Persecution of Falun Gong

Falun Gong was introduced to the general public by Li Hongzhi(李洪志) in Changchun, China, in 1992. For the next few years, Falun Gong was the fastest growing qigong practice in Chinese history and, by 1999, there were between 70 and 100 million people practicing Falun Gong in China. Following the seven years of wide-spread popularity, on July 20, 1999, the government of the People's Republic of China began a nationwide persecution campaign against Falun Gong practitioners, except in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. In late 1999, legislation was created to outlaw "heterodox religions" and retroactively applied to Falun Gong.Amnesty International states that the persecution is politically motivated with "legislation being used retroactively to convict people on politically-driven charges, and new regulations introduced to further restrict fundamental freedoms."

The nature of Chinese Communist Party rule is considered a central cause of the persecution. According to David Ownby, Falun Gong's popularity, traditional roots, and distinction from marxist-atheist ideology were perceived as a challenge by the Chinese government. Reports suggest that certain high-level Communist Party officials had wanted to crackdown on the practice for some years, but lacked pretext or support--until a number of appeals and petitions to the authorities in 1999, in particular, a 10,000 person silent protest at Zhongnanhai on April 25th. Reportedly many high-ranking members of the politburo were opposed to the persecution, and some analysts consider Jiang Zemin personally responsible for the final decision and the ensuing "Mao-style political campaign." Suspected motives include personal jealousy of Li Hongzhi's popularity, and a manufactured ideological struggle to enforce allegiance of both the populace and the party members to himself and the leadership.

The persecution is considered a major violation of human rights, and international human rights groups have called on the Chinese government to end the persecution and release practitioners sentenced to detention for peaceful activities. Reports state that every aspect of society was used by the Party to persecute Falun Gong, including the media apparatus, police force, army, education system, families, and workplaces. An extra-constitutional body, the 6-10 Office was created to "oversee the terror campaign," driven by a large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and internet. Propaganda urged families and workplaces to actively assist in the campaign, and practitioners were subject to severe torture to have them recant. There are acute concerns over reports of torture, illegal imprisonment, forced labour, and psychiatric abuses. Falun Gong practitioners comprise 66% of all reported torture cases in China, and at least half of the labour camp population, according to the United Nations and US State Department respectively. In July 2006, an investigative report by Canadian ex-Secretary of State David Kilgour and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas concluded that there exists an ongoing practice of systematic organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners in China. This has been met with concern from the United Nations Committee on Torture, who called for China to schedule an independent investigation and prosecute those guilty of such crimes.

Falun Gong practitioners around the world continue to protest against the persecution, and have initiated lawsuits against Chinese officials alleged to be chiefly responsible, in particular Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan.

Onset of the persecution

See further: Founding of Falun Gong and pre-persecution

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Arrest of peaceful protesters in Tienanmen Square

Jiang Zemin's role

Julia Ching from the University of Toronto suggests that it was the Zhongnanhai incident which led to "fear, animosity and suppression." Jiang Zemin had allegedly received a letter from the former director of the 301 Military Hospital, "a doctor with considerable standing among the political elite," endorsing Falun Gong and advising high-level cadres to start practicing it. Jiang also found out that Li's book, Zhuan Falun, had been published by People's Liberation Navy press, and that possibly seven hundred thousand Communist Party members were practitioners. "Jiang accepts the threat of Falun Gong as an ideological one: spiritual beliefs against militant atheism and historical materialism. He wishes to purge the government and the military of such beliefs."

Robert Thurman, Buddhism scholar at Columbia University, said the regime was frightened by Falun Gong and "went nuts, revealing its weakness and self-doubt for all the world to see." Thurman claims that Jiang "became obsessed and drove around Zhongnanhai to observe the protesters through the smoked glass of his limousine. That night, seemingly in the grip of a spiritual crisis, he wrote to the Politburo: 'I believe Marxism can triumph over Falun Gong.' He mutters incessantly to Western envoys about the troublesome movement."

The Washington Post reported sources saying that not all of the standing committee of the Politburo shared Jiang's view that Falun Gong should be eradicated. Through a Mao-style purge of Falun Gong, Jiang forced senior cadres "to pledge allegiance to his line," thus boosting his authority to enable him to dictate events at the pivotal 16th Communist Party congress, a Communist Party veteran later told CNN's Willy Lam. "As with campaigns dating from the 1960s, the standard ritual of ideological sessions held in party units, factories, and colleges the past few years is that participants make public declarations of support for the Beijing line—and for the top leader."

Jiang's campaign has been criticized for its Maoist-style approach. Lam reports a mid-level official saying that "The leadership is obsessed with the Falun Gong and have put its eradication as a top priority this year." Tony Saich agrees that the campaign was used by Jiang to serve as a loyalty test to his individual leadership. The size and reach of Jiang's anti-Falun Gong campaign surpassed that of many previous mass-movements.

On June 10, 1999 the Party established an extra-constitutional body charged with overseeing the persecution, referred to as the "6-10 Office." Agents were sent to every province, city, county, university, government department and state-owned business in China, according to Reid. In the Kilgour-Matas report, a Party official is quoted saying that in 1999, more than 3,000 officials of the 6-10 Office united at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to discuss the campaign, where Li Lanqing, then head of the 6-10 Office, is said to have verbally announced the Party's policy on Falun Gong, passed on by Jiang: "defaming their reputations, bankrupting them financially and destroying them physically".

By July 20, 1999, the persecution campaign had begun. Under orders from the Public Security Bureau, churches, temples, mosques, newspapers, media, courts and police were all mobilized to follow the Party line to "crush" Falun Gong, "no measures too excessive." Falun Gong was “condemned” in the media, with books shredded and videotapes bulldozed for TV cameras. Within days a “wave of arrests” swept across China. The arrest of other Falun Gong practitioners across the country also began, with police breaking into the homes of hundreds and taking them to prison in the middle of the night. By the end of 1999, practitioners were dying in custody, and by February 2000, 5,000 were detained across China.

