High-profile prisoner of conscience Gong Piqi allegedly died of a “sudden brain hemorrhage,” but his body had telltale signs of torture.
by Yang Feng
Colonel Gong Piqi, former deputy chief of staff of the Shandong Provincial Reserve Artillery Division, was one of the highest-profile Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. He was born in Qingdao, Shandong, in 1955.
His brilliant military career came to a halt when the CCP discovered that Gong was a Falun Gong practitioner. He was forced to retire, deprived of his salary, dispossessed of his home, and his children were expelled from school.
On May 13, 2005, he and his wife were arrested by the Qingdao police. His wife was sentenced to five years in jail under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code. Gong was sentenced to five and a half years. When he was released, in 2013, he reported that he had been systematically tortured.
Repressing movements labeled as “cults,” including through a misuse of taxes, and denying tax justice also happens in Italy. But more remedies exist there.
Reading the articles scholars from different countries have published about the Tai Ji Men case evidences both similarities and differences with the situation in Italy.
It seems to me that the Tai Ji Men case has three main features. First, a repression in 1996 of spiritual movements labeled as “cults,” largely dictated by political reasons. In the case of Tai Ji Men, a crucial role was played by a prosecutor who decided to make the case as spectacular as possible, and involved the media from the beginning. Although he had announced that he had uncovered serious crimes, no evidence was found to support his claim, and he even fabricated evidence. In the end, after the courts’ thorough investigations, he lost all his criminal cases against Tai Ji Men, proving his accusations were false.
This sounds familiar to a scholar observing the case from Italy. Although the situation is slightly quieter now, we had a long season in Italy where prosecutors turned justice into a show for the benefit of the media. Some of these prosecutors eventually became politicians, members of the Parliament, founders of political parties, governors of states, and mayors of large cities. In some cases, prosecutors targeted new religious and spiritual movements. Just as in the Tai Ji Men case, they started with well-publicized police raids, and tried to get as much media attention as possible, but most of these actions ended up with the defendants being found not guilty.
