‘China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is an attack on religious freedom and human rights,’ Sen. Ted Cruz said.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its ongoing human rights abuses, particularly forced organ harvesting, against Falun Gong practitioners.
“China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is an attack on religious freedom and human rights. It’s long past time to dismantle the CCP’s state-sponsored organ harvesting industry,” Cruz, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
wrote on social media platform X on May 13.
Cruz was responding to an
X post by the nonprofit Falun Dafa Information Center that shared that millions of people in more than 110 countries had celebrated World Falun Dafa Day this week, which is observed annually on May 13.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that encourages practitioners to abide by the core principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was first introduced to the public in 1992 and
grew rapidly in popularity, with official estimates indicating that by 1999, it had attracted at least 70 million practitioners in China.
The CCP deemed Falun Gong’s widespread appeal as a threat to its rule and in 1999 launched a brutal campaign of persecution and human rights abuses that continues to this day.
Many Falun Gong practitioners have died after suffering abuses while incarcerated, while others have been killed for their organs.
In 2019, the
China Tribunal in London concluded that the Chinese regime had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years “on a substantial scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the “principal source” of human organs.
“Amid the past 25 years of brutal persecution, there has never been an act of retaliatory violence by Falun Gong practitioners,” Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center,
said in a statement on May 13.
“What is it about Falun Gong that endeared itself so quickly to so many, and gave them the inner strength to peacefully withstand the full force and terror of the Chinese regime? The answer lies in its core tenets and how the teachings offer people a way to genuinely live by them.”
In response to Cruz’s comment, the Falun Dafa Information Center expressed gratitude and thanked the senator for his “steadfast leadership on human rights” in an
X post.
“We’re grateful for your introduction of S.817, the Falun Gong Protection Act, and hope to see it passed in the Senate soon!” the organization wrote.
Cruz
introduced the Senate version of the legislation in March.
The House of Representatives
passed the Falun Gong Protection Act (HR 1540) by voice vote with no objections on May 5. The legislation includes provisions to sanction individuals implicated in the forced harvesting of organs of Falun Gong practitioners.
The legislation now
awaits consideration in the Senate.
Texas was the first U.S. state to
enact a law to combat the Chinese regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting. The law, which went into effect in 2023, bans health insurance providers from covering organ transplants involving organs sourced from China or any country linked to forced organ harvesting.
