Falun Gong Practitioner Highlights CCP’s Abuses at UN Despite Interruption by Chinese Diplomat

Ding Lebin says he was not surprised by the regime’s effort to stop him from delivering his address.

Ding Lebin at a hearing on the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong at the lower house of the Czech parliament in Prague, on April 23, 2024. Michal Kováč/The Epoch Times

A Chinese diplomat interrupted a Falun Gong practitioner as he tried to expose communist China’s crimes against humanity in a recent speech to the United Nations.

Berlin resident Ding Lebin told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 4 that many of his fellow practitioners in China continue to receive prison sentences, with some being persecuted to death, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persists in the relentless campaign it started in 1999 to eradicate the faith group.

Ding’s speech was briefly interrupted when the Chinese delegation raised a procedural motion. In a brief remark, a Chinese diplomat accused Ding of abusing the council’s forum to “attack” the CCP and asked the council’s presiding vice president, Tareq Md Ariful Islam, to stop Ding from speaking.

According to the U.N. website, Song Changqing, the Chinese diplomat, holds the position of minister-counsellor with China’s permanent mission to the U.N. Office in Geneva.

Islam rejected the Chinese delegation’s motion, saying that Ding’s comments “are in order,” before handing the floor back to Ding to finish his address.

Ding ended his speech by calling on the council to appoint a special rapporteur to investigate the Chinese regime’s practice of forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for sale and transplant.

He delivered the address on behalf of the Society for Threatened Peoples, a human rights organization based in Germany.

“The CCP tried to stop and #silence me at the UN Human Rights Council,” Ding wrote on social media platform X on March 9. He called the Chinese delegation’s motion an “absurd request” and thanked Islam for allowing him to finish his address “on behalf of the voiceless millions of victims of persecution in China.”

The CCP’s campaign of persecution, now in its 25th year, has resulted in the detention and imprisonment of millions of Falun Gong practitioners in China, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center. While incarcerated, many have been subjected to torture, forced labor, and other inhumane treatment.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline with meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Before the start of the persecution in 1999, Falun Gong was freely practiced in China, with estimates at the time placing the number of practitioners between 70 million and 100 million.

Ding told The Epoch Times on March 9 that the Chinese delegation’s interruption was “expected.”

“Every time Falun Gong practitioners speak at the United Nations or the Human Rights Council, they are interrupted unreasonably by the CCP,” Ding said, adding that Beijing has not succeeded in preventing the practitioners from delivering their remarks.

“The Chinese Communist Party delegation has not refuted any of the crimes it has committed against Falun Gong practitioners,” Ding said.

“It has only tried to cover up and whitewash its crimes against humanity, spreading lies, and exporting coercion and transnational repression in an attempt to eliminate any condemnation toward the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes.”

He expressed hope that the U.N. can exclude China from the Human Rights Council.

Ding has been advocating for the release of his father, Ding Yuande, a Falun Gong practitioner who was sentenced to three years in prison in China in December 2023.

In the same X post, Ding explained that his father is being subjected to torture, brainwashing, and forced labor, while at “serious risk” of being a victim of the CCP’s forced organ harvesting.

In 2019, the China Tribunal, a London-based independent people’s tribunal, concluded that the Chinese regime had “beyond reasonable doubt” been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for many years, with the primary victims being Falun Gong practitioners.

Ding’s mother, Ma Ruimei, also a Falun Gong practitioner, is under surveillance in her hometown, Ding wrote, because of international campaigns to rescue his father.

“Due to the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong by China’s communist regime, our family of three has been separated,” he wrote, before adding that he has not seen his parents for more than 12 years.

“It is time to #end the CCP’s ongoing state crimes against Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience.”