These three scholars were the secretary-general of the China Anti-Cult Association, a research fellow of the Chinese Academy of Science’s Psychological Research Institute, and a professor from Shanxi Normal University’s psychology department. They had all received financial assistance from the Chinese state for their work, which was devoted to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Specifically, they had researched using methods learned from psychology to compel Falun Gong adherents to renounce their beliefs. One assumes they were able to participate in the meeting because the organizers did not know about the nature of their research.
The three scholars who surfaced in New Jersey are examples of a general trend: the perversion of scientific research in China for the sake of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.
The Greatest Harm
Anyone who reads reports on the persecution of Falun Gong will be shocked at the abuses inflicted on the practitioners. From the perspective of the practitioners themselves, the most serious harm done to them is psychological.
Research tells us that the longest time a person can stay awake is 11 days; crossing this line will cause irreversible mental and physical harm. But Zhang Yijie, a female Falun Gong practitioner and former employee of the Ministry of Commerce, was persecuted and made to stay awake for 42 days because she refused to renounce her belief.
Every time she would start to fall asleep, a policeman would seize her collar and pour cold water down her clothes. It being the depth of winter, she was soaked and freezing to the bone.
During the time she was isolated and tortured, suffering all manner of physical and mental torment, the police played a song for her. It was one of the more famous in China at the time: “Mother’s Kiss.” The song tells of the deep longing a daughter feels for her mother.
Ms. Zhang herself was the mother of a son and daughter, both school-age. When the melody started playing, she could do nothing but feel inconsolable pain.
When Ms. Zhang first got to jail, she was put through a psychological evaluation. The destruction of body and mind she suffered was meticulously designed by experts. In a few short months, the cruel methods of persecution had changed Ms. Zhang’s appearance from an energetic, healthy professional in her prime, into an old, withered-looking woman with graying hair and a face full of wrinkles.
The treatment Ms. Zhang suffered is a glimpse into the persecution inflicted on large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners. The Falun Dafa Information Center estimates that hundreds of thousands of practitioners are currently in China’s Labor Camps.
Disgrace of Science
Looking at the direction of social science research in China over the last 10 years, particularly in the two or three years after the persecution against Falun Gong started in 1999, an enormous amount of the funding for social science research has been devoted to this topic.
The Social Science Foundation Research Guide, published by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science, determines which topics will be awarded research grants. Year after year, it has included the categories “anti-cultism,” “atheism,” and “the relationship between religion and the socialist system.” In the early years, Falun Gong was directly mentioned, but beginning in 2001, more general language, such as “evil cults” and the like, was adopted.
A large number of scholars in China have been lured into joining the ranks of those who persecute Falun Gong using scientific research as the weapon. All sorts of pretexts have been used for funding these studies—many of which focus from the perspective of psychology on how to “transform” Falun Gong practitioners.
Each province and city has under its control universities, think tanks, and other research institutes, and the scholars affiliated with these bodies must follow government orders when given a political task. The number of studies commissioned on the topic is, therefore, sizable.
On Dec. 18, 2007, Communist Party boss Hu Jintao, after listening to the report of two scholars of religion, told the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political bureau, “From strategic heights, under new circumstances, we must fully grasp the importance of religious work.”
This means that the CCP will continue to use the whole nation’s strength to comprehensively “transform” the beliefs of social groups. The CCP’s dread of freedom of belief goes right to its marrow, and at this moment, a major spiritual group in Chinese society is being put through a grim test.
Dr. Sun Yanjun was an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the Capital Normal University in Beijing. In 2008, he was sent to the University of Hawaii as a visiting scholar. In 2009 he publicly renounced the Chinese Communist Party and now lives in the United States. He considers himself lucky that during his time in China, he was never asked to do research on persecuting others. This article was first published in New Epoch Weekly.