On July 22, 1999 the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs issued an official statement banning Falun Gong. Charges imposed ranged from "organizing illegal gatherings" to "threatening political stability." On the same day, Human Rights Watch in New York issued a statement that "strongly condemned the Chinese government's nationwide ban on the practice of Falun Gong" and urged the release of practitioners "arbitrarily detained in a nationwide sweep aimed at suppressing the group." Human Rights Watch called on the international community to protest the ban, and urged Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to intervene with Chinese officials at the highest levels.

Amnesty International states that despite the persecution, many Falun Gong practitioners continued to hold exercise sessions in public, usually as a form of silent protest against the persecution and imprisonment. Some of these silent protests were held outside important seats of government or in places of political significance, such as Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Amnesty says that they were attended by large numbers of people, including significant numbers of elderly people and women, and that they were entirely peaceful. The Party declared the sessions to be "illegal assemblies" and the practitioners were put under detention or sent to forced labor. Amnesty states that among the thousands detained were ordinary workers, farmers, teachers, academics, university students, publishers, accountants, police officers, engineers, people from a variety of other professions, and government officials. Ian Johnson cites information stating that over 35,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been arrested in Beijing alone..

The Falun Dafa Information Center has documented details of over 3000 confirmed cases of deaths of Falun Gong practitioners, caused by torture and violence in police custody. Falun Gong related human rights organizations state that realistic estimates of deaths could be above 30,000.

Mechanics of the persecution campaign

According to Human Rights reports, a variety of techniques have been employed by the Chinese government in its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. These include physical and psychiatric abuses; "re-education" through forced labor, where detained practitioners are forced to renounce the practice; and a widespread media campaign to turn public opinion against practitioners. Every aspect of society was turned against Falun Gong practitioners, according to Ian Johnson, including the media apparatus, police force, army, education system, families, and workplaces. An extra-constitutional body, the 6-10 Office was created to "oversee the terror campaign," driven by a large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and internet. Propaganda urged families and workplaces to actively assist in the campaign, while practitioners themselves were subject to severe torture to have them recant. Kilgour and Matas state that the "6-10 office" established itself every province, city, county, university, government department and government-owned business to spearhead the crackdown. Local governments were given unlimited authority to implement Beijing's orders in 1999 and afterwards.

Immeasurable capital and police resources are being poured into this campaign for no reason, turning society in chaos, all just to suppress Falun Gong practitioners—people who peacefully do their practice in order to cultivate their hearts and minds, and improve their health. What is being done to them is an absolute crime and a violation of basic human rights. There is no excuse for you not to take immediate action to change the situation. -- Prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in an open letter to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.

Human Rights organizations also point to retroactive use of legislation to legitimatize the persecution.. The campaign's first emphasis on rule by law was a statute legislation outlawing "heterodox religions," which was then retroactively applied to Falun Gong, thus granting the persecution of Falun Gong, and that of other spiritual groups, an air of legitimacy.Beatrice Leung states that Falun Gong had "obtained legal status as one of China's many qigong groups," since it had been registered with the China Qigong Science Research Society in 1992; its literature had been approved by the Ministry of Culture and its books were printed through a state-license. She suggests that this retroactive application of law, which saw the press which printed Falun Gong's books punished and bookshop-owners arrested for acts which were not illegal at that time, "defies normal concepts of legality."

Amnesty states the official directives and legal documents issued for the purge "undermine rights set out in the Chinese constitution as well as international standards."Kilgour and Matas point out that only "later in 1999 did the National People's Congress pass new laws targeting Falun Gong retroactively and purporting to legalize a long list of illegal acts" against practitioners.

Analysts opine that officials grew impatient with the constant flow of protesters into Beijing, and decided that “drastic measures were needed.” Johnson, in his work Wild Grass, described the framework set up by Beijing that led to killings. This was a cascading responsibility system to push the responsibility for meeting central orders down onto those enforcing them: central authorities would hold local officials personally responsible for stemming the flow of protesters. A typical “study session” of police and government officials was held in Weifang; the central government's directive to limit protesters was read aloud, no questions were asked as to how it was to be achieved—“success was all that mattered.”

The Party has also used a variety of extra-legal mechanisms to stamp out public practice and protest, according to Human Rights Watch. Work units would summarily fire people identified as practitioners. Job loss often meant lost housing, schooling, pensions, and a report to the police. If brought to the attention of police or Party officials, even doing the Falun Gong exercises at home proved dangerous. Local officials would detain active practitioners and those unwilling to recant, and were expected to "make certain" that families and employers keep them isolated.

Propaganda and media control

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A "Communists against Falun Gong" poster as part of the Chinese government's propaganda campaign. It reads "Firmly support the decision of the Central Committee to deal with the illegal organization of “Falun Gong”"

Anti-Falun Gong propaganda from state controlled media has played a central role in the persecution, according to scholars and journalists. Kilgour and Matas state that by inciting the population to hate Falun Gong practitioners, it justifies the policy of persecution, recruites participants in the persecution, and forestalls opposition.

Elizabeth J. Perry describes media reports inundating the evening news at the early stages of the crackdown: "For weeks... each night, pictures were broadcast of huge piles of Falun Gong materials that had been... confiscated in police raids on bookstores and publishing houses," including the People’s Liberation Army Press. "Some were disposed of in gigantic bonfires, others were recycled..." Media reports would focus on the testimonies of relatives of Falun Gong "victims", who would talk about the "terrible tragedies" that had befallen their loved ones; former practitioners would confess being "hoodwinked by Li Hongzhi and... expressing regret at their gullibility"; "happy pictures of those who had kicked the Falun Gong habit" and were now pursuing other pass-times were broadcast; physical education instructors suggested "healthy alternatives" to Falun Gong practice, including badminton, ballroom dancing, bowling. Perry writes that the basic pattern of the offensive was similar to "the anti-rightist campaign of the 1950s [and] the anti-spiritual pollution campaigns of the 1980s."

