History of Falun Gong

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Arrest of People practicing the 5th. exercise in China

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Arrest of Falun Gong Practitioners in Beijing

Beginning of the Conflict

The conflict between the Chinese government and the Falun Gong was initiated by Falun Gong's suppression of its critics. Due to the size of these protests – often thousands of practitioners at a time – the media companies often gave in to their demands. On May 27, 1998, twelve days after the Chinese Central TV had aired a positive coverage of the Falun Gong, the Beijing Television Station aired a critical report of the Falun Gong. In that report, a professor in China’s Academy of Science accused the Falun Gong of being harmful to its followers. Soon after that, in early June, more than a thousand practitioners besieged the station for days demanding an apology. Under pressure “the TV station's chief fired the 24-year-old reporter involved and broadcast a favorable report about the group a few days later."[1]

On April 11, 1999, He Zuoxiu published an article in the Tianjin College of Education’s Youth Reader magazine entitled "I Do Not Agree with Youth Practicing Qigong". From April 18 to April 24, Falun Gong practitioners went to Tianjin College of Education, which published the magazine, and related governmental agencies and held protests.

Some practitioners were arrested and were beaten by the police according to at least one report. Several days later, for 12 hours on April 25 1999, about 10,000 people lined up along a 2 km stretch at the Central Appeal Office outside Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of Chinese government. Premier Zhu Rongji met with some representatives of the practitioners and promised to resolve the situation within three days. The practitioners dispersed peacefully after they received word that Zhu had agreed to their requests. Nevertheless, it was reported that Falun Gong practitioners organizing a protest alarmed many senior leaders, particularly Jiang Zemin. According to some estimates, at this time there were more than 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing.

Julie Ching (2001) has stated: "The overseas Chinese-language press has suggested that the Zhongnanhai demonstrations were actually organized in part by the government, to help trump up charges against the Falun Gong, which it had observed and monitored for years through its infiltrators. It even gives the name of a high official, [Luo] Gan, as being the chief Communist organizer of the Zhongnanhai gathering. As secretary general of the State Council, [Luo] had been investigating Falun Gong and had wanted it banned since 1996 but could not find any legal basis for transgression. In that case, it is not certain where the Falun followers intended first to make their petition, but [Luo] had the police direct them to Zhongnanhai, in order to create an incident with which they afterwards could be charged."

On June 10, 1999, the government established the "6-10" office, an extra-constitutional body, to facilitate the crackdown. Most political analysts believe that this was the direct result of events that occurred in April 1999.

In July 1999, the government declared the practice of Falun Gong illegal. The government had become especially concerned by reports that significant numbers of government officials, as well as military and police personnel, were practitioners. Another influence in the change in policy was the cultural memory of the 19th century Taiping Rebellion, when a religious cult had caused a civil war.

"By unleashing a Mao-style movement [against Falun Gong], Jiang is forcing senior cadres to pledge allegiance to his line," a Communist Party veteran later told CNN's Willy Lam. "This will boost Jiang's authority-and may give him enough momentum to enable him to dictate events at the pivotal 16th Communist Party congress next year."

The Falun Dafa Information Center claims that over 2300 Falun Gong practitioners have died while in police or government custody.

He Zuoxiu has also accused some Falun Gong practitioners of harassment because of the articles he wrote, and published a book entitled How Falun Gong Harassed Me and My Family. He Zuoxiu is a relative of Luo Gan, one of the chief perpetrators of the persecution, and he is said to have "become a national hero" for opposing Falun Gong. [2] Therefore, some sources have suspected him of politically motivated careerism (e.g. [3], p99).

The CPC has burned and destroyed books and other materials about Falun Gong, and blocked access to internet resources about the topic. Treatment of Falun Gong practitioners has been regarded by some in the West as a major international human rights issue affecting freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

The media war

The People's Republic of China (PRC), led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) on July 20, 1999, began a nation-wide suppression of Falun Gong, referring to the practice as an "evil cult" spreading superstition to deceive people. Jiang, the former leader of the CPC, condemned the group in the state-controlled media, stating a position the Chinese government promotes to this day.

CPC claims that the practice has deviated its focus from engaging in spiritual cultivation to engaging in politics, basing their opinions on the existence of numerous websites disparate from, yet in support of, Falun Gong (such as Friends of Falun Gong).

In China, the CPC has blocked access to certain sites on the Internet (including this article, see History of Wikipedia), all Falun Gong Websites[4] and burned Falun Gong's books and materials. In addition, some junk mail filters are targeting [5] emails related to the Falun Gong spiritual movement and other dissidents[6].

