미등록[영상뉴스] 문화대혁명에서 살아남아 진실을 전하다…에포크타임스 CEO 재니스 트레이(1부)

How big is the epoch times that the Chinese Communist Party finds you as a threat? Terrorism and communism is two sides of the coin. Are people still in these labor camps? There are labor camps all across China. If you look at organ harvesting, there's a worldwide shortage of organs. So you're saying these are people who are being forced to give their organs away? I could have died during the Cultural Revolution. I could have died during the Tiananmen Massacre. The fact that I am alive is my duty and responsibility to give a voice to the voiceless. So Janice, welcome to PragerU. It is an honor to have you here. Congratulations on your role as CEO of the Epoch Times. It's almost kismet that here we are, two women who probably together speak about 10 different languages. And so I think it's really fun that the two of us get to do this together because what amazing visibility for the work that we're both doing for freedom around the world. Thank you, Marisa. Pleasure to be on your show. And I appreciate what you and Dennis have done over the years as something really important. Well, we appreciate you too. And I think that those who are going to listen in are really going to learn a lot. Many of us have heard about the Epoch Times. When people find out about the amazing work behind this organization and the magnitude and the scale of the work that Epoch Times has done both for America, but for the entire world, I think they'll be astonished. And so let's dive straight into this. I'd like people to know a little bit about your background and your childhood because it is so fascinating. Where were you born? Where were you raised? What was your life like as a child? Yeah, I was born in southern China during the Cultural Revolution. My parents are college graduate engineers. So they were sent to labor camps. When my mother's water broke, she rode on the back of the bicycle to the hospital. But there were no experienced doctors in the hospitals who were sent to labor camps to do farming work. And I was in a bridge position. So my mom and I had a narrow escape. So I will never forget to give a voice to the voiceless. And during the Cultural Revolution, I walked one and a half hours to school on another village, walked past cemeteries, the hill, farms, and ran for life because snakes were all around me. I actually received balloons from Taiwan as a child. And the balloons talked about refrigerators, cars, and which were absent in the labor camps. Later on, I went to Hong Kong, and my father sent me to a Christian school founded by the London missionaries because he was inspired by Einstein's belief in God. And he did not have a chance to learn Christianity in China. He wanted me to have a chance. And so from being a child laborer in mainland China during the Cultural Revolution, where I have to pick up crops on the crop fields during harvest season, carry fertilizers to the top of the hill of the sugar farm that funded the school. When I went to Hong Kong, I actually read textbooks of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, and I compared for the same historical periods. I found totally different stories. And so that really piqued my interest, like, what's the truth? And my turning point was the June 4th Tiananmen Square Massacre. I was not at the square, but my best friend was at the square. He was in medical school, so he carried dozens and dozens of bodies. And that triggered my decisions to come to the U.S. And I went to the University of Texas at Austin, and I studied accounting and worked two to three part-time jobs and passed my CPA exam before I graduated. So I got my master and undergraduate degrees in a total of four years. And I fell in love with America, you know, the freedoms and opportunities. And I started as a financial analyst and got my certified public accountant license and then transferred into different functions. So over the years, I have worked for multiple Fortune 500 companies and multi-billions and in leadership positions, and I also have completed more than 50 mergers and acquisitions. Wow. So, I mean, you've definitely been through a lot. I want to ask you a little bit more about your childhood, because for those of us who haven't lived in China and have been hearing about these labor camps, there are a lot of holes. There are a lot of portions of that story missing for us. And so how old were you when you were in the labor camp and why was your family sent to the labor camp to begin with? And are those labor camps still in existence? Yeah. So labor camps were set up, you know, for educated people so that they could no longer do their profession. So like doctors, the engineers and the labor camp. So my father did, you know, farming and my mother did sewing so they could not apply the engineering skill sets. And they were in remote part of China. And that's why I have to walk, you know, one and a half hours by foot. Do these still exist? Are people still in these labor camps? So these days, they are labor camps across China. And actually, you see photos of they label them and then become forced labor. So they make clothes, they make basketballs and because of cheap labors