China’s Top Security Official Should Be Held Accountable for Persecuting Falun Gong

Painting "Come Back Daddy" displayed in an outdoor art exhibit, part of an event to commemorate the 26 years of persecution of the spiritual meditation of Falun Dafa by the Chinese Communist Party in China, at Ruocco Park, San Diego, on July 12, 2025. The painting is based on a true story. The young girl lost her dad when she was 8 months old. The girl's dad was tortured to death in China because he did not give up his faith. Courtesy of San Diego Falun Dafa Association

Commentary

Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched its brutal persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, under then-top leader Jiang Zemin, it has systematically tortured and killed countless practitioners in an attempt to force them to renounce their faith. This created a nationwide network of repression involving the Party’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC), police, state security, courts, and all levels of government.

Chen Wenqing, a current member of the CCP Politburo—a top decision-making body—and head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, is one of the key figures driving this ongoing persecution.

Chen was promoted to this position in 2022. The PLAC oversees the police, courts, prosecution, and national security. Since then, Chen has been the primary figure overseeing the entire political and legal system. Under his leadership, the persecution of Falun Gong has intensified both inside China and overseas. He bears direct responsibility for the deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in custody and for the CCP’s transnational repression abroad.

Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline centered on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Official Chinese sources estimate that between 70 million and 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong in China before the CCP began its persecution in 1999.

‘Zero-Out’ Campaign

In 2020, the PLAC launched a “Zero-Out” campaign nationwide aimed at forcing every Falun Gong practitioner in China to renounce their faith—essentially a continuation of Jiang’s original goal to “eradicate” Falun Gong.

After taking office in late 2022, Chen continued and expanded this campaign. According to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit that documents the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, in the more than three years since he became PLAC’s top official, at least 17,805 Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested or harassed, 2,775 have been illegally sentenced, and 517 have been persecuted to death.

Chen is notorious for his brutal, iron-fisted suppression of Falun Gong practitioners when he served as an official in various procuratorates in southwestern Sichuan Province.

According to a December 2024 investigation report by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), on Jan. 15, 2003, during the First Session of the 10th Sichuan Provincial People’s Congress, Chen, then delivering the Sichuan Provincial Procuratorate’s work report, stated that authorities must “show no mercy” in suppressing Falun Gong.

The WOIPFG’s 2005 investigation report revealed that by Jan. 13, 2005, at least 81 Falun Gong practitioners had been confirmed to have been persecuted to death in Sichuan Province (excluding 43 deaths in Chongqing), placing Sichuan sixth-highest in practitioner deaths nationwide.

One case (among many) shows the brutal persecution of Falun Gong by a prison in Sichuan. An April 10 Minghui.org report detailed the torture at Jiaozhou Prison in Leshan city. To force practitioners to give up their beliefs, prison guards used every possible method, including:

• Beatings, electric shocks with batons to sensitive areas, pepper spray in the eyes, and forced injections of unknown drugs.
• Binding practitioners with restraint belts and forcing them to wear restraint clothing.
• Extreme sleep deprivation (as little as two hours of sleep per night).
• Forcing practitioners to stand facing the sun all day or to sit motionless in a military posture for long hours.
• Restricting meals to just 20 seconds per meal, with only a small amount of rice, barely enough to keep them alive.

One recently released Falun Gong practitioner described the prison’s methods by saying: “There is nothing they would not do—only things you haven’t thought of.”

An undated photo of Pang Xun. Chinese social media

Pang Xun, a 30-year-old Falun Gong practitioner and former Sichuan TV host, was beaten to death by guards at Jiaozhou Prison on Dec. 2, 2022. Witnesses say his lips were streaked with dried blood. His chest was covered with bruises and scars, and his legs were battered.

Chen’s Years of Involvement in the Persecution

Throughout his career, Chen has consistently pushed the persecution, and he has advanced steadily through his active role in persecuting Falun Gong.

As early as 2002, he was appointed prosecutor general of Sichuan, where he oversaw the arrest, prosecution, and sentencing of many practitioners. By 2005, Sichuan had one of the highest numbers of Falun Gong deaths in the country, according to WOIPFG.

Chen later rose to become Party secretary of the Ministry of State Security in 2015, a minister in 2018, and finally head of the PLAC in 2022. Both institutions play a major role in the persecution of Falun Gong.

Chen Bears Responsibility for Transnational Repression

Chen has also helped export the persecution abroad in an effort to “zero out” Falun Gong practitioners overseas.

According to sources who spoke with The Epoch Times, Falun Dafa Information Center, and the WOIPFG, in October 2022, the PLAC held a special meeting where CCP leader Xi Jinping ordered a coordinated international campaign targeting Falun Gong, using legal warfare and propaganda. These operations are directed by the PLAC and carried out by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security.

For this purpose, the CCP has created specialized agencies overseas, such as the “anti-Falun Gong North America Office” in the United States, to target Falun Gong.

An individual targeted by the CCP is Cheng Peiming, a Falun Gong practitioner from Heilongjiang Province, who has survived the CCP’s forced organ harvesting. He fled China and now lives in the United States. Because he has publicly testified about the CCP’s forced organ harvesting, Cheng’s life is under growing threat, and the CCP has not ruled out the possibility of assassinating him in the United States and making it look like a suicide, according to WOIPFG.

In addition, Shen Yun Performing Arts—founded in the United States in 2006—has showcased traditional Chinese culture from before the communists took control of China. Shen Yun has received acclaim worldwide. As a result, the company said it has become a target of the CCP’s transnational repression and has faced at least 150 threats in the past two years, including bomb, arson, and gun threats.

Bomb threats have even targeted world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Concluding Thoughts

Since former CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, every head of the PLAC—Luo Gan (1998–2007), Zhou Yongkang (2007–2012), Meng Jianzhu (2012-2017), Guo Shengkun (2017–2022), and Chen Wenqing—has played a major role in abuses against Falun Gong practitioners.

The international community should hold these individuals accountable for their crimes against humanity.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.