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The persecution of Falun Gong refers to the campaign initiated by the Chinese Communist Party against practitioners of Falun Gong since July 1999, aimed at eliminating the practice in the People's Republic of China. According to Amnesty International, it includes a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education, and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor, and physical torture sometimes resulting in death. Acute human rights concerns have been raised on this, and reports emerging from China have been interpreted as evidence of systematic organ harvesting from living Falun Dafa practitioners.

Falun Gong is a qigong discipline combining slow-moving exercises and meditation with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truth (or truthfulness), compassion and tolerance. It was founded by Li Hongzhi, who introduced it to the public in May 1992 in Changchun, Jilin. Following a period of meteoric growth in the 1990s, the Communist Party launched a campaign to "eradicate" Falun Gong on 20 July 1999.

An extra-constitutional body, the 6-10 Office, was created to lead the suppression of Falun Gong. The authorities mobilized state media apparatus, judiciary, police, army, the education system, families and workplaces against the group. The campaign, driven by a large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and internet, urged families and workplaces to participate actively in the campaign. There are reports of systematic torture, illegal imprisonment, forced labor, organ harvesting and abusive psychiatric measures, with the apparent aim of forcing practitioners to recant their belief in Falun Gong.

Foreign observers estimate that since 1999, hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in "re-education through labor" camps, prisons and other detention facilities for refusing to renounce the spiritual practice. Former prisoners, many of whom are not themselves Falun Gong adherents, have reported that Falun Gong practitioners consistently received "the longest sentences and worst treatment" in labor camps, and in some facilities Falun Gong practitioners formed the substantial majority of detainees. At least 2,000 Falun Gong adherents have been tortured to death in the persecution campaign, with some observers putting the number much higher.

Since 2006 there have also been persistent, but as-yet unproven allegations that the vital organs of non-consenting Falun Gong practitioners have been used to supply China's organ tourism industry. The United Nations Committee on Torture called for China to schedule an independent investigation into the allegations.

Background

Falun Gong emerged in 1992, toward the end of China’s "qigong boom", a period which saw the proliferation of thousands of varieties of slow-moving, meditating exercises believed to affect health and well being. First taught by Li Hongzhi in Changchun, Jilin province, Falun Gong differentiated itself from other qigong schools in its revival of spiritual and religious elements drawing on Buddhist and Daoist concepts.

Official registration issues

In 1993, Falun Gong was accepted into the state-run China Qigong Research Association (CQRS) and became an "instant star" of the qigong movement, enjoying considerable official support. By 1996, however, the relationship between Falun Gong and the CQRS had become strained. Palmer noted that Li objected to the new policy of the CQRS to formalise the structure of Falun Gong, and also objected to the requirement to start up a Communist Party branch. In March 1996 Falun Gong filed to withdraw from the CQRS, with Li explaining that he believed the CQRS seemed more interested in making money from qigong than conducting research. Falun Gong subsequently attempted to register with other government bodies including the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Minority Nationalities' Affairs Commission, the Chinese Buddhist Association and the United Front Department, but was rebuffed. In 1997, Falun Gong informed the Civil Administration and Public Security ministries that it had not succeeded in applying for recognition.

Initial restrictions and criticism

In July 1996, possibly in response to its withdrawal from the state-run Qigong Association and possibly as part of a broader government backlash against qigong practices, Falun Gong’s books were banned from further publication. The group also became a target of media criticism in the state-run press. Falun Gong adherents typically responded to what they perceived as unfair media treatment by picketing editorial offices to request retractions of critical stories. According to David Ownby, approximately 300 such demonstrations occurred between 1996 and 1999, and many, if not most, were successful.

Protests in Tianjin and Zhongnanhai

By the late 1990s, the relationship between Falun Gong and the Chinese state was growing increasingly tense. In 1999 official estimates put the number of Falun Gong adherents at approximately 70 million, making it arguably the largest independent civil society group in the history of the PRC.

In April 1999 He Zuoxiu, a longtime critic of qigong practices, published an editorial in Tianjin Normal University's Youth Reader magazine. Elaborating on what he had said months earlier on Beijing Television, he again launched into attacks on qigong groups—and Falun Gong in particular—as superstitious and potentially dangerous. Falun Gong practitioners claimed the cases he cited as evidence of the dangers of Falun Gong erroneous or otherwise "highly offensive."

His article catalyzed a "dramatic public struggle" between Falun Gong practitioners and Chinese authorities over the legitimacy of Falun Gong as an acceptable qi gong practice. Because Falun Gong practitioners had no access to mass media, they resorted to other symbolic forms to appeal to officials and the public: peaceful protests.

After the article was published practitioners gathered to protest in meditation posture outside the editorial office of the publication in Tianjin, and sent petitions and appeals to the Tianjin party headquarters and municipal government to retract He's piece. Three hundred riot police were sent to disperse the crowd. Some of the practitioners were beaten, and forty-five arrested. The practitioners were told the police action had been carried out on orders from the Ministry of Public Security, and that those arrested could be released only with the approval of Beijing authorities.

