WASHINGTON—U.S. officials and leaders of human rights organizations joined a rally in Washington on July 11 to call for an end to the Chinese communist regime’s 25-year-long persecution of Falun Gong.
“The United States, in a bipartisan way, stands with Falun Gong,” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) told thousands gathered at the National Mall.
“[The U.S.] stands for religious freedom and stands against the Chinese Communist Party’s direct attacks on that religious freedom.”
Also speaking at the rally, Asif Mahmood of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said that “the U.S. condemns in the strongest possible terms the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal repression of Falun Gong practitioners.”
“The United States must remain vigilant as China’s persecution of Falun Gong extends far beyond its borders. Chinese authorities regularly engage in transnational repression including in the United States,” Mr. Mahmood added, citing Serbian officials in May detaining Falun Gong practitioners to appease the Chinese regime.
This year marks 25 years—a quarter of a century—since the CCP began a sweeping campaign of repression targeting the spiritual practice that has been described as a genocide.
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill, co-sponsored by Mr. Ryan, calling for an “immediate end” to the persecution of Falun Gong. It would also sanction those involved in the regime’s forced organ harvesting.
Mr. Ryan, in an interview with NTD, The Epoch Times’s sister media outlet, called the bill a “critical life and death legislation.”
The lawmaker described the regime’s forced organ harvesting as “the most egregious and, and disgusting violation of a human and their dignity and their values.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that involves five meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance. Introduced to the public in China in the early 1990s by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the practice quickly gained widespread popularity, largely due to its health benefits and almost entirely through word of mouth. By official estimates, between 70 million and 100 million people had taken up Falun Gong before the end of the decade.
Threatened by this popularity, the CCP in 1999 started a mass campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong by slandering the practice and detaining, torturing, and destroying the reputations of practitioners who refused to renounce their spiritual beliefs. July 20 marks the date when the CCP launched the persecution, a campaign that persists to this day.
In 2006, The Epoch Times first reported revelations that the Chinese regime had been harvesting the organs of detained Falun Gong practitioners to fuel its lucrative transplantation industry. In 2020, an independent people’s tribunal concluded that Beijing had been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs “on a significant scale,” with imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners as the primary source.
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) is one of several organizations that have documented evidence of the CCP’s live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
“We need this consistent witness by outsiders, by the West, against the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party against Falun Gong,” VOC President and CEO Eric Patterson said at the rally.
Piero Tozzi, staff director of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China and senior adviser to Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), zeroed in on forced organ harvesting. The House has passed two bills on the issue, including Mr. Smith’s Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, which cleared the chamber in March 2023.
While the House of Representatives is doing its part, companies need to do their due diligence to avoid unintentionally aiding Beijing’s organ transplant industry, he told The Epoch Times.
In the morning, Mr. Tozzi said he met with two family members of Falun Gong practitioners who are currently in a Chinese prison. One of the detained, Zhou Deyong, is serving eight years of imprisonment over his belief. He had lost nearly all of his teeth because of the persecution.
“It’s not just statistics. These are individuals, people with family members,” Mr. Tozzi said.
Sean Nelson, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom International, thanked international advocates for persisting in raising awareness of Falun Gong.
“Many people have said the CCP has been launching a war on faith, and the Falun Gong were the initial victims of that 25 years ago,” he said. “Thousands and thousands thrown into prison every year in hopes that people would forget them, but I’m so glad that none of you have forgotten them.”
Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, recalled his own experience participating in the anti-communist movement that brought an end of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime. He considered Falun Gong a role model for human rights advocates around the world.
“Despite repressive, ruthless CCP campaigns to eradicate this ancient spiritual practice grounded in millennia of authentic Chinese tradition and universal including truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, practitioners have survived,” he said.
Speakers at the rally also included Christian Freedom International President Wendy Wright; Friends of Falun Gong Executive Director Alan Adler; Tuidang Center President Zhongyuan Yi; World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong Chair Zhiyuan Wang; and Chen Jingyu, a Falun Gong practitioner and victim of the CCP’s persecution.
After the rally, thousands of Falun Gong practitioners took part in a mile-long march through Pennsylvania Avenue ending at Freedom Plaza. After sundown, hundreds will return to the National Mall for a candlelight vigil to commemorate those who have been persecuted to death by the CCP.
Stories of Persecution
The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong has not relented since 1999. Some attending the July 11 rally had experienced it firsthand and shared their stories with The Epoch Times.
Chen Jingyu’s sister Chen Jinghui was one of dozens arrested this spring in Changchun City in northeast China’s Jilin Province. Both of the sisters practice Falun Gong, and Ms. Chen had been sent to a labor camp herself when she used to live in China.
In March, about seven police officers waited outside her sister’s apartment and arrested her just as she went outside. Ms. Chen said she suspects the police had been monitoring her sister for a while. She learned of the arrest only weeks after it occurred, through a friend.
“Even right now my family didn’t get an explanation,” Ms. Chen told The Epoch Times. The police initially didn’t inform the family of her arrest and where she was held. There was no arrest warrant or other documents. Both her lawyer and son were denied a visit request.
Her sister is the sole caretaker for their parents, both in their 80s. Their father’s thrombus worsened after the arrest. His legs swelled up and is still in hospital, Ms. Chen said.
Ms. Chen, 53, used to work in an auditing firm in Changchun. Both she and her husband lost their jobs because of their beliefs. Before China held the 2008 Beijing Olympics, police arrested her and later sent her to a labor camp. She worked for over 10 hours every day, making products such as parts of rag dolls, which would be exported to Japan. In the police station just after her arrest, the police opened all the windows and ordered her to lie on the cold floor, in a bid to torment her.
Several practitioners she knew were sentenced to prison for nine or 10 years. One of them got a life sentence.
“They could torture someone to coerce a confession, to make you say you did this and that wrong,” she said. “I’ve lived in those fears, the fear for your life. Just think: how many people have been tortured to death, how many had their organs harvested?”
Jack Bradley contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times