Director Leon Lee joins me to talk about his new movie, Unsilenced, about the plight and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China post the 1999 ban on the spiritual practice, and how China manipulates the narrative so that we in the Western world never really hear what's happening to the practitioners of FalUN Gong.
00:03:40.380did you tune into any of the olympics from china i didn't because they're genocide olympics and it
00:04:02.740was a moral choice not to give china the propaganda win they needed as they commit
00:04:07.400large-scale human rights atrocities against religious and ethnic minorities right under
00:04:12.360our noses abduction imprisonment rape torture and forced organ harvesting it's all happening
00:04:18.300right now in china against falun gong and china has had an organized propaganda disinformation
00:04:25.240and intimidation campaign to prevent the stories of falun gong persecution from making their way
00:04:31.280into the western world's media today you're going to meet leon lee he's a chinese canadian filmmaker
00:04:37.760whose new movie unsilenced tells the story of a university student in beijing who chose to speak
00:04:45.120the truth about what was happening to falun gong practitioners like himself in china in the wake
00:04:50.260of ccp outlawing the religious practice in 1999 here's leon in an interview we recorded sunday morning
00:04:57.180joining me now is director leon lee he's the director of the new movie unsilenced he's joining
00:05:17.300me from vancouver where last night it was saturday night he premiered his movie there leon before we
00:05:25.480get into the movie itself why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself because you're quite a
00:05:30.760prolific filmmaker with a focus on human rights yes i uh grew up in china i came to canada in 2006
00:05:40.660and that's when i started my filmmaking career uh started with a documentary called the human harvest
00:05:48.960about illegal organ trade in china and uh moving forward focusing on uh human rights issues in china
00:05:58.280and unsilenced uh is my latest film so why don't you tell us a little bit about this film and and in
00:06:05.860particular why you felt it needed to be made i know there's some strong overlaps between unsilenced
00:06:11.800and human harvest based on the targets of the organ harvesting but why don't you tell us a little bit
00:06:17.800about that silence is based on real life events when the chinese communist regime launched a brutal
00:06:25.920crackdown against 100 million citizens a team of innocent students and the western reporter
00:06:33.400joined forces to counter the government's propaganda and fight for freedom the film
00:06:40.480uh we had a successful theatrical run in the u.s last month and we opened uh on february 25th in canada
00:06:49.840so uh again it's about human rights issues in china and uh i feel it's a very timely film film because not
00:07:00.640it's not only a shed light on uh human rights atrocities in china but also it speaks to the theme of
00:07:07.660truth versus lies uh how what what should people do when there is government censorship
00:07:14.540you know it's a it's a very relevant thing for our time now your movie focuses on the treatment of the
00:07:21.220falun gong in china and in particular china making it illegal um in the late 1990s and the those who
00:07:29.940stood up um for the ability to practice their religion to believe what they want to believe
00:07:35.800and to think what they want to think without government overreach and i think the timeline is
00:07:42.200very important because it really demonstrates the bravery of those activists whose stories you tell
00:07:49.460in your movie because it was just 10 years after tiananmen square exactly uh the story happened
00:07:58.680well it began in 1999 when uh wang uh who was a phd candidate at the prestigious chinghua university in
00:08:08.580beijing and um he was actually a student leader and tapped by the communist party um to to join their
00:08:17.340ranks in the future so he had he really had a bright future uh he was a practitioner of falun gong
00:08:23.520but almost overnight after the government uh banned falun gong he had a difficult choice to make
00:08:31.120would he abandon his faith uh hope hopefully to keep his career or would he stand up and speak the truth
00:08:40.140he chose the letter and uh faced severe consequences but he forced on and uh devised
00:08:49.460creative ways to counter the government's propaganda and i don't want to give too much away because i think
00:08:55.440everybody should see the movie um but your student activist protagonist in the story sort of
00:09:01.700joins forces with an american journalist and you know in in the movie
00:09:08.620you sort of go through the ways that the ccp puts pressure on western journalists
00:09:16.780to self-silence themselves to self-censor um through fear of intimidation
00:09:23.740yes there have been uh many reports uh about ccp's tactics to uh interfere and and silence foreign
00:09:35.680correspondents in china including denying uh their visas um sending people to monitor them
00:09:44.180intimidating the interviewees uh essentially excuse me essentially it's very challenging
00:09:52.220for foreign reporters to report truthfully in china and even even if they want to do so
00:09:58.840most of them knew where the line is sometimes even among the human rights atrocities reporters know
00:10:09.440which one are easier to cover which ones are the absolute no-nos so i interviewed many reporters
00:10:18.680who stationed in china and i had to say many of them really wanted to do a great job but it's not easy
00:10:26.700now getting back to uh falun gong practitioners why did the ccp come down so hard on the falun gong
