Three Party Documents Used to Justify Persecution
Diplomacy Used Against Falun Gong
Jiang’s Personal War.Section 5: Transformation, Torture, and Sex Abuse
Transformation
In a 2001 Washington Post article, a Chinese government advisor told reporters that the suppression in the early stages was not successful until 2001 when “China’s security forces regrouped and devised an approach they say was producing results.” The approach has three ingredients: violence, a high-pressure media propaganda campaign, and forcing practitioners to attend intense study sessions in which the teachings of Falun Gong are picked apart by former followers. The last component, the brainwashing sessions, was believed to be key to persuading practitioners to quit Falun Gong. The CCP gave this approach a one-word name: transformation.
[13] The objective of the CCP’s media campaign against Falun Gong was to slander and incite hatred toward practitioners from the whole society. For Falun Gong practitioners, the persecution centered around forcing them to sign a statement to give up the practice, and be “transformed.” A new indicator of the performance of Chinese officials came into existence: the transformation ratio. Like local gross domestic product (GDP), the transformation ratio is closely tied to the performance of the local government, to the promotion opportunities of officials, and the evaluation of the labor camps, prisons, and police officers.
A “transformed” Falun Gong practitioner had to write and sign a “guarantee” statement with contents designated by the CCP. They include: public denial of the mind and body benefits brought by Falun Gong, pleading guilty to the CCP and expressing gratitude to the brainwashing session, cursing Falun Gong, pledging to never again practice Falun Gong, and pledging never again to petition on behalf of Falun Gong. The “guarantee” statements were obtained by means of violence or threat of violence while Falun Gong practitioners were deprived of personal freedom and suffered from tremendous mental and physical torment.
Transformation was the primary goal and business conducted in labor camps and prisons. In addition, the 6-10 Office set up various types of brainwashing sessions.
After the persecution of Falun Gong began, overseas Falun Gong’s website Minghui.org often referred to the “legal training center.” The center’s real operation was far from what is suggested by its name. One CCP website of Qingzhou in Shandong Province stated that its “legal training center” was an agency dedicated to transforming Falun Gong practitioners.
In later years with the growing corruption and social conflicts, petitioners for all kinds of issues swamped Chinese cities. The “legal training centers” that were originally created to brainwash Falun Gong practitioners have been used to illegally detain the petitioners. In 2011, a Chinese media disclosed the sudden death of a disabled veteran who was emaciated after spending over nine months at a “legal training center” in Shaanxi province. The center was reportedly torturing petitioners by starvation and physical abuse in order to prevent them from traveling to Beijing or provincial capitals. Many of the detainees were starved to skin and bones and died. One can easily imagine the sufferings of Falun Gong practitioners in those centers.
Torture
Torture in custody has taken the lives of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners since the Communist Party began persecuting followers of the spiritual discipline in 1999.
Cases of torture are annually documented in nearly every country around the world. China is notable here with cases of torture of Falun Gong that represent one of the largest and most frequently tortured groups in the world. In the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture’s 2006 report, two thirds of the torture cases listed for China were of Falun Gong.
Human rights organizations have documented over 87,000 cases of severe abuse or torture of Falun Gong adherents. Of the more than 3,400 confirmed deaths of Falun Gong adherents in China, the vast majority came from torture.
Used for decades by Chinese Communist Party police to extort confessions from suspects and targets of political campaigns, torture is now being used against the Falun Gong to force them to renounce their faith. Both physical and mental torture techniques are used, though the distinction between the two is not always clear.
The way mental and physical torture are combined can be seen in the brief excerpt below from the Washington Post, which describes the typical ordeal countless Falun Gong adherents have faced:
At a police station in western Beijing, Ouyang was stripped and interrogated for five hours. “If I responded incorrectly, that is, if I didn’t say, ‘Yes,’ they shocked me with the electric truncheon,” he said.
Then, he was transferred to a labor camp in Beijing’s western suburbs. There, the guards ordered him to stand facing a wall. If he moved, they shocked him. If he fell down from fatigue, they shocked him.
Each morning, he had five minutes to eat and relieve himself. “If I didn’t make it, I went in my pants,” he said. “And they shocked me for that, too.”
By the sixth day, Ouyang said, he couldn’t see straight from staring at plaster three inches from his face. His knees buckled, prompting more shocks and beatings. He gave in to the guards’ demands.
For the next three days, Ouyang denounced [Falun Gong’s] teachings, shouting into the wall. Officers continued to shock him about the body and he soiled himself regularly. Finally, on the 10th day, Ouyang’s repudiation of the group was deemed sufficiently sincere.
He was taken before a group of Falun Gong inmates and rejected the group one more time as a video camera rolled. Ouyang left jail and entered the brainwashing classes. Twenty days later after debating Falun Gong for 16 hours a day, he “graduated.” (John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan, Aug. 5, 2001)
[14] Over 100 methods of corporal torture methods have been documented to have been used against Falun Gong.
Beatings
Falun Gong practitioners in police custody are often brutally beaten, sometimes to death. The use of the following items for beating have been documented among the known cases: wooden clubs, steel and iron bars, iron rods, whips made of twisted copper wire, bamboo sticks, rubber sticks, electric batons, wooden planks, steel wire locks, rattan, electric wire whips, and rope whips.
Piercing
Fingertips are pierced with pins and bamboo nails, which are also hammered under the fingernails. In many cases, torturers pull out the practitioners’ fingernails by the root. Women’s breasts are also pierced with sharp wires.
Force-feeding
Force-feeding is a torture method often used on Falun Gong, and it has been the cause of death in approximately 10 percent of all known death cases. The force-feeding is most often carried out by labor camp staff with no medical training, or by criminal inmates who are coerced to assist. Unsanitary rubber tubes are shoved into an adherent’s nose and down the stomach, often rupturing or damaging tissue; sometimes the tube enters the lungs. Detainees are often fed irritants such as highly concentrated salt water, hot pepper oil, boiling water, detergent, or even human feces.
Scorching with Hot Irons
Hundreds of practitioners have reported being burned with cigarettes, lighters, fire, irons, or hot iron bars.
“Water Dungeon”
In “Water Dungeons,” the detainee spends many days in total darkness while inside a small cage and immersed in chest deep water. Often the water is routed from sewage lines. Some detainees have died under such conditions, while others have been driven insane from this torture.
