The State Department urged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stop persecuting practitioners of the Falun Gong in light of a recent report saying the regime is ramping up efforts to “eliminate” the spiritual practice not just domestically, but also overseas.
“PRC repression often extends beyond its borders, as authorities engage in transnational repression to surveil, threaten, and harass PRC nationals, including Falun Gong practitioners, to silence those who have fled persecution due to their religious or ethnic identity and seek safety abroad,” the department said in a statement to NTD.
“We urge the PRC government to uphold its international commitments and the promises made in its own constitution to protect the ‘freedom of religious belief,’ and end its now 25-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.”
The statement was issued in response to an inquiry regarding information from an Aug. 7 report by the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC) based on accounts of three whistleblowers detailing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) new plan to manipulate social media influencers and Western media to propagate false allegations, with a goal to sow public discord and to trigger a U.S. law enforcement response against Falun Gong.
“The Chinese regime has made a strategic decision to escalate its persecution against Falun Gong worldwide, expanding its propaganda, disinformation, and transnational repression activities to target Falun Gong more aggressively outside China, and especially in the United States,” said the report, released on Aug. 7 by the FDIC, a non-profit monitoring CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.
“This appears to be the CCP’s endgame to finally destroy Falun Gong.”
In 1999, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched a campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong after government surveys indicated 70 million to 100 million people had picked up the practice since its public introduction in 1992.
Human rights groups have estimated that millions of people have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, and detention centers, routinely facing torture and death. Several independent investigations have concluded that the CCP has been killing prisoners of conscience to sell their organs for transplantations, with Falun Gong practitioners being the primary victims.
According to information provided by the whistleblowers, the new overseas campaign seeks to manufacture allegations with the greatest potential to trigger an investigation by the U.S. government.
The regime seeks to “mobilize concealed agents to create and escalate the internal conflicts of Falun Gong, to expand nonstop the fighting strength, depth, and reach of [social media influencers targeting Falun Gong],” said notes from a June provincial-level meeting of China’s Ministry of Public Security provided by two of the whistleblowers.
“They must attract the continuous attention of the entire United States society, and force the U.S. government to strike on all fronts, eliminating the force of Falun Gong,” the notes read.
In addition, CCP officials were authorized to “activate” their agents embedded within Falun Gong communities to stir up protests against the U.S. government and then “create some incidents” during the protests, in order to provoke U.S. authorities, according to the meeting notes.
Another set of notes, from a June internal report by the China CITIC Foundation for Reform and Development Studies, talks of an effort to “mobilize central state media resources, university think tanks and other unit resources [to] actively share defamatory information about Falun Gong with overseas media.”
The regime’s agents were also supposed to “take advantage of the U.S. election and the conflicts between the two parties” to further its goals, according to the notes.
The U.S. government has been opposing the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong with increasing vigor. Several CCP agents targeting Falun Gong have been arrested in recent years and the State Department has issued several statements calling on the CCP to release imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners. In June, the House of Representatives passed the Falun Gong Protection Act, a bill that would impose sanctions on people involved in forced organ harvesting in China. A companion Senate bill was introduced in July.
Attacks on Shen Yun
A part of the leaked information pertained to the CCP’s strategy for sabotaging Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York-based classical Chinese dance company that was founded by Falun Gong practitioners.
Shen Yun is seen as a threat by the communist regime for presenting Chinese culture untainted by the regime’s influence, according to the FDIC.
“With a single performance, Shen Yun demonstrates the magnificence of Chinese culture before the rise of communism, and in so doing, offers a vision for how wonderful China could be without the CCP,” the report reads.
Some of Shen Yun’s dance pieces depict modern-day stories of Falun Gong practitioners facing persecution in China.
Since the company’s founding in 2006, it has grown to eight dance ensembles and orchestras that perform for an audience of about 1 million theatergoers a year. The Epoch Times is a media sponsor of the company.
The CCP’s new strategy is to create allegations that could trigger an investigation of the performing arts company by the U.S. government, the whistleblower information indicates.
Just last month, two Chinese men pleaded guilty to bribery and to acting as illegal Chinese agents after they tried to bribe the IRS into opening an audit into Shen Yun. The person they believed was an IRS official was actually an undercover FBI agent.
The men also sought to use an environmental lawsuit against Shen Yun’s training facilities and schools to “inhibit” their growth, according to court documents.
In recent years, an American with business ties to China has been filing meritless environmental lawsuits against Shen Yun.
The new campaign appears to work through social media influencers, particularly two individuals who’ve been producing and promoting anti-Falun Gong and anti-Shen Yun content on YouTube in recent years.
One of them is based in Japan and used to work for a CCP-run media outlet. The other is a Chinese immigrant in the United States who has made threatening comments toward Shen Yun personnel in his videos.
Last year, the FBI issued a warning to local law enforcement in New York that the man was “potentially armed and dangerous,” after he was seen near Shen Yun’s training center. He currently faces charges for possession of illegal firearms.
The whistleblower notes state that “all provincial-level governments [must] provide resources to fully support [the two influencers and others] to have a fight with Falun Gong.”
The officials also demanded the use of all channels to supply these people with “malicious information on Falun Gong gathered by the Ministry of Public Security internally,” the notes state.
The CCP has long tried to sabotage Shen Yun, most often by pressuring theaters or government officials to cancel the company’s performances under threat of endangering relations with China.
In some instances, the tires on Shen Yun tour buses have been slashed in a way to cause them to burst while on the road. Family members of some Shen Yun artists have been persecuted in China. The FDIC has documented more than 100 such incidents.
In March, the Shen Yun campus and several venues hosting its performances in the United States and Taiwan received emailed bomb threats and at least one threat of a mass shooting. The threats likely trace back to the CCP, according to several cybersecurity experts consulted by The Epoch Times.
From The Epoch Times