Falun Gong and the CPC

The Communist Party of China is, perhaps in our current situation, the most infamous totalitarian regime in the world, and with good reason. Ever since the rise of the so-called ‘People’s Republic’ in 1949, the Communist Party has murdered tens of millions of people both directly and indirectly through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, countless purges and crackdowns on dissidents e.g. The Tiananmen Square Massacre. However, a lesser known atrocity still ongoing is the CCP’s repression of peaceful Falun Gong practitioners.

Now what is Falun Gong? The CCP claims it is a cult, but this is simply incorrect. It is an informal spiritual movement in China, promoting deep-breathing exercises and methods of enhancing the physical, mental and energy health of its users. Its aim is to connect its followers in a sort of spiritual unity with the universe. It takes inspiration from Taoist and Buddhist elements of belief, and rose to prominence in the early 1990s.

Time for a brief history lesson. The Chinese Communist Party since its seizure of power in 1949 has committed itself to the annihilation of any beliefs that pose a conscious threat to the moral beliefs of the people, utilising terror and violence against any traditional systems of belief. However, it did not immediately repress Falun Gong, largely thanks to the sheer popularity of it. During Falun Gong’s rise, over 70-100 million people (depending on the source) adhered to the movement by 1999 at its very peak.

Eventually, attention turned to Falun Gong twenty-five years ago in July 1999 when the regime started its largest religious persecution campaign in over two decades, seeking to destroy it and its tens of millions of followers for good. There are plenty of likely reasons for this sudden shift, but it comes down to ideology and power. This campaign has served as a tool to further strengthen the ideology of Marxism and its materialistic view of the world against Falun Gong’s spiritual devotion along with empowering the CCP’s rule and its worldwide political influence, which would happen if it gained control over Falun Gong and its followers. The actions taken range beyond the run-of-the-mill censorship of the movement, arbitrary arrests, torture and executions we’ve seen from countless regimes in the past. What the Chinese State has done is absolutely horrific.

The Chinese State has taken practitioners of the peaceful Falun Gong group prisoner and forced them to take blood tests for a state-run DNA database. When a patient purchases an organ for transplant or other practices, the organs of these practitioners are removed while they are still alive and sold on the market. The China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center has put forward a range of prices for harvested organs from $62,000 to $150,000. Unbelievable? It should be, but it’s the truth. Furthermore, it has publicly admitted that it has used organs from executed prisoners in 2005, which is still horrifying to imagine even if it was subjected to just supposed ‘criminals’ (which it isn’t).

Two experienced and trusted Canadian human rights lawyers – David Matas and David Kilgour – exposed much of this activity in the 2000s in their “Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China”. They revealed that over 60,000 organ transplants of Falun Gong practitioners have taken place in China during a short five year period during their work, though that’s ramped up in recent times and that will be discussed too. Only 18,000 of them have been officially recorded in China, but the regime fails to explain (even though it vigorously denies all allegations of harvesting) the magnitude of these unrecorded cases. Kilgour and Matas discovered in their report that, disturbingly, the system of organ trafficking has been used to fund the Government’s programmes, particularly its health service. The Government is continuing the cycle and funding it’s own health service on the torture and murder of its people. These actions are demonstrably illegal even by Chinese law yet the practice continues.

To thoroughly research and investigate the organ trafficking industry, the China Tribunal was established just a few years ago with that sole purpose. It found that the 70-80 million practitioners of Falun Gong are indeed the primary source of organ supply. Calling back to 60,000 total organ transplants of Falun Gong practitioners in just a five year period in the 2000s, it is now also reported that at least 60-80,000 operations took place per year between 2010 and 2016 including both Falun Gong and Uyghur Muslim groups. These numbers are also by no means ‘volunteers’ given the sheer scale of transplants on a certain minority group of people in a relatively short timescale. So this means that the regime hasn’t even attempted to slow down it’s organ harvesting system since Kilgour and Matas exposed it in 2006 and have accelerated the intensity of it.