On 25 April ten to twenty thousand Falun Gong practitioners lined the streets near Zhongnanhai, the residence compound of China's leaders, in peaceful and silent protest to request the release of the Tianjin practitioners and an end to the escalating harassment against them. It was Falun Gong practitioners' attempt to seek redress from the leadership of the country by going to them and, "albeit very quietly and politely, making it clear that they would not be treated so shabbily." Many Falun Gong practitioners were party members who openly lobbied for the group. No other disenfranchised group has ever staged a mass protest near the Zhongnanhai compound in PRC history. Several Falun Gong representatives met with then-premier Zhu Rongji, who assured them that the government was not against Falun Gong, and promised that the Tianjin practitioners would be released. The crowd outside dispersed peacefully, apparently believing their demonstration had been a success.

Statewide suppression

On the night of 25 April 1999, then-Communist Party chairman Jiang Zemin issued a letter indicating his desire to see Falun Gong defeated. The letter expressed alarm at Falun Gong’s popularity, and in particular, its popularity among Communist Party members. In early May, reports were circulating that Jiang Zemin was establishing a high-level task force to deal with the threat, with Luo Gan in charge. Authorities started rounding up known Falun Gong organizers. According to the BBC, Falun Gong mobilised "tens of thousands of followers in some 30 cities" in mid June after the arrests.

On 20 July 1999, public security officers throughout China quietly detained numerous Falun Gong leaders just after midnight, from hundreds of homes, and hauling them to prison. Falun Gong's four Beijing "arch-leaders" were arrested, and quickly tried. The Public Security Bureau ordered churches, temples, mosques, newspapers, media, courts and police to suppress Falun Gong. Three days of massive demonstrations by practitioners in some thirty cities followed. In Beijing and other cities, protesters were detained in sports stadium. Editorials in state-run newspaper urged people to give up Falun Gong practice, and Communist Party members in particular were reminded that they were atheists and must not allow themselves to "become superstitious by continuing to practice Falun Gong."

Li Hongzhi responded with a "Brief Statement of Mine" on 22 July:

We are not against the government now, nor will we be in the future. Other people may treat us badly, but we do not treat others badly, nor do we treat people as enemies. We are calling for all governments, international organizations, and people of goodwill worldwide to extend their support and assistance to us in order to resolve the present crisis that is taking place in China.

Rationale

Foreign observers have attempted to explain the Party’s rationale for banning Falun Gong as stemming from a variety of factors. These include Falun Gong’s popularity, its independence from the state and refusal to toe the Party line, internal power politics within the Communist Party, and Falun Gong’s moral and spiritual content, which put it at odds with the officially Marxist–Leninist atheist ideology.

A World Journal report suggested that certain high-level Party officials wanted to crack down on the practice for years, but lacked sufficient pretext until the protest at Zhongnanhai, which they claim was partly orchestrated by Luo Gan, a long-time opponent of Falun Gong. There were also reportedly rifts in the Politburo at the time of the incident. Willy Wo-Lap Lam writes that Jiang’s campaign against Falun Gong may have been used to promote allegiance to himself; Lam quotes one party veteran as saying "by unleashing a Mao-style movement , Jiang is forcing senior cadres to pledge allegiance to his line." Some reports indicate that Premier Zhu Rongji met with Falun Gong representatives and gave them satisfactory answers, but was criticized by General Secretary and President Jiang Zemin for being "too soft." Jiang is held by Falun Gong to be personally responsible for the final decision: Sources cited by the Washington Post state that, “Jiang Zemin alone decided that Falun Gong must be eliminated,” and “picked what he thought was an easy target.” Peerman cited reasons such as suspected personal jealousy of Li Hongzhi; Saich postulates at party leaders' anger at Falun Gong's widespread appeal, and ideological struggle. The Washington Post reported that members of the Politburo Standing Committee did not unanimously support the crackdown, and that "Jiang Zemin alone decided that Falun Gong must be eliminated." The size and reach of Jiang's anti-Falun Gong campaign surpassed that of many previous mass-movements.

Human Rights Watch notes that the crackdown on Falun Gong reflects historical efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to eradicate religion, which the government believed was inherently subversive. Some journalists believe that Beijing's reaction exposes its authoritarian nature and its intolerance for competing loyalty. The Globe and Mail wrote : "...any group that does not come under the control of the Party is a threat"; secondly, the 1989 protests may have heightened the leaders' sense of losing their grip on power, making them live in "mortal fear" of popular demonstrations. Craig Smith of the Wall Street Journal suggests that the government which has by definition no view of spirituality, lacks moral credibility with which to fight an expressly spiritual foe; the party feels increasingly threatened by any belief system that challenges its ideology and has an ability to organize itself. That Falun Gong, whose belief system represented a revival of traditional Chinese religion, was being practiced by a large number of Communist Party members and members of the military was seen as particularly disturbing to Jiang Zemin. "Jiang accepts the threat of Falun Gong as an ideological one: spiritual beliefs against militant atheism and historical materialism. He to purge the government and the military of such beliefs".

Legal and political mechanisms

610 Office

On 7 June 1999, Jiang Zemin convened a meeting of the Politburo to address the Falun Gong issue. In the meeting, Jiang described Falun Gong as a serious threat to Communist Party authority—“something unprecedented in the country since its founding 50 years ago”—and ordered the creation of a special leading group within the party’s Central Committee to “get fully prepared for the work of disintegrating .”

On June 10 the Party established the 610 Office, a Communist Party-led security agency responsible for coordinating the elimination of Falun Gong. The office was not created with any legislation, and there are no provisions describing its precise mandate. Because of this, it is sometimes described as an extralegal organization. Nonetheless, its tasks were “to deal with central and local, party and state agencies, which were called upon to act in close coordination with that office,” according to UCLA professor James Tong. The leaders of the 610 Office are “able to call on top government and party officials...and draw on their institutional resources”, and have personal access to the Communist Party General Secretary and the Premier.

