Witnessing History: One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong
by Heidi Sibley
Appearing on the bookshelves this month is Jennifer Zeng’s Witnessing History-one woman’s fight for freedom and Falun Gong, published by Allen & Unwinded. Witnessing History is a moving account of how a bright, successful young scientist and happily married mother survived illegal detention and torture, only to be forced to flee her family and homeland to seek asylum in Australia.
The story reveals a hidden tragedy that is unfolding behind closed doors in China today.
Jennifer begins her story with the analogy of an ancient Chinese saying: “Still water runs deep!…Looking at the water’s stillness on the surface, we can hardly see or fell the rapid current that lies underneath, but, what lies under the surface could be truly terrifying, and yet the world is still largely unaware of the vastness of the current.”
Living in modern day China, Jennifer excelled in her academic studies and began a successful career. She met her husband, also a young academic, and together the married couple had their first child. However, her once peaceful life was suddenly shattered when she was illegally detained in a camp for her belief in the spiritual practice Falun Gong. Jennifer describes her forced labor camp ordeal: “During my year-long detainment, I experienced far more brutality and darkness than I ever thought existed, and certainly more than I could bear.”
Witnessing History is a testimony of what is currently happening to the countless hundreds of thousands of innocent Falun Gong practitioners locked inside China’s inhumane jails and forced-labour camps. During her time in detention, Jennifer was forced to squat for hours in the blistering sun, endure endless physical and verbal abuse, and knit garment until her hands bled, to feed the booming Chinese economy.
Jennifer saw many of her companies tortured to the point of dying and many still remain incarcerated. With the rest of the world blinded by the water’s alluring surface and the pot of gold at the end of China’s economic rainbow, Witnessing History brings to light what is really occurring under the “still surface” of Communist China today.
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Click here for info about where to read or buy Jennifer's book in English and Chinese, as well as where to watch award-winning documentary based on Jennifer''s story: "Free China: The Courage to Believe".
Jennifer at a book-signing event in Brisbane, Australia in May 2005.
