July 20 Will Become an International Day of Mourning in the Future: Opinion

By Sally Appert & Kathryn Lovett

Chris Chappell answered a question on July 18 about China’s traditional “Mandate of Heaven” concept, on his China Uncensored YouTube video “China Slammed by Floods.”

People have been mentioning the Mandate of Heaven in the China Uncensored videos’ comments sections in the context of the disasters China has been suffering recently, which now include apocalyptic flooding that has drowned out homes in 27 out of 31 provinces. It’s intense.

COVID-19 deaths have also been hitting China especially hard, according to reports by The Epoch Times, which has numerous sources in China, offering a window into the true virus situation over there.

Trade in China has been suffering, too, more than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to admit, as people in other countries lose interest in working with its state-sanctioned intellectual property theft and narrative control. Countries such as Australia and the United States have been applying increasing pressure on the CCP as well.

In traditional Chinese culture, it was believed that the Mandate of Heaven determined who ruled a country. It was also believed that good is rewarded and evil is punished. If China experienced disasters, the emperor would assume fault and consider what he had done wrong. If he ignored the signs, the understanding was that Heaven would replace him.

Here, of course, we have to distinguish between the CCP and the Chinese people. All along, it has been the Chinese people who have suffered the most under the CCP’s rule, and the disasters happening today cannot be blamed on them.

Observing the increasing speed at which the Chinese communist regime seems to be crumbling, and thinking about the Mandate of Heaven, we’ve been reflecting on some of the CCP’s more heinous crimes—especially as July 20 approaches.

Most people are aware of the atrocities taking place against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as well as the persecution of Tibetans. But fewer have heard of the political campaign that came between those, which has been perhaps the most brutal in Chinese history (and all three are still ongoing).

July 20, 1999 was the day the violent campaign against Falun Gong began.

In the 1990s, the peaceful meditation discipline called Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) became popular in China. The practice became famous for its physical and mental health benefits, and it spread rapidly by word of mouth. By 1999, an estimated 70 to 100 million people in China were practicing Falun Gong’s slow-moving exercises and living by its principles—truthfulness, kindness, and tolerance.

After July 20, 1999, all over the country, Falun Gong adherents were pulled from their homes and imprisoned in labor camps by the CCP. Meanwhile, state-controlled news media began a relentless campaign of slanderous propaganda against Falun Gong.

In the beginning, the general public thought highly of Falun Gong and were not on board with the persecution. Most people knew someone who practiced Falun Gong and knew practitioners to be kind and good people. So in order to strengthen support for the persecution, the Party staged a scene in Tiananmen Square in which several people set themselves on fire while claiming to be Falun Gong practitioners.

The video, along with intense and alarming commentary, was broadcast all over China on every news channel for many days, and people started to believe that Falun Gong’s teachings might really cause people to commit suicide. When real Falun Gong adherents spoke up to explain that it couldn’t be true because Falun Gong’s teachings forbid violence and suicide, they were arrested and thrown into labor camps.

The atrocities that have happened inside those labor camps are unthinkable. Victims have been tortured to the point of death or mental breakdown.

In addition, their vital organs have often been taken for transplants. In June 2019, an independent tribunal in London investigated allegations of organ harvesting in China and reached “the unavoidable final conclusion that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply.”

The persecution has continued for the past 21 years to this day.

Even other countries have been subjected to the propaganda against the group, as the CCP’s tentacles reach far and wide. No expense has been spared to shape the global narrative, through Confucius Institutes in universities, blackmailing companies that want access to the China market, paid sections in well-known newspapers, and infiltration into organizations and political bodies.

However, for the past 21 years, Falun Gong practitioners have been working to peacefully raise awareness of the persecution. They hope that people in China will one day soon have freedom of belief again, and that the world’s people will no longer be deceived by the CCP.

We sit now at a turning point. The CCP is losing its grip on China. The ancients would have said it is losing the Mandate of Heaven.

When the CCP is gone, people the world over will see clearly what’s been happening, and at that time, the CCP’s numerous campaigns of persecution will cease.

That day will be a day of immense celebration. China and the world will be freed from the global monster the CCP has become. People will prepare huge feasts and dance in the streets. It will be one of the happiest holidays.

Meanwhile, July 20 will become a day of mourning. Perhaps people will turn the lights down in their homes and light candles in remembrance of the injustice, and in profound respect for a strong group of people who never gave up their faith and never stopped standing up for the truth.