Humanity in Politics and Politics in Humanity
——Written in the Eve of Mid-Autumn Festival

Yang, Jian-Li

10/3/2001

Whenever the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival comes, people cannot avoid sending greetings to each other. Friends who usually have little contacts have chances to tell each other, by sending a holiday greeting, that “ I haven’t forgotten you yet”. Then everyone feels happy and satisfied. Despite of being a person who seems understand all of the benefits of holiday greetings, I almost forgot the moon festival at all until a special friend called me to say “Happy holiday”.

This friend called me in the eve of the moon festival. After we greeted each other, he said: “ I am deeply regretted that friends like you can not come back to China. Or we can work together to do a lot of things that benefit this society. You should have family members still live in China, are you? This kind of politics (of forbidding you from coming back) is really inhuman.” Then he heaved several sighs. This friend is working for a huge government sponsored financial institution located in Shenzhen. We never met face to face. But because both of us care about contemporary China and its future, we often exchange our ideas through calls and emails. As time goes by, we feel we become really familiar and close with each other. In an information era, a “net” enables so many people who, although never meet, get familiar, understand or even become close friends with each other like us.

His warm words brought the distance between us even closer. Even I could not see the expressions on his face, I could feel, literally, the sincere wishes originated from his heart. I was a little bit touched. Yet, I had little mood to repeat, once more, my angry towards those who deprived my right to go back to China, and the sufferings I experienced therefore, to this sympathized friend.

“How is your families? Do you have kids?” I switched the topic naturally to his family, a topic I never touched before in our former communication. My question made my friend became very talkative as if a button of voice box were pushed. His tone became unusually pleasant and alive, too. He told me, with pride, that he had a son of ten years old, who is very bright and full of curiosity. He then said: My boy was good at observing and thinking. Having overcome a life-threatening illness, he began to discuss with me on obscure topics such as death, the meaning of life. Recently he kept asking me one question. The question was: when he was still hospitalized, there were a lot aunts and uncles and grandpas and grandmas, who were all Fa Lun Kong practitioners, came to visit and take care of him. They were all good people. Why they were all arrested later? Every time we touched the Fa Lun Kong issue, he reminded me: “Dad, stop here. Don’t let the police overhear it.” Then, the conversation between my friend and I halted, followed by a long-time silence on both sides of the line.

Except those characters born by nature, a 10-years-old kid is too young to have any pre-defined stand towards virtually everything. Yet he has already experienced the distortion of his nature-born sincerity caused by what happened around him. Also has he felt, consciously or sub-consciously, the possible danger he might face should he choose to reject the distortion. Fear already began to invade his life. I struggled to collect the memories of the my generation’s child hood which was full of distortion and fear, then tried to design a satisfactory future picture for this 10 years kid: Should I let the kid grow up by fully developing his characters according to his nature, while continuously clashing with the inhumane political reality, then watch him to be imprisoned, exiled or prosecuted, or should I let him to be slaved by the inhuman politics, to lose his conscience, or help those prosecutors, or even be a part of this inhuman institution himself? The growing up experiences of my generations seems all fell into those categories. Should we let the young generation to repeat this tragedy? Thousands of kids’ lovely faces appear in front of my eyes, but I can hardly imagine their futures. I can not help keeping my concerns and sorrow. Why Chinese politics always have to build their “Glory”, “Stability” and “In accordance with the country’s reality” on the fact that “So many family cannot reunite under full moon?”

Mid-Autumn Festival is a day of family reunion in Chinese tradition, yet there are so many overseas dissidents can not go back to home in China to see their family members. There are several of my good friends could not even realize their small wishes of meeting their parents for the last time before they passed away or mourning them in front of their bodies. This tragedy is, of course, the direct result of China government’s inhuman policy towards dissidents. But, I saw a dangerous emotional tendency existed among my fellow dissidents, too. Some fellow dissidents regard those who return to China by making a private deal with the government, not by persuading the government to change its policy to respect the rights of all dissidents to return to China, as a betray of the principles, regardless of what reasons those people had to do so. As a result, those who want or did return to China for bon fide personal reasons face the moral dilemma raised by their fellow dissidents and therefore their souls are doubled tortured. As dissidents whose final goal is to establish a democratic system that will be fully in accordance with humanity, we should avoid using “revolution” as an excuse to suppress “humanity”. For each individual, to be able to see their relatives last time before their passing away is far more important than the moral issue raised by signing a “Guarantee” or whatever promise sheet on which they are forced to put their signatures in exchanging of their permit to go back to China. Having said that, that doesn’t necessarily mean there is no need for dedication, sacrifice, and in some special situation, even temporarily ignore the needs of the loved ones to fight against the totalitarianism in order to build up a democratic system. But, all of those sacrifices should be a result motivated by one’s voluntary choice, not by force, nor by cheating. For those friends who choose sacrifice, there is a monument built in my heart to memorize them forever. For those friends who choose not sacrifice (But not those who do so at the cost of betraying others), there are echoes of understanding ring in my heart forever.

It is my sincere wishes that there is more humanity in our politics and less politics in our humanity.