The central 610 Office is headed by a high-ranking member of the Communist Party’s Politburo or Politburo Standing Committee. It is closely associated with the powerful Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China. Soon after the creation of the central 610 Office, parallel 610 Offices were established at each administrative level wherever populations of Falun Gong practitioners were present, including the provincial, district, municipal, and sometime neighborhood levels. In some instances, 610 Offices have been established within large corporations and universities.

The main functions of the 610 Offices include coordinating anti-Falun Gong propaganda, surveillance and intelligence collection, and the punishment and “reeducation” of Falun Gong adherents. The office is reportedly involved in the extrajudicial sentencing, coercive reeducation, torture, and sometimes death of Falun Gong practitioners.

Journalist Ian Johnson, whose coverage of the crackdown on Falun Gong earned him a Pulitzer Prize, wrote that the job of the 610 Office was “to mobilize the country's pliant social organizations. Under orders from the Public Security Bureau, churches, temples, mosques, newspapers, media, courts and police all quickly lined up behind the government's simple plan: to crush Falun Gong, no measures too excessive.”

Official documents and circulars

Beginning in July 1999 Chinese authorities issued a number of notices and circulars prescribing measures to crack down on the Falun Gong and placing restrictions on the practice and expression of religious belief:

• On 22 July 1999, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a circular proclaiming that the Falun Dafa Research Society was an unregistered (and therefore illegal) organization.

• On 22 July 1999 the Ministry of Public Security released a circular forbidding the practice or propagation of Falun Gong, as well as prohibiting any attempts to petition against the ban or oppose the government’s decision.

• In July 1999 the Ministry of Personnel issues a circular stating that all government employees were prohibited from practising Falun Gong. Subsequent documents instructed local government departments to “deal with civil servants who have practiced Falun Gong.”

• On 26 July 1999 the Ministry of Public Security called for the confiscation and destruction of all publications related to Falun Gong. Falun Gong books were then shredded, burned and bulldozed for TV cameras. By By 30 July, state media reported confiscations of over one million Falun Gong books and other materials, which were then crushed or incinerated.

• On 29 July the Beijing Judicial Bureau issued a notice forbidding lawyers from defending Falun Gong practitioners. The Ministry of Justice also issues instructions that lawyers were not to represent Falun Gong without permission, and called on legal professionals to “interpret the law in such a way as to conform to the spirit of the government’s decree” on Falun Gong.

• On 30 October 1999 the National People’s Congress amended a statute (article 300 of the Criminal Code) to suppress "heterodox religions" across China. The legislation was used to retroactively legitimize the persecution of spiritual groups deemed "dangerous to the state." The it prohibited any large-scale public assemblies, and also prohibited religious or qigong organizations from organizing themselves across multiple provinces or coordinate with groups overseas. The NPC decision stated “all corners of society shall be mobilized in preventing and fighting heretical organizations activities, and a comprehensive management system shall be put in place. The same day, the Supreme People's Court issued a judicial interpretation prescribing measures to punish individuals found in defiance of the law.

• On November 5 1999 the Supreme People's Court issued a Notice giving instructions to local courts on handling cases of people charged with crimes for organising or using heretical organisations, particularly Falun Gong. It called for Falun Gong adherents to prosecuted for such offenses as “instigat activities of splitting China, endangering national unity or subverting the socialist system.

Human rights experts and legal observers have stated that the official directives and legal documents issued for the purge fall short of international legal standards and violate provisions in China’s own constitution.

Implications for the rule of law

The Ministry of Justice required that lawyers seek permission before taking on Falun Gong cases, and called on them to “interpret the law in such a way as to conform to the spirit of the government’s decrees.” Additionally, on 5 November 1999 the Supreme People’s Court issued a notice to all lower courts stating that it was their “political duty” to “resolutely impose severe punishment” against groups considered heretical, especially Falun Gong. It also required the courts at all levels to handle Falun Gong cases by following the direction of the Communist Party committees, thereby ensuring that Falun Gong cases would be judged based on political considerations, rather than evidence. Brian Edelman and James Richardson wrote that the SPC notice "does not comport well with a defendant’s constitutional right to a defense, and it appears to assume guilt before a trial has taken place.”

The Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong was a turning point in the development of China’s legal system, representing a "significant backward step" in the development of rule of law, according to Ian Dominson. In the 1990s the legal system was gradually becoming more professionalized, and a series of reforms in 1996-97 affirmed the principle that all punishments must be based on the rule of law. However, the campaign against Falun Gong would not have been possible if carried out within the narrow confines of China’s existing criminal law. In order to suppress the group, in 1999 the judicial system reverted to being used as a political instrument, with laws being applied flexibly to advance the Communist Party’s policy objectives. Edelman and Richardson write that "the Party and government’s response to the Falun Gong movement violates citizens’ right to a legal defense, freedom of religion, speech and assembly enshrined in the Constitution...the Party will do whatever is necessary to crush any perceived threat to its supreme control. This represents a move away from the rule of law and toward this historical Mao policy of ‘rule by man.’"

Propaganda

Onset of the campaign

One of the key elements of the anti-Falun Gong campaign was a propaganda campaign that sought to discredit and demonize Falun Gong and its teachings.

