Summary: American Director Kay Rubacek on May 21 gave an interview to HKBNews (video at n.1). Kay thought that the West has to wake up to the CCP's crimes against humanity, and see through its lies about Falun Gong, Uyghurs, and the Hong Kong resistance movement, etc. Having been to Hong Kong many times, Kay opines that the free world should say no to Communism, and support Hongkongers, who do not want to be part of Red China, in their fight for freedom and democracy. Kay revealed that she was accused of being a CIA agent and imprisoned in China in 2001, when she held on Tiananmen Square a banner with just 3 characters -- "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance".
Kay's documentary Finding Courage (2) is an in-depth report on how a Falun Gong family, badly persecuted by the CCP, escaped to the U.S. and exposed the evilness of the regime. The film has just won a Gold Remi Reward.
Kay first met the heroine (Y.F. Wang) in Finding Courage while filming Hard to Believe, a 2015 documentary on organ harvesting in China (3). She deemed the heroine's optimism about the future of China inspiring and necessary, citing the example that no one had expected the Berlin Wall to fall so instantly, though a former CCP propaganda official interviewed by her asserted that the morality of the Chinese in general was almost totally destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. Kay also pointed out that the CCP promoted Falun Gong before 1999 but bad-mouthed it after 1999.
The full interview is transcribed as follows:
Reason for Filming Finding Courage
Q: Why did you direct Finding Courage after producing Hard to Believe (2015), which is a documentary on organ harvesting in China?
A: We met the main lady in Finding courage when we were filming Hard to Believe and she had this very interesting story. So I said, "Let's do a short film about her", and as we started to interview her and her husband, they helped us to get more information from China, and we found other sources. We were able to get undercover footage of the Labour camps in China inside talking to a labour camp director and then the heroine's brother got out of prison. He had been in prison for 13 years. He was willing to let us film him. So we watch his healing process in America. I found that really moving. Suddenly with all this new information that we had access to, we realized that this couldn't be just a shot 10 minutes film, had to be a long film, and that is how it became Finding Courage.
See through CCP's Lies!
Q: What action do you think the free world should take in order to hold the CCP accountable for its abhorring crimes against humanity, against Falun Gong practitioners, against people of other faiths, against dissidents etc. ?
A: The CCP's crimes reach out so far. We can see what happened with the pandemic, we can see what happened in Hong Kong last year and now, and what has been going on with Falun Gong in the last 20-years, what is happening in Xiajiang, it is everywhere. So really the West has to wake up to it and that is why we need more information through this kind of movies, through Finding Courage, through news organisations like what you are doing. People need to take a stance. It can really be that simple as saying we are not going to support that, and just really seeing through the CCP's lies, because they are lying again and again and again and again. And so we really shouldn't fall for that.
Look at what's Going on in Hong Kong & Say NO to Communism!
When we see what is going on in Hong Kong, we should be able to look through and try and find the truth, not just follow whatever the CCP says. And we are seeing that now with the pandemic and I think a lot of people are starting to wake up, and I hope Finding Courage will help more people wake up. I hope Western governments Western people, people of the world, really can just wake up and say, "No, we don't want communism in our country!" If we can really take that step away from the CCP, and really see that it really is evil, what it is doing is very evil, if we can really step away from that, I think we are going to see huge changes.
Documentaries on Hong Kong Time Revolution?
Q: Would you consider directing a documentary on the Hong Kong Anti Extradition Law Movement or Hong Kong Time Revolution. As you may be aware, more than 8000 Hong Kong dissidents, 30% of whom are children, that is under 18, have been arrested and or tortured, since June last year.
A: That is a really serious topic and it is happening right now. It is very important, that is a movie that needs to be made, those films need to be made absolutely. But whoever is going to work on a movie like that I think they need to consider their security very tightly.
"Falun Gong is the Creator's wisdom"?
Q: Why does your documentary Finding Courage claim that Falun Gong is a traditional way of self-improvement from the Buddhist School, when in Mr. Li Hongzhi's book, Turning the Wheel of Dharma, Buddhist symbols are mixed with Taoist symbols, and the first sentence of the book reads, "Falun Gong is the Creator's wisdom"?
A: Well the creator is a Christian concept. I guess if you are looking at religious concepts, creators, the Creator, people will look at it differently; there is the creator, there is the Buddha, there is the Tao, and then some people say there is many gods, many Buddhas, many taos. It really depends on your religious belief. We told the story of this woman, and she told us her story, and we are presenting that story through the movie; we are not claiming anything.
Q: I respect Falun Gong. of course, just that it may be a kind of unconventional Buddhism, with respect.
A: Hahaha!
Too Optimistic to Think Red China'll Become Free & Democratic soon?
Q: Talking about Yifei Wang, the heroine of your film, she said that they could relax in China very soon as they are relaxing in America now. But according to a former CCP propaganda official interviewed by you in the documentary, the Cultural Revolution had so uprooted traditional morality in China, the CCP has so brainwashed people in China, that most of them no longer have faith in anything except money and materialism. Do you think that Yifei Wang may be too optimistic in her view about the future of Red China?
A: Absolutely yes, she has a lot of optimism and that gives a lot of hope and inspiration. It definitely inspired me to be able to tell this story and to want to tell this story, because that's a lot of sad stories that come out of China and they can be taught in ways that just make people want to cry. Wang's story has a lot of hope and optimism and her family have survived hell because of their hope and strength and optimism.
Fall of Berlin Wall Unexpected
But many of the former regime officials that we have interviewed in the movie are not very hopeful at all but then I have also interviewed a lot of other people, including one lawyer who saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. No one expected that to happen so quickly and they instantly got a new government into place within a week or so and things could change overnight. So when things happen, they can happen very quickly. If you ask when something is going to change in China, we don't know. I think we have got to have hope but we also need to look at the realities, that this is a very difficult situation in China but I think we cannot give up on that hope.