and many of the people in labor camps, they are Falun Gong followers, which the Chinese Communist Party started the persecution in 1999. And you probably have heard of like there was a story, someone rode, you know, a rescue sew into garments and someone find that. So yeah. So unfortunately, it's still happening, but in a more hidden way. How did you get out of the labor camp? So my grandfather was a successful banker before communism and his bank was robbed and his art collections were taken away. So he fled to Hong Kong. So when he got old, we went to Hong Kong to take care of him. And so as was in Hong Kong, that was the first time I experienced, you know, under the British colony, a very total picture. And because during Cultural Revolution, you cannot listen to Beethoven, Mozart, any of the classical cultures, whereas the folk songs are filled with lyrics praising Communist Party. And you have to read the red books and you can only sing the song praising the Communist Party. So it was a breath of fresh air when I arrived in Hong Kong. When I think of labor camps, I think of something that nobody could leave without permission. And so did your uncle have some sort of connection to be able to pull you out of the camp? It was the ending of the Cultural Revolution and because of my grandfather in Hong Kong. And so it was a long process that finally got out to Hong Kong. Yeah. And how old were you when you got out? When I was nine. Oh, so you were a little girl in the camps. Yes. And so, yes, it was basically at that time, there was information blockage. So even when I got the balloons from Taiwan, I did not know everything I read then was true until I got out of China. Why did the Chinese put families like yours into these camps? And now, years later, when people who live in China are reading, I guess, somewhat like the information that you received later on when you went to Hong Kong, what is their reaction to it? Are they supportive of the current regime there? Or are they forced to believe in these things? So if you look at the seven decades of the Commerce Rule, first they mobilized the farmers, promised the redistribution of the lands. But that was how wealth were confiscated. And then they have food rations to basically support the people. And then 1966 to 76, 10-year Cultural Revolution to suppress the educated one because they would speak up. And that's why they have the labor camps, such that they don't have the opportunity to speak up when you work on the farm and all that. And then in 1989, the student movement, and they were persecuted. And in 1999, the Falun Gong were persecuted. So you've looked back in the communist history, every decade, an innocent group of people were chosen. And so the rest of the people live under self-censorship. And that's how Communist Party is trying to suppress any opposition. 5,000 years of China, there was no communism. And Communist Party leaders were very afraid of the revival of the traditional values. And that's why they burn books, they destroy statues, and they even change the Chinese characters. I give you an example. In the name of simplification of Chinese character, the word progress, the traditional Chinese character was written, boats that bring you to better and better settings. So that's progress. Whereas the communist simplified version of progress is written, boats take you to the well. A well is a dead end. I give you another example, the character love. In Chinese, traditional character is a roof. Under the roof, there are people. And in between the roof and the people, there's a heart. And so that's love. You know, people under one roof, and that's love. The simplified characters, they remove the heart. So there were people, there was roof, but there was no heart. And so it's a systematic destruction of the traditional Chinese culture. And that's why Epoch Times focused on truth, tradition, and hope, trying to bring back the traditions of the Chinese culture as well as tradition around the world. We believe in, you know, God has bestowed the divine culture and through the cultural heritage, and we respect all the cultural heritage. And people should be connected, you know, rather than being replaced by some of the modern ideologies and other agendas. It's typical communism to remove the heart, to remove the arts, to remove the family. And really, in the name of simplification, really, it's just absolute control. When we were chatting on our way in here, I asked you whether most Chinese love the Chinese government or not. And you explained to me that, you know, they're essentially living in fear and there isn't a better example for this than the Falun Gong practice, or as some of us think of it as a religion. When I think about the Falun Gong religion, I think of it as almost like a religion or practice that has been developed as an antidote to communism and almost as an escape from communism. But I'd love for you to explain to us what is this Falun Gong practice? I know it's the practice that you hold, and how does this relate so much to the Chinese people? So Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on three tenets, truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. So it has the