A WOMAN’S MEMOIR OF ABUSE AND TORTURE
The Courier Mail reports: “Jennifer Zeng’s memoir, Witnessing History—One Woman''s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong, is the kind of book that leaves you feeling shocked, depressed and—most of all—angry.
Describing the Chinese Government’s brutal persecution of tens of thousands of followers of Falun Gong—a pacifist and apolitical movement based on the tenets of truth, compassion and forbearance—Zeng’s book inspires such outrage that readers will probably feel the need to research the situation for themselves to see if the author has exaggerated the scale of the tragedy or the outrageousness of the Government’s actions.
Sadly, it seems she hasn’t. While the plight of the Falun Gong practitioners (or ‘students’ as they call themselves) has been reported in the West, it certainly hasn't received the attention it deserves. …
Zeng recalls many of her captor’s inventive methods of torture, such as being forced to stand for days on end with a saucer of water on one’s head, with a vicious beating ensuing whenever a drop was spilled. One woman was tied to a bed ‘for more than 50 days’ until ‘the muscles and skin of her whole back and arms went putrid.’ Another was stood on and attacked with an electric prod so that ‘her chest ended up looking like the fried underside of a pancake’ …
It’s difficult to criticise a book like this. Even if it was preachy or poorly written (which it isn’t), and even if it espouses a spiritual movement based on metaphysical philosophising that the reader might have trouble digesting (which I did), its message is so worthy and so powerfully expressed that it can’t be ignored.
The Chinese Government’s flagrant and frequent violations of its people’s fundamental human rights have not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, but nor have they received the attention and the scorn that they deserve. Let’s hope that Witnessing History marks another step towards reversing that situation.”
"Meet the Author" Invitation from Angus & Robertson, once known as "the biggest bookshop in the world".
