SAN FRANCISCO—Over 300 people paraded from San Francisco’s Ferry Building to Chinatown’s Portsmouth Square on July 16 to mark the 23rd year since the commencement of the Chinese communist regime’s persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline consisting of meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings centered on the principles, truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice shot up in popularity in China in the 1990s with an estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents. But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), perceiving this popularity as a threat to its authoritarian control, launched a society-wide campaign in July 1999 to eradicate the practice and its adherents.
Sandy Wang, was has practiced Falun Gong since 1994, is among those who have been detained and tortured in China.
“At the police station, they [tried to] force me to sign [a pledge to renounce my faith],” Wang told NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times. “They would force my hand open, but I made a fist because I won’t sign. They bent my thumb until it dislocated and couldn’t sign anymore.”
Wang said she went out in public in China to tell people that Falun Gong was being unjustly persecuted, but she was arrested and sent to jail. After that, she was in and out of jail for years.
“During that time, I was forced to do labor work. I had to wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and work until 11 or 12 at night. It [was] common to work overtime. If we [didn’t] work overtime, we [could] sleep before 11 p.m.,” she said.
Besides physical torture, she said she was mentally tortured, or brainwashed, so that she wouldn’t be able to have any of her own thoughts. Wang said they constantly played propaganda through a speaker.
She said the persecution affected those close to her, too. One time, she was arrested during the Chinese New Year, the most important family holiday in China.
“My whole family—my brothers and sisters were celebrating at my house—found out I suddenly disappeared. So it was not a joyous celebration. They were all looking for me,” she said.
Wang said she chooses to continue practicing it because it has brought her many benefits. Before she started practicing, she was already divorced with a young child, and her life had lost its meaning. But after she took up Falun Gong, she found a purpose, and life no longer felt tiring.
“In everyday life, I think of others first,” Wang said. “The daily routine at home is still the same, but I no longer feel tired or miserable.”
Wang, an engineer, recalled a time when she went to the bank for 80,000 yuan (about $12,000), but the bank made a mistake and gave her another 80,000 yuan, so she had a total of 160,000 yuan.
“At the time, I didn’t even check and just left. When I finally checked, I immediately returned the amount. The bank was very grateful,” she said.
The CCP’s grisly practice of forced organ harvesting of detained Falun Gong practitioners was also highlighted at the rally. In 2019, an independent expert panel found that the Chinese regime has killed prisoners of conscience, primarily detained Falun Gong adherents, on a “significant scale” to supply the organ transplant market. The practice, the tribunal said, continues today.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before in the history of the world,” Alejandro Centurion, a member of advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, told NTD. “This is something so horrific. It’s taking organs for profit; it’s part of a medical genocide.”
Many pedestrians stopped to watch the parade. Some expressed a wish that the issue of the persecution had more news coverage and visibility.
“I don’t believe mainstream media reports on something that, to me, is a crisis. Organ harvesting, for example,” Bob Spurlock, a retired police officer, told NTD. “Our media, mainstream media, social media, does not want to end the CCP. That’s the bottom line, and it’s all money.”
“You’ll see people passing out the fliers and people really not paying attention,” Anita Whites, a San Francisco resident, told NTD. “I hope the next generation doesn’t fall for misinformation and really does its research and understand[s] what’s going on in the world.”
Some people were unaware of the atrocities taking place in China but agree that it’s a universal human rights issue.
“It is very shocking,” Gabriel Tapia, a tourist from Mexico, told NTD. “I think these kinds of movements have to be made more often so we make [people] conscious.”
Jorge Triana, a tourist from Columbia, said he wishes the situation in China would get better. He said he didn’t know there were people from China here in this country fighting communism.
“People still believe that socialist, communist is the good way to go, because they have free education and they have free things, which doesn’t exist,” Triana told NTD. “There is no free anything. People pay for that.”
Falun Gong practitioners held a candlelight vigil the following day in front of the Chinese Consulate to remember those who have lost their lives to the CCP’s persecution.
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