On the other hand, there have been incidents in which China's state-owned television networks were jammed with reports on the persecution of Falun Gong. In addition, a syndicated Chinese language newspaper with worldwide circulation, The Epoch Times, is accused of having a pro-Falun Gong platform, mainly because it has been the mouthpiece of much of Falun Gong's claims of suppression and torture, but also partly because it has published articles suggesting a declining state in the CPC. These articles include Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party of China(jiuping), New Zealand to Celebrate 7 Million Renouncing Communist Party of China, and others [7].

According to ClearWisdom.net, eight Falun Gong practitioners were arrested after one of the jamming incidents in Changchun city, including Liu Chengjun, who was allegedly tortured to death after 21 months incarceration in Jilin Prison.

The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident

The campaign of government criticism increased in January 2001, when persons whom the government claimed were Falun Gong practitioners, among them a 13-year-old girl, Liu Siying, doused themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. Videos of the incident were widely broadcast on Chinese state television, as were interviews with Siying, who was horribly burned and whose mother, Liu Chunling, did not survive the incident. Falun Gong advocates emphatically deny that the people who set themselves on fire could have been actual practitioners. [8]

On the same day, the Falun Dafa Information Center made an announcement entitled, "China Staged Self-Immolation Act; Xinhua News Framed Falun Gong with Slanderous Lies, calling for a third-party independent investigation to uncover the truth." However, according to a Time article [9], "A Beijing arm of the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong strongly suggested the protesters, one of whom died, were devotees. "We heeded a call from our master to strengthen our fight against evil," said a member of the group based in the Chinese capital.". "Yet hours later, Falun Gong's New York head office distanced itself from the act: This so-called suicide attempt on Tiananmen Square has nothing to do with Falun Gong practitioners because the teachings of Falun Gong prohibit any form of killing. "

Though the Chinese media claimed that it was CNN journalists who recorded the close-up shots, the head of the International Department of CNN stated that CNN did not film anything because at the very beginning of the incident, CNN reporters were arrested and their equipment confiscated. However, in the CNN original report the CNN reporters were able to film the scene[10]. Authorities did not allow any reporters other than those from the Xinhua News Agency to interview 13-year-old Siying, nor did they allow any of her family members to visit. Two months after the incident in Tiananmen Square, the hospital announced the sudden death of Siying.

In slow motion footage made available by Falun Dafa Information Center and Ming Hui Net (chinese language website) of the video broadcast by State-run Xinhua News Agency, an object might be seen flying off Liu Chunling's head or neck just before she suddenly collapses. Charles A Radin of Boston Globe says: "In the slowed version, it appears that Liu Chunling, one of two people who died, collapsed not from the flames but from being bludgeoned by a man in a military overcoat.”[11] An analysis, published by Falun Dafa Information Center, also says that the body language of the policemen suggests foul-play. In addition, the analysis also points out: The burn victims seem to be wearing protective clothing, has unburnt hair, and the green plastic bottle that supposedly carried the gasoline was not even burned.[12] According to Chandra D Smith's paper in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion,The propaganda capitalized on the alleged self-immolation of five Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001 in which a mother died and her 12-year-old daughter was severely burned. “By repeatedly broadcasting images of the girl’s burning body and interviews with the others saying they believed self-immolation would lead them to paradise, the government convinced many Chinese that Falun Gong was an ‘evil cult.’”

Allegations of organ harvesting

On 9 March2006, allegations were made of deaths at the Sujiatun detention compound, an alleged labor camp and part of the China Traditional Medicine Thrombosis Treatment Center located in Shenyang City, Liaoning province. According to at least two witnesses interviewed by The Epoch Times, internal organs of living Falun Gong practitioners have been harvested and sold to the black market, and the bodies have been cremated in the hospital's boiler room. The witnesses make allegations of nobody coming out of the camp alive, as well as six thousand practitioners being held captive at the hospital since 2001, two-thirds of them have died to date. According to these sources, removed organs include hearts, kidneys, livers and cornea. The news were quickly covered by some minor media outlets, including the Metro newspaper in Spain and Holland's APS.

The World Organization to Investigate the Persectution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), an organization "initiated" by Falun Gong, providing evidence for organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners, have released recordings of telephone messages. Transcription of a telephone message recorded by WOIPFG says:

A: Hi. Is this Zhongguo Medical University’s Director Song?

B: Yes, please speak...

A: …..His doctor told him that the kidney is quite good because he practices gong(=qigong). Then asked which qigong? He said Falun gong. People know that when practising Falun Gong the health would be better.

B: Of course. We have all those who breathe and with heart beat. We have these. Up until now, for this year, we have more than 10 hearts, more than 10 such hearts.

A: More than 10 of this kind of hearts? You meant live bodies?

B: Yes, it’s so.

