Witnessing History: One Chinese Woman's Fight for Freedom

By Jennifer Zeng

Zheng (Jennifer) Zeng was a graduate in science from Beijing University. She was a wife, a mother, and a Communist Party member. But because she followed a spiritual practice called Falun Gong, her life in China was shattered. Adhering to the practice's simple tenets of Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance, she was amazed that the Party would institute a crack down, arrest her and demand that she recant. After twice being held at a detention center and refusing, she was sentenced without trial to reeducation through forced labor. Her "enlightenment"-in part undertaken by fellow prisoners incarcerated for prostitution, pornography and drug addiction-took the form of beatings, torture with electric prods, starvation, sleep deprivation, and forced labor. She was compelled to knit for days at a time, her hands bleeding, to produce goods contracted for sale in the US market. Many Falun Gong practitioners died under the harsh conditions. Zheng Zeng was lucky.

Thousands of others remain deprived by an oppressive Chinese government of their freedom of speech and assembly and the freedom to believe as they choose. This is the testament to her ordeal and theirs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781569477885

Reviews for Witnessing History

[tommyb_50 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“Witnessing History” is a harrowing account of one woman’s experience with China’s repression of Falun Gong, the spiritual/religious/moral code movement that swept through much of China in the 1990s. Her story of the passionate adherence of Falun Gong practitioners to their beliefs despite the torture, forced labor and brainwashing practices that the Chinese government has used and is still using ina fruitless attempt to eliminate Falun Gong could be interpreted as a story of cult-like devotion to the practice, but a better explanation is that it reflects the courageous resistance of ordinary people to government attempts to repress their beliefs. The Chinese government has used all of its propaganda tools to characterize Falun Gong as an evil cult that is harmful to society – in much the same way as it now is using propaganda to give the world a false picture of the unrest in Tibet. The true story is that the government was threatened by a practice that was replacing the state as the most significant force in society for large numbers of people and has devoted a huge amount of resources to its repression. The Falun Gong issue has largely disappeared from United States news in recent years, but the repression continues. If our own government were not guilty of its own repressive and torture-oriented tactics, it would be much better able to take a stand against the Chinese government’s tactics.