I mean even if the CCP is overthrown or gone, China may not become a democratic or free country overnight
Why Risk Life to Practice Falun Gong?
Q: Why do you think people in China would risk their own lives and the safety of their family in order to practice Falun Gong?
Religious Freedom is a Fundamental Right
A: I think it is a matter of faith and you look at other people of faith, you look at throughout history what the Christians have suffered during persecution and we can see what other religious practices in China, the Uyghur Muslims, the house questions. Falun Gong is.... because the numbers are so high, so many people have been persecuted, but it is still a matter of faith. If you have faith but you are being forced to follow atheism, it is a really big conflict and certainly in America freedom of religion is a fundamental right. For me I grew up in a religious family, so it is very important for me to be able to have respect to my own faith and other people's faiths.
To Fill in Spiritual Void
Living in the free world I can understand that. I would not want to have some form of communist government say, you are not allowed to believe in anything, you must be atheist. I think I would be better against that. And I think for the people in China, when they found this Falun Gong, so many of them found that their health really improved so much and that they did overcome this spiritual void that had been created, through the cultural Revolution, through these massacres that have happened under communism, and they found they were able to reconnect with their roots, with tradition, with spirituality, health, and they didn't what to let that go.
So I said that it is great that we have been able to see and look towards, maybe they look towards democracy and say, well, we want freedom of religion, we want freedom of thought, maybe they just had that innately when they said no we really can't, we know this is good, and we don't want to. Basically, as you know under the CCP, you are told to say that black is white, and white is black, and if something is good, and you are being told to say it is bad, it is lying for yourself, it is going against your conscience. So many Falun Gong practitioners, many other people of faith, they don't want to go against their conscience, and that is a really difficult thing to do.
Hongkongers do NOT Want to Become Part of Red China
But I think from the west we should really applaud them, and support them, because that is very important, like what is going on in Hong Kong, people who are saying, no, this is not right, we really do need democracy; we really don't want to become a part of communist China. We need to look at that, we need to respect that, respect people wanting their freedoms. I think it is really important and I think Falun Gong is certainly a good example of that, but we are also seeing more and more examples worldwide, where people are standing up to what the CCP. You really got to say that.
Q: Don't you yourself practice Falun Gong and why?
A: I tried not to bring that into my movie-making. It's difficult. I have been to Hong Kong numerous times for work and for travel. I do practice Falun Gong. I actually started in 1998, that was before the persecution began in China in 1999. So I was very fortunate that I got to practice Falun Gong before any of this politicising started in around the world about Falun Gong. I really got to experience Falun Gong just for what it is ,reading the book, doing the exercises, and practicing that. I started because of health reasons. I have had a lot of knee and back problems, since I was young, because I am actually very tall, and I grew very quickly, and I had been to acupuncturists, I had been to herbal medicine, I had been to the osteopath chiropractors, you name it. I really wasn't able to solve those joint issues and I started doing Falun Gong. I never thought I would be able to do the cross-legged because my knees will really in a very bad state. But after doing Falun Gong for 9 months, I was able to do my legs crossed over, which I thought was impossible.
I had even been told by doctors that I would have troubles conceiving children but a few years after I got married, I actually conceived a young, beautiful, healthy boy, so I am very fortunate. Yes yes I got to see Falun Gong before the persecution started, and after the persecuted started, there was no difference. The only difference was that the CCP started lying about it. Before 1999, the CCP was promoting Falun Gong and saying how good it was; after 1999 they started lying and they started saying bad things about Falun Gong, which I knew was wrong, because they didn't say it a year before. Why did they suddenly say it now, to justify this persecution?
So yes I really started for those personal reasons and that's been more than 20 years. As far as I am concerned, Falun Gong hasn't changed, over all that time as a spiritual practice, but many many people who practice Falun Gong have been trying to stop this persecution so that's been a very interesting journey, and part of making the movie was part of that, of be able to see what has happened over the time with the persecution.
Truth, Compassion, Tolerance is Banned in China!
I did actually spend one day in a Chinese prison in Beijing in 2001. I was arrested on Tiananmen Square because I held the banner that said "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance", three words, that's it, nothing else. I was told by the Chinese police that truth, compassion and tolerance is illegal in China. That is what they told me, they all told me that point-blank. I didn't say anything about Falun Gong, the banner didn't have anything about that on me, just three words, and they told me truth, compassion, tolerance is banned in China. That is shocking. To say those three words, any one of those words, is banned in China.
It was very eye-opening and the police that I spoke to, some of them spoke English, they told me all this lies. They said you must be funded by the CIA to come here, you must be part of some religious cult, religious sect, to come here. They had all these ridiculous concepts and propaganda, and it was really very eye-opening, and that certainly has inspired me to want to speak out about it, because when you have that kind of experience, and you spend hours locked in a prison cell, and you have Chinese police interrogating you, you really see that they are totally full of lies.
Q: Were you tortured while you're in prison in China?
A: I was not tortured; I was beaten a bit, I had my hair pulled, I had bruises, but being an Westerner, I think I was more safe at the time. Things are perhaps even worse now for Westerners. But yeah I mean it was a huge risk, but I was not tortured, though I was treated badly. They offered to bring us food, they brought up beautiful restaurant food to eat, but they only would let me eat, if the cameras were filming, the CCTV cameras, and I refused, and then they took the food away. So it was all for show. They would only treat me nicely, if the cameras were rolling, so that they could say, Look at how this Westerner comes in and we are going to treat her nicely and we are going to give her food.
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