Falun Gong was branded by state-media as part of an "anti-China international movement," according to CNN's Willy Lam. In a throw-back to the Cultural Revolution, the Party organised rallies in the streets and stop-work meetings in remote western provinces by irrelevant government agencies such as the weather bureau to denounce the practice. Xinhua published editorials on PLA officers declaring Falun Gong "an effort by hostile Western forces to subvert China," and vowing to do their utmost to defend the central leadership and "maintain national security and social stability."

Circulars were issued to women's and youth organisations encouraging support for the crackdown. Both the Youth League and the All-China Women's Federation trumpeted the "greater use of science education" to combat "feudalistic superstition." Xinhua would report speeches of Youth League officials: "This reminds us of the importance and urgency of strengthening our political and ideological work among the younger generation, educating them with Marxist materialism and atheism, and making greater efforts to popularize scientific knowledge." The Women's Federation stated the need to "arm our sisters with scientific knowledge and help improve their capability to recognize and resist feudal superstition." After having "earnestly studied" Jiang's speeches on Falun Gong, the PLA also recognised that "Only Marxism can save China and only the Chinese Communist Party can lead us to accomplish the great cause of reinvigorating the Chinese nation."

The campaign entered educational institutions, with anti-Falun Gong propaganda incorporated into high-school and primary school textbooks. WOIPFG claimed that students who practiced Falun Gong were barred from schools and universities and from sitting exams; a policy of "guilt by association" was adopted, such that direct family members of known practitioners were also denied entry; schoolchildren were taught anti-Falun Gong poems; anti-Falun Gong petitions were organised on a mass scale; university professors, lecturers and students who refused to renounce Falun Gong were expelled and faced consequences such as arrest, forced labour, rape, and torture, sometimes resulting in death; students were forced to watch videos or attend seminars attacking Falun Gong; defaming banners and posters were placed around schools and universities, reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution; viewing Falun Gong websites could result in arrest; examinations contained questions with anti-Falun Gong contents—incorrect answers could result in reportedly violent repercussions.

According to The Washington Post, neighborhood officials compelled the elderly, people with disabilities, and the ill to attend the classes denouncing Falun Gong; universities sent staff to find students who had dropped out or been expelled for practicing Falun Gong and brought them back for the brainwashing sessions.

The Post reported the story of a Beijing university student, Alex Hsu, who was kidnapped on his way to a computer lab. It was reported that they drove him to a hotel near a labour camp, where 20 other practitioners were detained, including students, teachers, university staff and retired professors. At the hotel three former practitioners still detained at the camp tried to persuade him to abandon Falun Gong for 12 hours a day. The Post reports Hsu saying "It was mental torture... The pressure just kept growing ... And the threat was always there. You could see these people all had suffered, and you knew what would happen to you if you didn't give in too." The Post reported that practitioners are forced to remain in the classes until they renounce their beliefs, in writing, and then on videotape. They report Hsu saying, "It was very painful. They forced us to lie. We knew Falun Gong is good, but they forced us to say it was evil." Hsu wept after giving in, and later dropped out of school and went into hiding. “Those who refuse to submit in the classes are sent to the labor camps, where members face a more systematic regime of violence than in the past, according to practitioners and government sources. On average, the government adviser said, most people abandon Falun Gong after 10 to 12 days of classes, but some resist for as long as 20,” The Postreported.

Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury gives Falun Gong as an example of the CCP's use of new technologies as propaganda tools. "If you do a web search in China using Chinese Google on Falun Gong, all that you'll get is all the government sites." She says that relevant western companies doing business in China are made to participate in this censoring system. According to James Mulvenon of the Rand Corporation, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security uses cyber-warfare to attack Falun Gong websites in the United States, Australia, Canada and England.

In July 2001, as part of House Concurrent Resolution 188, the U.S. House of Representatives denounced the "notorious" '6-10' offices which oversees the persecution through "organized brainwashing, torture and murder," and stated that propaganda from state-controlled media "inundated the public in an attempt to breed hatred and discrimination." The Resolution was passed by a 420:0 vote, calling on China to "cease its persecution and harassment of Falun Gong practitioners in the United States; to release from detention all Falun Gong practitioners and put an end to the practices of torture and other cruel, inhumane treatment against them and to abide by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Intimidation of foreign correspondents

Amnesty International has documented intimidation and harassment of foreign correspondents reporting on the crackdown on Falun Gong. Many foreign journalists attending a news conference organized covertly in Beijing on 28 October, 1999, by practitioners, were accused by the Chinese authorities of "illegal reporting." Later on, journalists from a number of news organizations, including Reuters, the New York Times and the Associated Press, were questioned at length by police, obliged to sign a "confession of wrongdoing," and had their work and residence papers temporarily confiscated. Several of the reporters were put under police surveillance.

Foreign correspondents also complain that television satellite transmissions were interfered with while being routed through China Central Television. Amnesty states that "a number of people have received prison sentences or long terms of administrative detention for speaking out about the repression or giving information over the Internet. Others have been punished for communicating with the foreign press or for organising press conferences."

The 2002 Reporters Without Borders' report on China states that "Since Falungong was banned in July 1999, Chinese authorities have harassed foreign journalists investigating this issue. Photographers and cameramen working with foreign media are prevented from working on and around Tiananmen Square where hundreds of Falungong followers have demonstrated in recent years. Reporters Without Borders estimates that at least 50 representatives of the international press have been arrested since July 1999, and some of them were beaten by police. Finally, several Falungong followers have been imprisoned for talking with foreign journalists."

Zhang Xueling, whose name was cited in a series of articles by Ian Johnson, Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Beijing, was arrested on 24 April 2001. Johnson had reported Zhang Xueling, a Falun Gong practitioner's account of her mother, who was also a practitioner, being tortured to death by the police. She was sentenced to a few weeks and later to three years in a labour camp. Ian Johnson left Beijing after writing his articles about the persecution, stating that after he received the Pulitzer Prize for his articles "the Chinese police would have made my life in Beijing impossible."