High-voltage Electric Shock Batons
Electric batons carrying high voltages are used to shock practitioners’ sensitive areas and private parts such as the inside of the mouth, top of the head, breasts, genitals, buttocks, thighs, etc. Several electric batons are often used simultaneously on different parts of the body. Victims have said that the smell of burning flesh permeates the air during the torture.
Sexual Abuse
Women (and also men) who practice Falun Gong have been systematically sexually violated by the police and the 6-10 Office. They are raped in public by police agents, hung upside down in prison, stripped naked and thrown into jail cells containing convicted male criminals. This has resulted in gang rape, being penetrated with broomsticks or electric batons causing severe bleeding, or tortured with dangerous compounds in the genitals.
“Almost every woman’s genitals and breasts or every man’s genitals have been sexually assaulted during the persecution in a most vulgar fashion,” Gao wrote in a December 2005 open letter to Communist Party leaders.
[15]A report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women cites an October 2000 case in which 18 women who practice Falun Gong were stripped naked and thrown into jail cells containing convicted male criminals.
[16]In April 2004, Yoko Kaneko (a resident of Japan), imprisoned in China for 1.5 years for practicing Falun Gong, gave her personal testimony at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. “In the Police Hospital, the police tried to force me to give up my belief. They handcuffed me to a bed. The handcuffs were so tight that my wrists were bleeding. They not only injected a tube through my nose into my stomach for force-feeding but also used a catheter to drain urine so that I would not go to the toilet. At that time, I was menstruating. They put me on a plastic sheet with my lower body naked and exposed. … I was handcuffed to that bed for almost 20 days in the hot summer, lying in my own sweat, the sticky sludge, and the discharge from my lower body. When I was finally released from the bed, I couldn’t get off the bed by myself and couldn’t walk. The skin on my entire back [was] infected and rotted.”
[17]In March 2005, at European Parliament in Strasbourg, Falun Gong practitioner Xiong Wei, from Germany, revealed how the Chinese labor camp usurp women’s basic rights and dignity. She said even when menstruation occurred, they were not allowed to use the toilet or tampons. When she protested the violence, the police would handcuff her and threaten, “I will break off your fingers one by one, and burn you with boiling water, if you still want to practice [Falun Gong].” Xiong also mentioned a 19-year-old college girl. The police instructed eight drug addicts to strip her naked and beat her up. They stuffed the socks and underwear into her mouth and kicked her lower body with hard shoes. Twenty days later, the girl was already mentally abnormal.
A French resident and Falun Gong practitioner Chen Ying witnessed another type of abuse. Chen saw a female practitioner carried into her labor camp cell on a big wooden board. Black and blue over all the body, she had each of her feet and hands tied to four corners of the board. She was wearing a thin upper coat and her lower body was stripped naked. The police kept feeding her thick pickle soups mixed with hot pepper so that she constantly felt thirsty. When she drank water, she would have to discharge. However, the police kept her limbs tied to the board even when she was discharging.
[18]Cruelty Rewarded
Some people blamed the poor quality of law enforcement officers for the torture. As a matter of fact, the abuses upon Falun Gong practitioners by those law enforcement officers is precisely in line with Jiang Zemin’s persecution policy to eliminate Falun Gong. The CCP held rounds of commendations to praise and promote the most vicious police officers.
For example, Zhang Chaoying, former head of Liaoning Province’s Masanjia Labor Camp and its party chief, was the mastermind behind the facility’s persecution of Falun Gong detainees. A most horrifying incident of Masanjia was to strip 18 female Falun Gong practitioners naked and throw them into male cells in October 2000. The event, directly leading to ten deaths, seven mental disorders, and multiple disabilities, caused an immediate international outcry. However, in 2001, Zhang was personally awarded by seven party and government agencies, including the CCP Central Committee’s Organization Department, Propaganda Department, and Political and Legal Affairs Commission, due to his all-out participation in the campaign against Falun Gong. Furthermore, Masanjia was awarded and given praise as the “model unit of national education and transformation work.” In March 2001, Zhang attended a Liaoning Province’s award ceremony where he was recognized for the judicial system’s education transformation work. This cruel, malicious person was later promoted to the head and party chief of Liaoning’s Bureau of Reeducation through Labor, in charge of all labor camps across the province.
[19]The CCP’s persecutory policy towards Falun Gong needed to be implemented by actors who would be receptive to deploying extreme brutality and sadism. However, the brutal and shocking nature of the campaign cannot be entirely blamed on the local-level law enforcement. Rather, it was Jiang Zemin and the CCP’s persecutory policy that fomented and incited the appalling conduct of these law enforcement officers.
Section 6: Organ Harvesting from Live Falun Gong Practitioners
On March 9, 2006, a woman with the pseudonym ‘Annie’ made a public statement that there had been large-scale harvesting of organs in China sourced from living Falun Gong practitioners.
On March 17, 2006, in an interview with
The Epoch Times, Annie stated that her ex-husband had participated in the large-scale organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in Shenyang Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Liaoning Province. The organs were sourced from a concentration camp detaining Falun Gong practitioners near the Sujiatun Hospital. Over the course of two years from 2001 to Oct. 2003, Annie’s ex-husband performed corneal transplant surgeries on approximately 2,000 practitioners, after which their organs would be extracted by other surgeons. These operations were performed while the victims were still alive. “Until now, no one has walked out of there alive. Out of the approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned there, a significant number of them have become victims of organ harvesting where their kidneys, corneas, and skin were first removed, then their corpses cremated. Now, about 2,000 practitioners still remain at the camp.”
[20]These allegations quickly drew the attention of the international community. Various efforts were undertaken to investigate the allegations. Requests were made to enter into China for the investigations but none were granted.
Since March 2006, independent investigations have collected numerous pieces of evidence from the CCP’s Central Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC) and 6-10 Office, organ transplant centers and hospitals of military, armed police, and local authorities involving all of mainland China’s 30 provinces, metropolitan cities, and autonomous regions. These investigations came to the conclusion that the allegations are true. There was also evidence found that Jiang Zemin issued the order of live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
[21]Unidentified Practitioners Provide Major Source of Organs
The CCP issued orders that the practice of Falun Gong was to be eradicated in three months. The orders were relayed to local authorities on Aug. 21, 2000 during a nationwide telephone conference of the Ministry of Public Security. CCP orders to eradicate Falun Gong set the stage for a massive number of arrests of Falun Gong practitioners that provided potential sources for organs.