Buddhist elements in terms of self-improvement and upgrading, you know, towards enlightenment. So you're trying to do better and better. And then they also have five sets of simple, soft exercises and meditations. So if you look at the 5,000-year civilizations, the ancient saints and the historic figures, they actually focus on self-improvement to become better and better. So this is what we call cultivations. And in Falun Gong, there's also the book called Zhuan Falun, which is a very important text that talks about the universe, about loss and gains, talks about commerce and talks about the meaning of life and helping people to become better. And so Falun Gong followers pretty much are very self-disciplined, and they find calm and they look from within rather than blaming others and just trying to be better citizens in a society. And because of the truth, compassion, tolerance, which is the opposite to the communistic approach that's about violence, about propaganda and fighting and struggle. And so it's a contrast. And since communist leaders are not elected by the citizens, so it's their own fear. So in fact, Falun Gong first spread in May 1992, and within seven years, it grew to 70 to 100 million people. In the beginning, the communist parties were supportive of that and actually promoted and gave many awards. But when you get to the size that's more than the number of communist members, then they started the persecutions. Wait, how many Falun Gong members were there? 70 to 100 million. Wow. And so pretty much every park in major locations, you can see people practice, so they do exercise in the mornings, and then they continue to go to work, go to school, and then at night they read the book John Falun. And so the government enterprise employees, their medical reimbursement is through the work units. And so all of a sudden, they found people no longer turn in reimbursement receipts because they become healthier through the Falun Gong practice. So it's pretty much spread by word of mouth. And people become healthier physically, mentally, and even people with terminal illness and people with infertility and all sorts of problems, they find improvements after the practice. Wow. So millions of people have had practice, the Falun Gong practice. They focused on personal reliance, perseverance, taking care of their health, believing in truth, standing for truth. And so the communist party doesn't like it. And so they put them in labor camps. That's basically what is happening. Yeah. So if you look at organ harvesting, there's a worldwide shortage of organs in terms for organ transplants. And the Falun Gong followers, they don't drink, they don't smoke. So if you want a lung transplant, you don't want a smoker's lung. If you want a liver transplant, you don't want an alcoholic person's liver. So the fact that the Falun Gong followers, they don't drink, they don't smoke, they become targets. And if you think of a human body, they sell hearts for about $160,000, U.S. dollars, a kidney, $62,000, and a lung, $150,000. And so I actually attended the World Transplant Congress in 2006 at the Boston Convention Center. I ran into Dr. Wei Liu of Tianjin Oriental Transplant Centers and asked, Dr., what's your specialty? He told me he was a liver transplant expert. I said, how many liver transplants you personally did? Over 200. And these are of Falun Gong members that are in labor camps? So what happened was David Matos, a prominent Jewish human rights lawyer, and late David Kilgore, who was the former Secretary of State for Canada, for Latin America, Asia Pacific, as well as the Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament in Canada. The two of them co-authored investigative reports. And in those investigative reports, there were people calling into the different transplant centers in China saying that, well, my cousin needs a liver transplant, and my brother needs a heart transplant. And we heard that the Falun Gong people are young and healthy. And do you have that? And all of that. And so there were recordings from hospitals around the country. And David Kilgore and David Matos actually have the Canadian government's translators to verify the transcripts. And then they also look at the log of the phone calls and then make another round of calls to verify those were indeed the hospitals. So when they published the first reports, the Chinese embassy only pointed out a mismatch of two cities and states, provinces. In other words, the rest of the reports were accurate. That these were Falun Gong people? Mostly, yes. And that's why when you think of cutting out a human body that's making a million dollars versus manufacturing. And why the Falun Gong was vulnerable? Because first of all, they're 70 to 100 million. In an organ transplant, not only you have to match the blood type, you also need to match the tissue types. So it's very rare to find the matching. So they put them in labor camps and as free laborers. And that's why you can find some of the products so cheap, because there's no cost to the labor. And then also, you need that huge number of people. And so Falun Gong followers in labor camps, they were drawn blood. If you want to know the blood type, you only need to drop very small amounts of blood, but they draw a lot because they were running matchings. So it was a very wide scale of a systematic state-operated organ transplant. So back to the summer 2006 World Transplant Congress. I asked Dr. Wei Liu, how many transplant centers in Tianjin? There were three. I said, how many across China? 