8 Lawmakers Call on State Department to Help Free Florida Resident’s Detained Father in China

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 25, 2022. John Raoux/AP Photo

Eight Florida lawmakers are urging the State Department to help free the father of a Sunshine State resident who has been detained in China for over a year amid the communist regime’s ongoing campaign targeting his faith.

Zhou Deyong, a geological engineer, was one among nearly two dozen Falun Gong practitioners rounded up by police in Dongying city of eastern Shandong Province in a series of raids last April. He has been detained in Binhai Detention Center for the past one-and-a-half years—without a formal trial until late last month—while having restricted access to his lawyer.

Zhou’s son and wife, who reside in Florida haven’t been able to talk with him since his arrest.

In the letter dated Sept. 27 and led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the lawmakers expressed concern for Zhou’s welfare in the custody of Chinese authorities, citing the regime’s 23-year-long effort to eliminate the spiritual group Falun Gong that has subjected adherents to arbitrary detention, torture, sexual assault, slave labor, and forced organ harvesting.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, features slow-moving meditation exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Its popularity surged in China with 70 million to 100 million people estimated to have taken up the practice by 1999. Deeming this as a threat, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unleashed a systematic persecution campaign targeting adherents.

Zhou Deyong and You Ling in Monument Valley in Navajo County, Ariz., in January 2020. Courtesy of Zhou You

“In 1999, China started abducting and detaining Falun Gong practitioners, starting what has become a 23-year campaign by the CCP to violently purge all aspects of Falun Gong and its practitioners in China,” Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who signed the letter, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Like in Zhou’s case, “[m]illions of people who practice Falun Gong in China have been unjustly imprisoned. Others have been tortured or killed simply for practicing their religion.”

‘China Is Not Our Friend’

In the letter, the lawmakers wanted to know whether the Department of State had raised Zhou’s case with the Chinese authorities since their previous communication last November. Secretary of State Antony Blinken should “employ the tools available to you to sanction CCP and [Chinese] officials responsible for the horrific human rights abuses targeting Falun Gong practitioners,” they wrote.

Zhou You, the son, thanked the lawmakers for their support of his father. But his family’s story is shared by many others in China, he said.

Meng Yu, a Falun Gong practitioner close to Zhou’s family who was arrested on the same day, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. Deng Cuiping, the mother of Zhou You’s friend Iris Lu who lives in Tampa, received a 6-year sentence in 2017 and was only freed in July. This was her second stint in prison for the practice of her faith.

These examples and Chinese authorities’ continued refusal to let Zhou’s family contact his father “proves what an evil system the CCP is,” the son told The Epoch Times.

Zhou You called on Americans to recognize the nature of the CCP. “How could a government that brutally persecutes its own citizens be friendly to other countries?” he said.

“I am proud to live in Florida. Their support has been a huge help to us. I hope that America, now and in the future, will be free from any form of communism,” he added.

Bilirakis, the co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Caucus and a member of the executive committee of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, described the CCP as “[o]ne of the worst offenders on the planet.”

He has urged the United Nations (U.N.) to remove China from the U.N. Security Council. The United States, he said, needs to toughen its stance on the Chinese regime over its “horrible record on human rights and continued bad acts on the world stage.”

“China is not our friend,” he said, adding that the “time has come for a new approach in how we interact with China.”

“America must remain a beacon of principled courage, recognizing and promoting the basic human rights of all people. If we remain silent in the face of these transgressions, we neglect that moral imperative and do so at the peril of civil society.”

Republican Sen. Rick Scott, along with GOP Reps. Bill Posey, María Elvira Salazar, Brian Mast, Mike Waltz, and Democrat Rep. Val Demings also joined the letter.

The State Department declined to comment.

This article has been updated with a response from the State Department.