After July 20, 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, who came from all over the country to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to appeal or protest, were systematically arrested. To protect family members, few identified themselves. Those who revealed their identities to the Beijing authorities were sent back to their home region. The local authorities there would then pressure their families and co-workers to get the practitioners to renounce Falun Gong. Again, to protect their families and co-workers, many Falun Gong practitioners refused to identify themselves once detained. As a result, the identities of large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners in custody were not known to their captors.
Massive Arrests Correlate with Exponential Growth of Organ Transplants
The exponential growth of organ transplants in mainland China started suddenly at the time of the massive arrests and disappearances of Falun Gong practitioners. Coincidence? Not Likely.
For example, consider liver transplants. From 1999 to 2006, the number of hospitals in mainland China capable of performing liver transplant surgeries increased from just 19 prior to 1999, to 500 in 2006, a spike of 26-fold, according to The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG). In the more than two decades leading up to 1999, only 135 liver transplant cases were performed in mainland China, averaging 5 to 6 cases per year. Specifically, during the eight-year period from 1991 to 1998, hospitals in mainland China performed a total of 78 liver transplants, averaging less than 10 cases per year. However, during the eight years from 1999 to 2006, 14,085 liver transplants were carried out in mainland China, an average of 1,760 cases per year and a 180-fold increase in liver transplants during the eight years. It’s highly unlikely that this enormous increase occurring during the time of the massive arrests and disappearances of Falun Gong practitioners is a mere coincidence.
Note that the number increases year after year and is the reason why it is described as exponential growth. Toward the end of this period, over almost 18 months, from January 1, 2005 to June 24, 2006, at least 5,644 liver transplants were carried out in mainland China. Transplants of kidney, heart, and lungs experienced similar growth. Parallel with the rise in organ transplants in China is the sudden establishment across China of a large number of organ transplant centers and tissue matching centers.
[22]In WOIPFG’s report of “Live Organ Harvesting in China,” Chapter 5, a health specialist for the central government, He Xiaoshun, noted the importance of the year 2000 (the year after Falun Gong was banned) for a dramatic increase in the number of organ transplantations and how much even that number escalated. She said in an article printed in the Phoenix Magazine Network, “The year 2000 is the watershed of China’s organ transplant industry … The number of liver transplants nationwide in 2000 is 10 times that of 1999, and by 2005, the number has tripled since 2000.” In other words, the number of transplants performed in 2005 in China was already 30 times that of the year 1999.
She was in a position to know about the numbers. She was a member of the China Organ Donation Committee and vice president of the Organ Transplantation Academy of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.
[23] ‘Organs Waiting for Patients’
In reviewing the numbers of transplants, it’s important to note something else: The waiting period for these organs at some hospitals is only one or two weeks. Compared to the severe shortage of donors in the United States as published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, China appears to have an abundant supply.
An examination of the top three organ transplant centers reveals an astonishing finding. During the period of 2003 to 2006, at Oriental Organ Transplant Center, Organ Transplant Institute of the People’s Liberation Army, and China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center, the waiting time for an organ was between one and two weeks, with a maximum wait of two months.
[24]In China, the organ transplant industry is highly abnormal. Instead of patients waiting for organs as is the practice everywhere else, in China the supply is so abundant, “organs wait for patients,” as WOIPFG facetiously put it. After 1999, the country experienced extremely short waiting times for transplanted organs, indicating the country had an oversupply of organs. “There appeared to be so many donors that China alone couldn’t use them all. Hospitals in China started marketing and promoting organ transplants to patients all over the world. Tens of thousands of foreign ‘transplant tourists’ have traveled to China for transplant operations since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999, because the average waiting time for an organ can be 2-4 weeks, and sometimes even as short as 1-2 weeks.”
[25]For example, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital Transplant Center declares on its liver transplant application form that the average wait time for a liver transplant is one week.
[26]What is happening in China’s organ industry becomes easier to grasp by comparing it with the United States. In the U.S., more than 120 million people are registered as voluntary organ donors, while China’s organ donation network was, until recently, nearly nonexistent. Nevertheless, the median wait time in the U.S. for a liver transplant in 2005 was 321 days or about 11 months, according to the 2008 Milliman report.
[27] The median wait time in the U.S. has come down considerably; in 2002, it was 974 days or two years and 10 months. The wait times for kidneys in 2002 was 1,136 days or three years and two months, according to the latest data in Milliman’s report cited above. The wait time for heart transplants in 2005 was 130 days or 4.3 months.
Later data from the 2012 Annual Data Report, United States Organ Transplantation, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states: “Average waiting times across the 58 [donation service areas] were longest for kidney transplants, on average 26 months compared with 12 months for pancreas, ten for intestines, four for livers, three for hearts, and three for lungs.”
[28]Order Came from Jiang Zemin
Based on evidence obtained by WOIPFG, Jiang Zemin personally issued the order to eradicate Falun Gong by live organ harvesting. “Organ harvesting targeting Falun Gong practitioners is a systematic crime committed by the state, which was initiated by Jiang Zemin and led by the Chinese regime,” is the conclusion of WOIPFG based on more than 2,000 telephone interviews, and over 10,000 items of data evidence.
[29]On Sept. 30, 2014, Bai Shuzhong, former head of the PLA’s General Logistics Department Health Division, spoke on the telephone to a WOIPFG investigator, who was posing as a CCP investigator. Bai was the top officer of the military’s health division from 1998 to 2004, and his office directly controlled the military medical universities and hospitals.
Bai was asked whether the order to conduct organ harvesting of detained Falun came from the PLA General Logistics Department or directly from the CCP’s CMC. Bai wouldn’t say either one, but instead, he responded:
“Back then, it was Chairman Jiang … There was an order, a sort of instruction that … instructed to carry out this thing, that is, organ transplantation.”
In response to the question whether it was true that the PLA Joint Logistics Departments (of the Military Regions) had detained a number of Falun Gong practitioners as sources of live organs, Bai stated, “This is back then, I think, at least this is how I remembered, because back then after Chairman Jiang issued the order, we all did a lot of work against the Falun Gong practitioners.”
During the phone call, Bai also stated, “We directly control the military medical universities. They are directly affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department, and they received repeated orders, because Jiang … put a lot of emphasis on this matter. … [Jiang] paid a lot of attention to this matter, there were written orders.”