Beyond the organ harvesting, other state-sanctioned actions have been implemented to terrorise its followers. Falun Gong has been absolutely denounced as a ‘cult’ by the Chinese regime yet it holds no actual basis in reality according to the international scholar community, and even to the CCP itself, which failed to label Falun Gong as a cult until it started its campaign of persecution. The Chinese regime has arrested and detained thousands, and forced millions of its followers to rescind their faith via written pledges. The regime has subjected harsh and brutal torture to the followers of Falun Gong, primarily psychological and physical. Electric shocks, sleep deprivation and slandering against the movement and its leaders – all of which are commonplace against the victims of this vile state. Yet another aspect is surveillance and using the law to target Falun Gong followers. Now spying on and gaslighting its citizens through legal complexities isn’t a rare occurrence for the CCP, but given the sheer amount of resources dedicated to the persecution of Falun Gong, it’s worth looking into. The security forces has used electronic technology to dig up as much information as possible on the followers, using geographical data, CCTV footage, browsing mobile phone records, internet histories and monitoring texts from people’s conversations even in the private homes of followers. Worst of all, it attempts to trick the people into thinking this all justifies the actions by the regime due to the fact that it is legally demanded. Article 300 of the criminal code was added in 1999 to accelerate the context of the persecution campaign of Falun Gong; which punished against religions that “undermine implementation of law”, and now poses a sentence for followers of up to 15 years to life imprisonment.

However, these are all just statistics and general statements so let’s remember what has gone on for just a small number of individuals.

Ren Pengwu was a 33-year old man from Harbin City. He worked as a power plant technician and was viewed as being an honest and hardworking individual. He was arrested by local Hulan police in early 2001 for distributing material on Falun Gong and was detained in the Hulan County Second Detention Center. He was brutally assaulted and faced horrific torture through force-feeding for nearly a week by the police. When he was understandably on the brink of death, the police did nothing and waited until it was too late. He died on arrival when he was sent to a hospital. Four hours after being informed of his condition. murdered after having his throat and lower abdomen cut out while he was alive. In an effort to whitewash the situation, the authorities prevented any photographs being taken of Ren’s body. A desperate decision to hide the truth was made. His bodily organs were removed before his body was cremated without the family’s full consultation or awareness.

Kang Ruizhu was a 52-year old woman in Pingshan, who was employed at a fertiliser factory. She was fired from her job after being detained and fined frequently between 1999 and 2002 for her appeals to try to ameliorate the nation’s treatment of Falun Gong to Beijing itself or for the distribution of Falun Gong materials to others. During one of her detention periods Kang was subjected to “brainwashing sessions” and handcuffed to a tree for a whole week. At this point, Kang was forced to abandon her home and live on the streets to try to escape the grasp of the police. She wouldn’t succeed. In October 2002, Kang was detained once again by police. She started a hunger strike as a means of peacefully resisting the police, perfectly keeping with her Falun Gong faith. The police even told Kang herself that this action was ordered by the country’s government and that her cause of death, no matter what, would be deliberately ruled as a suicide. The police soon announced Kang’s death and she was subsequently cremated on the same day. Her family was then told by local authorities that they were to have their state salaries ceased and that they would not be eligible for any legal or social action to gain justice for Kang or even know the full truth.

Liu Qunying was a 42-year old woman from the city of Wuhan and had been working as a store employee on Zheng Street, Caidian District. She was viewed by others as a faithful, kind and honest person. Liu became a follower of Falun Gong in early 1999 and was soon an easy target of the CCP’s persecution. She was detained and even sentenced to a forced labour camp in two instances in 2000 for her activism to promote and defend Falun Gong in the face of state tyranny. In January 2003, Liu was ordered by drunken police officers to go to a substation for an investigation into her and her civilian activities, to which she reluctantly agreed given that she believed she was innocent of any crime. Unfortunately, her faith was now a crime. Liu was interrogated by the police in the Caidian District Police Substation. In shocking mysterious circumstances, Liu was suddenly reported dead by the police. It was said that she committed suicide by “falling” to her death from the seventh floor. But it was determined by eyewitnesses to be impossible due to the size of the windows, the complications needed to overcome in order to jump from the building and the fact the police were there to foil any attempt. It is certain from her autopsy that Liu suffered intense beatings across her body due to her injuries, including internal wounds, and other circumstances her body was found in. Liu’s family arrived to find her body, but the police and the local legislative committee of the Caidian District warned it could only happen if they agreed to the conditions that they were to agree that Liu died as a result of suicide, that no wreaths were to be sent, no memorials were to take place and no guests were to invited. In the end, they were also forced to sign her autopsy documents which did not list her cause of death, time of death nor any attempts taken by staff or authorities to help her, proving that she received no medical care for her ‘fall’.

Li Fenghua was a 44-year old woman from the northeastern city of Jiamusi. She was a firm believer in Falun Gong and its principles. She was arrested in October 2001 and sent to the Xigemu Forced Labour Camp. She was physically and mentally neglected during her time as a forced labourer. She was given a poor diet and the hygiene conditions left her mind and body effectively broken down, giving her a high-blood-type pressure level of up to 220. She was briefly released after eight months in the camp but was sent back in a mere three months. She would never leave. Li was held as a hostage by the police force in order to capture her husband and daughter, who were also followers of Falun Gong and who were also detained by the police. Li was tortured continuously for the next two months, being subjected to the same actions by the police, leading to her losing most of her body weight and destroying her lucidity. Li died in November, and when they saw the body, her family was horrified by her condition, and tried to hold the police accountable through filing an attempted lawsuit, but was rejected by the courts. Li was cremated and the police used this as an opportunity to arrest her widowed husband and daughter.

