STOP THE PERSECUTION OF THE FALUN GONG. -Those who do not know about this - Please read...
1999 to date over 3,000 deaths have been documented, as well as over 63,000 accounts of torture. An estimate of the real figure puts the actual death toll in the tens of thousands.
Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that is Buddhist in nature. It consists of moral teachings, a meditation, and four gentle exercises that resemble tai-chi and are known in Chinese culture as “qigong.” The latter are a truly unique, and very much enjoyable, way to improve the health and condition of one’s body.
At the core of Falun Gong are the values of truth, compassion, and forbearance (or in Chinese, Zhen, Shan, Ren). Falun Dafa teaches that these are the most fundamental qualities of the universe itself, and takes them to be a guide for daily life and practice. Falun Gong is also known as “Falun Dafa.”
While Falun Gong is practiced openly in the 70-plus countries where it is found, today in its homeland of China it is subject to well-documented egregious human rights violations. The scale and scope of abuses taking place make this possibly the largest religious persecution in the world today
***ORGAN HARVESTING - AN OVERVIEW***
Mounting evidence tells a terrible tale of murder and mutilation in China. Witnesses and Chinese physicians reveal that thousands of persons affiliated with the Falun Gong are being killed for their organs, which are sold and transplanted at enormous profit.
The kidneys, livers, and hearts are often sold on demand to overseas patients, who can afford them. That is, the prisoners of conscience are tissue typed and then killed once a matching recipient is found for their organs.
The perpetrators are officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), acting in cahoots with surgeons, prison authorities, and military officials.
Victims are held in concentrations camps prior to dissection, after which the bodies’ remains are immediately cremated.
The story, almost too dreadful to believe, was first revealed in March 2006, when a woman claimed that as many as 4,000 Falun Gong had been killed for their organs at the hospital in which she had worked. She also said that her husband, a surgeon at the same hospital outside the northeastern city of Shenyang, had disclosed to her that he had removed cornea from the living bodies of 2,000 Falun Gong adherents.
One week later, a Chinese military doctor not only corroborated the woman’s account but claimed such atrocities were taking place in 36 different concentration camps throughout the country. The largest, he said, held 120,000 persons. He said he had also witnessed the Falun Gong being massively transported across the country in cattle trains, at night and under the cover of tight security.
Falun Gong supporters and human rights activists overseas immediately began investigating the allegations. They placed calls to Chinese hospitals pretending to be shopping for a kidney or a liver. To their horror, one doctor after another openly confirmed: We’ve got Falun Gong in stock; just come in and we can get you the organ within a week.
Shocked by these reports, two prominent Canadian human rights lawyers launched their own investigation. Then in July 2006, former Secretary of State for Asia Pacific David Kilgour and Nazi hunter David Matas, published their own 140-page report. It drew “the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true”.
CCP officials are reportedly hastening to destroy all evidence. They have provided monitored tours and removed websites that advertised organs for sale (though not in time, as investigators had already managed to save images of these web pages). One Chinese website had boasted that it can provide matching organs in 1-4 weeks, which medical experts say is impossible unless the Chinese hospitals have access to a huge stock of living organ “donors.”
Shortly after reports of organ harvesting emerged, Party leaders announced new legislation banning use of organs without consent. Over a year later, this law does not appear to have been implemented at all, supporting those who claimed all along that the legislation was nothing more than a public relations stunt.
Throughout the 1990’s, human rights organizations and international media reported the widespread use of executed prisoners’ organs for organ transplants in China. In 2001, a Chinese doctor testified before Congress, saying he had removed corneas and skin from more than 100 executed prisoners, including ones who were still alive.
The Communist Party has now begun employing “execution vans,” which allow for both discrete executions on the go and delivery of fresh organs to hospitals.
Along with Kilgour and Matas, the Committee to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG:http://www.cipfg.org/) has taken the lead in uncovering and exposing the organ atrocities.
****Persecution: Timeline****
1996 - As Falun Gong becomes more popular, early signs of state oppression appear. Shortly after they are named bestsellers, Falun Gong books are banned form publication.
The first major state-run media article criticizing Falun Gong appears in the Guangming Daily on June 17. Mr. Li moves to the United States.
1997 - The Public Security Bureau conducts an investigation into whether Falun Gong should be deemed an “evil cult,” but the investigation concludes: “no evidence found thus far.”
1998-1999 - Police disrupt routine morning Falun Gong exercise sessions in parks and search the homes of Falun Gong adherents who help organize group activities.
Attacks on Falun Gong continue in state-run media. The Falun Gong respond to the critiques by visiting, and sometimes petitioning outside, the local newspaper or television stations in order to explain what Falun Gong is and clear their reputation.
Such events take place in Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and other major cities.
Chinese media and government surveys report that at least 70 million people in China practice Falun Gong.
April 1999 - He Zuoxiu, a prominent Marxist-atheist, disparages Falun Gong and qigong in general in a Tianjin college magazine. Local Falun Gong gather in Tianjin, asking the magazine to repair the damage done to their reputation.
Although the gathering is peaceful, on April 23 and 24, riot police is sent, 45 practitioners are arrested and some are beaten. When practitioners ask Tianjin authorities to release those who were arrested, they are told that the orders came from Beijing; if they want to petition, they were told, they must go to the capital.