[30]Admissions by other top CCP leaders over the years corroborated Bai’s account that Jiang Zemin personally ordered live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
On Sept. 13, 2006, Bo Xilai, then-Commerce Minister, accompanying then-Premier Wen Jiabao on a visit to Hamburg, Germany, received a call from someone who disguised himself as an official from the Chinese embassy in Germany, but was really a Falun Gong investigator. In the recorded conversation, Bo was asked whether it was he, then governor of Liaoning Province, or Jiang Zemin, who gave the order of live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. Bo said, “President Jiang’s [order].”
[31]On April 17, 2012, Li Changchun, a Politburo Standing Committee member, was asked what he thought of the idea of using the murdering of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to convict Bo Xilai. Li answered, “Zhou Yongkang was in charge of this specifically. He knows this.”
From May 4 to May 10, 2012, Liang Guanglie, former secretary of defense, former PLA chief of staff, and member of the CMC, was asked about the Grade 3A military hospitals using Falun Gong practitioners’ organs for transplants. Liang replied, “I’ve heard about it ... I did not take care of that thing. I was in charge of military affairs, instead of the logistics and medically related [affairs].” He told the investigator that the CMC had held meetings to discuss the issue of live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.
[32]In April 2012, former Deputy Party Secretary of the Liaoning Political and Legal Affairs Committee Tang Junjie was asked, “What kind of directions or commands did Bo [Xilai] give regarding removing organs from Falun Gong practitioners?” He answered, “I was asked to take care of this task. Party central [leadership] is actually emphasizing this.… At that time, we mainly talked about it during the meetings within the [Politburo] Standing Committee.” Liaoning Province is known to be the first province involved in large-scale live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners.
[33]Doctors Confirm Primary Sources Were Falun Gong
During the investigations over the years, transplant doctors from all over the country confirmed that Falun Gong practitioners were sources of organs.
Luo, a Guangxi National Hospital Urology transplant doctor, told the WOIPFG investigator on May 22, 2006, that his hospital obtained organs from Falun Gong. He stated, “It shouldn’t be a problem at all.… I can tell you, it’s an easy job for them to get organs.… Some are from Falun Gong; some are donors from family.” Luo said later in the 2008 TV program produced by Hong Kong Satellite TV that he spoke to a WOIPFG investigator.
[34]A doctor from Wuhan Tongji Hospital also said that using supplies of live organs from Falun Gong was “not a problem.”
[35]The military and armed police hospitals have played a major role in live organ harvesting of Falun Gong. For example, various doctors at the PLA No. 452 Hospital confirmed that there were young, healthy donors, who practiced Falun Gong. The PLA No. 307 Hospital could even provide identification information, proving that the organ donors were indeed Falun Gong practitioners. The PLA No. 205 Hospital admitted that the “donors” were detained Falun Gong practitioners, and this was done through the courts. Chengdu City Air Force Hospital anticipated that there would be a batch of kidney donors in the middle of May 2006, and that the hospital could provide young and healthy Falun Gong organs.
[36]Section 7: Suppression Apparatus of the Party State
Propaganda Machine in Full Swing
Propaganda is the key component of the CCP’s political persecution. Large-scale political campaigns always begin with vociferous accusations against an enemy of the state, and the persecution of Falun Gong was no exception. At each level of the newly established 6-10 Office system, a deputy position was usually in charge of the media and communication system. The nationwide newspapers, television and radio networks, the internet, as well as the high-pitched speakers in the rural areas, launched the attack, flooding various media with anti-Falun Gong content.
Within the first month of the clampdown, every major official print media outlet published 300–400 anti-Falun Gong articles. TV stations filled their prime time with Falun Gong-related programs, none of which carried viewpoints different from the authorities. The government mouthpiece China Central Television’s (CCTV) flagship daily news analysis program Jiaodian Fangtan (焦点访谈) produced 102 disparaging episodes. In the first 42 days between July 21 and August 31 of 1999 only, CCTV ran 30 episodes, taking up three-quarters of its total air time.
The authority’s nationwide propaganda portrayed Falun Gong adherents as out of step with scientific rationality, claiming the worldview of Falun Gong as “completely anti-science and anti-communism.” For example, the party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily characterized the battle against Falun Gong as “the battle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism.” Other editorial pieces claimed that Falun Gong’s “idealism and theism” was “absolutely contrary to the fundamental theoretical principles of Marxism,” and that Falun Gong’s principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance “had nothing in common with the socialistic ethics and socialistic culture.” The suppression of Falun Gong was viewed as a necessary step to safeguard the vanguard role of the Communist Party in Chinese society.
In an environment deprived of freedom of speech, repeated lies were effective in deceiving people. “Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth,” said Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s propaganda minister in Nazi Germany. This approach was the propaganda strategy adopted by the CCP.
In the very beginning, many people did not feel that Falun Gong was any sort of threat and disapproved the policy of suppression, as probably most people believed the government could not be trusted to tell the truth. Later, especially after the incident of self-immolation on Tiananmen Square in 2001, and the official media volleyed distorted reports and criticisms against Falun Gong, people’s minds began to waver. All sorts of posters, leaflets and videos that criticized Falun Gong were produced. Even schools at all levels regularly arranged anti-Falun Gong courses. The media warfare waged by the government was very similar to earlier campaigns during the Korean War and the Great Cultural Revolution.
The negative media campaign paved the road for brutality. As the planted hatred started to grow, more violent means were adopted, and the public support toward Falun Gong began to wane. Falun Gong practitioners faced severe imprisonment and torture. The death toll during detentions rose.
A 21st century large-scale persecution launched by a regime equipped with modern-day technology and communications is a game at a new level. People usually compare the campaign against Falun Gong to the Great Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. As a matter of fact, the intensity and breadth of the Communist Party’s media offensives toward Falun Gong went far beyond what the technology thirty years before could achieve. During the Cultural Revolution, the number of outlets was quite limited and the speed of communication was slow. Newspapers would take days to get into the hands of people.
