vietnam vet invites falun gong to new york city veterans parade

Falun Gong, ‘Come Stand With Us’

Vietnam War veteran invites persecuted Falun Gong practitioners to march in annual parade

By Nick Zifcak, Epoch Times





 | November 13, 2013

Last Updated: November 13, 2013 7:50 am

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NEW YORK—The lack of freedom in China has long disgusted Patrick Gualtieri.

(Patrick Gualtieri

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Patrick Gualtieri

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 Honoring Our Veterans

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 2012

Pat Gualtieri is well-known throughout the veterans’ community as a leader, producer of special events and veterans advocate. He embodies the essence of patriotic pride, respect for service, honor for veterans and love of country. As a Vietnam Veteran, he knows just how important it is to embrace our veterans – to ‘never forget’ another generation. Throughout his 15+ years of community service, Pat consistently goes ‘above and beyond’, providing assistance, direction, friendship and resources to many a veteran. Pat extends himself ‘times over’ to make it ‘go right’ for another veteran. Years ago, he formed a close working, professional relationship with Samaritan Village Veterans Program. With his ‘larger-thanlife’, buoyant personality, sharp instincts and business savvy; Pat became an unofficial mentor, providing ‘ad hoc’ inspiration and training for many a Samaritan veteran.

Pat’s indelible signature is by far his production of the NYC Veterans Day Parade for the past 12+ years. He’s brought new energy, vitality, purpose and patriotism to the forefront; working tirelessly to ensure every component part is well handled. He’s our unsung hero of an incredible amount of time, commitment and dedication. With creative vision, high standards and driving spirit, Pat’s elevated the Parade with increased attendance and participation. Pat’s a champion of veterans, creating The Goodwill Valentines Caravan and Thank You for Serving. He heightened awareness of veterans’ issues as a Founding Father for The Mike Handy Veteran’s Foundation. )




The veterans’ advocate personally experienced the regime’s suffocating grip on freedom. It happened during a speaking tour in China years ago. Strong Impact
“I was in China many, many years ago, and I saw what wasn’t allowed,” said Gualtieri. When singers accompanying him performed the American national anthem he got in trouble with his Chinese hosts. “They went nuts … I was called, and I had to go see the officials.”Officials were upset about the musical performances they called propaganda. As an invited guest to dinner, Gualtieri said former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s brother made clear to him they were watching him closely. Gualtieri felt the crushing weight of communist oppression. In a strange land, he felt vulnerable and alone.In 2004, Gualtieri saw Falun Gong practitioners on the streets of New York, protesting the persecution of the spiritual practice in China, which is also known as Falun Dafa. He saw people in cages demonstrating the torture adherents were suffering. He immediately understood. “Yes, yes! I know that!” said Gualtieri, recalling his reaction. He added, they lock you up and you’re never heard from again!A Vietnam War veteran, Gualtieri has worked organizing New York City Veterans Day parades since 2000. He is executive director of the United War Veterans Council.Gualtieri decided to invite Falun Gong practitioners to join the annual Veterans Day parade. He wanted Falun Gong practitioners to be seen with veterans, to be under their protection. He said he wanted to send a message: China is torturing these people, but Falun Gong, “you come stand with us.”“To me, this was my way of saying … you are not going to do this to these people,” said Gualtieri. “If you are positioning with America, you position with veterans, you’re untouchable!”Gualtieri said he also wants Americans to understand that China is not free. “People in America, they don’t know,” he said.“Religious freedom doesn’t exist in that country,” said Gualtieri. He discounts China’s economic growth in the complete absence of religious freedom. He said he doesn’t want Americans to be hoodwinked into believing the rosy picture of China that its leaders paint.Billed as “America’s Parade,” New York’s Veterans Day Parade is the largest such event honoring veterans. More than twenty thousand people marched in the parade Nov. 11. The parade is a key annual event honoring veterans.Top Army commander Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno joined the event, marching alongside New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The first female four-star general, Ann Dunwoody, was grand marshal of the parade.Falun Gong practitioner Crystal Liu has been joining the Veterans Day parade since the group was first invited in 2004. Practitioners really appreciate that there is a free environment here in the United States to practice Falun Gong, said Liu. That is something “we don’t have in China.”Liu is in charge of a section of the Falun Gong parade entry known as the heavenly ladies, which consists of a group of young women in flowing Chinese gowns. Liu said that in Chinese culture people have the concept of “heavenly ladies casting flowers.” According to Liu, heavenly ladies cast flowers in the heavens when people on earth are receiving a blessing.With the ladies processing in the Veterans Day parade, she hopes to bring “blessings from heaven to all the people in the audience.”Over the years, Falun Gong practitioners have gratefully accepted the United War Veterans Council’s invitation. Liu said adherents of the practice want to show respect to veterans.This year, around 200 Falun Gong practitioners marched in the parade. Practitioners brought banners displaying Falun Gong’s core values of truth, compassion, and forbearance. Banners also called for an end to the persecution of the practice in China, which started in 1999 and continues to this day.The Falun Gong entry also included a lion dance team, more than 25 banner-bearing teams, a man-powered float, a contingent of traditional Chinese waist drummers, and a group demonstrating the peaceful exercises, which are part of the practice of Falun Gong.“For me, when I see them coming up Fifth Avenue, I am really proud of it,” said Gualtieri.

