NTD Television

There’s an ancient Chinese proverb: “You can’t understand until you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.”

When Oliver Perrett was in high school he was introduced to an ancient Chinese meditation practice called Falun Gong. An encounter destined to take him on a journey from a small farm in outback Australia to the world’s most populated nation, China.

Oliver wasn’t planning a retreat. He wanted to find out why a practice recognized for its health and healing properties, was targeted by communist authorities.

[Oliver Perrett, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“If you have freedom of thought, if you have a faith that is stronger than your allegiance to the Communist Party they see that as a threat.”

Oliver traveled to China’s Hebei Province to teach English. After one year, he had no choice but to leave. Police interrogated him overnight, threatening him to “stop participating in Falun Gong activities or bad things would happen.”

[Oliver Perrett, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“Unlike the Nazi’s in Germany where they just wipe everyone out, its not ethnic cleansing, it’s trying to break your faith, because Communist Party relies on controlling peoples minds.”

Oliver felt the climate of fear in China is chilling. One day there was a public execution near his school. Students were required to watch it, while officials tried to prevent Oliver from knowing about it because he’s a westerner.

[Oliver Perrett, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“I taught in China so from a young age they are taught that they should love the Communist Party more than their mother and father and if you don’t love the Communist Party you don’t love China and you’re not patriotic unless you love the Communist Party and their brainwashed.”

With a university degree and fluent in Chinese, Oliver was one of the few Western Falun Gong practitioners to live in China since the persecution began in 1999. At that time he formed more than just friendships. He became the voice to those who had been tortured and who couldn’t tell their own stories.

[Oliver Perrett, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“A lot of practitioners have talked about being electrocuted with electric batons that are extremely high voltage, one shock makes their body shake and burns their flesh, they use it all over their body even for practitioners that are like over 70 years old, like my friend I talked about just before who was persecuted for 6 years they also used electric batons on her a lot.”

Oliver’s friends are just a few of many Falun Gong practitioners who’ve suffered under the Chinese regime. The Falun Dafa Information Center has reported over 80,000 cases of torture and has confirmed over 3,500 deaths from abuse.

[Gina Shakespeare, NTD Sydney Correspondent]:
“To understand why the Chinese Communist Party persecutes Falun Gong you have to look at history. China’s 5,000 year-old civilization is steeped in Buddhist and Taoist belief, when Falun Gong rose to popularity in the 1990’s it was renaissance of traditional culture, a culture the Communists have been destroying for over half a century.”

Over the past nine years Oliver spent time in the United States and Asia. During a two-year stay in Hong Kong he was so exhausted from spending endless hours on the streets informing people about the persecution that when he returned to Australia he nearly collapsed from exhaustion.

But he believes giving his time volunteering these past nine years is a small sacrifice, knowing many prisoners of conscience will spend a lifetime languishing in China’s notorious prison system.

[Oliver Perrett, Falun Gong Practitioner]:
“I think the collapse of the communist party will bring a new future for China and that’s coming quite soon.”

Oliver hopes sooner rather than later the Chinese people will one day be free.

Gina Shakespeare, NTD, Sydney, Australia.

Original article