In contrast, by 1999 when the crackdown became intense, China’s TV penetration rate was almost 90 percent. Multimedia had become a powerful tool for the CCP to incite hatred, which was more difficult during the time of the Cultural Revolution. The internet had become a far-reaching platform for the transmission of information at lightning speed. Throughout history, no other tyrant could have rivaled Jiang Zemin in terms of control of the media and telecommunications. The Chinese Communist Party’s newspapers, television, radio, and the internet reach around the globe. In seconds, Jiang Zemin’s defamation and lies about Falun Gong could reach every corner of the world.
The Great Firewall Controls Information Flow
As the world entered the information age and with the advent of the internet, the CCP spent a significant amount of public funds to develop the Great Firewall project.
The project launched in 1998 in an attempt to block information flow and free speech of the Chinese people. After the persecution of Falun Gong began in July 1999, the blockade prevented the exposure of facts about Falun Gong and censorship intensified to a previously unseen level.
In December 1999, the CCP State Council established a National Information Work Leadership Team led by Deputy Premier Wu Bangguo. In May 2000, China started to implement its national information filtering/monitoring system, the centerpiece being the National Information Security Management System, commonly referred to as the Great Firewall, or GFW.
The GFW monitors, analyzes, and filters domestic and international information flow, targets websites and their information, tracks and intercepts unapproved internet (IP) addresses, and blocks oppositional messages on the internet. Falun Gong-related information is one of its main targets. The GFW is a subproject of the Golden Shield Project (jīndùn gōngchéng), which encompasses much wider national security concerns. The original requirements of the GFW came from the 6-10 Office, whereas the Golden Shield Project’s requirements derived from national public security, according to Wikipedia.
GFW reports to the CCP Politburo, the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the Ministry of National Security, and the 6-10 Office. It is regarded as a “national defense project” under the direct leadership of the CCP Politburo. Jiang Zemin paid close attention to this project.
GFW involves a number of top Chinese universities, the Ministry of National Security, and units within People’s Liberation Army. The institutions participating in GFW development received equipment and technical support from major technology companies such as Cisco Systems, Inc., Nortel Networks Corporation, and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
According to a 2005 research report by Professor John Palfrey of Harvard University, the Chinese Communist regime blocked the following:
- 10 percent of all “pornography” websites
- close to 50 percent of the information available on the Tiananmen Square protest of June 4, 1989
- 60 percent of online information related to opposition political parties
- 90 percent of information on the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party
- 100 percent of all information reporting positively on Falun Gong
Research by experts from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University suggests that controversial filtering software known as the “Green Dam,” pre-installed on all computers sold in China since 2009, was designed to filter and block information about Falun Gong.
China’s information filtering system targets numerous overseas search engines, free blog services, popular Chinese community forums, virtual storage management (VSM) systems, video/photo services, Chinese websites of radio stations, free servers or host units, proxy servers or websites that are able to break through the censorship, home pages of well-known portals, as well as technical, shopping, charity, religious, and human rights websites.
An article from the Falun Dafa Clearwisdom.net, Aug. 25, 2013 states:
“The GFW has become the largest ‘wonder’ of the virtual world by locking the largest number of netizens on the planet inside its wall, while blocking the fact-bearing websites outside. It performs like a disgraceful hacker—intercepting, interfering with, and blocking internet users’ normal communications, and arbitrarily cutting off the Chinese people’s contact with the free world, forcing them to live within a web of lies spun by the CCP regime.”
[37]Chinese Diplomats Defame and Vilify Falun Gong
At the New Zealand APEC meetings in 1999, the Associated Press reported that Jiang Zemin personally gave then-U.S. President Bill Clinton a book defaming Falun Gong, hoping to convince President Clinton to adopt a “correct” attitude towards Falun Gong. “The book’s 150 pages in English is a relentless barrage of propaganda from China’s entirely state-run media,” reported AP.
[38]In March 2001, three Chinese diplomats, former Ambassadors Zhu Chizhen, Li Daoyu, and Zhang Wentu, were expected to hold discussions with the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on a variety of U.S.-China topics: arms sales to Taiwan, China’s human rights record, and U.S. missile defense plans. Instead, one of the diplomats pulled out a prepared speech and harangued Rice for some 20 minutes about Falun Gong. Rice, who would later become President Bush’s secretary of state, was angered by the Chinese diplomats’ tirade and quickly ended the meeting after the 20-minute reading.
[39]At the forefront for exporting propaganda targeting Falun Gong was the Chinese ambassador to France, Wu Jianmin, who went to great lengths to slander and incite hatred against Falun Gong and its founder in multiple gatherings. In a Feb. 17, 2001 meeting, Wu urged local Chinese immigrants and students in France to “take actions to stay away from and resist Falun Gong, and carry out the battle till the end.” Two days later, in a talk with the Beijing front organization, China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, Wu linked China’s stability and prosperity and overseas Chinese families’ personal life and property security to Falun Gong, asking overseas Chinese and international students to be vigilant against Falun Gong.
[40] On Jan. 4, 2002, the Chinese embassy in Paris held a photo exhibition, showing about 100 photos attacking Falun Gong (characterizing it as an evil cult), and its founder. Wu personally introduced and showed those pictures to French citizens and overseas Chinese.
[41]However, no one was as detrimental and as significant in the propaganda effort as the Chinese ambassador to the United States.
During his tenure as Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Li Zhaoxing gave talks that attacked Falun Gong on multiple occasions, at the University of North Carolina, University of Louisville in Kentucky, University of Virginia, WTO’s Ministerial Conferences, in Chicago, in Cleveland, and in San Jose. At its doorway, the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. put out display boards showing contents defaming Falun Gong. Embassy personnel also distributed anti-Falun Gong CDs to people who visited the embassy for normal business. He took every opportunity that was available to an ambassador to slander and incite hatred towards Falun Gong even when it was totally unrelated to the meeting: “forums at universities, workshops on economy and trade, international conferences, and overseas Chinese community meetings,” according to WOIPFG.
[42]In 1999 when the persecution started and again in 2001 when the incident of “self-immolation” was broadcast, a number of Chinese embassies and consulates convened local Chinese students and scholars to watch the CCP’s China Central Television programs, and organized anti-Falun Gong symposiums to criticize Falun Gong. Many of these activities took place inside the embassy buildings. These activities were then immediately reported by the CCP’s official media inside China, giving the false impression that overseas Chinese were also denouncing Falun Gong on their own initiative.
