NYC Libraries Receive Fake Bomb Threats Targeting Falun Gong Parade

The threats were received a day after a large-scale parade and rally in New York City’s Flushing neighborhood.

Police cars surround Queens Public Library in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City on April 21, 2025. The Epoch Times

NEW YORK CITY—Several New York City libraries on April 20 received threats targeting events organized by local Falun Gong practitioners.

On the night of April 20, multiple Queens Public Library branches received bomb threat emails demanding that they stop any event held to commemorate the 26th anniversary of a major demonstration held in Beijing.

The threats came a day after Falun Gong practitioners held a thousands-strong parade in the Flushing neighborhood calling for an end to the persecution of their spiritual group in China. The April 19 rally also commemorated a peaceful gathering of Falun Gong practitioners held in 1999 that is now known as the April 25 appeal.

Global Tuidang Center, an organizer of the April 19 parade, received a similar email at about the same time.

According to a copy of the email The Epoch Times reviewed, the sender appeared to mistakenly assume that there would be a parade on April 25, the actual anniversary of the 1999 appeal. They threatened to drive into the parade participants while sending another group of assailants to Dragon Springs, the home of Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York-based arts group the Chinese regime has tried for years to disrupt using political and economic pressure.

An official with the New York City Police Department’s 109th Precinct confirmed that the email the center received is similar to the ones sent to the library and that the IP addresses of the emails are in China.

Parade organizers said they believed that the scale of the April 19 event might have caught the sender’s attention, prompting action.

Elisabeth de Bourbon, spokeswoman for Queens Public Library, told The Epoch Times that the library learned about the threats on April 21 and evacuated the library building in Flushing, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens known for its large ethnic Chinese population. She said they were grateful to staff members for “remaining professional and calm throughout the incident.”

The library’s Main Street branch was the end point of the April 19 parade, while a few other branches that were not on parade route also received threats.

Police cars and an ambulance arrived at the site on the morning of April 21 and temporarily blocked off roads for investigation. They eventually declared the library safe and opened it to the public shortly before noon, after a roughly two-hour delay.

This was the second round of such threats targeting Falun Gong parades in about six months. Intimidators emailed The Epoch Times in Chinese in September 2024, taking credit for assaults on multiple Falun Gong practitioners walking in a parade in Chinatown in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.

Cybersecurity experts who recently assessed similar emailed threats told The Epoch Times that they believe the emails came from the Chinese regime or its operatives.

Flushing councilwoman Sandra Ung, whose office kept in contact with the 109th Precinct of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and Queens Public Library officials throughout the morning of April 21, thanked law enforcement for its swift response.

“There is no place in our city for threats of violence, especially those meant to stifle free speech or intimidate individuals for exercising their right to peacefully assemble,” Ung told The Epoch Times. “Flushing is one of the most diverse communities in the country, and that diversity is our strength.

“No one should be made to feel unsafe or unwelcome for celebrating their cultural, spiritual, or political identity.”

She said she hopes all residents remain vigilant and report any suspicious or threatening behavior to the proper authorities.

Martha Flores-Vazquez, New York State Assembly district leader for Flushing, said the case illustrates the importance of protecting this diaspora.

“It’s a scare tactic, but we need to take it seriously and protect our good citizens of New York City,” she told The Epoch Times. “I think that it’s horrible that they’ve gone this far, and that we need to do everything possible through the use of intelligence to capture and make an example of who it is that is behaving this way, because it’s detrimental to the world.”

Martha Flores-Vazquez, New York State Assembly district leader for Flushing, speaks at a Falun Gong rally in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City on April 19, 2025. Mark Zou/The Epoch Times

The threat email was similar to a recent intimidation campaign targeting Shen Yun, which draws attention to the Chinese regime’s abuses against Falun Gong in its performances.

In the past year, dozens of violent email threats have been sent to the classical Chinese dance company and the venues that host its performances, as well as to supportive lawmakers and U.S. government agencies. The emails have variously threatened bomb detonation, arson, and other forms of violence, prompting several theaters in the United States and other countries to call in police and canine units. All the threats have turned out to be fake.

Taiwanese authorities recently traced some of the emails to China. They suspect the threats are linked to a research facility under blacklisted Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has significant ties to the Chinese military.

Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline with meditation exercises based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. About 70 million to 100 million people had taken up the practice in China by 1999. The Chinese regime, seeing its popularity among the people as a threat, launched a systematic campaign to eliminate Falun Gong, putting any Chinese who refused to renounce the practice in jail, labor camps, and psychiatric facilities. Falun Gong practitioners also face the threat of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting.

On April 25, 1999, about 10,000 people turned out to appeal for freedom of belief in front of China’s equivalent of the White House, the Zhongnanhai compound. The event was orderly, and officials initially affirmed the practitioners’ request. However, just three months later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its persecution, and Chinese state media began describing the gathering as a “siege.”

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade to call for an end to the persecution in China, in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City on April 19, 2025. Zhang Jingyi/The Epoch Times

Flores-Vazquez attended the April 19 parade and spoke at the rally that followed, telling the audience that they “stand together.” She stayed for hours at the evening vigil and, like the attendees there, she held a lotus flower in remembrance of the people killed in China for their belief.

The CCP has “done the worst,” she said, noting that the email intimidation campaign “really has to be taken seriously.”

“A higher level of government has to get involved,” she said.

Stopping the parades would suit the CCP’s goals, because such events help expose the regime’s misdeeds, said Michael Yu, one of the event organizers.

“Evil is always afraid of light,” he told The Epoch Times.

The FBI told The Epoch Times in a statement that the agency can neither confirm nor deny conducting specific investigations, and referred The Epoch Times to the NYPD.

The NYPD did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Linda Lin contributed to this report.