( Dated: March 30, 2006 )

According to The Epoch Times, Timothy Cooper, the executive director of Worldrights, said in a Washington D.C. rally against alleged Chinese human rights violations on March 12: "If what has been reported is accurate, then Shenyang has become the Auschwitz of China. But this time, unlike the situation during the Second World War in Nazi Germany, America must not fail to act. America must not fail to confront these atrocities — unimaginable in any civilized society" and "A whole new level of depravity is being practiced by the CPC." Also, Nina Shea from Freedom House has called for investigation of the case . Guido Tastenhoye, a member of the Belgian parliament, has questioned Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel De Gucht about the imprisonment of Falun Gong practitioners in Sujiatun. Worldrights and Freedom House themselves have not covered any of the above in their websites and press releases.

The Washington Times covered the allegations on 24 March 2006 in an article by Bill Gertz. According to the article, Jin Zhong (a pseudonym for the journalist who fled China recently) said he first learned of the harvesting operation between October and December. Mr Jin, who in the past has been a contributor to a Japanese news agency, calls Sujiatun "a murder sponsored by a state". Jin came across the underground detention center while researching the Chinese government's response to SARS. The article claims that several other hospital workers have also revealed details about the prisoner organ harvesting. Jin Zhong has had to hide his true identity after being threatened by Chinese government agents. He was arrested twice for his reporting and recently fled to the United States, where he hopes to seek political asylum. Jin also professes that the bodies of prisoners were burned in the boiler room of the hospital and that boiler room workers had taken jewelry and watches from the dead and sold them.

On 28 March, over two weeks after the allegations surfaced, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang stated: "This absurd lie is not worth refuting and no one will buy it." He also urged reporters to go to Shenyang's Sujiatun district to look into the claims. However, the official website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China made no mention of this in their coverage of the press conference.

On 30 March, Reuters released an article entitled "U.N. envoy looks at Falun Gong torture allegations". According to the report, the United Nations torture investigator Manfred Nowak shall be looking into the Sujiatun case. "I am presently in the process of investigating as far as I can these allegations ... If I come to the conclusion that it is a serious and well-founded allegation, then I will officially submit it to attention of the Chinese government," he told a news briefing. Nowak also stated that he found torture widespread in China when he got to visit the country in late 2005 after a decade of negotiations. Furthermore, Nowak's new report insisted on the Chinese government to abolish its "re-education through labour" system and urged authorities to release all political prisoners and people held for exercising their right to freedom of speech, assembly and religion. China has denied earlier abuse and torture charges made by Nowak and asked the U.N. envoy to "think again." [13]

On 30 March, Epoch Times reported that a new informant, identifying himself as a veteran military doctor in Shenyang military zone, has told about a system of similar concentration camps in China. Because the Chinese government has defined Falun Gong practitioners as class enemies, they're officially declared as felons. The informant claims: "The reports from outside China about Sujiatun Concentration Camp imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners are true, although some of the details are incorrect." He says that more than 10,000 people were detained in Sujiatun in early 2005, but now the number of detainees is maintained at 600-750. Many detainees have been transferred to other camps, especially after the news on Sujiatun was publicized. The informant also asserts that the hospital in Sujiatun is only one of 36 similar camps all over China. Jilin camp, codenamed 672-S, holds over 120,000 people, not only Falun Gong practitioners. Specially dispatched freight trains can transfer 5,000-7,000 people in one night, and everyone on the trains is handcuffed to specially designed handrails on top of the ceiling, claims the informant.

On April 1, 2006, The Australian published initial finding from US congressional researcher that the concentration camp allegation is substantially exaggerated.

On April 4, 2006, Falun Gong announced the establishment of the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG) on their 'clearwisdom' website [14]. However, as of April 21, 2006, despite Qin Gang's invitation, several members have been denied visas to China according to the clearwisdom.net website [15].

On April 13, 2006, the official from the hospital gave the following statement: “the hospital is lacking the required facilities to conduct organ transplants and has no basement to house the Falun Gong practitioners.” [16]. According to a document from Ministry of Health of Malaysia, this hospital--Liaoning Thrombus Medical Treatment Center--is not a state owned company but one partly invested by a Malaysian company (Country Heights Health Sanctuary). And in an official visit to China the Minister of Health of Malaysia visited the hospital in September, 2004.

On April 14, 2006, US State Department released a statement [17] [18] that "found no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital". The hospital itself was a joint venture with a Malaysian government-sponsored company[19], open to foreign visitors.

On Apr 19, 2006, UK's Sky News reporter took camera undercover inside Chinese hospitals where nurses and doctors confirm readily-available organs are taken from "prisoners" and that the hospital's abundance of "donors" is due to its close connections with Chinese security forces[20]. Sky News's Website states:

China has been accused of taking organs from executed prisoners to supply the international transplant market. British surgeons say there is evidence that prisoners are being selected as potential donors before they are killed[21].

As of April 21, 2006, despite Qin Gang's invitation, several CIPFG members have been denied visas to China according to The Epoch Times[22].