Within the first month of the crackdown, 300–400 articles attacking Falun Gong appeared in each of the main state-run papers, while primetime television replayed alleged exposés on the group, with no divergent views aired in the media. The propaganda campaign focused on allegations that Falun Gong jeopardized social stability, was deceiving and dangerous, was "anti-science" and threatened progress, and argued that Falun Gong's moral philosophy was incompatible with a Marxist social ethic.

For several months China Central Television's evening news contained little but anti-Falun Gong rhetoric. China scholars Daniel Wright and Joseph Fewsmith described it as "a study in all-out demonization", they wrote. Falun Gong was compared to "a rat crossing the street that everyone shouts out to squash" by Beijing Daily; other officials said it would be a "long-term, complex and serious" struggle to "eradicate" Falun Gong.

State propaganda initially used the appeal of scientific rationalism to argue that Falun Gong's worldview was in "complete opposition to science" and communism. For example, the People's Daily newspaper asserted on 27 July 1999 that the fight against Falun Gong "was a struggle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism." Other editorials declared that Falun Gong's "idealism and theism" are "absolutely contradictory to the fundamental theories and principles of Marxism," and that the "'truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve." Suppressing Falun Gong was presented as a necessary step to maintaining the "vanguard role" of the Communist Party in Chinese society.

At the early stages of the crackdown, the evening news also would broadcast images of large piles of Falun Gong materials being crushed or incinerated. By July 30, ten days into the campaign, Xinhua had reported confiscations of over one million Falun Gong books and other materials, hundreds of thousands burned and destroyed.

The tenor of the official rhetoric against Falun Gong continued to escalate in the months following July 1999, and broadened to include charges that Falun Gong was colluding with foreign "anti-China" forces. Media reports portrayed Falun Gong as a harm to society, an “abnormal” religious activity, and a dangerous form of “superstition” that led to madness, death, and suicide. These messages were relayed through all state, and many non-state media channels, as well as through work units and the Communist Party’s own structure of cells that penetrate society.

Elizabeth Perry, a Harvard historian, writes that the basic pattern of the offensive was similar to "the anti-rightist campaign of the 1950s the anti-spiritual pollution campaigns of the 1980s.” As it did during the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party organised rallies in the streets and stop-work meetings in remote western provinces by government agencies such as the weather bureau to denounce the practice. Local government authorities have carried out "study and education" programmes throughout China, in the form of reading newspapers and listening to radio programmes, as well as having office cadres visit villagers and farmers at home to explain "in simple terms the harm of Falun Gong to them".

Use of the ‘cult’ label

Despite Party efforts, initial charges leveled against Falun Gong failed to elicit widespread popular support for the suppression of the group. In October 1999, three months after the suppression began, the Supreme People's Court issued a judicial interpretation classifying Falun Gong as a xiejiao. A direct translation of that term is "heretical teaching", but during the anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign was rendered as "evil cult" in English. In the context of imperial China, the term "xiejiao" was used to refer to non-Confucian religions, though in the context of Communist China, it has been used to target religious organizations which do not submit to the authority of the Communist Party. Julia Ching writes that the "evil cult" label was defined by an atheist government "on political premises, not by any religious authority", and was used by the authorities to make previous arrests and imprisonments constitutional.

Ian Johnson argued that by applying the 'cult' label, the government put Falun Gong on the defensive, and "cloaked crackdown with the legitimacy of the West's anticult movement." David Ownby similarly wrote that "the entire issue of the supposed cultic nature of Falun Gong was a red herring from the beginning, cleverly exploited by the Chinese state to blunt the appeal of Falun Gong.". According to John Powers and Meg Y. M. Lee, because the Falun Gong was categorized in the popular perception as an "apolitical, qigong exercise club," it was not seen as a threat to the government. The most critical strategy in the Falun Gong suppression campaign, therefore, was to convince people to reclassify the Falun Gong into a number of "negatively charged religious labels" like "evil cult", "sect", or "superstition". In this process of relabelling, the government was attempting to tap into a "deep reservoir of negative feelings related to the historical role of quasi-religious cults as a destabilising force in Chinese political history."

Overseas Chinese propaganda using this label has been censured by Western governments. The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission in 2006 took issue with anti-Falun Gong broadcasts from Chinese Central Television (CCTV), noting "they are expressions of extreme ill will against Falun Gong and its founder, Li Hongzhi. The derision, hostility and abuse encouraged by such comments could expose the targeted group or individual to hatred or contempt and...could incite violence and threaten the physical security of Falun Gong practitioners."

Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

A turning point in the government’s campaign against Falun Gong occurred on 23 January, 2001, when five people set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Chinese government sources declared immediately they were Falun Gong practitioners driven to suicide by the practice, and filled the nation's media outlets graphic images and fresh denunciations of the practice. The self-immolation was held up as evidence of the "dangers" of Falun Gong, and was used to legitimize the government's crackdown against the group.

Falun Gong sources disputed the accuracy of the government’s narrative, noting that their teachings explicitly forbid violence or suicide. Several Western journalists and scholars also noted inconsistencies in the official account of event, leading many to believe the self-immolation may have been staged to discredit Falun Gong. The government did not permit independent investigations and denied Western journalists or human rights groups access to the victims. However, two weeks after the self-immolation incident, The Washington Post published an investigation into the identity two of the victims, and found that "no one ever saw practice Falun Gong."

