opinion

It's a matter of conscience
by Falun Gong

Many people write to us and ask why our work revolves around China, why do we not work to stop the United States from committing so many reprehensible acts against its victims?

The simple and straightforward answer is: because we are determined to defend the most fundamental right of human beings, the right to conscience, and to stop the worst of all crimes, crimes against conscience.

In the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that all men are endowed with "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Those unalienable rights, unfortunately, have too often been taken away from human beings.

There is one thing that no external force can take away from a human being. That is one's conscience. No one can force us to change our mind; we have to agree to. It is the only thing that a human being truly owns and controls. Conscience, therefore, defines humanity, and the right to conscience is a human being's most fundamental right.

Since there is no direct access to human conscience, attempts to coerce people's conscience must be exerted through other violations. That is the underlying reason why violations of freedom of belief are often coupled with violations of other basic rights, an observation that Ms. Asma Jahangir, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Belief and Religion, has noted in one of her reports.

When human beings lose their conscience, there will be no bottom-line, and no telling what decadent minds will do. Many are outraged by toxic food and toys exported from China, and some analysts attribute that to the "lack of rule of law" in China. When there is no conscience, human intelligence will be ill used to evade all laws for personal gain.

The moral bankruptcy in China is the result of over fifty years of crimes against conscience by the Chinese communist regime. In recent years, the Chinese regime has taken its crimes against conscience to other parts of the world, plunging people in Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and other regions into worse human rights suffering, and enticing Western corporations such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco to cooperate with its human rights violations.

Since goading people to act against their conscience is the very basis of the Chinese regime's rule, it has viewed conscience as the greatest threat to its rule and spent the fiercest violence on people who insist on their conscience. The Chinese communist regime's persecution of Falun Gong is its latest and most vicious attack against conscience.

In standing up to the CCP, Falun Gong practitioners not only are standing up for their own right to conscience, but also taking a stand for all of humanity.

How can we afford not to stand with them? How can we not devote ourselves to stopping the Chinese communist regime's crimes against conscience?

If right and wrong can be compromised, why have right and wrong? ... Conscience, thus, defines human nature, and the right to conscience is a human being's most fundamental right.

No crime, therefore, is worse than the crime against conscience.