Congressional Commission Demands CCP End Decades-Long Persecution of Falun Gong

Falun Gong adherents take part in a march to mark the 24th anniversary of the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China by the Chinese Communist Party at the National Mall in Washington on July 20, 2023. Larry Dye/The Epoch Times

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China has demanded that the Chinese communist regime end its decades-long persecution of the peaceful meditation practice Falun Gong as the group marks the 25th anniversary of its appeal to the regime in Beijing for the right to freely practice their faith.

“25 years ago today, Falun Gong practitioners gathered peacefully in Beijing, asking to freely practice their religion. Instead, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] launched a campaign of detention, torture, and harassment. The PRC [People’s Republic of China] must end its quarter-century-long persecution of Falun Gong,” the chairs of the commission stated on social media platform X on April 25.

In New York on April 21, Falun Gong adherents attended a rally in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York City, to commemorate the event and called on the CCP to end its persecution of their faith.

Speaking at the rally, Martha Flores-Vazquez, a Democrat and district leader from Queens, said she becomes emotional each time she attends an event that raises awareness about the persecution of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that features gentle, slow-moving exercises and is based on moral values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice was first introduced to the public in China in 1992.

The meditation practice was embraced by people from all walks of life. It quickly gained popularity across the country. Chinese authorities initially welcomed the practice for its benefits to citizens’ physical and mental health. The founder of the practice, Li Hongzhi, received multiple government awards for his contributions to society.

With the practice’s immense popularity, the then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin viewed it as a threat to the regime’s authoritarian control over Chinese society. By 1999, the number of Falun Gong practitioners had exceeded that of CCP members.

In April 1999, in response to an article published in Tianjin, a northern city in China, that smeared and denounced the practice, Falun Gong practitioners held sit-ins outside the newspaper’s office to request a retraction. However, the Tianjin police cracked down on the peaceful protest and arrested 45 practitioners.

The arrests in Tianjin concerned the 70 million to 100 million adherents nationwide at the time. As a result, on April 25, 1999, about 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside Zhongnanhai, the CCP’s leadership compound in Beijing, to request the release of unlawfully detained practitioners. This gathering is the largest protest in communist China’s recent history.

According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, two members of the Falun Dafa Research Society and three other Beijing-based practitioners went to the State Council to talk to CCP officials. They presented three requests, including the release of the Tianjin protesters. The party leadership granted the request and promised not to oppose the practice in the country.

However, less than three months later, on July 20, 1999, the CCP launched the brutal persecution of Falun Gong adherents across China. Since then, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been unlawfully detained, tortured, and killed for their organs.

With the threat of arbitrary arrest, torture, and possible death looming over them, tens of millions inside China mobilized to clarify their story in the face of an onslaught of state propaganda.

Outside of China, the Falun Gong diaspora established the website Minghui.org, coordinating grassroots networks in China to supply first-hand accounts of abuse inflicted on Falun Gong practitioners. Engineers who practice Falun Gong pioneered software technologies to help people in China break through the CCP’s internet firewall to access uncensored information.

CCP’s Forced Organ Harvesting

Over the past 25 years, Falun Gong practitioners have also been primary targets of forced organ harvesting, fueling China’s booming organ transplantation industry.

In March 2020, the UK-based Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China issued its final judgment, concluding that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply.”

Multiple law-making bodies, including the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament, have passed resolutions condemning forced organ harvesting by the CCP, calling on the regime to end the brutal practice.

In March 2023, in a historic move, the House of Representatives passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act to punish the Chinese regime for its brutal practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.

The legislation’s principal sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the Commission on China, said that forced organ harvesting is “an atrocity, a crime against humanity, and a war crime” and that those who willingly engage in it will be held responsible.

Eva Fu contributed to this report.