A report from the National Post in Canada on March 20, 2004, revealed a letter, written in March 2003, from China’s Chargé d’affaires in Canada Chu Guangyou to Jim Peterson, a Liberal MP and later a member of Paul Martin’s cabinet until 2007. It warned that China has “advised the Canadian government of the sensitivity of the issue [of Falun Gong] in the overall bilateral relations. I hope you and your government will understand our position and be vigilant against any attempt of Falun Gong to jeopardize our bilateral relations.” The Post report said that included with the letter was “the now standard package of anti-Falun Gong propaganda.”
The
National Post report also said that Mei Ping, China’s ambassador to Canada, “came to the
National Post to extol the virtues of Communist China and the evils of Falun Gong, leaving behind a book that purported to show how Falun Gong had driven people to suicide, murder, and madness—a claim without foundation and one that no other government has ever made about its own citizens who have taken up Li’s teachings.”
[43]In April 2002, the
Washington Times reported that Chinese officials were conducting a nationwide campaign in the United States against Falun Gong by “contacting mayors, and at least one governor, and urging them to snub the group.” U.S. elected officials who received letters from Chinese diplomats included Santee, California Mayor Randy Voepel, former Saratoga, California Mayor Stan Bogosian, and Washington State Governor Gary Locke.
[44]In China’s foreign relations, the CCP’s bottom line is clear. With western governments, anything can be put on the table, but not Falun Gong. Nor can any diplomatic meetings openly talk about Falun Gong. It is obvious there was huge pressure coming from Jiang Zemin and the CCP.
Jiang and the CCP also played games with western media so as to obscure their true intentions. During World War II, the Nazis once invited the Red Cross to visit Theresienstadt concentration camp and watch the Jewish detainees enjoy a rich cultural life. Likewise, the CCP took a page from the Nazi playbook to deceive the international community and invited western journalists for a carefully scripted tour in Chinese prisons near Beijing, providing them false impressions.
Jiang Zemin and the CCP also liked to manipulate perceptions of its human rights record and game the system. For example, in the United Nations, the CCP spent a large amount of resources to buy off some small countries, so as to block any motion criticizing China’s human rights abuses. They also played a “catch and release” game to disguise their true intentions. The CCP would first arrest a number of pro-democracy activists or human rights activists. When there were mounting pressures from western society regarding China’s human rights violations, it would then release a few of them. These releases gave the international community a piece of “evidence” that China’s human rights issue had improved. Among the prisoners released by the CCP, none would be a Falun Gong practitioner. The CCP knows what its ultimate goal is. It can be a little lenient toward other groups, but Falun Gong must always be the main target of its suppression of people’s freedom.
CCP Mounts High Pressure on the Masses
China has a gigantic hierarchy of government and Party organizations from the capital city all the way down to every neighborhood and every village. It also has numerous nongovernment organizations cobwebbing every aspect of people’s life. When the crackdown started, Jiang Zemin and the CCP mobilized all these organizations to participate. The Falun Gong persecution, thus, became a campaign in which virtually everyone had to participate.
Every workplace would organize the employees to watch CCTV’s anti-Falun Gong programs. Everyone had to make known his or her position on Falun Gong with a signed personal statement. An atmosphere of “universal opposition to Falun Gong” was created. School textbooks and exams contained contents and questions that defamed Falun Gong. A job applicant or a student applying to a university was required to fill out a form that stated whether he or she practices Falun Gong. Everyone was forced to be on board.
A tactic the CCP used to get everyone involved was the policy of collective punishment.
In ancient China, there was kin punishment, where family members would be implicated for a severe crime. The CCP would punish not only Falun Gong practitioners’ family members, but also their workplaces and local governments.
If any local Falun Gong practitioner traveled to Beijing or a provincial capital to petition on behalf of Falun Gong, or if the “transformation” rate of local Falun Gong practitioners in brainwashing centers was not high enough, the particular local government’s performance would be negatively affected. In this way, even sympathetic officials may feel forced to step up the persecution. The same was true at workplaces. The Falun Gong issue was directly linked with bonuses to the employees. By putting everyone’s pay at stake, a powerful incentive was created by the CCP for everyone to turn against Falun Gong.
Section 8: Jiang’s Personal Crusade
Three Party Documents Used to Justify Persecution
In February 2011, Hong Kong’s
Frontline (前哨) magazine, a monthly periodical with a focus on China’s political inside news, ran an article titled, “Two Regretful Incidents in Jiang Zemin’s Lifetime.” These two events were the so-called false bombardment of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia by the United States, and the persecution of Falun Gong. For the former, Jiang provoked national hatred against the United States. For the latter, the article stated for the first time something closer to the truth than what had ever been said before. “The decision to ban Falun Gong was controversial from the very beginning within the Politburo Standing Committee. Zhu Rongji and Li Ruihuan did not believe there was a need to go out of the way to deal with a qigong practice, nor did they believe it would become a large-scale movement. Jiang also faced opposition at home, as both wife Wang Yeping and grandson Jiang Zhicheng once practiced Falun Gong ... but Jiang Zemin insisted [on having] his way and forced the Politburo to adopt a resolution to ban Falun Gong. “
[45]Although different versions of the above account were already widespread, it was the first time that this story was carried by a publication considered to be connected to internal sources. It should be noted that even today, no evidence exists that the Politburo adopted a motion to ban Falun Gong. Per the CCP’s routine practices, any Politburo resolution that initiated or guided a political campaign, if it existed, would be published in a specific format for the general public. One important example was the May 16 Notice, a resolution circulated by the Politburo on May 16 of 1966, marking the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution.
As shown by all the existing evidence, in the interim between April 25, when over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners peacefully demonstrated at the Zhongnanhai government compound, and July 20 when the persecution officially began, only three documents were issued by the General Office of the Central Committee of the CCP to officials at the provincial and ministerial level or above that lay out the basis for persecuting Falun Gong adherents. These were Jiang Zemin’s letter, instruction, and speech. These were all Jiang Zemin’s private documents, sent under his authority and no one else’s, delivered in a secret way and never published. None of these was a resolution of the Politburo or its Standing Committee, or from the National People’s Congress or its Standing Committee.
During these three months, Jiang Zemin established the extralegal chain of command—the 6-10 Office and its proliferation of offices across the country—to orchestrate the persecution Falun Gong. We know Jiang gave four letters or speeches using his authority within the CCP leadership to call for violent suppression of Falun Gong and to build CCP consensus for this decision. Here is more detail of Jiang’s leading role in what happened during that critical time.
