A severe cyberattack has hit a New York-based research group, the worst in its two-decade history.
The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong recently released testimony from a whistleblower doctor. In it, she described an encounter with a Falun Gong practitioner who had her kidney forcibly removed in China. The woman reportedly died later.
The doctor video-recorded the conversation and shared it with the research group. It was not published due to safety concerns.
Just hours after publishing the testimony in July, the New York nonprofit’s website came under attack and was sporadically shut down for a full week.
The director of a medical ethics advocacy group suggests the hackers might have wanted to prevent the release of the video, noting that “hacking usually comes with a purpose.”
Falun Gong is a spiritual mediation discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
A 2019 independent tribunal concluded practitioners of the faith were the principal source for the regime’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting.