By Donovan Mullen
Opinion
Many countries allow the right to practice whatever religion they want; the United States is one such country. Our founding fathers wanted to build our country on freedom, that includes the freedom of religion. We allow all religions in the United States, we have Christianity, Judaism, Satanism, Pastafarianism, Jedi, and Sith (yes, I am serious). All these religions and more and there is nothing our government can do to prevent these religions from existing, which is fantastic, anyone can believe what they want, we cannot force anyone to believe anything. Most modern societies follow behind this philosophy to a point. The United Kingdom follows this to a point, Australia follows this but there is one thing that binds us all together in this. We are developed and don’t abide by Marxist teachings.
In the Soviet Union the communists took a hard stance against religion, they confiscated property, buildings and even went as far as to propagate atheism in schools. They harassed believers and priests were killed, tortured and sent to prison camp in the first five years of the Soviet Union they executed 28 Russian Orthodox Bishops and 1,200 priests. They did allow certain religious organizations to exist but they were viewed as the property of the state. It got worse as time went on, prison camps, mental institutions and so much more. They are not the first communist country to do this and it is happening today.
The communist party of China is the founding and ruling power of the Peoples Republic of China is no exception to the rule. In 1999 the last communist dictator of China moved towards a brutal persecution of a specific religion. Faul Gong religion prescribes to the practices of peace and spirituality. The dictator ran a brutal campaign which included imprisonment, torture and even death.
“Facing autocratic state power, Falun Gong practitioners took peaceful approaches to speak out about the truth of the persecution to Chinese people and the world. According to Amnesty International, Freedom House, and others, tens of thousands of practitioners in China have been arrested and imprisoned for voicing their thoughts and beliefs. My mom is one of them.”
This excerpt comes from a change.org petition from a woman named Iris whose mother has been subject to the persecution of this campaign. Her mother has been imprisoned multiple times under this campaign. She was arrested in 2006 and imprisoned in 2009 and was summarily tortured and brutalized. Her friend was tortured to death six months after Iris’s mother’s release. She was arrested again in the July of 2016 and was sentence then levied against her on February 24th, 2018. Iris’s family petitioned a higher court and was denied to have her sentence overturned. Iris who has been working for years to save her family from the communists of China started a Change.org petition to help fight for her mother’s freedom.
Show this example to anyone who wants to say communism is good. Communism is a plague on the earth, it kills indiscriminately and removes the freedom of choice from those who are under the communist rule. The choice to choose your religion is big, communism removes not only the right to believe what you want but takes away all other rights.
