NEW YORK CITY—An Asian man attacked multiple Falun Gong practitioners during a parade for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in Brooklyn’s Chinatown neighborhood on Sept. 14, according to witnesses.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual meditation practice that teaches the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Official estimates put the number of practitioners in China at 70 million to 100 million in 1999, when the CCP launched a whole-of-state operation to “eradicate” Falun Gong.
Brooklyn Attacker
Around 12:45 p.m., a man wearing a light-colored shirt rushed from the sidewalk into the street where Falun Gong practitioners were participating in the Mid-Autumn Parade.According to a witness, the man spat on one woman holding a Falun Gong banner before a male practitioner wearing a bright crossing guard vest ran up to him, putting himself between the woman and the attacker.
Wang Lirong, a parade coordinator and the second victim of the attack, saw this happening before the attacker moved toward her. When the man caught up to her, he punched her multiple times from behind, she said.
Wang was walking alongside the parade wearing a yellow jacket and a bag with the words “Falun Dafa” on them.
“It happened suddenly,” Wang told The Epoch Times. “He suddenly pounded on me and hit my head with his fist. I instinctively tried to move back, and he hit me on the right shoulder, and I was almost knocked down.”
It was then that the man in the bright crossing guard vest, Wei Lisheng, a volunteer guard for the parade, caught up and put himself between the attacker and Wang, as he had done with the first victim. With Wei shielding Wang, the attacker walked away.
“He shouted, ‘I will remember you,’” Wei told The Epoch Times.
Minutes later, the attacker returned and struck Wang again, hitting her on her neck and back, witnesses said.
“I staggered for a few steps, almost falling,” said Wang. “It was the same attacker who attacked me two minutes ago.”
Wang took out her phone to take a photo of the attacker. But before she could take one, he fled into a nearby bank. This was the first time Wang had encountered something like this in the United States, she said, and the man was a total stranger.
“This sort of hatred against Falun Gong is something instilled by the CCP,” she said. She believes the act should be considered a hate crime.
In a video recorded by a witness, the attacker can be seen waving to and greeting two other onlookers who appeared to know him.
Wang Xiaoling saw the attack play out while holding a banner for the Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP.
The Global Service Center was founded shortly after The Epoch Times published “Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party” in 2004. The editorial series inspired Chinese people to quit the CCP—a grassroots movement called “Tuidang” or “quit the party.”
Quitting the CCP is not limited to Chinese people who have become CCP members. It also applies to any Chinese person who has given an oath to the CCP, including when they joined the Young Pioneers in kindergarten or the Communist Youth League in high school. At those times, they swore to the CCP that they would sacrifice their blood for it and never betray it. To quit the CCP is to renounce any oath given to the CCP.
Wang Xiaoling told The Epoch Times that because the attack on Wang Lirong happened in the middle of the street, between two intersections, there were no police or security guards in the area to intervene.
On Sept. 16, a third Falun Gong practitioner told The Epoch Times he was assaulted. Yang Xiaoping was wearing a yellow shirt on Saturday, walking in the parade with a section of people holding banners for the Quit CCP center and movement.
The parade ended around 2 p.m., Yang said, and he headed toward the subway station back on the same route as the parade when a man came up to him, ramming his shoulder into Yang’s chest so hard that Yang went numb and dizzy and almost fell. The alleged attacker was pointing at Yang, but Yang said he didn’t hear what he said.
A video and photos taken by witnesses and reviewed by The Epoch Times show that Yang and Wang Lirong had encountered the same man.
Yang told The Epoch Times that witnesses of the attack said they had seen the same man ram into two other elderly Falun Gong practitioners in the same way, so hard that they nearly fell.
Parade organizers said on Sept. 15 that they had filed a police report.
Other Pro-CCP Attackers Arrested
In 2023, Qi Zhongping was arrested for assaulting a Falun Gong practitioner named David Fang in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens while Fang was sitting at a booth to provide information about Falun Gong.Fang told The Epoch Times that Qi had frequented the area for about a decade, harassing female Falun Gong practitioners and making false accusations about Falun Gong practitioners who tried to raise awareness about the practice and the CCP’s persecution campaign.
Qi’s harassment turned violent last year when a woman tried to film him attacking Fang, leading to Qi grabbing at the woman’s phone and biting Fang, who then tried to help the woman. Both fell to the ground, and then Qi grabbed another female Falun Gong practitioner’s walking stick to try to hit Fang with it, according to court filings.
Martha Flores-Vazquez, state Assembly district leader for Flushing, said it took a long time to get the protection needed in the neighborhood, although the Falun Dafa community alerted Americans to the CCP threat early on.
“Now we need to bring that same protection to the borough of Brooklyn, Kings County, Manhattan,” she said. Flores-Vazquez said the exposure of CCP infiltration into government agencies has created a heightened awareness and that action should follow.
“It’s become more and more obvious that this is ongoing. ... It’s like a cancer that continues to grow. Until you remove it, it’s not going to stop,” she said. “You remove by seeing something, saying something. We have to say something; we have to report each and every incident that occurs so there are records, so we can claim justice.”
Flores-Vazquez said that from her conversations with different ethnic communities in her district, she’s seen how the CCP has created division and given Asian Americans a bad name.
“It’s not healthy for the good citizens of New York City and around the world,” she said. “We need to prosecute those people who are committing these crimes.”