500. And so they all brag about how the transplant center was only doing organ transplant. And the next day, after the keynote speech, and I didn't see many of the Chinese doctors the night before at the receptions, opening reception, and asked them what happened, because they were all picked up by pharmaceutical companies, to Disney's and Hawaii and all that. But I ran into one who's a researcher for Hamburg University because he had a poster presentation. So he stayed back, and he told me that he had two job offers to go back to China to set up two transplant centers. I said, well, you're already in Germany. You can have a second child. Why would you want to do that? And he told me the dollar figure. So it's very lucrative. And I asked, where's the organ source? Because Chinese people believe in reincarnation. So you don't want missing pieces in your next life. And even Red Cross, for many years in China, there was very minimum numbers of donations. And so he asked me to walk outside the convention center. And then I went outside. And so there were screenshots of different transplant centers' websites and with the price tags and promise, you know, four to six weeks. So you're saying this is not people who are donating their organs. These are people who are being forced to give their organs away. Yes. And so the U.S. Congress has, in June, the House representatives have unanimously passed the Falun Gong Protection Act and urging the stop of this atrocity practice and also ask the State Department, you know, to report on the organs, you know, situation and trying to stop those transplant people to really make informed decisions so that American citizens won't be inadvertently, you know, being part of it. And so right now, the Falun Gong Protection Act is in the Senate. There's a companion Senate bill. And so we hope that it will pass and then eventually sign into law. And that will put a stop to that. But over the years, U.S. Congress has passed various resolutions, you know, to raise awareness. And then the organ transplant is a money-making opportunity for the Communist Party. And if you look at the same period, there was no major breakthrough in transplants. And it coincides with the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. And so the number of transplants skyrocketed. And so it's very sad that this is still happening every day. You know, Janice, we're in 2024 now, almost 2025. And you see Americans being very focused on all kinds of injustices, not just in the United States, but there seems to be a lot of focus on what's happening around the world, whether it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Russia and Ukraine. And you see, you know, riots and protests and all of that. And so I'm curious what kind of visibility the Falun Gong people and this organ harvesting labor camps, what kind of visibility has been on that? And why isn't there that kind of visibility? Yeah. So there were some, for example, Dr. Jacob Levy in Tel Aviv, you know, he... In Tel Aviv? Yes, yes. So he's a heart surgeon. So his patients told him, like, Dr. Levy, I will go to China and in two weeks at this day and time, I will get a heart transplant. So Dr. Levy said, it will be impossible to know someone who matches your blood type, tissue types that the heart will be available for you. But indeed, his patient got a transplant on the exact date and time. And so since then, Dr. Levy have put out legislation, you know, to protect Israelis and asking any transplant overseas financed by the insurance industry have to meet the Israeli standards. So in Spain, you know, there were laws passed, you know, to really put a stop on this atrocity similar in Taiwan. And we have not heard as much because of the censorship on the media, because some media companies, you know, worry about their press credentials may be revoked and they lose the chance to go to China or, you know, the sponsor trips of the reporters. So it's definitely happening in a very large scale and for very long. I mean, this is like 18 years when it became public. And so it really take more people to speak up. And in fact, recently, there was a survivor who was shown on the movie State Organs. And he escaped, you know, I have personally seen the cut on his body and he had a narrow escape and he's trying to give a voice to the voiceless. When it first started was in 2006, Annie, she's a nurse. And then her ex-husband performed over 2,000 corneas removal and have a lot of nightmares, but make a lot of money and ask her to try to get out of China. It's kind of like riding on a tiger. You know, you're doomed if you stay on a tiger or you're doomed if you came, you know, off the tiger. And so many Chinese, unfortunately, were in a tough situation. So Annie is a Christian. She wanted to make it public because she knew a surgeon in that hospital. And her best friend is an