This special will air on Saturday, April 27, at 9:30 p.m. ET.
The world first heard of Falun Gong 25 years ago. On April 25, 1999, around 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered in front of Zhongnanhai—the home and office compound of the Chinese leader.
The spiritual meditation practice teaches the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and was first released to the public in China in 1992. Seven years later, it had grown so popular that the Chinese communist regime deemed it a threat.
Three months after that peaceful demonstration, Beijing launched an all-out persecution against the faith, seeking to eradicate the 100 million people practicing.
“I said this is a Buddhist revival movement … I don’t see that as this massive threat,” said Ethan Gutmann, senior research fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “So there was something else going on.”
“A part of what I felt was that the values that Falun Gong was espousing were actually quite against that sort of new China that was being presented by the Chinese Communist Party, which demands that one lies,” he added.
Those practicing Falun Gong inside China were fired from their jobs, kidnapped from their homes, and thrown in prison.
But later, evidence of an even worse crime began to come to light: the forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience, while they were still alive.
Those organs supply China’s lucrative organ match and transplant market.
“The organ harvesting is the genocide aspect … this entire organ transplant system was built on the backs of Falun Gong,” said Mr. Gutmann. “This is something that is going to hit every group. It’s going to hit the Tibetans, it’s just a question of getting the right hospitals set up in their region.”
“If there had not been the Ukraine war, [the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act] would have gone through. If there had not been the Oct. 7 [Hamas attack on Israel], that bill would have gone through.”
Watch our interview with investigative reporter and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ethan Gutmann.