On November 10, 1999, the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) of China sent a letter of protest to the Chinese Foreign Ministry about official "intimidation and harassment" of foreign correspondents trying to report the persecution of Falun Gong. The letter said that "members [of FCC] have been followed, detained, interrogated and threatened." Amnesty also noted that "several of the reporters were put under police surveillance."

Use of the cult label as a tool of repression

The 'cult' label was first used against Falun Gong by the Party three months after the onset of the persecution, according to the Washington Post. A November 1999 report by the Post states, “It was Mr. Jiang who ordered that Falun Gong be branded a ‘cult,’ and then demanded that a law be passed banning cults.”

Human rights groups and scholars have criticized use of the term to justify violence. David Ownby, Director of the Centre of East Asian studies at the University of Montreal, stated in response that Falun Gong is "by no means a cult." Former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas, authors of investigative reports on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, profess that the label "is a manufactured tool of repression, but not its cause." They state that the label was used to incite hatred and dehumanize practitioners and served to create a pretext for the government's policy of persecution.

Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal, and Pulitzer Prize winner in 2001 for his writing on the plight of Falun Gong practitioners, writes that declaring Falun Gong a cult was the most "brilliant" move, cloaking the crackdown with the "legitimacy of the West's anti-cult movement," forcing practitioners to prove their innocence. Julia Ching opines that calling Falun Gong a "cult" after the crackdown had already begun attempted to make previous illegal arrests and imprisonments constitutional. She states that "cult" was defined by an atheist government "on political premises, not by any religious authority, without defining what a good cult, or a good religion would be."

A 2001 Amnesty report states that "the word 'cult' has been frequently used in English to translate the label recently put by the Chinese government on the Falun Gong and other similar groups. However, this translation is misleading. The expression used in China for this purpose, "xiejiao zuzhi", refers to a large variety of groups and has a far broader meaning than "cult." "Xiejiao zuzhi" is the expression used in Chinese legislation, official statements and by the state media to refer to a wide range of sectarian and millenarian groups, or unorthodox religious or spiritual organizations, and other groups which do not meet official approval."

Johnson notes that the purported "victims" were never allowed to be interviewed independently, making the state's claims "almost impossible to verify"; "the group didn't meet many common definitions of acult," since Falun Gong practitioners do not live isolated from society; they marry outside the group; they have non-practitioner friends; they hold normal jobs; they do not believe that "the world's end is imminent"; they do not give over large amounts of money for Falun Gong, they believe that "suicide is not accepted, nor is physical violence.". Johnson further points out that during the greatest period of Falun Gong book sales in China, Li Hongzhi never received any royalties because all publications were bootleg. Danny Schechter notes that, as Falun Gong's popularity grew, "Li Hongzhi made it clear that his mission was to bring the practice to everybody because it is beneficial, and that he was not in it for the money. After this investigation, I found the group to be very anti-materialist in its orientation--spiritualist not materialist."

"Re-education" through forced labor

According to the Ministry of Public Security, "re-education through labor" is an administrative measure imposed on those guilty of committing minor offences, but who are not legally considered criminals. In late 2000, the Party began to use this method of punishment widely against Falun Gong practitioners in the hope of permanently "transforming recidivists," who would often be immediately sentenced to re-education for up to three years. Terms could also be arbitrarily extended by police. Practitioners may have ambiguous charges levied against them, according to Robert Bejesky, writing in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law, such as "disrupting social order," "endangering national security," or "subverting the socialist system." Up to 99% of long term Falun Gong detainees are processed administratively through this system, and do not enter the formal criminal justice system. Outside access is not given to the camps, prisoners are forced to do heavy work in mines, brick factories, and agriculture, and physical torture, beatings, interrogations, inadequate food rations, and other human rights abuses take place, according to Human Rights Watch. A figure from 2004 sets the number of Falun Gong deaths in these institutions at 700, according to Bejesky.

There are estimates of at least 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners having been officially sentenced to reeducation from the beginning of the crackdown, and that at least half of the 250,000 total recorded inmates in China's reeducation camps are Falun Gong practitioners, according to the US State Department. Upon completion of their reeducation sentences, practitioners are sometimes then incarcerated in "legal education centers," another form of punishment set up by provincial authorities to "transform the minds" of practitioners," according to Human Rights Watch, which delivered a comprehensive report on the persecution, including extensive references to state-media and official statements. While Beijing officials initially portrayed the process as "benign," a harder line was later adopted; "teams of education assistants and workers, leading cadres, and people from all walks of life" were drafted into the campaign. In early 2001 quotas were given for how many practitioners needed to be "transformed." Official records do not mention the methods employed to achieve this, though Falun Gong and third party accounts indicate that the mental and physical abuses could be "extraordinarily severe."

Use of torture

Further information: Reports of organ harvesting from Falun Gong in China

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Gao Rongrong, tortured to death by Chinese authorities for practising Falun Gong. Amnesty notes that officials had reportedly beaten her using electro-shock batons on her face and neck, causing severe blistering and eyesight problems.

David Ownby writes that the Chinese authorities have harassed and detained "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" of practitioners in China, and that authorities have extended the harassment to family members and friends of practitioners also. Falun Gong sources, accepted as accurate by human rights agencies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch according to Ownby, have documented over 3000 confirmed cases of deaths from torture in police custody. Reports of torture documented by the sources exceed 50,000. Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as other NGOs monitoring the treatment of Falun Gong by the Chinese government, have also published reports on the torture and mistreatment of practitioners. Since 2000, the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations reported 314 cases of torture, representing more than 1,160 individuals, to the authorities. According to the UN Special Rapporteur, Falun Gong comprise 66% of all such reported torture cases, 8% occurring within Ankangs, which are psychiatric facilities. The US State Department cites estimates that practitioners may account for half of the labour camp population, while Amnesty International notes that practitioners in detention are at a "high risk of torture or ill-treatment."