why did Wang Lijun leave? he was going to be eliminated

Why the Wang Lijun — Bo Xilai Affair Matters

Mobster takes revenge on the Communist Party

By Stephen Gregory
Epoch Times StaffCreated: February 22, 2012Last Updated: April 3, 2012

Related articles: Opinion » Thinking About China

     

Commentary

Wang Lijun, former Chief of Chongqing Public Security Bureau, attends a meeting during the annual National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 6, 2011 in Beijing, China (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

Some events shift the way in which we look at things: What had seemed permanent is revealed to be fleeting, and institutions that appeared solid are seen to be crumbling.

Such a transformative event was the sudden visit by the Chinese official Wang Lijun to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6. Today’s paper(Pages A6 — A9) carries a special four-page section that examines the background and implications of the affair Wang set in motion.

Wang was the former vice mayor and chief of police for the province-level city of Chongqing in central-western China. According to a U.S. government official quoted by the website Washington Free Beacon and according to the dissident Chinese-language website Boxun, Wang had gone to Chengdu to defect, but the United States refused to give him asylum.

Investigation and Flight

The tale of Wang’s attempted defection reads like a spy story.

On Feb. 2, Bo Xilai, the head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Chongqing, relieved Wang of his duties as chief of police and demoted him from first vice mayor to seventh vice mayor, with a portfolio that included the environment and education.

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Click this tag to read The Epoch Times’ collection of articles on the Chinese Regime in Crisis. Intra-CCP politics are a challenge to make sense of, even for veteran China watchers. Here we attempt to provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation.

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According to Boxun, Bo had an informant on the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), a secretive and powerful Party organ that investigates and punishes cadres suspected of corruption. The informant told Bo that the CCDI, which is headed by his enemies, had launched an investigation of Wang.

During Bo’s five-year reign over Chongqing, Wang had been Bo’s henchman. Among other duties, Wang had led Bo’s “hitting the black” campaign. Said to be an anti-Mafia campaign, it was used as a political weapon.

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Businessmen were jailed and their wealth expropriated. CCP officials put in place by Bo’s predecessor were also jailed—Wen Qiang, Wang’s predecessor as head of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau, was executed. Critics say Wang only targeted those gangs Bo did not control.

Wang, then, literally knew where the bodies were buried in Chongqing. Bo recognized that the CCDI sought to bring him down by investigating Wang, and so Bo threw his longtime ally overboard. Bo arrested 19 of Wang’s close associates. According to Boxun, two were killed, one committed suicide, and several were tortured.