The campaign of state propaganda that followed the event eroded public sympathy for Falun Gong. As noted by Time magazine, many Chinese had previously felt that Falun Gong posed no real threat, and that the state's crackdown against it had gone too far. After the self-immolation, however, the media campaign against the group gained significant traction. Posters, leaflets and videos were produced detailing the supposed detrimental effects of Falun Gong practice, and regular anti-Falun Gong classes were scheduled in schools. CNN compared the government'’s propaganda initiative to past political movements such as the Korean War and the Cultural Revolution. Later, as public opinion turned against the group, the Chinese authorities began sanctioning the "systematic use of violence" to eliminate Falun Gong. In the year following the incident, the imprisonment, torture, and deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in custody increased significantly.

Censorship

Interference with foreign correspondents

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China have complained about their members being "followed, detained, interrogated and threatened" for reporting on the crackdown on Falun Gong. Foreign journalists covering a clandestined Falun Gong news conference in October 1999 were accused by the Chinese authorities of "illegal reporting". Journalists from Reuters, the New York Times, the Associated Press and a number of other organisations were interrogated by police, forced to sign confessions, and had their work and residence papers temporarily confiscated. Correspondents also complained that television satellite transmissions were interfered with while being routed through China Central Television. Amnesty International states that "a number of people have received prison sentences or long terms of administrative detention for speaking out about the repression or giving information over the Internet."

The 2002 Reporters Without Borders' report on China states that photographers and cameramen working with foreign media were prevented from working in and around Tiananmen Square where hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners have demonstrated in recent years. It estimates that at least 50 representatives of the international press have been arrested since July 1999, and some of them were beaten by police; several Falun Gong followers have been imprisoned for talking with foreign journalists." Ian Johnson, The Wall Street Journal correspondent in Beijing, wrote a series of articles which won him the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. Johnson left Beijing after writing his articles, stating that "the Chinese police would have made my life in Beijing impossible" after he received the Pulitzer.

Entire news organizations have not been immune to press restrictions concerning Falun Gong. In March 2001, Time Asia ran a story about Falun Gong in Hong Kong. The magazine was pulled from the shelves in Mainland China, and threatened that it would never again be sold in the country. Partly as a result of the difficult reporting environment, by 2002, Western news coverage of the suppression within China had all but completely ceased, even as the number of Falun Gong deaths in custody was on the rise.

Internet censorship

Terms related to Falun Gong are among the most heavily censored topics on the Chinese Internet, and individuals found downloading or circulating information online about Falun Gong risk imprisonment.

Chinese authorities began filtering and blocking overseas website as early as the mid-1990s, and in 1998 the Ministry of Public Security developed plans for the “Golden Shield Project” to monitor and control online communications. The campaign against Falun Gong in 1999 provided authorities with added incentive to develop more rigorous censorship and surveillance techniques. The government also moved to criminalize various forms of online speech. China’s first integrated regulation on Internet content, passed in 2000, made it illegal to disseminate information that “undermines social stability,” harms the “honor and interests of the state,” or that “undermines the state's policy for religions” or preaches “feudal” beliefs—a veiled referenced to Falun Gong.

The same year, the Chinese government sought out Western corporations to develop surveillance and censorship tools that would let them track Falun Gong practitioners and to block access to news and information on the subject. North American companies such as Cisco and Nortel marketed their services to the Chinese government by touting their efficacy in catching Falun Gong.

In addition to censoring the Internet within its border, the Chinese government and military use cyber-warfare to attack Falun Gong websites in the United States, Australia, Canada and Europe. According to Chinese Internet researcher Ethan Gutmann, the first sustained denial of service attacks launched by China were against overseas Falun Gong websites.

In 2005, researchers from Harvard and Cambridge Universities found that terms related to Falun Gong were the most intensively censored on the Chinese Internet. Other studies of Chinese censorship and monitoring practices produced similar conclusions. A 2012 study examining rates of censorship on Chinese social media websites found Falun Gong-related terms were among the most stringently censored. Among the top 20 terms most likely to be deleted on Chinese social media websites, three are variations on the word “Falun Gong” or “Falun Dafa”. In response to censorship of the Chinese Internet, Falun Gong practitioners in North America developed a suite of software tools that could be used by bypass online censorship and surveillance.

Reports of violence and abuse

Since 1999, foreign observers estimate that hundreds of thousands—and perhaps millions—of Falun Gong practitioners have been held extrajudicially in reeducation-through-labor camps, prisons, and detention centers.

Arbitrary arrests and imprisonment

Recent estimates, such as those cited by the U.S. State Department, suggest that hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong adherents are detained extrajudicially in China, mostly in reeducation-through-labor camps. According to a 2005 Human Rights Watch report, petitioners who were not themselves Falun Gong practitioners reported that most of the detainees in reeducation-through-labor camps were Falun Gong adherents. They also noted that Falun Gong practitioners received the "longest sentences and worst treatment" in the camps.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, "re-education through labor" is an administrative measure imposed on those guilty of committing minor offences, but who are not legally considered criminals. In late 2000, China began to use this method of punishment widely against Falun Gong practitioners in the hope of permanently "transforming recidivists." Terms could also be arbitrarily extended by police. Practitioners may have ambiguous charges levied against them, according to Robert Bejesky, writing in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law, such as "disrupting social order," "endangering national security," or "subverting the socialist system." Up to 99% of long term Falun Gong detainees are processed administratively through this system, and do not enter the formal criminal justice system. Outside access is not given to the camps, prisoners are forced to do heavy work in mines, brick factories, and agriculture, and physical torture, beatings, interrogations, inadequate food rations, and other human rights abuses take place, according to Human Rights Watch.