In its "United Nations Reports on China’s Persecution of Falun Gong" (2004), Falun Gong sources report numerous cases of extreme psychological and physical torture, accompanied by testimonies and details of identities of the victims, resulting in impaired mental, sensory, physiological and speech faculties, mental trauma, paralysis, or death. Over 100 forms of torture are purported to be used, including electric shocks, stress positions, branding, force-feeding, and sexual abuse, with many variations on each type. The main purpose of the torture is ostensibly to have Falun Gong practitioners renounce or denounce the practice and their teacher, Li Hongzhi. The Special Rapporteur refers to the torture scenarios as "harrowing" and writes that "The cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts... defy description."

John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan wrote in the Washington Post that the Party gained the upper hand in its protracted battle against Falun Gong by expanding its “use of torture and high-pressure indoctrination.” They report that, according to sources, in 2001, after a year and a half of difficulty in suppressing the practice, “the government for the first time this year sanctioned the systematic use of violence against the group, established a network of brainwashing classes and embarked on a painstaking effort to weed out followers neighborhood by neighborhood and workplace by workplace.” They repeat the reports of practitioners being beaten, shocked with electric truncheons, and being “forced to undergo unbearable physical pressure, such as squatting on the floor for days at a time... Many adherents are also sent to intensive classes where the teachings of Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi are picked apart by former believers, sometimes friends who have already been tortured into submission.”

They cite three main ingredients, according to a party apparatchik: violence, a high-pressure propaganda campaign, and brainwashing classes. "Each aspect of the campaign is critical," the Post reports their source saying, "Pure violence doesn't work. Just studying doesn't work either. And none of it would be working if the propaganda hadn't started to change the way the general public thinks. You need all three. That's what they've figured out."

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Zhang Zhong upon release from police detention. Zhang, rearrested when his case was brought under international attention, died while in police custody.

They write that some local governments had tried brainwashing classes before, but only in January 2001 did the “secret 610 office, an interagency task force leading the charge against Falun Gong, order all neighborhood committees, state institutions and companies to start.” Pomfret and Pan write that no practitioner was to be spared, and that according to their source the most active are sent directly to labor camps, “where they are first 'broken' by beatings and other torture.”

The Post reported the story of James Ouyang, who was arrested for the second time protesting in Tiananmen Square. After he was arrested, “police methodically reduced him to an 'obedient thing' over 10 days of torture ... Ouyang was stripped and interrogated for five hours. 'If I responded incorrectly, that is if I didn't say, 'Yes,' they shocked me with the electric truncheon,' he said.” After he was put in a labor camp in west Beijing, the Post reported, “the guards ordered him to stand facing a wall. If he moved, they shocked him. If he fell down from fatigue, they shocked him ... By the sixth day, Ouyang said, he couldn't see straight from staring at plaster three inches from his face. His knees buckled, prompting more shocks and beatings.” Eventually he gave in to the guards demands, and denounced Falun Gong shouting into the wall, “Officers continued to shock him about the body and he soiled himself regularly. Finally, on the 10th day, Ouyang's repudiation of the group was deemed sufficiently sincere. He was taken before a group of Falun Gong inmates and rejected the group one more time as a video camera rolled.” They report that he left jail and then entered brainwashing classes, “Twenty days later after debating Falun Gong for 16 hours a day, he 'graduated.'”

Amnesty International states that while "it is unknown how many Falun Gong practitioners are being executed by the Chinese authorities, ...various sources indicate China may be executing between 10,000-15,000 people a year." Human Rights Watch commented that most of the information available to it are from either official Chinese government or Falun Gong sources, stating that "There is no sure way of checking the information from either source, making it impossible to fully assess competing claims about the numbers of judicial sentences, reeducation through labor terms, deaths in custody, and so on. " David Ownby, in his 2008 "Falun Gong and the future of China," vouches for the veracity of Falun Gong sources, and says they are well-respected and regarded as accurate by human rights groups.

Chinaview, an independent website focused on human rights abuses in China, says that the Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp was the first to begin force-feeding Falun Gong practitioners with human urine and excrement in the summer of 2003, and that “…the Chinese government awarded them for this innovation, and sent labour camp staff from around the country to learn this procedure.”

Amnesty International's "Falun Gong Persecution Factsheet" lists sexual abuse among the forms of torture Falun Gong practitioners are subject to. Gao Zhisheng, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer, in his third open letter to the Beijing leadership stated his shock of the "unbelievable brutality, ...the immoral acts ...of 6-10 Office staff and the police. Almost every woman's genitals and breasts or every man's genitals have been sexually assaulted during the persecution in a most vulgar fashion. Almost all who have been persecuted, be they male or female, were first stripped naked before any torture." The Association for Asian Research reports that victims in the Dalian Labor Camp were tied up in a spread-eagle position as torturers repeatedly thrust foreign objects (toilet and shoe brushes, and long rods) into their vaginas.

Reports of organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners in China

Main article: Reports of organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners in China

In March 2006 The Epoch Times published a number of articles alleging that the Chinese government and its agencies, including the People's Liberation Army, were conducting widespread and systematic organ harvesting of living Falun Gong practitioners. It was alleged that practitioners detained in forced labour camps, hospital basements, or prisons, were being blood and urine tested, their information stored on computer databases, and then matched with organ recipients. When an organ was required, it alleged, they were injected with drugs to stop the heart, their organs removed and later sold, and their bodies incinerated.

The first series of allegations were based on apparent eye-witness testimony of two individuals, and directed specifically at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoningprovince. The story received some deal of media attention. Within one month, some third party investigators, including representatives of the US Department of State, said that there was insufficient evidence to support this specific allegation. A few months after the Sujiatun incident, in July 2006, former Canadian Secretary of State, David Kilgour, and Human Rights Lawyer David Matas, published a report of their investigation into the reports of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Their report titled "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China" concluded that large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners are victims of systematic organ harvesting, whilst still alive, throughout China and that the practice is still ongoing. Kilgour and Matas state that several pieces of evidence contained in their reports are publicly verifiable.

