Chinese Canadian Shares Harrowing Experience of CCP Persecution Extending Into Canada

Michelle Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner who resides in Toronto, poses for a photo on April 19, 2023. Ms. Zhang and her family have experienced years of persecution by the Chinese Communist Party. Michelle Hu/The Epoch Times

Michelle Zhang, a Canadian of Chinese origin, is calling on the government to confront Beijing’s foreign interference. She says she and her family have endured ongoing threats and harassment in Canada over the last 22 years, which she asserts is an extension of the regime’s persecution of her spiritual adherence to Falun Gong.

In 2001, while living in Vancouver, Ms. Zhang says she became a target for several years after speaking out publicly against the oppression of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For example, around 2003, her car window was smashed while parked overnight outside her apartment building, and months later, she discovered that someone had dumped a large amount of excrement on her balcony.

“I didn’t have any personal enemies and had just moved into the apartment not long before. [Only] a few friends knew where I lived. So who did that?” she said at a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 25, at which the Falun Dafa Association of Canada (FDAC) released a report detailing the CCP’s foreign interference over the past 24 years targeting residents in Canada who practise Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions. It consists of five meditative exercises along with moral principles centred on the tenets of “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.” First introduced to the public in China in 1992, it quickly gained popularity due to its health benefits. Official Chinese data estimated the number of Falun Gong adherents to be between 70 million to 100 million by the late 1990s.

However, then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin perceived the practice’s popularity as a threat to the regime’s totalitarian control. In July 1999, he initiated a nationwide mass arrest and persecution campaign with the aim of eradicating the practice.

Threats Against Family

An even more disconcerting incident occurred after Ms. Zhang moved to Toronto in June 2008.

One day, when she was out and an elderly friend was babysitting her 4-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter, a Chinese man wielding a firearm reportedly came to her 18th-floor apartment and demanded that her friend surrender her two children. Ms. Zhang said her children sought refuge by hiding in a closet until the man eventually went away.

Ms. Zhang also reported that she is constantly under surveillance. She realized this after talking to other Chinese parents at her children’s school about the CCP’s human rights issues and the persecution of Falun Gong. “It was not long before I found a few Chinese people constantly keeping an eye on me,” she said. “They were watching me from a distance.”

Similar incidents are documented in the FDAC report, which states that “[Falun Gong] practitioners are under constant surveillance by CCP agents in Canada.”

The report noted that the repeated presence of certain individuals in places where the practitioners frequent raises alarms that these individuals may be “involved in Chinese consulate surveillance activities.” Those places may be the practitioners’ exercise practice sites or locations where they volunteer their time to let passersby know about the CCP’s rights abuses.

“Even in Canada I have been harassed by the Chinese Communist Party members,” Ms. Zhang said.

She called on the Canadian government to “pay more attention to the CCP’s interference” in Canada. She noted that if the CCP’s activities go unaddressed, they could “become a threat to more Canadian citizens.”

Ms. Zhang’s family members in China have also suffered under the communist regime due to their adherence to Falun Gong. Her brother-in-law, Songtao Zou, endured employment restrictions. He was subjected to torture and died in a labour camp in China in November 2000, reported the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times.

Ms. Zhang’s sister, Yunhe Zhang, was arrested for distributing materials on the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong. Although she managed to escape from the police station, she subsequently went missing and has not been heard from since 2001.

Michelle Zhang’s sister, Yunhe Zhang, with her husband, Songtao Zou, in a file photo. Courtesy of Michelle Zhang

Pervasive Interference

The ordeals endured by Ms. Zhang and her family members due to the CCP’s persecution and transnational oppression of Falun Gong practitioners are among dozens of cases documented in the FDAC report. The report sheds light on numerous instances in Canada where individuals or entities engaged in physical and verbal assault, intimidation, harassment, and social exclusion of adherents of the spiritual practice.

The FDAC report stated that the CCP’s campaign aimed at annihilating Falun Gong “entails some of the worst human rights violations committed, including forced organ harvesting, which have been found to constitute crimes against humanity and potentially genocide.”

Additionally, the report notes that, in pursuing the goal of altering the public perception of Falun Gong and diminishing public support for its adherents’ call for justice and human rights, the CCP has engaged in a foreign influence operation that “extends to and adversely impacts the general Canadian public as a whole.” This includes politicians and many other facets of civil, social, and political life in Canada.

Notably, the report said that these interference activities have often been linked to the Chinese Embassy or Consulate or the regime’s foreign interference arm, the United Front Work Department (UFWD).

“The UFWD extends its global influence by manipulating narratives within the Chinese diaspora and suppressing dissent. By leveraging substantial resources, it mobilizes various overseas Chinese groups to promote CCP interests through invoking nationalism and fostering cultural connections, thereby aligning them with CCP narratives,” the report said.

“Operating discreetly within Chinese consulates and embassies, the UFWD guides its front groups to stifle voices from Falun Gong adherents and other dissident groups.”

Call for Action

The FDAC proposes a series of recommendations in response to the CCP’s foreign interference and transnational repression. This includes calling on the government to publicly condemn the regime’s persecution of Falun Gong and to ensure diplomatic accountability by sanctioning Chinese diplomats and mission officials found to be involved in infiltration and repression activities in Canada.

Grace Wollensak, a representative of the Falun Dafa Association of Canada (FDAC), speaks at a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 25, 2023, at which the FDAC released its first-ever report on the Chinese Communist Party's foreign interference in Canada and transnational repression of the spiritual practice Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong. Annie Wu/NTD

During the Oct. 25 press conference, FDAC representative Grace Wollensak highlighted the need for the federal government to proactively protect Canadian citizens from the CCP’s foreign interference. She pointed out that what sets the repression of Falun Gong apart is that within every Chinese mission worldwide there is a “Special Anti-Falun Gong Working Group” in the host country.

Members of the working group carry out activities that include pressuring the host country’s governments and institutions not to praise or recognize Falun Gong but instead to exclude adherents from civic activities like parades. They also work to mobilize Chinese immigrants, their businesses, and Chinese students in the host country to write complaint letters against Falun Gong and to influence the host country’s institutions and elected officials not to support Falun Gong.

In addition, they work to control local Chinese media media and use Chinese students, through coercion or funding, to slander and ostracize Falun Gong adherents and to gather intelligence from the Falun Gong community.

“The CCP’s extension of the persecution of Falun Gong to Canada not only threatens the safety and security of the Falun Gong community, it also erodes the fundamental values and the good governance of Canadian society,” Ms. Wollensak said.

“Canada must be decisive in its response to the CCPs infiltration and must treat it as a top priority for it to be effective.”