WASHINGTON—While the persecution of Falun Gong adherents and their peaceful resistance within Mainland China continues unabated, Western media covers the persecution less than it did in the early years, and Chinese media gives virtually no coverage at all. The lack of coverage and its often biased nature are issues that the new annual report from the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC) attempts to change by providing new facts about the scope and direction of the persecution of Falun Gong in mainland China.
Falun Gong entered the world stage when 11 years ago, on April 25, 1999, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners went to the State Appeals Office in Beijing, asking for a peaceful and legal environment in which to practice their benign Buddhist mind-body meditation practice. Three months later, the practice was banned, as the Chinese communist regime set about to eradicate Falun Gong.
The official release of the 2010 FDIC Annual Report was marked by a panel discussion held at the Capitol Building on April 26 that covered various aspects of the persecution of Falun Gong.
“Tens of millions of Falun Gong citizens in China remain at constant risk of detention, torture, and death because of their religious identity,” said Levi Browde, executive director of FDIC. He said the regime tries to portray the practitioners as a “fringe group” or a “weird group,” but they are the “heartland of China.”
The regime’s official count of Falun Gong was 70 million in 1998—a figure that was cited in Western media—but after the ban, the regime said there were only 2 million. The report cites evidence that between 20 and 40 million actively promote the practice and many others are probably practicing in secret at home.
The estimate is based on the number of “material sites,” approximately 200,000, where Falun Gong adherents have established secure Internet connections and can download from a central site to print and disseminate information and Falun Gong literature. On average, each material site reaches 100 to 200 Falun Gong practitioners.
The regime escalated the repression in 2009 and continues to use surveillance of practitioners and “late night raids on practitioners’ homes, beatings with electric batons, and long-term imprisonment … to identify and forcibly ‘transform’ every single Falun Gong practitioner in China,” says the report.
Falun Gong entered the world stage when 11 years ago, on April 25, 1999, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners went to the State Appeals Office in Beijing, asking for a peaceful and legal environment in which to practice their benign Buddhist mind-body meditation practice. Three months later, the practice was banned, as the Chinese communist regime set about to eradicate Falun Gong.
The official release of the 2010 FDIC Annual Report was marked by a panel discussion held at the Capitol Building on April 26 that covered various aspects of the persecution of Falun Gong.
“Tens of millions of Falun Gong citizens in China remain at constant risk of detention, torture, and death because of their religious identity,” said Levi Browde, executive director of FDIC. He said the regime tries to portray the practitioners as a “fringe group” or a “weird group,” but they are the “heartland of China.”
The regime’s official count of Falun Gong was 70 million in 1998—a figure that was cited in Western media—but after the ban, the regime said there were only 2 million. The report cites evidence that between 20 and 40 million actively promote the practice and many others are probably practicing in secret at home.
The estimate is based on the number of “material sites,” approximately 200,000, where Falun Gong adherents have established secure Internet connections and can download from a central site to print and disseminate information and Falun Gong literature. On average, each material site reaches 100 to 200 Falun Gong practitioners.
The regime escalated the repression in 2009 and continues to use surveillance of practitioners and “late night raids on practitioners’ homes, beatings with electric batons, and long-term imprisonment … to identify and forcibly ‘transform’ every single Falun Gong practitioner in China,” says the report.
High Tech Surveillence
The estimated number of Falun Gong practitioners held in labor camps, prison camps, and other long-term detention facilities at any given time is between 450,000 and 1 million, according to panel member Ethan Gutmann, independent researcher and author of Losing the New China.Gutmann befriended Hao Fengjun, a defector in 2005, who told him the history of Chinese technical intelligence methods. Hao worked in the 610 Office—the office created on June 10, 1999, for the purpose of eradicating Falun Gong—soon after it was created. Hao discovered that the work on Falun Gong was already quite advanced, including comprehensive files on the Falun Gong practitioners that the 610 Office intended to arrest. Every person’s specific details, “Including family member information, everything of everything, how many practitioners in each district, how many coordinators, etc. These things are not something that can be done and collected in just one or two years,” said Gutmann.
“Hao’s responsibility was to round up specific high-profile practitioners who had slipped the net. The 610 Office had amassed camera surveillance of the individuals, taped at various public gatherings for use in advanced facial recognition technology. As long as we had video footage of the people involved, Hao told me, we would be able to get their personal information from our computer system,” said Gutmann.