On April 27, the General Office of the CCP Central Committee issued a circular “On Printing and Distributing the Letter from Comrade Jiang Zemin to Members of the Politburo Standing Committee and other Leading Comrades.” The recipients were asked to study Jiang’s letter written on the night of April 25 (the same day of the Falun Gong demonstration), and report back to the CCP Central Committee.
On May 8, Jiang Zemin handed out instructions to the Politburo, the CCP Secretariat, and members of the Central Military Commission. It later became the No. 19 [1999] document distributed by the General Office of the CCP Central Committee. In the latter half of May 1999, provincial Party committees held meetings of the Standing Committee to convey this document and send it to lower level Party organs. In the first half of June, the document reached city level Party committees. The contents of the document were about making secret preparations to suppress Falun Gong.
On June 7, at a Politburo meeting, Jiang gave a speech on “handling and solving the ‘Falun Gong’ problem.” The speech was also distributed by the General Office of the CCP Central Committee with a mandate for study and implementation. A direct result of this speech was the setup of CCP Central Committee’s Leading Group of Handling Falun Gong and its office three days later on June 10. It was also known, as mentioned earlier, as the 6-10 Office. The speech claimed that “the ‘Falun Gong’ issue took place against a deep sociopolitical and complex international context. This was one of the most important incidents ever since the political turmoil in 1989. We have to take it seriously, study it thoroughly, and adopt strong countermeasures.”
In the political environment of China, the allegations of “political” and “international context,” as well as the comparison with 1989 student movement, signaled that a large-scale persecution was underway.
On June 13, the General Office of the CCP Central Committee issued the No. 30 [1999] document “Notice on Printing and Distributing Comrade Jiang Zemin’s speech at the Central Politburo meeting on handling and solving the ‘Falun Gong’ issue.”
These three documents were all from Jiang Zemin himself and not from any other members of the Politburo. One can discern from the outset, at the highest level of the CCP (that is, the Politburo), Jiang’s initiative to suppress Falun Gong was not approved or advised by others. It was Jiang’s own personal decision. Incidentally, these preparatory documents actually marked the beginning of the split-up of the senior CCP members. (There later was a fourth Jiang document—a document not formally issued by the Party—consisting of the speech Jiang gave to party members on July 19, the day before the mass arrests began, which gave the order for mobilizing the persecution.)
In early June and in many places across the country, police came to harass Falun Gong practitioners and interfere with their exercises. At the same time, word was spreading that the authorities were about to launch the suppression. Against such a background, the major official media published an article on June 14, four days after the establishment of the 6-10 Office. The article, “Key talking points of head of State Bureau for Letters and Calls when receiving Falun Gong petitioners,” denied rumors of suppression and reaffirmed the main talking points agreed to at the April 25 meeting. “For all kinds of normal exercises and fitness activities, none of them have been banned by any level of governments. People have the freedom to believe in a practice and do its exercises, and also have the freedom not to believe in a practice. It is normal to have different views and opinions, which can be passed along through normal channels and by normal means.”
Clearly, it was that Jiang’s secret documents ignored the Party’s and government’s open policy, unless the “key talking points” were part of a conspiracy to conceal the preparation for the large-scale persecution before it was in full swing. Neither scenario could possibly happen without the direction of the person with the highest level of power. In other words, either Jiang Zemin’s secret documents overrode the power of the official policies of the CCP and the government, or else the documents were part of a grand scheme of deception.
Although the public persecutory policy was marked by the two ministerial documents on July 22, 1999 from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security, the consensus both at home and abroad is that the large-scale arrest of Falun Gong practitioners on July 20 was a starting point of the persecution. On the evening of July 19, the day before the mass arrests, the CCP Central Committee convened the main leaders of the provincial Party committees. Jiang Zemin himself came to the meeting to speak, which later became the “speech at the meeting of persons-in-charge of the provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities.” In the history of the Communist Party, it was quite rare for the head of the Party to personally mobilize the whole Party on the eve of large-scale political persecution.
An article in the English Minghui on May 1, 2015 summarized the exclusive role that Jiang played in ordering the persecution:
“Jiang Zemin planned, directed, and oversaw implementation of the violent persecution of Falun Gong beginning in July 1999. His letters and speeches to top leaders of the CCP were transformed into official CCP Central Committee internal documents, ordering preparation and guidelines for the persecution. He established the chain of command for the persecution, especially by creating the “Leading Group” and “6-10 Office” as authoritative intra-CCP bodies able to direct lower-level CCP (and lower-level state) officers to commit abuses against Falun Gong adherents.”
[46]It’s important to note that this persecution was a Party action, not a state action using state organs. The same chain of command via the Party has been used ever since. An article in English Minghui observed: “…implementation of the persecution of Falun Gong at all levels was supervised and carried out by the officers of the Leading Group and its ‘6-10 Office’ at all levels. In particular, the ‘6-10 Office’ gives the orders it receives from above to security personnel to subject Falun Gong believers to carry out
zhuanhua (ideological conversion through torture),
douzheng (violent forms of suppression), and other related forms of torture, brainwashing, and abuse.”
[47]Diplomacy Used Against Falun Gong
International public relations is usually under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but when it comes to Falun Gong, the conventional diplomatic etiquette was pushed aside.
On Aug. 13, 1999, when Jiang held talks with visiting Tajikistan President Rahmon in Dalian, he went out of his way to brief the guests on the persecution of Falun Gong.
As mentioned previously, at the New Zealand APEC meetings in September 1999, the Associated Press reported that Jiang Zemin personally gave then-U.S. President Bill Clinton a book defaming Falun Gong, hoping to convince President Clinton to adopt a “correct” attitude towards Falun Gong. “The book’s 150 pages in English is a relentless barrage of propaganda from China’s entirely state-run media,” reported AP.
On October 25, 1999, on the eve of a state visit to France, Jiang accepted a written interview with the editorial board of the French newspaper Le Figaro. At the interview, Jiang called Falun Gong an “evil cult,” before any other CCP document or official media had so stated.
In September 2000, when Jiang was interviewed by CBS
60 minutes, he told Mike Wallace that the founder of Falun Gong claimed himself as the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva and Jesus Christ, and that Falun Gong had caused thousands of followers to commit suicide. One can prove that Jiang made the charges up. All Falun Gong books and teachings are open to the public, and nowhere can one find any of the above-mentioned assertions about Bodhisattva or Jesus Christ or suicide.
