Falun Gong practitioners gather near Zhongnanhai to peacefully appeal for their freedom of belief, in Beijing, on April 25, 1999. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)
On April 25, Falun Gong practitioners mark the 24th anniversary of their peaceful protest against repression in China.
On that day in 1999, approximately 10,000 practitioners of the spiritual practice appealed to the central government in Beijing for relief from slanderous comments on state-controlled television and publications, and for the release of approximately 45 members of their group who had earlier been arrested in Tianjin near Beijing.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is part of the Buddhist tradition and “combines meditation and gentle exercises (similar to yoga or tai chi) with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance,” according to Falun Dafa Infocenter.
According to an April 10 article by Zheng Yan in Minghui.org, many people in China and abroad do not understand that the persecution of Falun Gong extends back five years before the events of 1999.
The article should be read with an open mind as Professor David Ownby, in a 2008 book about the Falun Gong published by Oxford University Press, called accounts of persecution in the English version of Minghui “largely credible even if we have no way of verifying all of the accounts in detail.” Ownby was able to verify some of the accounts, however, by contacting witnesses.
Recognition of the persecution, despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) global propaganda campaign against Falun Gong, has been increasing.
Falun Gong practitioners hold placards with names of victims of the persecution of their beliefs in China at a rally at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Sept. 8, 2000. (Courtesy of Levi Browde)
On April 22, a feature article in Australia’s Spectator magazine found that “the persecution has been documented by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and investigative journalists such as Ian Johnson, whose coverage earned him a Pulitzer Prize.”
While most inside and outside China reportedly believe that the persecution of Falun Gong began in reaction to the April 25 event in Beijing, Zheng argues that “from 1996 to 1999, years before the incident in Tianjin, the then-head of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, assisted by Luo Gan and Zeng Qinghong, had already orchestrated several covert operations and attacks to defame and discredit Falun Gong.”
Zheng says that on April 25, the police in Beijing directed Falun Gong adherents “to line up around the central government compound,” which appears to be the case from the video of the event. Zheng argues that the regime later used the accusation of practitioners “‘besieging the government’ … as an excuse to initiate the persecution in July 1999.”
Zheng writes that the appeal in Beijing was not the cause of the persecution but rather “an event manipulated by the regime to justify the persecution.”
With reports of as many as 70 million to 100 million Falun Gong practitioners, which was larger than the CCP membership at the time, the regime likely saw Falun Gong as a competitor and increasing threat to its rule.
As early as 1994, according to Zheng, the regime began investigating the group, including with undercover agents. The police found nothing negative but continued to search. An early indicator of government repression came with an article in Guangming Daily, a regime mouthpiece, on June 17, 1996.
About five weeks later, the CCP banned the publication and distribution of Falun Gong books.
“The Ministry of Public Security investigated Falun Gong nationwide in January and July 1997 and attempted to designate it as a cult,” writes Zheng Yan. “They not only failed to collect any evidence to support the claim, but many officers who participated in the investigation took up Falun Gong themselves.”
Without evidence, the CCP finally declared Falun Gong a cult in July 1998. Police in four provinces and regions were reportedly ordered to begin the persecution. The police raided practitioners’ homes and confiscated their belongings.
After the appeal of the Tianjin incident in Beijing and an apparent attempt in the morning by Zhu Rongji to moderate the CCP’s response, the 45 practitioners were released in the evening, and the gathering in Beijing dispersed.
But the power of Falun Gong to mobilize its followers en masse in Beijing was noted by Jiang. The following year, he announced a ban on Falun Gong.
According to Falun Dafa Infocenter, “from July 1999 to March 2001, 188 people [practitioners] had been tortured to death in China, several hundred had been sentenced to up to 18 years in prison, and more than 50,000 had been detained in detention centers, labor camps, and mental hospitals.”
Falun Gong has resisted the CCP for nearly a quarter-century, with the persecution increasing in response, up to and including mass imprisonment, torture, and forced organ harvesting from detained practitioners that together amounts to genocide by the United Nations definition.
Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) speaks during the meeting for legislative business regarding HR 1154 – Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023 in Washington, on March 27, 2023, in a still from a video. (The House of Representatives/Screenshot via NTD)
As the CCP’s global reach has grown through an unprecedented increase in its international trade, so has its ability to persecute Falun Gong abroad.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged that China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) was targeting Falun Gong practitioners in the United States.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York announced a specific case and two arrests last week involving China’s Ministry of Public Security’s (MPS) transnational repression, including through agents that operated an undeclared Chinese “police station” in New York City. The two agents are U.S. citizens.
The police station targeted many Chinese dissidents, including Falun Gong adherents. According to reports by the New York Post and The Epoch Times, CCP officials directed Lu Jianwang, one of the arrestees, to target Falun Gong with counter-protests as early as 2015. China’s consulate in New York allegedly “directed Lu to publish materials in newspapers targeting Falun Gong,” though he said he did not do so.
The police station and its links to the repression of Falun Gong is the latest indicator that the CCP continues its persecution of that spirituality and other religious minorities, not only in China but internationally. Tragically, the CCP does so to the point of genocide in the cases of the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and Tibetan Buddhists.
The CCP apparently does not realize that the less it accepts the diversity of viewpoints and practices in China and abroad, the worse it looks.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Anders Corr has a bachelor's/master's in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea" (2018).