Upon completion of their reeducation sentences, practitioners are sometimes then incarcerated in "legal education centers," another form of punishment set up by provincial authorities to "transform the minds" of practitioners, according to Human Rights Watch. While Beijing officials initially portrayed the process as "benign," a harder line was later adopted; "teams of education assistants and workers, leading cadres, and people from all walks of life" were drafted into the campaign. In early 2001 quotas were given for how many practitioners needed to be "transformed." Official records do not mention the methods employed to achieve this, though Falun Gong and third party accounts indicate that the mental and physical abuses could be "extraordinarily severe."

Torture in custody

A 2001 article by John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan in the Washington Post said that no practitioner was to be spared coercive measures in an attempt to make them renounce their faith. According to their source in the security apparatus, the most active are sent directly to labor camps, "where they are first 'broken' by beatings and other torture." They write that some local governments had tried brainwashing classes before, but only in January 2001 did the "secret 610 office, an interagency task force leading the charge against Falun Gong, order all neighborhood committees, state institutions and companies to start."

The Falun Gong website Clearwisdom report numerous cases of extreme psychological and physical torture, accompanied by testimonies and details of identities of the victims, resulting in impaired mental, sensory, physiological and speech faculties, mental trauma, paralysis, or death. Over 100 forms of torture are purported to be used, including electric shocks,suspension by the arms, shackling in painful positions, sleep and food deprivation, force-feeding, and sexual abuse, with many variations on each type. Reportedly, more than 250,000 people in China, being detained in 'Re-education through Labour' camps, on vaguely defined charges, have never seen a lawyer, never been to a court, and are detained with no form of judicial supervision. It is unknown how many Falun Gong members are detained in these camps.

Since 2000, the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations highlighted 314 cases of torture, representing more than 1,160 individuals, to the Government of China. Falun Gong comprise 66% of all such reported torture cases, 8% occurring within Ankangs. The Special Rapporteur refers to the torture allegations as "harrowing" and asks the Chinese government to "take immediate steps to protect the lives and integrity of its detainees in accordance with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners" Corinna-Barbara Francis of Amnesty says Falun Gong's (death toll) figures seem a little high because they are not the result of formal executions.

Organ harvesting

In March 2006 the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times published a number of articles alleging that China was conducting widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living Falun Gong practitioners. The website alleged that practitioners detained in labour camps, hospital basements, or prisons, were being blood- and urine-tested, their information stored on computer databases, and then matched with organ recipients. Within one month, third party investigators including representatives of the US Department of State, said that there was insufficient evidence to support the allegation. There is, however, a widely documented practice of the buying and selling of organs of death penalty prisoners in China. The lack of transparency surrounding such practices makes it impossible to determine whether written consent was obtained. It is unknown how many Falun Gong practitioners are being executed by the Chinese authorities. While Chinese authorities conceal national statistics on the death penalty as a state secret, various sources indicate China may be executing between 10,000 -15,000 people a year. Former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas were commissioned by Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong to investigate the allegations. In July 2006, they published "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China", which concluded that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners were victims of systematic organ harvesting throughout China, whilst still alive.

In August 2006, a Congressional Research Service report said that some of the key allegations of the Kilgour-Matas report appeared to be inconsistent with the findings of other investigations. In November 2008 the United Nations Committee Against Torture called for the Chinese state to immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims of organ harvesting, and take measures to ensure that those responsible for any such abuses are prosecuted and punished.

Psychiatric abuse

Falun Gong and human rights observers began reporting widespread psychiatric abuse of mentally-healthy practitioners since 1999. Falun Gong says that thousands have been forcefully detained in mental hospitals and subject to psychiatric abuses such as injection of sedatives or anti-psychotic drugs, torture by electrocution, force-feeding, beatings and starvation. It also alleges that practitioners are involuntarily admitted because they practice Falun Gong exercises, for passing out flyers, refusing to sign a pledge to renounce Falun Gong, writing petition letters, appealing to the government etc. Others are admitted because detention sentences have expired or the detainees have not been successfully "transformed" in the brainwashing classes. Some have been told that they were admitted because they had a so-called "political problem"—that is, because they appealed to the government to lift the ban of Falun Gong.

Robin Munro, former Director of the Hong Kong Office of Human Rights Watch and now Deputy Director with China Labour Bulletin, drew worldwide attention to the abuses of forensic psychiatry in China in general, and of Falun Gong practitioners in particular. In 2001, Munro alleged that forensic psychiatrists in China have been active since the days of Mao Zedong, and have been involved in the systematic misuse of psychiatry for political purposes. He says that large-scale psychiatric abuses are the most distinctive aspect of the government’s protracted campaign to "crush the Falun Gong." Munro notes a very sizeable increase in Falun Gong admissions to mental hospitals since the onset of the government's persecution campaign. However, Stone said that Munro's allegations were constructed from "his layman's reading and tendentious extrapolations of Chinese psychiatric publications".

