The Brave Dads: Don’t Forget the Virtuous Men Unlawfully Jailed in China’s Dark Prisons

Strong, virtuous fathers are the foundations of close-knit families and a better world. While households the world over are preparing to celebrate Father’s Day, honoring their share of the protective fatherly love in their lives, let’s not forget the brave dads who are being persecuted in communist China, either for their faith or for defending human rights.

A devoted Christian and known as the “Conscience of China,” Gao was on good terms with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) until he stood up to defend members of persecuted faith groups: Christian family churches and Falun Gong practitioners. He had been repeatedly arrested and tortured over the years and was formally arrested in 2006 after he wrote open letters to the top Chinese leadership condemning the suppression of faith.

Gao’s wife, Geng He, and his two children, who had faced constant harassment from the police, escaped to the United States in 2009 with the help of underground faith groups. Residing in a free country this past decade, Gao’s family has never stopped speaking out and worrying about his whereabouts.

“The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong is destroying lives and families,” Jack told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times. “What had happened to my family is just one example out of thousands.”

Jewher has been increasingly worrying about her dad since 2017—the year when the world came to know about the Xinjiang re-education and internment camps; her family in China had lost contact with her father that same year.

To seek her father’s release, the young daughter has been advocating for him.

“I have been trying to do anything that could possibly help my father and my community. I don’t know if it’s helping, I don’t know if anything would help. I just don’t want to regret,” she said.

Eric’s father, Ye Jia, was also arrested for practicing Falun Gong. Like his father, Eric’s close relatives, including his grandmother and aunties, had also been arrested several times for the same reason and had been subjected to different forms of torture while imprisoned.

Eric’s father was last arrested in September 2017 and released three months later in December after Australian Greens Senator for Victoria Janet Rice sent a letter to the mayor of Xi'an, China, in November 2017, urging him to release Ye Jia “immediately and unconditionally." Eric’s story mirrors that of many other overseas Chinese Falun Gong practitioners whose families are still being persecuted by the CCP in mainland China. Eric fled to Australia with his mother in 2012 and has been raising awareness of the persecution.

“There is nothing wrong to have faith in Falun Dafa. The CCP used all kinds of means to make us give up our beliefs,” Eric said to a crowd that had gathered at Martin Place in Sydney in 2018 to commemorate the lives lost at the hands of the CCP.

For instance, 20-year-old Xu Xinyang lost her dad in the brutal persecution.

Xinyang’s parents, both Falun Gong practitioners, were arrested by the Chinese regime for printing materials to expose the persecution of their faith. Her father was sentenced to eight years in prison when her mother was pregnant with her. Xinyang’s father died 13 days after he was released.

Due to the brutality of the persecution, Xinyang never saw her dad until she was 8 years old, she told the audience at the forum.

“He wanted to hold me, but I was scared and hid behind my mom. I refused to let him hold me because I never had a chance to know him,” she said. “This became my lifelong regret.”

Even after her father was persecuted to death, Xinyang and her mother were not spared. The police even arrested her school principal and some of her teachers, all of whom were Falun Gong practitioners. Xinyang was wanted by the police. Fortunately, she managed to flee to Thailand with her mother when she was 12 and arrived in the United States in 2017.