No Intention to Change
The panelists were not hopeful that the communist regime would relent and allow Falun Gong to freely practice their spiritual beliefs. Canadian attorney David Matas said that he participated in the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group’s Universal Periodic Review, in which every member of the U.N. has its human rights record reviewed once every four years.China’s turn came in February 2009. During the “interactive dialogue” between China and Canada and other nations who made formal criticisms, China said, “No” to guaranteeing all citizens of China the exercise of religious freedom, freedom of belief, and freedom of worshipping in private.
Further, China said, “No” to abolishing arbitrary detentions, “No” to implementing the recommendations of the Committee against Torture in 2008 that China conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims that some Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to torture, and used for organ transplants, and “No” to taking effective measures to ensure that lawyers can defend their clients without fear of harassment.
Matas, co-author of Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, concluded that the Chinese regime has no intention of ending its human rights violations, because the regime says it has no such intention.
Matas was particularly disappointed that the regime refused to make public death penalty statistics. He wants this number to see if it is large enough to account for the sources of organ transplants between years 2000 to 2005 by persons other than Falun Gong practitioners.
“The government of China may feel it needs to suppress Falun Gong in order to stay in power, but it doesn’t need Falun Gong organs to stay in power,” Matas said derisively.
War on the Internet
An active arena where the persecution of Falun Gong is contested is on the Internet.While the efforts by Chinese netizens to see forbidden sites and uncensored searches is often viewed as a “cat and mouse game. … It’s not a game, but more like warfare on the Internet,” said Dr. Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF) and an expert on censorship circumvention technology.
Dr. Zhou said in testimony before Congress, May 20, 2008, “[The Chinese Communist Party] constantly launches cyberattacks on our infrastructure and our people. Attempts to hack our websites are nonstop, e-mails impersonating our own people with virus attachments are abundant, harassing phone calls are not rare events.”
China has erected a vast system to control the information that Chinese citizens can view on the Internet. Fifty thousand cyberpolice engage in monitoring and surveillance of Internet users, some of whom end up in prison for voicing their opinions online. GIF consists of a small team of dedicated Chinese-American engineers, who were brought together by the practice of Falun Gong. GIF has been providing circumvention technologies that allow millions of Chinese and Internet users in other repressive countries, such as Burma, Syria, and Iran, to gain free access to the Internet.
Dr. Zhou said that the contest between the regime and GIF is a “strategic battle in China.” He held up a photo of a badly beaten GIF engineer, Dr. Peter Li, chief technology officer, who was attacked in his suburban home in Atlanta and computers were stolen in 2006. The stakes are high and whoever did this deed was frustrated at the GIF successes, opined Dr. Zhou.
However, GIF is facing limitations in improving its services and has approached Congress for more resources. Last June, during the election crisis in Iran, their traffic increased sixfold and crashed their servers, said Dr. Zhou.
Distorted Media Coverage
Browde said that Falun Gong practitioners represent the largest single group of prisoners of conscience in China, and perhaps the world. Why then, he asked, were the news articles in major Western media and press releases from human rights groups about Falun Gong so few and far between in 2009?The regime tells the world that Falun Gong has been crushed and is no longer an issue of importance in order to discourage investigation and reporting of abuses, according to Browde.
The report asks, if what the Communist Party said were true, then why would Party officials in its internal statements use phrases like, “we must not loosen our hold on the struggle with Falun Gong in the slightest way”?
If hardly anyone were still practicing Falun Gong, why would China’s human rights lawyers collectively represent hundreds of practitioners over the past two years, asked the report.
Moreover, “Petitioners and others released from the labor and prison camps consistently report that Falun Gong practitioners make up a significant percentage of detainees, and in many cases, the majority of individuals held at these camps,” says the report.
Browde said that discussions and analysis, reports, and press releases on the persecution of “the largest single group of prisoners of conscience in China” fall far short of what it deserves.
He also said that the coverage of Falun Gong by Western media often use derogatory terms, such as “sect” and “cult,” that originated in Chinese propaganda. The use of these terms can affect people’s attitudes and behavior toward practitioners, creating a social distance harmful to understanding the practice. FDIC recommends that governments and media characterize Falun Gong accurately and suggest terms like: “spiritual practice” and “mind-body meditation practice.”