00:10:36.640why was it something that the chinese state felt they needed to outlaw what was the threat i guess is
00:10:42.540my question to the chinese state that's a great question falun gong was introduced in 1992 to the
00:10:49.400public it's a buddhist based meditation practice uh that has the tenets of truthfulness compassion and
00:10:58.540tolerance it was welcomed by the government in china and actually even supported for a long time
00:11:06.460i think the chinese leadership once uh commented that uh there is enormous health benefits from the
00:11:14.620practice that the country saves billions of yuan uh every year but uh a few things happened one
00:11:23.720they realized by 1999 there were over 70 million to 100 million people practicing falun gong in china
00:11:31.620which outnumbered the membership of the chinese communist party although falun gong has no political
00:11:38.520agenda whatsoever but uh being a communist dictator jiang zemin was just so paranoid that he wanted to take
00:11:48.640action and another important factor is that falun gong believes in truthfulness compassion and tolerance
00:11:56.200whereas the communist regime is an atheist regime that functions based on propaganda and violence
00:12:04.040if a large uh percentage of the population actually believe in truth actually believe in speaking the truth
00:12:12.920it is no doubt a threat to the communist regime you know and i think it's for that same reason that
00:12:19.820there's such a tough crackdown on christianity uh within china and as you point out the crackdown that
00:12:28.320we're seeing on christians that we are seeing on uigurs all of this was perfected on falun gong
00:12:34.480exactly um almost all religious practices and spiritual groups uh have been targeted in china since 1949
00:12:45.620because the communist leaders don't want anyone or anything above them whether it's the lord the buddha or
00:12:52.520ala or whoever they want to be the one that has the moral authority to say anything and take the
00:13:01.060practice of organ harvesting for example uh it it was widespread in the falun gong and then uh the
00:13:10.000uigurs also became uh a terrible terrible target for for the ccp and that's why when people raise
00:13:18.960awareness about persecution against particular group they're really trying to help everybody
00:13:24.940because no one is immune to the crackdown now i know that you faced some pretty severe challenges
00:13:34.220trying to get this movie made you couldn't you had to make it in taiwan but the threat of intimidation
00:13:41.740from the chinese state reached right into taiwan to disrupt production
00:13:46.640almost every chinese speaking actors understandably want to develop their career in china
00:13:54.080one day so we had tremendous difficulty uh casting in casting many actors uh didn't even come to an
00:14:04.840audition and for for those courageous ones who initially accepted our offer some of them back off
00:14:11.420we had uh crew members uh really wanting to remain anonymous so if you look at the end credit you see the
00:14:21.600number of people who remain anonymous um locations quite often uh when our team is on set doing uh set
00:14:31.320dressing the owner would come out and say oh you can't shoot your film here but we say well but
00:14:36.740the film is scheduled the next day i say i don't care just you can't shoot here so after um long days of
00:14:46.060production we had to scramble and look for another location so within two months of production the core
00:14:54.900team only had one day off now and even for yourself are you facing any sort of intimidation
00:15:02.060as a chinese canadian filmmaker making movies that are critical of the chinese state is that sort of
00:15:09.420intimidation reaching into canada as well i had my uh fair share of encounter with the uh chinese
00:15:18.180authorities in particular the ministry of state security let's say the chinese kgb uh they they threatened
00:15:26.180me um but uh here's the thing i think two things happened one is they realized that leaving me alone as an
00:15:37.380independent producer there's only so much damage i can do anything they try to do to interfere will only
00:15:45.180attract more attention to the films which they don't want to see and secondly i i am deeply inspired by the
00:15:55.880people i portray in my films if they can do what they did in china there is no reason i cannot tell their
00:16:05.240story in canada now i wanted to ask you a question about hollywood because hollywood seems to be
00:16:14.520very uh compliant i guess with china's demands we saw you know in the end credits of
00:16:25.620mulan um you know sort of thanking the chinese government for allowing them to shoot in the
00:16:32.100uighur province and you know we've seen hollywood stars like john cena basically groveling for access
00:16:40.320to the chinese market is that why there really are no movies out there the major hollywood productions
00:16:49.260that are critical of china like is it to get into the chinese market i guess is my question
00:16:55.340yes um in 2021 the chinese box office has officially surpassed the u.s to become the number one in the
00:17:07.360world and uh i believe it started in 1997 when there were several hollywood films that were uh let's say
00:17:16.640not friendly to the chinese regime um and then people learned the lesson in order to uh be considered
00:17:25.160uh to be imported into the chinese market because they had a strict quota system uh of of foreign films
00:17:33.020that were allowed to be shown in china and people are really trying hard in the beginning it was to
00:17:39.100make sure we don't criticize china and then uh people had to compete to portray the chinese regime in a
00:17:46.140more positive light for example in certain films it has to be the chinese spaceship the chinese