On May 8, 2006, a press conference was held in Ottawa, Canada, in which Former chairman of Canada's Sub-Committee on Human Rights of the Committee of Foreign Affairs and former director of the Asian Pacific Division of Canada's Foreign Affairs Ministry, Mr. David Kilgour, and international human rights attorney Mr. David Matas, announced that they will jointly lead the efforts to investigate the organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners by the Communist Party of China. Mr. Kilgour stated that he wished the investigation to be completely independent. As of the press conference, the plan includes interviewing witnesses and telephone investigators from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, as well as going to China to conduct on-site investigations[23]

Some human rights activists are also skeptical of Falun Gong's claims. Harry Wu, best known for his investigations of Laogai and alleged organ harvesting of executed prisoners, claimed that the allegations were just heresay. "No pictures, no witnesses, no paperwork, no detailed information at all, nothing." [24]

On June 13, 2006, Edward McMillan-Scott, vice president of the European Parliament, wrote what he heard from Falun Gong practitioners on secret atrocities of Chinese regime .

Nearly 400 hospitals in China share the booming trade in transplants, with websites advertising new kidneys for $60,000. Administrators tell inquirers: "Yes, it will be a Falun Gong, so it will be clean."

The two people he interviewed in China were missing after meeting with him .

On July 6, 2006, David Kilgour, a former Liberal cabinet minister in Canada, and David Matas, an immigration lawyer, after two months of interviewing people in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, announced that they had found "credible evidence that the organs of Falun Gong adherents in China are being harvested for paid transplants."

During the press conference on July 6, 2006, they presented their 68-page long report .

In the report, phone transcripts were provided to Matas and Kilgour by World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong.

One transcript of their phone calls to Chinese doctors reads:

• Q: "How many Falun Gong suppliers under the age of 40 do you have?
• A: "Quite a few."
• Q: "It (the organ) was from healthy Falun Gong practitioners?"
• A: "Correct, we would choose the good ones because we ensure the quality in our operation."
• Q: "You choose the organs yourself?"
• A: "Correct."

Another transcript of their phone calls to a Mr. Li in the Mishan City Detention Center in Heilongjiang province reads :

"Do you have Falun Gong organ suppliers?"

"We used to have, yes."

"What about now?"

"Yes."

On July 6, 2006, Matas told reporters that China, which has repeatedly denied similar allegations, refused entry to both to investigate the claims further .

The report supports the allegations of China's harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners and calls for international concerns "Believe me, I used to be a prosecutor. I knew there would be cynicism and I did my utmost to make sure that everything was satisfactorily and properly and ethically done," Kilgour said. "Our findings are shocking. To us, this is a form of evil we have yet to see on this planet," Matas said the live organ harvesting practice amounted to a crime against humanity.

On July 20, 2006, two members of the Canadian independent investigation team, David Kilgour and David Matas, held a press conference at the National Press Club. They announced their two-month investigation into allegations of the CCP's organ removal from Falun Gong practitioners and answered questions from participants. Their independent investigation verifies the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) atrocities of organ removal from living practitioners and caught the attention of the international community and media.

On July 24, 2006, renowned human rights lawyer Dr. Terri Marsh officially delivered a criminal complaint on to the Massachusetts Prosecutor's Office during the first World Transplant Congress held in late July 2006. This is the first international human rights lawsuit that Falun Gong has lodged regarding the atrocities related to live organ harvesting. The defendants in the criminal complaint are the visiting president of Tongji Hospital Transplantation Research Institute in Wuhan City, Chen Zhonghua, and the dean of Zhongshan Hospital Organ Transplantation Center in Shanghai, Zhu Tongyu. They stand accused of violating the United States' "Torture Criminal Statute" (Title 18 USCA Section2340A) and "Torture Convention" approved and implemented by the United States in 1994.

On July 26, 2006, a third Chinese doctor, the director of Oriental Organ Transplant Center, Shen, Zhongyang, was charged. All the defendants were charged mainly because of the fact that doctors in the hospitals where they are directors admitted in recorded telephone conversation that the sources of the hospitals' organ transplants include Falun Gong practitioners.

Related Legal cases

• Falun Gong files case against Jiang Zemin in Spain

• United States Supreme Court denies Falun Gong's petition against Jiang Zemin (Case 04-1070, PDF File)

• Belgium throws out Falun Gong case against Jiang Zemin

• Falun Gong supporters fail in legal action against Chinese minister

• French court asks China to investigate as part of Falun Gong lawsuits

External links

• What is the Persecution of Falun Gong?
• China syndrome: the persecution of Falun Gong
• Stepped-Up Crackdown - China's persecution of the Falun Gong - Brief Article
• Falun Dafa Information Center
• World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
• Resolution Urges China to Cease Persecution of Falun Gong
• Poisonous Deceit ISBN 0-9731181-0-5 © 2002, Deep Six Publishing