Falun Gong Practitioner Assaulted in New York, Raising Transnational Repression Concerns

China’s communist regime has been persecuting Falun Gong since 1999, and it is known to have extended its campaign overseas.

NEW YORK CITY—A man assaulted a Falun Gong practitioner in New York City on Feb. 27, in the latest incident raising concerns about possible Beijing-linked intimidation in the United States.

City resident Lydia Dong said she was attacked while volunteering at a Falun Gong information booth in the Flushing neighborhood, home to the city’s largest Chinese population. Time stamps on video footage of the event show the attack took place at about 1:15 p.m. local time on Feb. 27.

The footage shows a man dressed mostly in black approaching Dong from behind, striking her on the back of her head with his right hand and knocking her to the ground. Her glasses and hat fall off.

After getting back on her feet, Dong called the police. A pedestrian who witnessed the attack described the assailant as an Asian man about 5 feet 9 inches tall, according to Dong.

Dong recalled feeling immediate pain and numbness after the attack, although it left no visible wound. The police called an ambulance for her, she said.

At the hospital, Dong said, she experienced a headache, numbness in her arms and legs, and elevated blood pressure. The doctor believes the symptoms were related to the attack, she said. When speaking to The Epoch Times, she said she still felt a tingling sensation in her head, like “ants crawling.”

The information booth at which Dong was volunteering is organized by the Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party, which was founded shortly after The Epoch Times published “Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party” in 2004. That editorial series helped inspire a grassroots movement known as Tuidang, or “quit the party,” in which Chinese people renounce their ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Flushing has regularly seen incidents of pro-CCP activists harassing or attacking Falun Gong practitioners, dating back to at least 2008. In April 2025, the center received multiple threatening messages over nine days, warning of bombings, shootings, vehicle sabotage, rape, and other acts of terror targeting Falun Gong practitioners and supporters. The threats escalated the following day when a man showed up at a booth in Flushing and attempted to knock it over.

Another incident took place in Brooklyn in 2024, when an Asian man allegedly attacked several Falun Gong practitioners during a parade for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.

In 2022, a suspect named Zheng Buqiu was charged with a hate crime and criminal mischief in the fourth degree, for repeatedly vandalizing information stands in Flushing.

Lydia Dong. Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party

Dong said the hostility toward Falun Gong is largely fueled by the Chinese regime’s messaging.

The Chinese people’s minds “have been filled with propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party,” Dong said. “As a result, they tend to harbor feelings of hatred toward Falun Gong.”

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice grounded in the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Introduced to the Chinese public in 1992, the practice had spread widely by the late 1990s, with official estimates placing the number of practitioners at more than 70 million in China.

In 1999, the CCP launched a brutal campaign to eliminate the practice, believing its popularity threatened the CCP’s authority. Since then, hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been detained and subjected to torture, with thousands dying as a result of abuse while in custody, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center. Due to strict censorship in China, the true death toll is hard to determine; it is likely far higher.

The persecution makes it impossible for people to set up such information booths inside China, Dong said, so the opportunity to do so in the United States feels “very meaningful.”

“What we do here is hand out materials to pedestrians passing by,” Dong said. “Those who want them can take them. If someone wants to learn more, we talk with them. The goal is to use this approach to show people what Falun Gong is really about.”

She said that what happened to her and what Falun Gong practitioners are doing to stop the abuses in China mark two contrasting forces: one for violence and one for kindness.

Michael Yu, who helps coordinate volunteers for the booth, said the incident represents another example of the CCP’s transnational repression of overseas dissidents.

“I think [the attacker] acted out of his hatred for Falun Gong,” Yu told The Epoch Times. “Falun Gong is a legally recognized religious organization in the United States. His action could be seen as a form of hate crime, directly targeting a religious group and, in doing so, challenging one of the foundational principles of the United States.”