US Calls on Chinese Regime to End Persecution of Falun Gong

The United States has called on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to immediately end its “depraved abuse and mistreatment” of the spiritual practice Falun Gong.

“Twenty-one years of persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is far too long, and it must end,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a rare statement about the persecution by a top administration official.

“Extensive evidence shows the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government continues to repress and abuse this community to this day, including reported torture of Falun Gong practitioners and detention of thousands,” he said on July 20, the 21st anniversary of Beijing’s launch of the persecution campaign.

Pompeo also demanded that the Chinese regime release imprisoned adherents of Falun Gong and account for the whereabouts of missing practitioners.

His calls join around 30 U.S. lawmakers and officials who issued statements expressing solidarity with Falun Gong practitioners on the anniversary. Hundreds of lawmakers around the world also condemned the regime’s brutal suppression.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that includes meditative exercises a set of moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice spread widely in China with around 70 million people practicing by the end of the 1990s, according to official Chinese estimates at the time.

On July 20, 1999, Falun Gong practitioners in China found themselves the targets for persecution when the CCP deemed Falun Gong’s popularity a threat to its rule and banned the practice. Adherents have since been subjected to harassment, detention, and torture in an effort to coerce them into giving up their beliefs. Millions have been detained, according to estimates by the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC). More than 4,000 are confirmed to have died from torture, according to Minghui.org, an online clearinghouse for information about the persecution of Falun Gong, although this is likely to be an understatement of the real death toll given the difficulty of obtaining sensitive information from China.

“Since 1999, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has sought to eradicate Falun Gong, a spiritual practice originating in China, and its peaceful practitioners and human rights defenders who have fought for their right to practice their beliefs,” Pompeo said.

The secretary described the story of Zhang Yuhua, a Falun Gong adherent who survived detention in China. Pompeo welcomed her last year at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington hosted by the department.