Investigative reports from Sky News and BBC add evidence to the findings of the Kilgour-Matas report. The Christian Science Monitor says the report’s evidence is circumstantial but persuasive. The Chinese Embassy in Canada dismissed the Kilgour-Matas report soon after its release as "rumors and totally groundless," though their response was met with strong skepticism from Amnesty International. On August 2006, a Congressional Research Service report said that some of the report’s key allegations appeared to be inconsistent with the findings of other investigations, though the report does not provide details. The US state department maintains that "[i]ndependent of these specific allegations, the United States remains concerned over China’s repression of Falun Gong practitioners and by reports of organ harvesting." Kilgour and Matas maintain that the issue has yet to be properly addressed, while commentators speculate that the media silence is related to China's prominent role in the international community, which western governments and media are afraid to compromise.

U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak, in December 2007 said "The chain of evidence they [Kilgour and Matas] are documenting shows a coherent picture that causes concern." In November 2008, the United Nations Committee Against Torture made a strong statement on the matter, citing Nowak's note that an increase in organ transplant operations coincides with “the beginning of the persecution of [Falun Gong practitioners]” and who asked for "a full explanation of the source of organ transplants." The Committee stated that it is concerned with the information that Falun Gong practitioners "have been extensively subjected to torture and ill-treatment in prisons and that some of them have been used for organ transplants." They called for the state to immediately conduct or commission an independent investigation of the claims of organ harvesting, and take measures to ensure that those responsible for such abuses are prosecuted and punished.

The Tiananmen Square "self-immolation" incident

Main article: Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

On the eve of the Chinese New Year, January 23, 2001, five people apparently attempted to set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Seven days later, footage was broadcast nationally in the People's Republic by the state controlled China Central Television (CCTV) which claimed the immolators were practitioners. Initially, western news organizations disseminated the story as given byXinhua, without the possibility of verifying it independently, given the tight state censorship. Falun Gong in New York emphatically denied that these people could have been practitioners, pointing out that the teachings explicitly forbid suicide and killing. On the very same day of the incident, Falun Gong in New York issued a press statement stating that the incident was "yet another attempt by the PRC regime to defame the practice of Falun Gong" and called for the "PRC regime to allow the world media and international human rights groups to investigate this case to clarify the facts." Danny Schechter notes that CCP's claims are "unsubstantiated by outside parties"

Falun Gong, Human Rights Activists and third-party commentators have pointed out discrepancies in the government's version of events, and assert that the incident was staged in order to turn public opinion against the practice and build public support for its persecution.

In August, 2001, Human Rights Organization, IED ( International Educational Department), stated in its report at the United Nations that they discovered the incident "in fact, had been staged" and requested that the international community and the UN Subcommission urgently address the situation. According to analysts, the Government's media war against Falun Gong capitalized on the incident. A six-month campaign that followed attempted to portray Falun Gong as an "evil cult" through repeated broadcasts of images of scene. The campaign is thought to be the government's first effort to gain public support for the crackdown of Falun Gong, and is "reminiscent of communist political movements -- from the 1950-53 Korean War to the radical Cultural Revolution in the 1960s."

Falun Gong related sources pointed out several apparent discrepancies in the Chinese government's version of the incidents in a video titled "False Fire". Western media correspondents were denied access to the purported victims. A CNN official confirms that one of his teams was arrested that day near Tiananmen Square and that police confiscated their videotapes. Danny Schechter notes that CNN videotapes of the incident are confiscated, never aired... China's charges are unsubstantiated by outside parties."

In a CBC documentary Clive Ansley, Chair of CIPFG and China Country Monitor for Lawyers Rights’ Watch Canada states "You've got Falun Gong people this country.. oppressed over and over again, they are not allowed to speak, they are not allowed to assert any of their rights as citizens and the level of frustration must be terribly high... I can understand people doing that.. that does not mean.. the movement is evil. But, ironically, we ultimately found out that it was a fraud anyway. It wasn't real, the people involved weren't Falun Gong members, it was completely staged by the government."

Reports of psychiatric torture

Soon after the onset of the persecution, Falun Gong and human rights observers began reporting widespread psychiatric abuse of mentally-healthy practitioners. Falun Gong says that thousands have been forcefully detained in mental hospitals and subject to psychiatric abuses such as injection of sedatives or anti-psychotic drugs, torture by electrocution, force-feeding, beatings and starvation. Schechter states that as the persecution progressed, the "authorities came up with a new tactic, throwing those arrested into mental hospitals."

Abuse of political dissidents in China is well documented by international Human Rights organizations. Human Rights Watch has documented 3,000 cases of psychiatric punishment of political dissidents since the early 1980s.In 2002, Human Rights Watch and the Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry issued a report which alleged that Chinese dissidents, independent labour organisers, whistle-blowers and individuals who complain about official misconduct have been labelled "political maniacs" and locked up in mental hospitals simply for opposing the government.

Danny Schechter notes that "use of psychiatric institutions to imprison Falun Gong practitioners is becoming an international issue." The American Psychiatric Association, at its May 2000 meeting in Chicago, discussed this concern. The Committee on Misuse and Abuse in Psychiatry unanimously passed a resolution asking that the American Psychiatric leadership request the World Psychiatric Association to investigate this problem. Schechter notes that the body's intervention had helped prevent a similar practice in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.

Political abuse of psychiatry

A 2001 report by Amnesty International states that "Several cases have been reported in which Falun Gong practitioners, alone or in groups, were taken by police to mental hospitals where they were detained for periods varying from a few days to several weeks, and often forced to take drugs against their will.

Robin J. Munro was the first clinician to draw worldwide attention to the abuses of forensic psychiatry in China in general, and of Falun Gong practitioners in particular. Munro says that large-scale psychiatric abuses are the most distinctive aspect of the government’s protracted campaign to "crush the Falun Gong."

Sunny Y. Lu and Viviana B. Galli credit Jiang Zemin with reversing the declining trend of using mental hospitals as places of government-directed torture in China, as part of a comprehensive and brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. They draw comparison with political abuse of psychiatry by the Soviet Union aimed at dissidents and nonconformists, but point out that Falun Gong practitioners were "neither political nor nonconformists."

