Math teacher and Falun Gong practitioner Zhang Yaoming died in northeastern China in early April, one year after serving a 19-year prison term for providing facts about Falun Dafa to people.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that follows three core tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, and doing five slow-moving exercises. After it was made public in 1992 in China, the number of followers had surged to 70 million to 100 million by 1999. That year, the Chinese regime, deeming the practice’s popularity a threat, launched a nationwide persecution campaign to eradicate it.