Liu Zhenfang was a 60-year old woman from Huangchuan County and had worked as a hairdresser. She turned to Falun Gong in 1998, learning of the health benefits it put forward in its exercises and teachings. Liu was committed to her beliefs and did not yield them even after the CCP began its persecution campaign the next year. She faced harassment and was targeted by the police countless times. Her house was ransacked, she was arrested, financially extorted and viciously tortured, and her family faced similar attacks by the police forces throughout her life. Despite the regime’s dogmatic attempts to try to get Liu to forfeit her faith, she remained firm and never betrayed her principles by refusing to reveal the source of Falun Gong materials. Liu’s determination to stand up sealed her fate in 2017 when she was sentenced to 1.5 years imprisonment. She was force-fed nerve-damaging drugs, forced to stand upright for days without resting and subjected to forced labour among other things. Liu was released in late 2018, but succumbed at the end of the year from her injuries, having become a skeletal shadow of her former self. Before her death, she filed a criminal complaint to the authorities, revealing the extent of her treatment while in prison. Liu’s story remains an inspirational event, a single woman who faced unbeatable odds against the state remained a faithful follower of the movement her country’s government seeks to strangle.

These are a mere handful of people who have suffered greatly at the bloody hands of the CCP. Practitioners have been sent to camps, dying to excessive forced labour, torture and abuse, lack of adequate nutrition and medical attention, or a combination of factors. Now let’s see how several expert sources describe the horrors of China’s organ harvesting in relation to international law and human dignity. As it stands over have died at the hands of the CCP, and many thousands more have suffered and are currently suffering under its boot.

“Across China, a gruesome trade in human organs is taking place on a mass scale. Like something out of a horror movie, livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs and corneas are being cut out from prisoners of conscience while they are still alive.”—Deputy Chair of Human Rights Commission of the Conservative and Unionist Party; Benedict Rogers

The US Congress proclaims House Resolution 343 in which it “condemns the practice of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China”, calling for an end of the CPC organ harvesting and immediate release of all Falun Gong and religious prisoners

“[The Communist Party initiated] the worst instance of religious persecution since the Cultural Revolution, with the clampdown against Falun Gong.”—André Laliberté, Ottawa University, leading scholar on religion in China

The exact details of every atrocity committed by the Chinese State is debated still to this day. What shouldn’t be up to date, however, is the fact that this barbaric group of evil tyrants have deliberately targeted Falun Gong, and millions of its citizens in the name of its goal for furthering power over man. This article’s purpose isn’t to lecture anyone or suggest from my comfortable position on how to challenge the CCP’s position on Falun Gong and the atrocities it’s committed. Just please read, learn and tell.

Sources:

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/china/China0102.htm

Oxford University Press, 2008).

A Roar of Silent Protestors,” New York Times, April 27, 1999; Joseph Kahn, “Notoriety Now for Movement’s Leader,” New York Times, April 27, 1999; Renee Schoff, “Growing group poses a dilemma for China,” Associated Press, April 26, 1999.

Vivienne Shue. “Legitimacy Crisis in China?” in State and Society in 21st-century China. Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation, ed. Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen (New York: Routledge-Curzon, 2004).

https://www.hudson.org/events/chinas-persecution-falun-gong-25-years-nina-shea

https://www.rferl.org/a/1071999.html

2006 Report

https://www.ibanet.org/article/0D8860DC-A94D-4E9B-80AE-46FAB2902879

China: No end in sight – Torture and forced confessions in China

//wenshu.court.gov.cn/content/content?DocID=d227f882-f7b3-4118-833f-90049cbba7a0

//www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/droi/dv/506_yiyangx….

https://en.minghui.org/emh/articles/2001/4/21/6812.html

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2002/11/11/28637p.html

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2003/1/27/31376.html

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2002/11/16/28798p.html

https://www.ntd.com/woman-dies-3-months-after-prison-release-years-of-torture-damaged-her-body_285990.html

https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/organ-harvesting-in-china/#:~:text=Across%20China%2C%20a%20gruesome%20trade,living%20by%20that%20point%2C%20executed.

Resolutions

https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2017/3/8/162431p.html

https://freedomhouse.org/report/2017/battle-china-spirit-falun-gong-religious-freedom#footnote6_mslto0q

By Lewis Atkinson