Lu and Galli assert that the authorities began forcing sane Falun Gong practitioners into psychiatric facilities not long after the crackdown began. In cases where hospitals expressed reluctance to admit mentally healthy persons, the government would apply pressure through police. Without formal legal procedures for commitment, local police officers and members of the 6-10 Office arbitrarily commit Falun Gong practitioners to psychiatric institutions, with lengths of detention ranging from days to years. Lu and Galli state that “the perversion of mental health facilities for the purpose of the torture of Falun Gong practitioners is widespread”; the targets are from all tiers of society, including physicians, nurses, judges, military personnel, police officers and school teachers.Their crimes were practising Falun Gong, passing out flyers against the persecution, appealing and petitioning to the government, and refusing to renounce the practice. Diagnoses may include obsessive-compulsive disorder, “mental problems induced by superstition” and also the newly coined the “evil cult-induced mental disorder” (邪教所致精神障碍) --which Munro describes as a “politically opportunistic... hyperdiagnosis", and a throwback to the model found in Soviet forensic psychiatry.”

If the practitioners continue to perform the exercises in the hospital or refuse to renounce their beliefs, medication dosages are increased as much as five to six times the initial dose until the “patient” loses the ability to move or communicate... they are tortured by being tightly bound with ropes in very painful positions, beaten and shocked with electric batons, deprived of food or sleep, force fed through gastric tubing, and shocked with high voltage through acupuncture needles.

— Lu and Galli

Munro writes that detained practitioners are tortured and subject to electroconvulsive therapy, painful forms of electrical acupuncture treatment, prolonged deprivation of light, food and water, and restricted access to toilet facilities in order to force "confessions" or "renunciations" as a condition of release. Fines of several thousand yuan may follow. Lu and Galli write that dosages of medication up to five or six times the usual level are administered through nasogastric tubes as a form of torture or punishment, and that physical torture is common, including binding tightly with ropes in very painful positions. Effects of this treatment, including drug or chemical toxicity, are loss of memory, migraines, extreme weakness, protrusion of the tongue, rigidity, loss of consciousness, vomiting, nausea and seizures.

Lu and Galli say that the Chinese government uses extreme measures to prevent investigation of the alleged abuses: threats, bribes, summary cremation of victims' bodies, arbitrary detention of potential whistleblowers, censorship of the internet, restricted access for western media and humanitarian organisations, and detention, harassment, deportation of journalist or revoking their licenses etc.

The Washington Post also the reported in the issue: "The old Soviet Union pioneered the misuse of psychiatry against political dissidents; China has followed suit..." The Post recounts the story of 32-year-old computer engineer Su Gang as "dramatic". Su had been repeatedly detained by the security department of his workplace for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. Following a protest trip to the capital, on May 23, 2000 his employer, a state-run petrochemical company, authorized the police to "drag him off to a mental hospital." According to his father, doctors injected Mr. Su twice a day with an unknown substance. "When Mr. Su emerged a week later, he could not eat or move his limbs normally. On June 10, the previously healthy young man died of heart failure."

Reports state that practitioners are involuntarily admitted because they practice Falun Gong exercises, for passing out flyers, refusing to sign a pledge to renounce Falun Gong, writing petition letters, appealing to the government etc. Others are admitted because detention sentences have expired or the detainees have not been successfully “transformed” in the brainwashing classes. Some have been told that they were admitted because they had a so-called “political problem”—that is, because they appealed to the government to lift the ban of Falun Gong.

Amnesty reports of a case where, Yang Yong, a spokesman for a police station in Beijing, confirmed to a foreign journalist that around 50 Falun Gong had been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital near Beijing. Yang Yong reportedly said that his police force was responsible for Falun Gong practitioners, the majority of them women, held at the Zhoukoudian psychiatric hospital. He told the journalist that the practitioners "are not patients, they are there to be re-educated... most of them are Falun Gong 'extremists' who have been to Beijing to protest at least 10 times".

Response to the reports

Lu and Galli state that since September 1999, the police have forced mentally healthy Falun Gong practitioners into psychiatric facilities. They point out that such a commitment requires no formal legal procedure. Members of the 6-10 Office — an extraconstitutional body created for the sole purpose of terrorizing Falun Gong—the local police, or even the security forces of local factories can arbitrarily commit Falun Gong practitioners. Human rights groups now estimate that there are 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners being held against their will in mental hospitals. The actual number is very likely many times higher. The lengths of these detentions range from a few days to 1.5 years.

According to Lu and Galli, documented cases include "physicians, nurses, an associate professor, a judge, a computer engineer, military personnel, police officers, teachers, and others. They are known to have functioned at high professional levels in society before incarceration."

Lu and Galli state that the Chinese government uses extreme measures to block any investigations by Western media and that many foreign journalists who have attempted to investigate these matters (or, in some cases, merely cover Falun Gong) in the past year have been detained, harassed, and had their licenses revoked and in some cases have even been deported from China. China has also blocked attempts at investigation by international organizations such as Amnesty International and has not responded to the World Psychiatry Association’s request to send international experts to investigate psychiatric abuse in China. Munro brings attention to the 'coincidence' between the very sizeable increase in Falun Gong admissions to mental hospitals, and the onset of the government's persecution campaign.

In 2002, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) scheduled an investigation with the involvement of the Chinese Society of Psychiatrists' (CSP) to examine alleged abuses of Falun Gong practitioners who were sent to Chinese psychiatric hospitals and clinics as punishment. In April, several days before it was to start, the investigation was postponed indefinitely, at the Chinese government's insistence.