Jiang’s Personal War
It is difficult to grasp the whole picture of the ongoing persecution of such a scope, intensity, and duration (the persecution is still ongoing at publication time). One can characterize it as being systematic, inclusive, and covert. It’s systematic in that a new organization, national in scope, was created via a top-to-bottom hierarchy of 6-10 Office locations with the purpose of the party utilizing the whole state and all its manpower and powers to implement the persecution policy against Falun Gong. It’s inclusive because every segment of society, including workplaces, schools and universities, and family members, were dragged in to participate in a Cultural Revolution-style political campaign. It’s covert because the CCP blocked positive information about Falun Gong at home and abroad, and its massive propaganda and tight control of the mass media deceived the western world.
Jiang Zemin’s crusade against Falun Gong was a personal war. However, a personal war does not mean that the scale of this war would be confined to a few individuals. On the contrary, in a totalitarian society, the irrational and cruel behavior of the dictator inevitably results in tragedy for everyone. The zeal and fanaticism of this dictator, stopping at nothing and attacking with everything at his disposal, has ensured doom for him and his henchmen, which is little comfort to the innocent victims, who suffer huge losses, oftentimes losing their lives.
[13] Pomfret, John and Pan, Philip. (2001, August 5) Torture Is Breaking Falun Gong. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/08/05/torture-is-breaking-falun-gong/ea6c5341-c7a7-47c9-9674-053049b7323d
[15] The Epoch Times. (2014, August 6) Republishing Lawyer Gao Zhisheng’s Three Open Letters to Hu and Wen. http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/14/8/6/n4218099.htm
[16] United Nations. (2001, February 13) INTEGRATION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND THE GENDER PERSPECTIVE: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2000/45, Addendum, Communications to and from Governments https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G01/110/89/PDF/G0111089.pdf
[17] Kaneko, Yoko. (2004, April 13) Yoko Kaneko (A Resident in Japan), Imprisoned in China for 1.5 Years for Practicing Falun Gong, Gives Personal Testimony at U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Minghui.org. http://en.minghui.org/emh/articles/2004/4/14/47024.html
[18] Li, Ming. (2006, February 15) The Chinese Communist Party Is the Source of All the Atrocities During the Persecution of Falun Gong (Photos). Minghui.org. http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2006/2/15/69968.html
[19] Jue, Xing. (2013, April 23) Investigation of Masanjia Forced Labor Camp a Further Testament to the Atrocities Committed in the Camp. Minghui.org. http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2013/4/23/272410.html
[20] Ji, Da. (2006, March 17) Witness Appears to Testify Sujiatun Concentration Camp, Live Harvesting Organs. The Epoch Times. http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/6/3/17/n1257362.htm
[21] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. (2016, April 22) The Final Harvest. Chapter 2. https://www.upholdjustice.org/node/340#_Toc448409604
[22] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. Summary Report on the Crime of Live Organ Harvesting in China by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. http://www.upholdjustice.org/sites/default/files/201709/record/2016/366-english_a4_report.pdf.
[24] Web archive of the website of Oriental Organ Transplant Center http://archive.edoors.com/render.php?uri=http://en.zoukiishoku.com/list/volunteer.htm+&x=8&y=9
[25] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. Summary Report on the Crime of Live Organ Harvesting in China by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. http://www.upholdjustice.org/sites/default/files/201709/record/2016/366-english_a4_report.pdf.
[27] Milliman, Inc. (2008, April) 2008 U.S. organ and tissue transplant cost estimates and discussion. http://www.econ.wayne.edu/agoodman/7550/week8/Previous/2008%20Milliman%20Report.pdf
[28] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration. (2014, June) United States Organ Transplantation 2012 Annual Data Report. https://srtr.transplant.hrsa.gov/annual_reports/2012/pdf/2012_SRTR_ADR.pdf, page 171
[29] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. Summary Report on the Crime of Live Organ Harvesting in China by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. http://www.upholdjustice.org/sites/default/files/201709/record/2016/366-english_a4_report.pdf.
[30] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. (2014, September 30) WOIPFG Obtained New Evidence: Jiang Zemin Ordered the Harvesting of Organs from Falun Gong Practitioners for Transplantation. https://www.upholdjustice.org/node/260
[31] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. (2015, November 18) The Final Harvest. Chapter 2. http://www.upholdjustice.org/node/288
[33] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. (2016, April 22) The Final Harvest. Chapter 2. https://www.upholdjustice.org/node/340#_Toc448409604
[34] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. (2013, September 11) Collection of Evidence of Live Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party. http://www.upholdjustice.org/node/241#_Toc367315084
[36] Li, Sisi and Tang Mei. (2006, May 3) Military Hospital Openly Admits Transplant Organs Come from Falun Gong Practitioners (Photo). MInghui.org. http://en.minghui.org/emh/articles/2006/5/3/72773.html
[37] Minghui.org. (2013, August 25) Breaking through Internet Censorship for the People of China. http://en.minghui.org/html/m/141114.html
[38] Associated Press. (1999, September 12) Jiang gives Clinton Book on Banned Mediation Group.
[39] Gertz, Bill and Scarborough, Rowan. (2001, March 9) Notes from the Pentagon. Inside the Ring. https://gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring030901.html
[40] China News Service. (2001, February 22) Representatives of overseas Chinese and scholars in France Expose and Criticize “Falun Gong.” http://www.chinanews.com/2001-02-22/26/72554.html
[41] Sina.com. (2002, January 5) http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2002-01-05/435908.html
[42] World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. (2004, May 13) Investigative Report on the Jiang Regime’s Persecution of Falun Gong Outside China. https://www.upholdjustice.org/node/84
[43] Turley-Ewart, John. (2004, March 20) Falun Gong persecution spreads to Canada. National Post.
[44] Park, Steve. (2002, April 8) Officials ask U.S. cities to snub sect. Washington Times.
[45] Yan, Daming. (2011 February) Two Regretful Incidents in Jiang Zemin’s Lifetime. Frontline Magazine.
[46] Human Rights Law Foundation. (2015, May 1) The Role of Jiang Zemin in the Persecution of Falun Gong - a Legal Brief. Minghui.org. http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2015/5/1/149952.html