Munro claimed that detained Falun Gong practitioners are tortured and subject to electroconvulsive therapy, painful forms of electrical acupuncture treatment, prolonged deprivation of light, food and water, and restricted access to toilet facilities in order to force "confessions" or "renunciations" as a condition of release. Fines of several thousand yuan may follow. Lu and Galli write that dosages of medication up to five or six times the usual level are administered through nasogastric tubes as a form of torture or punishment, and that physical torture is common, including binding tightly with ropes in very painful positions. This treatment may result in chemical toxicity, migraines, extreme weakness, protrusion of the tongue, rigidity, loss of consciousness, vomiting, nausea, seizures and loss of memory.

Stone said that the pattern of hospitalisation varied from province to province, and did not suggest any uniform government policy was in force. After having been given access to and examining several hundred cases of specific Falun Gong practitioners in named psychiatric hospitals, the medical personnel, "a significant number of the reported cases... had been sent on from labor camps where they... may well have been tortured and then dumped in psychiatric hospitals as an expedient disposition.

Deaths

The Falun Dafa Information Center reports that over 3,400 Falun Gong adherents have been killed as a result of torture and abuse in custody, typically after they refused to recant their belief in the practice, though these numbers are impossible to independently corroborate. The preponderance of reported deaths occur in China’s Northeastern provinces, Sichuan Province, and areas surrounding Beijing.

Among the first torture deaths reported in the Western press was that of Chen Zixiu, a retired factory worker from Shandong Province. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning article on the suppression of Falun Gong, Ian Johnson reported that labor camp guards shocked her with cattle prods in an attempt to force her to renounce Falun Gong. When she refused, officials "ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood...She crawled outside, vomited, and collapse. She never regained consciousness." Chen died on 21 February 2000.

On 16 June 2005, 37-year-old Gao Rongrong, an accountant from Liaoning Province, was tortured to death in custody. Two years before her death, Ms. Gao had been imprisoned at the Longshan forced labor camp, where she was tortured and badly disfigured with electric shock batons. Gao escaped the labor camp by jumping from a second-floor window, and after pictures of her burned visage were made public, she became a target for recapture by authorities. She was taken back into custody on 6 March 2005, and killed just over three months later.

On 26 January 2008, security agents in Beijing stopped popular folk musician Yu Zhou and his wife Xu Na while on their way home from a concert. The 42-year-old Yu Zhou was taken into custody, where authorities attempted to force him to renounce Falun Gong. He was tortured to death within 11 days.

Societal discrimination

Academic restrictions

According to Falun Gong lobby group World Organization for the Investigation Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), examinations contained questions with anti-Falun Gong content, and incorrect answers had serious repercussions. WOIPFG claimed that students who practiced Falun Gong were barred from schools and universities and from sitting exams, and that "guilt by association" was assumed: family members of known practitioners were also denied entry. There were anti-Falun Gong petitions.

Outside China

In 2004 the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a resolution condemning the CCP’s attacks on Falun Gong practitioners in the United States; it reported that Party affiliates have "pressured local elected officials in the United States to refuse or withdraw support for the Falun Gong spiritual group," that Falun Gong spokespeoples’ houses have been broken into, and individuals engaged in peaceful protest actions outside embassies have been physically assaulted. It called on the Chinese government to "immediately stop interfering in the exercise of religious and political freedoms within the United States."

International response

Falun Gong's ordeal has attracted a large amount of international attention from governments and non-government organizations. Human rights organizations, such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, have raised acute concerns over reports of torture and ill-treatment of practitioners in China and have also urged the UN and international governments to intervene to bring an end to the persecution.

The United States Congress has passed six resolutions - House Concurrent Resolution 304, House Resolution 530,House Concurrent Resolution 188, House Concurrent Resolution 218, - calling for an immediate end to the campaign against Falun Gong practitioners both in China and abroad. The first, Concurrent Resolution 217, was passed in November 1999. The latest, Resolution 605, was passed on 17 March 2010, and called for "an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners." At a rally on 12 July 2012, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, called on the Obama Administration to confront the Chinese leadership on its terrible human rights record, including its oppression of Falun Gong practitioners. "It is essential that friends and supporters of democracy and human rights continue to show their solidarity and support, by speaking out against these abuses", she said.

Response from Falun Gong

The Falun Gong have responded to all of this with markedly peaceful means. Throughout thirteen years of persecution, they have refused to adopt violence. Instead, adherents first tried to reason with Communist Party rulers through letters and petitions. Falun Gong practitioners and supporters report torture and ill-treatment of practitioners in mainland China. After 1999 practitioners also began holding frequent protests, rallies, and appeals outside The People's Republic. Some Falun Gong support groups and activists outside of China published "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party", and initiated a worldwide "Three Renunciations" Campaign. The video "False Fire: Self-Immolation or Deception?", was broadcast on Chinese television by hackers. Liu Chengjun, named as the instigator of the television hacking, was sentenced to 19 years in prison. The Falun Gong website stated that he died after 21 months in Jilin Prison, on 26 December 2003.

