some of his practitioner friends were mentally tortured. One of them, a colleague, was also his Chinese tutor.

[Jason] What they did was they would go and sit with this woman for extended periods of time in the evening. The principal and other teachers even brought her mother in to try to convince her stop practicing Falun Gong, to make sure she didn’t go anywhere, to make sure she didn’t try to appeal to her government. They didn’t allow her to come to my apartment anymore. They put her under house arrest. And they made her read the government’s propaganda. They tried to brain-wash her. . After classes were over, say after dinner, 6 o’clock, they would sit with her till midnight or one till she went to bed. They had convinced her mother that it was in her best interest too that she stopped practicing. Even her mother was trying to convince her. It was very difficult for her.

After a few months, Jason’s tutor had an opportunity to leave China. She was fortunate to escape the persecution.

Soon after, Jason found another Chinese tutor who was also a Falun Gong practitioner. Before coming to Beijing, this woman had been an office secretary.

[Jason] She was also forced to leave her job. She was told to choose between Falun Gong and her job. And she made the right choice and she came to Beijing and lived off her saving for a while. But eventually she also decided that she needed to do something more, so she went to Tiananmen square to hold up a big banner to say “Falun Gong is good”. I heard she was sent back to her hometown after being incarcerated for a while.

Jason has not heard anything about this woman since. Usually, practitioners who went to Tiananmen Square are directly sent to prisons, labor camps, or even mental institutions after returning to their hometowns. China’s Constitution guarantees citizens the right to appeal injustice, but the rights of Falun Gong practitioners were denied.

As the persecution intensified, more and more of Jason’s practitioner friends were detained or missing.

[Jason] It was kind of lonely. There was a lot of sentimentality, especially around Christmas time. I just felt kind of…. I guess, isolated…

And some of Jason’s friends were arrested after leaving his apartment.

[Jason] A young man left in the evening, a good friend of mine. He was a student in a nearby college, he is at my age. He left in the evening and the next morning my roommate discovered that his bicycle was still there. So we know he had been captured. …..We didn’t hear any word. Most people arrested were sent back to their hometown or if no one came were sent to some sort of labor camp.

Jason went to the Foreign Affair bureau at his school to report that his friend was missing. The two men in the office laughed at him.

[Jason] What it really shows you is that the system there is a joke, ‘cus they are laughing at it too. They are laughing because Who you’re going to talk to? Who are you going to tell? Falun Gong practitioners are arrested for talking to the government. Who are you going to appeal to? There’s no body to appeal to. So when I told them that one of my friends was missing and that I wanted to report to somebody -- even if it’s not going to do anything I still wanted to do what I should do and report it -- they just laughed.

Jason learned that the government was working to pass an anti-cult law that was obviously written to escalate the persecution of Falun Gong. The law would take effect retroactively – people could be arrested and tried for anything they’d done previous to the law’s enactment. Jason and some of his Chinese friends decided to go to Tianamen Square on the day the government was due to vote on the law.

[Jason] I saw a lot of people being arrested, for just being there. The police were questioning people. There was so much surveillance and a lot of police without uniform, just wear black leather jackets, dressed up like civilians. And…. Practitioners they weren’t doing anything wrong

The police just herded them all together even though there were so many people -- twenty or thirty people -- and surrounded them. Then they would bring in these little white vans, pulling them and throwing them into the vans. Practitioners weren’t fighting back, but they also had no reason to be arrested. So they weren’t just doing what they were told. So the police responded with violence and dragged them into the van.”

Jason and his friends returned from Tiananmen Square safely. Many other practitioners did not. They were arrested, beaten, and sent to forced-labor camps and detention centers. Across China, under the directive of the government’s “610” office -- the agency overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong -- many Falun Gong practitioners were expelled from school, fired from their jobs, and driven from their homes. Some even lost their lives.

By this time, Jason’s family was getting quite concerned about his safety and well-being in Beijing.

[Daniel] We knew he was alive and well, doing his job as he was supposed to do. I was a little alarmed just hearing personal accounts of practitioners in China, the torture and the abuse they went through, thinking that may be it would happen to my brother,

It was getting close to the end of Jason’s contract. The family decided to visit Jason in China and bring him home.

[Jason] It was really good to see my family again when they came to China. I felt like in some way they came to take me home. And I’d been there for so long I even had doubts leaving. It was a really good thing to take me home.

In August of 2000, after living in China for 11 months, Jason returned home with his family.

[Jason] When I stepped out the plane, I just remember, in Boston and all places, I remembered the fresh air, and the blue sky, just a very nice environment. Go home again, it’s really comforting.

Jason was fortunate; because he is an American, he was able to escape from the Chinese police and the people spying on him– Jason was able to leave China. Millions of innocent Falun Gong practitioners in China are not as fortunate. From day to day, they face police harassment, fines, dismissal from jobs and schools, and illegal detention in labor camps and mental institutions. They are beaten, tortured, raped, and even murdered. And those who torture them are their fellow countrymen.

[Jason] I don’t think anybody in world associates the Chinese leadership today with Chinese people. When I think of China, I think of 5,000 year old place with deep culture heritage. I think of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism. I think of marshal arts, excellent cooking. I don’t think of the current leadership nor the past 50 years of that party’s leadership. And I’m very surprised that Chinese people do, and that they forgot who they are.

[Show still picture of man being forced down on ground and roll list of names on screen of people who have been killed. Fade the picture out to black and keep names rolling. Along bottom of the screen have the text “For more information on how to help stop the persecution in China, call ??? or go to www. Falundafa.org