Weep for the Souls of the Falun Gong and Other Persecuted Minority Groups in China

Justice delayed is justice denied

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China, in New York's Chinatown on July 10, 2022. Larry Dye/The Epoch Times

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been emboldened by the world’s lack of serious response to their crimes against humanity.

Let’s face it: The CCP has been guilty of crimes against humanity virtually since its inception—especially since assuming control of China at the point of a gun in 1949. Estimates vary, but as many as 80 million people have been tortured and killed by the CCP since the Party was founded in 1921. Minority and religious groups in China have borne the brunt of the CCP’s fury—with Tibetans, Uyghurs, Christians, Muslims, and Falun Gong adherents having suffered relentless persecution over the years.

By way of example, let us examine the persecution and genocide practiced by CCP thugs against Falun Gong.

Background

July 20 marks the 23rd anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong by the CCP.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice whose adherents are peaceful and nonviolent by definition and practice.

Founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, the spiritual discipline is described by the Falun Dafa Information Center as a combination of “meditation and gentle exercises (similar to yoga or tai chi) with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance (or in Chinese, Zhen 真, Shan 善, Ren 忍),” which “represents a direct and authentic connection to genuine traditional Chinese culture.”

Falun Gong practitioners doing meditation exercises in Guangzhou, China, before the persecution started in July 1999. Courtesy of Minghui.org

The three Falun Gong tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance are anathema to the CCP, which prizes deceit, lies, intolerance, and violence against dissenters. These characteristics are most sought by Chinese communists in maintaining their brutal control over the Chinese citizenry, especially those from “disfavored minorities.”

By the mid-1990s, the number of Falun Gong practitioners had blossomed to 70 million–100 million, according to official data. The CCP considered the continuing spread of Falun Gong principles to the Chinese people as a direct domestic threat to the Party’s never-ending quest for legitimacy. The CCP could not co-opt those who followed Falun Gong; they remained true to their three tenets.

The persecution of Falun Gong adherents was initiated by then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin on July 20, 1999, when practitioners were publicly declared to be a “threat to the government.” According to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that chronicles the CCP’s campaign against the practice, “Under Jiang’s personal direction, the CCP established the 610 Office, an extralegal security organization with the power to override the police and judicial systems and whose sole function is to carry out the persecution of Falun Dafa.”

Unable to entirely stamp out the practice, the CCP has ratcheted up the persecution during the past 23 years, from unlimited detentions to forced reeducation efforts, to more aggressive physical and psychological torture and the forced harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners.

Organ Harvesting

The selling of human organs has become a significant money maker for the communists.

In March 2020, the China Tribunal published a “full judgment” resulting from its independent inquiry into allegations of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and others in China, as well as the commission of other heinous acts on Chinese citizens.

From the judgment:

• “Thousands of innocent people have been killed to order having their bodies ... cut open while still alive for their kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin to be removed and turned into commodities for sale.”
• “Those innocents were killed by doctors simply because they believed, for example, in truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance and lived lives of healthy exercise and meditation and because the way they lived was seen as dangerous to the interests and objectives of the totalitarian state of the People’s Republic of China.”
• “Every witness who appeared before the Tribunal and who identified as a Falun Gong practitioner while in the PRC, and who had been either detained and/or arrested by law enforcement authorities in the PRC, and/or sentenced by a court in the PRC, for being a Falun Gong practitioner, stated that they had been tortured while incarcerated.”
• “The Tribunal is also satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that one or more of the following acts have been committed on Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs in the PRC: murder; extermination; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; rape or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; persecution on racial, national, ethnic, cultural or religious grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law; and enforced disappearance.”

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of the China Tribunal into forced organ harvesting, on the first day of public hearings, in London on Dec. 8, 2018. Justin Palmer

Gut-wrenching and horrific personal stories and evidence of torture are documented in the judgment and also in recent articles from Minghui.org found here and here.

International Response

The international response to the persecution—and genocide, by most definitions—of Falun Gong has been muted but has grown in recent years. International organizations have condemned the acts, and even some governments have weighed in with an outflow of proclamations, determinations, and “strong words.”

For example, the U.S. State Department condemned the incarceration of Falun Gong practitioners just prior to the start of the 2022 Winter Olympics, as reported here. The State Department also detailed the CCP’s atrocities against Falun Gong and other minority groups in China, in its annual “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices“ released in March 2021.

According to the Falun Dafa Australia Information Centre, “During the World Falun Dafa Day celebration in May [2022], Falun Dafa Associations across the U.S. received many proclamation letters from their state-, county-, and city-level officials expressing admiration for practitioners’ peaceful efforts to resist the persecution.”

This is all well and good, but where are the teeth—the sanctions and other crippling actions—that should be directed against the CCP? Yet we see no trade embargoes, no national leader-to-leader confrontations—nothing substantial that would disrupt China’s robust export economy and cause the CCP real pain for its crimes against humanity.

Concluding Thoughts

Justice delayed is justice denied. The souls of the Chinese dead cry out for a strong international response to the ongoing persecution and genocide of minority and religious groups such as Falun Gong.

How many souls might have been saved had there been a strong response from the beginning to the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong? And how many Chinese in other minority groups such as the Tibetans and Uyghurs might have been saved by forceful and coordinated international actions?

There seems to be no end in sight, because multinational corporations and others are too busy making money in communist China to pay attention to the CCP’s continuing atrocities. For shame.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.