00:17:52.680agencies that saved save humanity right and then it went even one step further uh they had to allow
00:18:01.820more chinese investment in those films uh so that uh of course in that case they couldn't even uh they
00:18:10.220sometimes have to have uh alternate stories uh even more additional scenes for the version that to be shown
00:18:19.500in china uh that's why it's it's extremely rare uh for hollywood to come you know to produce something uh that
00:18:29.820shed light on human rights atrocities in china so what is the solution you know when hollywood is
00:18:36.700either self-censoring or groveling and allowing chinese propaganda to be inserted into their films
00:18:43.580and with china intimidating western journalists who are trying to tell their story also arresting and
00:18:50.140cracking down on human rights activists what is the solution to getting the word out telling the world
00:18:56.860about what is happening in china we just sat through the genocide olympics where the world did their
00:19:03.820best to ignore what was happening around the olympics at the very same time so how what i guess how do we
00:19:10.380get through all of that to tell the story you are but on a broader scale well for me i think it's
00:19:20.540very important to keep telling stories like this uh we've got overwhelming uh response from the us and
00:19:28.860canada now people are telling us how moved they were by by wong and his story in unsilenced and they
00:19:37.340felt compelled to take action to share with their family and friends ultimately awareness among the public
00:19:44.780is the most important thing if enough people know what's really going on in china i think they will
00:19:51.100demand action from our politicians and the second uh point is that for a long time the west uh
00:20:02.540naively believed that you know appeasement dialogue engagement somehow by uh trading with china
00:20:12.300it's going to change the mind of the uh dictators there uh now after decades of such policy i think we
00:20:20.460realize it doesn't work it's it's critical that the west realizes uh that the communist party in china
00:20:28.860is the most uh dangerous threat that the west faces and divides policies accordingly otherwise
00:20:40.540uh unfortunately what happens to ukraine will happen in in europe and will happen in taiwan and will
00:20:49.500happen all over the world you know it's true i think western leaders for a long time thought that they
00:20:55.100could teach china about capitalism by trading with them and instead china taught us all about the dangers
00:21:02.060of communism and how quickly it can proliferate and how those tentacles of the chinese state reach into
00:21:08.300every aspect of every aspect of our culture particularly in pop culture where we don't even realize that
00:21:13.340we're watching chinese propaganda absolutely the ccp had a long-term plan for the west the the very
00:21:22.220existence of our way of life is an existential threat to the ccp so they had plans whether it's economically
00:21:32.460uh militarily uh militarily you know technology uh espionage everything they had a comprehensive plan
00:21:39.980to infiltrate the west and to bring down uh our way of life here and that's why people really need to wake up
00:21:49.100and i as a filmmaker i believe film is one of the most important tools if you you know drag someone on the street and say let me tell you about
00:21:58.460human rights in china for two hours most will say no thank you but if you tell them a compelling story
00:22:05.100through a film not only they remember it they resonate with it and they feel it so they can go ahead and
00:22:14.060share with their family and friends um so i think that's uh hopefully uh an important way to shed light on
00:22:23.500these kind of issues now uh i don't want to take up too much of your time but i know that your film is in theaters in canada right now
00:22:32.620i was able to catch it in edmonton um what are some of the ways that people can find your film um what cities are
00:22:41.260what cities um is the film in and um i know that it is available online very very soon but not quite yet so how can people
00:22:49.500find the work but also support the work that you're doing because you are an independent filmmaker
00:22:55.500and i doubt that you will ever have the backing of a big hollywood studio and that is not to say
00:23:01.020that you don't deserve it it's just that they're too scared to give it they are certainly too scared
00:23:06.380and i was hoping to get the film to some of the let's say big streaming platforms and so far from what i can
00:23:13.740tell they were also scared to take it on so we're still exploring digital options but we don't have
00:23:20.780anything lined up yet unfortunately it's in theaters now in canada in toronto vancouver montreal calgary
00:23:29.340edmonton halifax and so on so if you go to unsilencedmovie.com you'll see a full list of theaters there
00:23:38.060and if you could consider supporting us it would be uh very helpful because it's incredibly difficult
00:23:44.940for indie film like ours to have a theatrical run and if if we um if we demonstrate that people
00:23:51.420actually want to see content like this then there may be more opportunities in the future
00:23:56.940leon i want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me but also for your bravery i know that
00:24:01.420um like you say you've faced some um intimidation here in canada for the work that you're doing to
00:24:08.700shine light on the stories of human rights atrocities in china and you know a special thanks to everybody
00:24:14.700who was involved in the film because they you know face those same sort of intimidation challenges as
00:24:21.420well um thank you so much for agreeing to this interview and best of luck on the film thank you for