Further reading

• Amnesty International (March 2000). China: The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called 'heretical organizations. London, UK: Amnesty International Publications.
• Spiegel, Mickey (2002). Dangerous Meditation: China's Campaign Against Falungong. Human Rights Watch. ISBN 1-56432-269-6. Retrieved 28 December 2009.
• Schechter, Danny (November 2001). Falun Gong's challenge to China: spiritual practice or 'evil cult'?. Akashic Books. ISBN 1-888451-27-0.
• Johnson, Ian (2004). Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China. New York, NY: Vintage. pp. 251–252, 283–287. ISBN 0375719199.
• Palmer, David A. (2007). 9. Falun Gong challenges the CCP. Columbia University Press. pp. 241–295. ISBN 0-231-14066-5. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Tong, James (2009). Revenge of the Forbidden City: The Suppression of Falungong in China, 1999-2005. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195377281.
• Amnesty International (December 2013). Changing the soup but not the medicine: Abolishing re-education through labor in China (PDF). London, UK: Amnesty International Publications.

References

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Misplaced Pages's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (July 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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External links

• zhuichaguoji.org "World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong" English home page
• eBook Poisonous Deceit at Deep Six Publishing
• pulitzer.org - The 2001 Pulitzer Prize Winners: International Reporting: Wall Street Journal: Ian Johnson
• clearharmony.net "An Overview of Legal Cases Filed by Falun Gong Practitioners Around the World"

v t e Religious persecution and discrimination
By group	Atheism Campaigns in China Exclusivism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Christianity Persecution Catholicism Eastern Orthodoxy Jehovah's Witnesses LDS or Mormon Protestantism Tewahedo Orthodoxy post–Cold War era Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Ahmadiyya Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism minority Muslim Judaism Persecution Neopaganism Rastafari Sikhism Yazidism Zoroastrianism
Methods	Censorship Blood libel Communal violence Cultural genocide Deprogramming Desecration Domicide Discrimination Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Extrajudicial killing Extrajudicial punishment Exclusivism Forced conversion Forced displacement Hate crime Iconoclasm Intolerance Pogrom Political violence Population cleansing Population transfer Sectarian violence Social cleansing Segregation State atheism State religion Terrorism Violence War
Events	Persecution of Canaanite Pagans (1210 BC-1200 BC) Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire (64–313) Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire (c. 324–c. 491) Decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent (c.550–c. 1200) Yellow Turban Rebellion (c.184–c. 205) Battle of Tours (732) Rhineland massacres (1096) Jerusalem massacre (1099) Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent (643–1526) Inquisition (1184–1908) Massacre at Ayyadieh (1191) Northern Crusades (12th–16th cent.) Crusades against Christians (13th–15th cent.) Forced conversions of Muslims in Spain (1500–1526) European wars of religion (1522–1712) Ottoman–Habsburg wars (1526–1791) Goa Inquisition (1561–1812) French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) Expulsion of the Moriscos (1609–1614) Test Acts (1673–1829) Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction (1683–1922) Christianization of the Sámi people (1700s) French Revolutionary dechristianisation (1789–1801) Utah War (1857–1858) 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war (1860) Circassian genocide (1864) Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) Adana massacre (1909) Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Greek genocide (1913–1922) Pontic Greek genocide Assyrian genocide (1914–1924) Armenian genocide (1915–1923) Persecution of Christians in the Eastern Bloc (1917–1990) Soviet persecution (1922–1991) 1917–1921 1921–1928 1928–1941 1958–1964 1970–1987 legislation Šahovići massacre (1924) White Terror (Spain) (1936–1975) Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses (1933) The Holocaust (1939–1945) Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945) Communist Polish persecution (1945–1989) Communist Romanian persecution (1945–1989) Noakhali riots (1946) Direct Action Day (1946) 1946 Bihar riots (1946) Rawalpindi massacres (1947) Persecution of Hindus in Pakistan (1947–ongoing) Violence against Muslims in India (1947–ongoing) Violence against Hindus in independent India (1947–ongoing) 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight (1948) Jewish exodus from the Muslim world (1948–1980) Antireligious campaigns in China (1949–ongoing) Persecution of Tibetans (1950–ongoing) Exodus of Turks from Bulgaria (1950) Religious violence in Nigeria (1953–ongoing) Istanbul pogrom (1955) Buddhist crisis (1963) Huế Phật Đản shootings (1963) Thích Quảng Đức (1963) Xá Lợi Pagoda raids (1963) Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) Four Olds (1966) Famen Temple (1966) Bangladesh genocide (1971) Persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh (1971–ongoing) Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) Cambodian genocide (1975–1979) 1984 anti-Sikh riots (1984) Revival Process (1984–1989) Big Excursion (1989) Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus (1990) Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001) Ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War (1992–1996) Bosnian genocide (1995) War crimes in the Kosovo War (1999) Walisongo school massacre (2000) Kosheh massacres (2000) September 11 attacks (2001) 2002 Gujarat riots (2002) South Thailand insurgency (2004–ongoing) Boko Haram insurgency (2009–ongoing) Maspero demonstrations (2011) Attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh (2013–2016) Yazidi genocide (2014–2017) Genocide of Christians by ISIL (2014–ongoing) Iraqi Turkmen genocide (2014–2017) Persecution of Uyghurs in China (2014–ongoing) Rohingya genocide (2016–ongoing) Christchurch mosque shootings (2019) 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings (2019) 2020 Delhi riots (2020) 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel (2023) 2024 Istanbul church shooting Crocus City Hall attack (2024)
Religion

• Articles with ibid from July 2014
• Use dmy dates from December 2012
• Falun Gong
• Political repression in China
• Religious persecution
• Political abuses of psychiatry
• Campaigns of the Communist Party of China
• Torture in China
• 1999 in China