Australian Film Premiere Unsilences the Voices of Human Rights Activists in China

An award-winning film that tells the story of Chinese human rights activists fighting to make the international community aware of the Chinese regime’s brutal persecution of believers of the Falun Gong spiritual practice has won over Australians at its premiere in Sydney on Oct. 19.

The latest work of Chinese Canadian director Leon Lee, Unsilenced, is based on the true story of Wang Weiyu, a student at Tsinghua University. The film tells the story of two student couples at the renowned university and a foreign journalist who face arrests, torture, and even death threats, as they try to spread the truth about the Chinese regime’s persecution of Falun Gong to the international community.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that features moral teachings based on three core principles, “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance,” along with a set of meditative exercises. The practice spread quickly in China after being introduced to the public in 1992. By 1999, about 70 million to 100 million people around the country had taken up the practice, according to official estimates.

Taking Falun Gong’s popularity in China as a threat to the communist regime, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched a nationwide persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in July 1999, which is still ongoing.

The premiere was co-hosted by NSW upper house MP Reverend Fred Nile and The Australian Epoch Times.

MP Applauds the Brave Souls in China

Nile, who spoke after the film’s screening, applauded the bravery of those in China who were protesting the persecution of Falun Gong adherents and said that the film continued to shed light on the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong adherents in China.

“We know that these brutalities are still occurring as they have been documented by the Commission on International Religious Freedom, Amnesty, International Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and many other human rights Non-Governmental Organizations,” he said.

“The Communist Party eradicated freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and trade or free will… The cost of this is the destruction of the human spirit, and the result is the eventual enslavement of the population of the nation of China.

“I applaud those brave souls in China that have actively voiced their protests,” he said. “We need your prayers and your action to help bring that about here in Australia as well as in other countries. God bless your endeavours to freedom and truth and compassion.”

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‘Magnificently Made… Very Moving’

Paul Folley, the general manager of the Australian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), praised the quality of the film and the courage of Falun Gong practitioners to spread the truth.

“The quality of the movie is absolutely tops… It’s magnificently made,” he said. “The acting, the photography, the whole editing was incredible.”

“It reminds us that the persecution of Falun Gong and others in China that the Communist Party has decided to wipe out is absolutely horrendous,” he continued.

“But what touched me the most was the heroic bravery of the people under that system, who are resisting, the people who are maintaining themselves and not breaking under the pressure.

“Their dedication is very, very moving… They are symbols of all the people in China who are resisting.”

Salvatore Babones, a sociologist and an associate professor at the University of Sydney, said realizing the film is based on a real story at the end surprised him and made it really moving.

“The important thing about a work of art is that it tells a compelling story,” he said. “If the story isn’t compelling, nobody will read the message. The incredible thing about this film is that it is such a compelling story, and the fact that it’s true makes it all the more important.”

Peter Kim, the former deputy mayor of Ryde City Council, said the film shows how desperate the main characters were to share the truth with the world.

“They’ve actually given up their life to bring truth to the world,” he said. “And that was deeply, deeply impressive.”

Richard Lu, the former president of the National Chengchi University Alumni Association of Sydney, said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s suppression of Falun Gong is not at all reasonable.

“It’s just the CCP fears more people believe in Falun Gong than belief in CCP,” he said.

This worries Lu, who is from Taiwan, that the CCP may one day threaten the self-ruled island that the communist regime has long declared as a renegade province.

“That would be horrible,” he said. “[I] worry about Taiwan’s safety very much.”

After the film, the organizers invited Samuel Liu, a Falun Gong practitioner who had been persecuted in mainland China, to share his personal experience with the audience.

Unsilenced was filmed in Taiwan and featured four rising Taiwanese actors. The screenings in the United States, Canada, and Taiwan have attracted mainstream media reviewers and won the film 2021 Audience Award for narrative feature at the 28th annual Austin Film Festival in Texas.

Posting on Twitter, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the film is “a moving, honest, scathing indictment of the CCP.”

My friend Miles Yu & I went to see Unsilenced – a moving, honest, scathing indictment of the CCP. The truth of Xi & his predecessors’ utter depravity & the power-driven horrors they’ve inflicted cannot be denied. This movie unsilences the wonderful Chinese people, go see it. pic.twitter.com/Mv7ECNP1KO

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) January 28, 2022

Unsilenced will be screened at the Dendy Cinemas Canberra Centre in Canberra on Tuesday, Nov. 22 and at the Henry Carmichael Theatre in Sydney on Thursday, Nov. 24. Click on the link for ticketing information.

Wen Qingyang and NTD reporter Philippe Wang contributed to the report.