Dr. Abraham Halpern, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at New York Medical College and former president of The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, states "The allegations of psychiatric abuse in China involve mistreatment, torture, and fraudulent diagnoses in the case of large numbers of political dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners and should not be dismissed as mere `failures in accurate diagnosis.'" Schechter notes Halpern, who is also a former civil rights activist who worked with Martin Luther King Jr, as stating "the [Chinese] government needs to hospitalize, wrongfully, non-mentally ill dissidents because this will help them in their efforts to paint the Falun Gong practitioners as not being against the government policy, but as being mentally ill. So even if they were to hospitalize a small number, word would soon spread that Falun Gong practitioners are crazy." Halpern has also called on his colleagues worldwide to speak out on the issue.. Halpern also notes that "Deliberate hospitalization, wrongful hospitalization, is only part of the problem. They then make it very difficult for practitioners to get out of the hospital by demanding that their families pay exorbitant amounts of money for their 'treatment' in the hospital. So there's no question that this type of conduct, government-sanctioned, is a serious violation of human rights. And we'd like to stop it early rather than wait until large number of dissidents are placed in hospitals,as occurred in case of Soviet Union."

Munro maintains that the few cases of psychiatric torture of Falun Gong practitioners he mentions are typical of the “several hundred such accounts that have so far been compiled and published by the Falun Gong,” and that "[i]ndependent investigations by foreign journalists… have confirmed the Falun Gong’s version of events in the cases that have been examined." He responds to Lee and Kleinman's doubts by saying that they, in their own published work, relied on the very same documentation, drawn from facts, commentary, and decades of survey material written and compiled by Chinese psychiatrists and law-enforcement officers published in China’s officially authorized professional literature on psychiatry and the law. He opines that since they do not make any substantive rebuttal of his evidence, they must have no answer to it.

Munro contends that decades-long political abuse of psychiatry by the Party, directly preceding the section on Falun Gong, transfers the burden of proof "squarely back onto the Chinese authorities."

International response

Human rights organizations, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, have raised acute concerns over reports of torture and ill-treatment of practitioners in China and have also urged the UN and international governments to intervene to bring an end to the persecution. David Ownby notes that human rights organizations "have unanimously condemned China's brutal campaign against the Falungong, and many governments around the world, including Canada's, have expressed their concern."

Governments around the world, including United States and Canada have called upon the Chinese government to bring a complete end to the persecution. The United States Congress has passed five resolutions - House Concurrent Resolution 304, House Resolution 530,House Concurrent Resolution 188, House Concurrent Resolution 218 andHouse Concurrent Resolution 217- where Congress expresses that oppression of Falun Gong by the Government of the People's Republic of China in the United States and in China should be ceased.. The first, Concurrent Resolution 217, was passed in November, 1999.

Con. Resolution 188, passed unanimously (420-0) by the US Congress states: "Falun Gong is a peaceful and nonviolent form of personal belief and practice with millions of adherents in the People's Republic of China has forbidden Falun Gong practitioners to practice their beliefs, and has systematically attempted to eradicate the practice and those who follow it....this policy violates the Constitution of the People's Republic of China as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights... propaganda from state-controlled media in the People's Republic of China has inundated the public in an attempt to breed hatred and discrimination;... official measures have been taken to conceal all atrocities, such as the immediate cremation of victims, the blocking of autopsies, and the false labeling of deaths as from suicide or natural causes'... several United States citizens and permanent resident aliens have been subjected to arbitrary detention, imprisoned, and tortured."

Response from Falun Gong

See also: Falun Gong outside the People's Republic of China

Falun Gong practitioners enact torture scenes in New York City

Li Hongzhi, in response to accusations made against Falun Gong by the Chinese government, stated on July 22, 1999:

Falun Gong is simply a popular qigong activity. It does not have any particular organization, let alone any political activities. I am a cultivator myself, and I have never been destined to be involved in political power. I am just teaching people how to practice cultivation. If one wants to practice qigong well, he/she must be a person of high moral standards...

We are not against the government now, nor will we be in the future. Other people may treat us badly, but we do not treat others badly, nor do we treat people as enemies.

We are calling for all governments, international organizations, and people of goodwill worldwide to extend their support and assistance to us in order to resolve the present crisis that is taking place in China.

Falun Gong practitioners and supporters have set up human rights organizations to report torture and ill-treatment of practitioners in mainland china.

After the persecution in 1999, practitioners began holding frequent protests, rallies, and appeals outside mainland China.

Some Falun Gong support groups and Human Rights activists outside of China responded to the crackdown by publishing "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party", and initiating a worldwide "Three Renunciations" Campaign. Since it began on Dec 3, 2004, over 44 million members of the Communist Party of China and its subordinate organizations (the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers of China)have publicly denounced the CCP as of Aug 04, 2008, according to The Epoch Times.

The video "False Fire: Self-Immolation or Deception?", was successfully broadcast on Chinese television in a hacking incident in the city of Changchun. The video was first posted on the Minghui Net in March 2001 and distributed widely on cassettes; it has been one of the most accessed pieces on the Falun Gong human-rights related websites. Liu Chengjun, named as the instigator of the television hacking incident, was sentenced to 19 years in prison; he was reportedly tortured to death after 21 months in Jilin Prison, and his body cremated without autopsy.

Legal action

Falun Gong practitioners in the United States have filed several civil complaints in U.S. federal courts against PRC leaders for violations of the Torture Victim Protection Act, the Alien Tort Claims Act, and other crimes against humanity. Law suits have also been filed for violation of the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1999. Chinese officials alleged to have taken part in human rights abuses against practitioners have become targets of legal action, particularly when they step upon foreign soil. Since 2001, there have been more than 70 legal cases launched by Falun Gong practitioners and sympathisers against those considered responsible for the persecution campaign in the Chinese government. According to International Advocates for Justice, Falun Gong has filed the largest number of human rights lawsuits in the 21st century and the charges are among the most severe international crimes defined by international criminal laws.

• An Overview of Legal Cases Filed by Falun Gong Practitioners Around the World

External links

• World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
• Poisonous Deceit ISBN 0-9731181-0-5 © 2002, Deep Six Publishing
• Articles on the Falun Gong, Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson, 2001, Wall Street Journal