Bo assigned policemen to monitor their former boss day and night. Wang, who knew the fates of his former staff, appeared unperturbed in public. In a Feb. 5 interview he spoke calmly of the challenge of his new duties, but Wang feared he could be assassinated at any time.

On Feb. 6, he donned a disguise, walked past the police camped outside his apartment building, climbed into a regular civilian car, and began the four-hour drive west to Chengdu. Using a temporary cellphone, he called the consulate to tell them he was on his way and wanted an interview.

Revenge at the Consulate

Wang spent over 24 hours in the consulate. The Washington Free Beacon quotes former State Department official John Tkacik, who when serving in China dealt with walk-ins requesting asylum, as saying Wang would have only been kept overnight in order to continuously debrief him.

Meanwhile, Bo had discovered Wang’s flight and dispatched Mayor Huang Qifan, who surrounded the U.S. Consulate the morning of Feb. 7 with 70 police cars, including armored vehicles, according to Hong Kong’s Mingpao newspaper.

The U.S. Consulate had informed Beijing of Wang’s presence there, and several high-ranking officials flew to Chengdu. They commanded the Sichuan national security forces to disperse the Chongqing police, who departed by noon.

That evening, Wang left the consulate and was taken under the protection of Qiu Jin, a vice minister of state security. Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported that as Wang left the consulate, he shouted out to the crowd that he was Bo’s “sacrificial lamb” and that he had transferred important information overseas.

On Feb. 9, Wang was put under investigation by the CCP Central Disciplinary Committee, according to a report on the mainland website Caixin.

Wang’s flight to Chengdu was not just about self-preservation, it was about revenge.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, “a source familiar with Wang’s debriefing said it contained details of corruption and links to organized crime by his boss, Bo Xilai, as well as details about Chinese police repression of dissent.”

Boxun has reported that Wang claimed that Bo and Zhou Yongkang, a powerful member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, were conspiring to oust the presumptive next head of the CCP, Xi Jinping, after Xi takes power at the 18th Party Congress next fall.

Avoiding Responsibility

The CCP has always had some level of factional struggle. In 1998, Chen Xitong, the former mayor of Beijing, was jailed, putatively for corruption but actually because the faction headed by Jiang Zemin wanted him out of the way. In 2008, Shanghai’s Mayor Chen Liangyu was jailed, putatively for corruption, but actually as a way for Hu Jintao to weaken the Jiang faction.

But not since the plane of Lin Biao, who had been tabbed to succeed Mao Zedong, exploded over the Mongolian desert as Lin fled to the USSR, have there been credible reports of a planned coup in China.

Lin probably believed he needed to depose Mao to preserve the CCP. Wang Lijun was not devoted to an ideology; he was a mobster with a fancy title who ran an elaborate protection racket in one of China’s great cities.

Arthur Waldron, Lauder professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to The Epoch Times in an e-mail. “I have difficulty seeing what glue holds the CCP together any longer—nothing except a shared desire to hold on to power and to enrich themselves.”

While the Chinese regime appears to be rapidly amassing power in the forms of wealth and high-tech military weaponry, in fact the leadership’s criminality and lust for power are pulling it apart.

The weapon of choice that CCP officials use against one another is the knowledge they have of one another’s crimes. Today’s CCP has no greater crime on its hands than the almost 13-yearlong persecution of Falun Gong.

The attempt to avoid responsibility for this massive violation of human rights is forcing some officials to try to hold onto power in order to protect themselves. As the steady stream of accurate Internet leaks about Bo and Wang these past two weeks has demonstrated, other officials fight back by publicizing colleagues’ wrongdoings.

In this process of disintegration, professor Waldron warns that no hopes should be attached to one faction or one individual.

He writes, “My greatest fear with respect to the U.S. is that we will start taking sides on Chinese internal politics. … The ultimate effect of this is to tie American politics, which are constitutional, to Chinese, which are personal, dictatorial, and corrupt.”