LOS ANGELES – A who’s who of Chinese Democracy activists rallied on the South Lawn of City Hall Sunday morning to support the 44 million Chinese who have renounced their membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations, and to express the need for democracy and human rights in mainland China.
A crowd of about 150 gathered on the rusty Spanish tiles between City Hall and First Street, holding banners decrying the CCP’s various persecutions since it took power in 1949, including its recent lack of oversight in the production of melamine-contaminated milk products, which has led to four deaths and over 14,000 infants being hospitalized.
Ti-Anna Wang was one of the 19 speakers at the event. Ti-Anna, born in November 1989 and so-named after Tiananmen Square, is the daughter of renowned democracy activist Dr. Bingzhang Wang, who by many is considered the founder of the overseas Chinese democracy movement.
Bingzhang, a permanent US resident, was sentenced to life-imprisonment in China in 2002 for his involvement in pro-democracy activities. During a visit to Vietnam in 2002, he along with his pro-democracy colleagues were illegally arrested by Chinese secret police and detained in a temple. Bingzhang was sent to southern China, but his family didn’t hear a word about his whereabouts until six months later, when his colleagues were released.
Ti-Anna is deferring her studies at Montreal’s McGill University for one year and working for the release of her father by joining the Washington, D.C. branch of Initiatives for China, an organization created by Dr. Jianli Yang to facilitate the peaceful transition of democracy in China.
In a soft but hopeful voice Ti-Anna said to all at the rally, “My father would be touched to see others working for his dream.”
The theme of the rally was threefold: to welcome the emergence of the new China without the Chinese Communist Party; to congratulate those who have renounced their membership in the CCP; and to call for the CCP to dissolve. Here is what some of the speakers had to say:
Liangyong Fei, a nuclear physicist living in Germany, is also president of the Federation for a Democratic China:
“The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” exposes the whole evil history and the tyrannical nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With this, many people understand the CCP much better and see through it. Now there are more than 40 million people who have quit the Communist party, the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers.
“This is a very good thing if people choose to disconnect themselves from the CCP, leave the CCP. This is a very peaceful and rational movement that protests tyrannical dictatorship,” Liangyong continued. “Quitting the CCP is not just about the number of withdrawals. What is more important is its social effect. Now many people may think why there are so many people quitting the CCP? What’s going on?
“This has become the ruling crisis of the Chinese Communist regime.”
Ming Su, a former professor at Peking University: “Quitting the CCP is a great victory for Chinese people who are awakening. It is also a death knell for the CCP, and the dawn of a new, democratic China.”
Peng Xiaoming, president of the Chinese Students and scholars association in Germany: “Quitting this party (CCP) and leaving this evil organization is to regain people’s humanity.”
Zhu Xueyuang, a physicist and professor of history: “It (the CCP) wants to ‘communistize’ our thoughts; it doesn’t want us to have different thoughts. Sixty years ago people believed in the CCP, but all Chinese suffered as a result, and then the whole world will suffer. It’s similar to how people in Germany believed in Hitler, then the whole world suffered.”
Xue Sheng, a writer and poet, is vice president of the Federation for a Democratic China: “More and more people want to quit the CCP’s organizations. No one wants to live in a suffering, persecutory, and servant-like environment.
“People definitely want to help themselves out, and quitting the CCP is a way,” Xue added. “Before, many people thought, ‘I don’t care for politics. I just want to live a peaceful life.’ But actually their wish for a peaceful life was destroyed again and again. Everyone has been affected by the CCP, and finally they find the only solution is to abandon this regime, and the first step is to disconnect oneself from the Party (CCP).”
Tang Yuanjun, a renowned democratic activist, noted that the Quitting the CCP movement is great because it is peaceful, and results in no blood. He added, “In China I felt that I wasn’t proud to be a human because we don’t have any human rights. We feel that we don’t have human dignity in our country [under the CCP]. The regime is still committing large scale human rights violations.”
