Falun Gong Practitioners in China Get Double the Average Jail Sentence: Study

Falun Gong practitioners participate in a parade in downtown Toronto on July 20, 2024, marking the 25th anniversary of the Chinese regime's persecution of the spiritual practice. Evan Ning/The Epoch Times

In China, individuals holding a spiritual belief centred on compassion can face sentences twice as long as those convicted of picking fights and provoking trouble, according to a recent study.

The latest report by human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders found that the Chinese regime continues to justify its arrests and lengthy sentences for Falun Gong practitioners using the contentious Article 300 under China’s Criminal Law. Although the law is also applied to other persecuted religious organizations in China, the NGO noted that the majority of recorded Article 300 cases involved Falun Gong practitioners.

From 2008 to 2020, the average jail sentence under Article 300 was just over five years, more than double the 2.3-year average for the “‘crime’ of picking quarrels and provoking trouble” under Article 293, a common charge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses against human rights defenders, according to the report.

“More than half of the cases in our database were for Article 300, and that held for every year except for three in our sample, showing how determined the CCP has been in punishing [Falun Gong] followers,” Safeguard Defenders stated.

The report analyzed roughly 1,400 cases out of more than 10,000 human rights cases in China between 2008 and 2020. Data was collected from three sources: Safeguard Defenders’ own database, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and the NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

The report found that most cases were concentrated in China’s northeast region, with Heilongjiang Province reporting the highest number. This region is where the Falun Gong spiritual movement began in the early 1990s. Sichuan Province recorded the second-highest number of cases.

The report also examined the gender distribution of those convicted under Article 300. It found that 50 percent more women than men were convicted under that article from the NGO’s sample.

Persecution and Transnational Repression

Safeguard Defenders’ report, published on July 22, coincides with the 25th anniversary of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, which began on July 20, 1999.

Canada, along with international governments, experts, and rights groups, has called on the regime to end the persecution, which has resulted in numerous cases of torture, abuse, and deaths from live organ harvesting.

“There is also evidence that many practitioners died in custody–some harvested for their organs–while many others were persecuted from outside the judicial system and sent to horrific terms in labour camps or psychiatric detention,” the NGO reported.

Falun Gong, a meditative practice rooted in Buddhist traditions, involves exercises and moral teachings centred on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Within a decade of its public introduction in 1992, official estimates indicated that there were between 70 million and 100 million practitioners in China by the late 1990s.

Viewing Falun Gong’s popularity and spiritual teachings as counter to the regime’s officially atheist ideology, the CCP launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate the practice. Despite the persecution, millions of practitioners in China continue to practise their faith today.

Safeguard Defenders noted that prominent human rights lawyers in China have also faced CCP persecution for defending Falun Gong practitioners. The most notable case is that of Gao Zhisheng, who has been missing since 2017.

Additionally, the regime is known for extending its persecution of Falun Gong abroad by hiring proxies and engaging in influence attempts. The report cited a 2023 case in the United States in which two Chinese men were charged with attempting to bribe a U.S. public official to help the CCP “topple” the Falun Gong group.

The CCP’s transnational repression has extended to Canada, according to a 143-page report by the Falun Dafa Association of Canada, documenting how Falun Gong practitioners in Canada have faced surveillance, harassment, and intimidation at their exercise sites and during protests at the Chinese Embassy and consulates.

Eva Fu contributed to this report.