CCP Is Committing Genocide Against Falun Gong, Human Rights Lawyer Says

Human rights lawyer David Matas speaks at an event marking the 24th anniversary of the Chinese regime's ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, in London on July 15, 2023. Yanning Qi/The Epoch Times

The Chinese regime’s treatment of Falun Gong practitioners is another genocide, a human rights lawyer said of Beijing’s ongoing war against the spiritual discipline that has lasted for 24 years.

David Matas, a human rights lawyer and Nobel Prize nominee, said Falun Gong adherents have been the target of a protracted “cold genocide” that’s harder to identify than mass killings in a shorter period of time.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a Chinese meditation practice consisting of slow-moving exercises and the doctrine of “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.”

It was estimated that the popular practice had attracted some 70 million followers before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by then-party head Jiang Zemin, launched a persecution campaign against it in 1999.

Since then, practitioners in China have been subjected to detention in prisons, labor camps, and mental hospitals. They have also been targets of social exclusion, sexual violation, and torture, which in some cases were fatal.

An independent people’s tribunal chaired by prominent British barrister and judge Sir Geoffrey Nice, KC in 2019 found that adherents of Falun Gong had been and continued to be the main group of victims killed for their organs. Evidence also pointed to forced organ harvesting from Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in recent years.

According to the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), the large pool of detainees in China enabled a “reverse matching” system, in which “a prisoner who is the best match for the paying recipient is chosen from a large pool of detainees. The prisoner is then killed and their organs extracted for transplantation,” ETAC said in a video explaining the practice.

Mr. Matas, one of the first investigators into the allegations of forced organ harvesting in China, said it’s a “cold genocide” that’s “happening slowly over time.”

“When you get mass killings in a short period of time ... it’s a lot easier to identify, like we saw with the killing of the Tutsis in Rwanda,” he told NTD, adding that the “genocide of Falun Gong” is less visible because the killing happened at the pace of “several thousands a year rather than everybody all at once.”

Genocide is defined in international law as acts with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

Mr. Matas said he disagrees with the arguments that the mass killing of Falun Gong practitioners is not genocide, because the killings had a profit motive or because people may renounce Falun Gong to avoid being killed.

“First of all, people can have mixed motives. Secondly, the direction of the repression of Falun Gong was not monetarily based. It was strictly ideologically based,” he said.

“Genocide is the killing of an identifiable group. And if you leave the group, you’re outside the group that’s the target of genocide. So I don’t agree with these arguments,” he said.

Mr. Matas made the remarks at a rally in London marking the beginning of the CCP’s suppression of Falun Gong 24 years ago.

Hu Xuanming (2nd row, R), whose mother is imprisoned in China, marching in a rally commemorating the 24th anniversary of the Chinese regime's ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, in London, on July 15, 2023. Yanning Qi/The Epoch Times

According to Falun Dafa Infocenter, the persecution officially began on July 20, 1999, when practitioners across China were arrested in the middle of the night.

Two days later, the Ministry of Civil Affairs declared Falun Gong to be illegal, and the Ministry of Public Security banned followers from congregating, displaying signs of Falun Gong, promoting the practice, and appealing or protesting against the decree (pdf).

In a document banning CCP members from practicing Falun Gong, the party’s central committee has said the Buddhist school practice “fundamentally contradicts” Marxist theory, which is atheistic or antitheistic in nature.