accountant and who saw, you know, all of a sudden a lot of transplant medicine. And they knew there were Hong Kong followers who after the removal of the different organs and they were burnt. So you talk about the lack of visibility to one of the most evil things that are happening on planet Earth right now. And much of it is because the media is either controlled by China, propagated by China or is afraid of China. It's just so horrific, but it does tie into the work that you're doing at Epoch Times. And so you guys at the Epoch Times are probably, I mean, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but the largest non-communist Chinese media enterprise in the world. And you have incredible visibility in the West. You translate your content to many different languages. And so can you walk us through the history of the creation of the Epoch Times and just the vision behind it as well? Yeah. So 24 years ago, Epoch Times was founded in a basement in Atlanta. And a group of elite Chinese who either experienced or observed the persecution in the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. And they have family members who've been persecuted in China because of the Falun Gong practice. And they saw there's a void because information were not getting out. That's what you just mentioned, the blockage of information. So it started as an online publication and then print. And they're trying to provide information to Chinese in and out of China. And in the inception, there were reporters in China. So 30 of them were arrested and sentenced from 3 to 10 years just by providing information to the Epoch Times to really review what's really going on in China. As you mentioned earlier, many of the media shied away from exposing what's going on. And then in 2001 and 9-11, the Communist Party-backed Chinese media provided a distorted image about US to the Chinese. And so these Chinese-Americans at the Epoch Times felt there's a need to really expand and bring information more broadly to Chinese all over the world about what's really happening to the US, such that the Communist Party's narrative won't be dominating. That's how a lot of expansions in different countries during that time. And then in 2003, the SARS-CoV-2 disease, the Epoch Times reported three weeks before Beijing admitted the pandemic, and four to six weeks before any of the major media around the world reported about the SARS-CoV-2 disease, which eventually took a lot of lives. And that's why the media is also playing a role in saving lives. We have readers who send us thank you notes that when they read about it, they changed the flights, returned to US and Europe, and such that they were not perished when their friends were scheduled on the same flight, didn't have to cancel tickets or change tickets, they perished. So similarly in the COVID, so in December 2019, Epoch Times started covering and describes what was going on in China and described the pandemic. And so there are readers who bought N95 masks when they were abundant in major pharmacies, and there were readers who changed the flight tickets and returned to US before the lockdowns. So we've been encouraged by the impact that we make, providing timely information and sensor information. And in fact, leaders in China who are communist member leaders, they use VPN and trying to access the Epoch Times because they knew we were telling the truth. Even the communists want to know the truth. You know, I have to ask you, why would China care about how 9-11 was reported? And why would they want to distort it? I understand why China would want to cover the SARS respiratory illness. I can understand why they wanted to cover COVID, totally get that. Why would China want to distort the messaging about 9-11? It's supposed to have nothing to do with them. Well, terrorism and communism is two sides of the coin. At the time, the 9-11 was a tactic to divert attention and divert the resources so that China could do a lot of things without so much attention on them. And they portrayed a distorted image where Chinese people were celebrating 9-11. So as American citizens, we felt like that's really wrong. I mean, we love America. We're naturalized citizens. You know, we enjoy all the freedoms. How could they distort the image? As you know, China has launched unrestricted warfare and the Communist Party always perceives the U.S. as a threat because freedom and totalitarian regimes are opposites. They don't want people to know about elections and they can elect their leaders. And The Epoch Times has been providing simultaneous translations into multiple languages since the beginning on election campaigns and educated people from different languages and in their mother tongues such that they understand the beauty of democracies and freedoms. China is controlled by propaganda. I'll give you an example on the internet censorship. Why do the Chinese Communist Party censor people on the internet? Because they have been avoiding the Chinese citizens to know the truth. And so through various censorships and over the years, I've been working on the internet freedoms and I do believe internet freedom and press freedom are necessary to have true freedom for everyone.