U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns has urged the Chinese communist regime to release Falun Gong practitioners, who have been brutally targeted for their spiritual beliefs over the past 25 years.
The ambassador made the statement on July 22, shortly after the State Department called for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) long-running persecution campaign against the faith group. The regime’s suppression of the group has resulted in a large number of practitioners being arrested, imprisoned, or even killed for their organs.
Mr. Burns urged the regime to release all detained Falun Gong practitioners and others imprisoned in China for their beliefs.
“The United States will continue to speak out in support of freedom of religion and belief in China. We call on the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to release all those imprisoned for their beliefs, including Falun Gong practitioners,” Mr. Burns said in a statement on social media platform X.
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing commemorated the 25th anniversary of the start of the persecutory campaign.
“We solemnly mark 25 years today since the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began a campaign of repression against practitioners of Falun Gong,” the embassy said in a July 23 statement on X.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline incorporating meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By the end of the 1990s, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people had taken up the practice in China. Its health benefits and positive societal effects also drew praise from state institutions and media.
Its enormous popularity, however, was perceived as a threat by then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, who had long feared that the Party had lost its dominance over daily life in China. On July 20, 1999, Jiang utilized his power to initiate a sweeping persecution campaign against Falun Gong. Since then, millions of practitioners have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated and untold numbers killed, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
After more than two decades, the persecution of Falun Gong remains a top priority for the CCP’s police, prosecutors, and judges in more than a dozen provinces across the country, according to an analysis of official documents by the Falun Dafa Information Center.
In the first six months of this year, courts in China sentenced 218 people to prison or other punishment for practicing Falun Gong, according to data collected by Minghui, a U.S.-based website tracking the persecution of the faith group. Given the difficulty of obtaining related information from China, Minghui believes the actual number is much higher.
Detained practitioners are vulnerable to becoming the victims of the state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting, an independent people’s tribunal in London confirmed. The China Tribunal concluded in 2019 that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs. The ongoing practice supplies the country’s lucrative transplant industry.
The CCP’s bloody suppression of the faith group has drawn condemnation from U.S. officials and leaders of rights advocacy groups.
“For 25 years, the PRC has repressed and abused practitioners of Falun Gong—a peaceful meditation practice—because of their beliefs,” U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain said in a July 20 statement on X.
“We stand in solidarity with the Falun Gong community in the PRC and around the world.”
Lawmakers in Canada, Australia, the UK, Slovenia, as well as some Asian countries such as Japan and Taiwan, also called on Beijing to end its persecution of Falun Gong.
In a joint online statement, more than 130 lawmakers from 15 countries urged the CCP to “immediately stop the 25-year-long persecution of Falun Gong in China, and to unconditionally release all detained Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience.”