April 25, 1999 - The following day, on April 25, over 10,000 adherents from Beijing, nearby Tianjin, and other cities in the area gather outside the State Council Office of Petitions in Beijing.
The office is located right next door to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party leaders’ residential compound. In spite of the Party’s later accusation that the Falun Gong “seized” Zhongnanhai, the gathering is actually remarkably peaceful and orderly, with adherents keeping entrances, exits, and footpaths clear – as also reported by Western media.
Adherents request that those arrested in Tianjin be released, that the ban on publishing Falun Gong books be lifted, and that they be able to resume their practice without government interference.
Then-Prime Minister Zhu Rongji meets with Falun Gong representatives in his office. By the end of the day, those arrested in Tianjin are released and the gathering quietly disperses.
Within hours, however, then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin opposes Zhu’s assuaging position, and states that if it cannot defeat Falun Gong, the Party will become a “laughing stock.”
June 10, 1999 - Jiang Zemin creates the 6-10 Office, a secret security agency with a mandate to eradicate Falun Gong. Jiang grants it authority over all local levels of police, government, and courts, and the 6-10 Office later becomes the primary tool for arresting, torturing, and killing the Falun Gong.
July 1999 - From the April 25 gathering until mid July, adherents throughout China report being followed and interrogated by plain clothes police officers, as the Party collects lists of adherents and makes final preparations for the ensuing ban.
On July 20, 1999 police begin arresting adherents that they consider to be key organizers. On July 22, 1999 a media blitz commences. Airwaves, television screens, and newspapers columns are filled with attacks on Falun Gong. Sound trucks drive around city streets and college campuses warning people that practicing Falun Gong is now illegal. Among the ban’s stipulations, protesting the ban is also banned.
October 1999 - Falun Gong adherents hold a secret press conference for foreign media in Beijing aiming to expose the persecution they are facing. At the end of the press briefing, participants are arrested. Ms. Ding Yan, one of the adherents who spoke at the press briefing, is later tortured to death in custody. Jiang pushes through legislation that retroactively justifies the ban on Falun Gong.
Winter 1999-2000 - As rounds of arrest continue and the first reports of deaths from torture in custody emerge, the Falun Gong throughout China travel to Beijing to petition their government and appeal to the world for help by meditating or raising banners on Tiananmen Square. The banners often simply say: “Falun Dafa hao” (Falun Dafa is good).
International media repeatedly capture images of police pouncing on people meditating on the square and beating them to the ground before taking them away.
January 2001 - State-run media claim that several Falun Gong practitioners ignited themselves in protests on Tiananmen Square. The so-called self-immolation becomes the centerpiece of the Party’s propaganda against Falun Gong and is used to give credence to what had by then become an increasingly unpopular campaign.
Although most foreign media simply copy-paste the reports from Party mouthpieces Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television, the self-immolation incident appears increasingly suspicious, not least because Falun Gong teachings consider suicide a sin. Investigations by the Washington Post and others, most notably slow-motion analysis of the Party’s own video footage, poke hole after hole in the Party’s version of the story and raise alarming questions.
November 20, 2001 - A group of 35 Falun Gong practitioners from 12 different countries gathers on Tiananmen Square to meditate under a banner that reads: “Truth, Compassion, Tolerance” – Falun Gong’s principles. They are arrested and beaten within minutes. Similar protests by foreign Falun Gong practitioners continue in the following months.
March 5, 2002 - Falun Gong practitioners in northeastern Changchun city tap into state-run television broadcasts. They air 45 minutes of video that otherwise cannot be seen in China, including how Falun Gong is practiced freely outside of China yet persecuted in the mainland.
Enraged, Jiang orders police to “shoot to kill” Falun Gong adherents caught posting informational materials. Over three days, the city of Changchun turns into chaos as some 5,000 people are arrested; the number of deaths during those days remains unknown. Of those who participate in the broadcast, several are later tortured to death in custody, including Mr. Liu Chengjun, the subject of an Amnesty International urgent action. Similar overrunning of broadcast signals continues sporadically throughout China in the following years.
November 2002 - Hu Jintao begins officially taking over the leadership from Jiang, although Jiang and his highly-placed supporters who have been wedded to the persecution of Falun Gong – primarily Luo Gan, Zhou Yongkang, Liu Jing, Li Lanqing, and Zeng Qinghong - continue to push the campaign.
July 2004 - The number of documented cases of Falun Gong adherents who died as a result of the persecution, mostly due to torture in custody, reaches 1,000. Estimates place the actual number of deaths at over 10,000 deaths.
November 2004 - The “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” a series of editorials critical of the Party published overseas by The Epoch Times (www.ninecommentaries.com), begins being clandestinely circulated throughout China (www.ninecommentaries.com); tourists bring copies back from Hong Kong, others download them from the Internet or receive them in the mail.
The Nine Commentaries includes a chapter about the persecution of Falun Gong, and sets of a wave of denunciations and withdrawals from the Party and its affiliated organizations throughout China and the Chinese diaspora (see http://
December 2004 - Prominent human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng in Beijing writes to the National People’s Congress about the persecution of Falun Gong. In the following months Gao’s firm is shut down, he is disbarred, stalked, put under house arrest, and eventually detained – largely because of his outspoken stance on the sensitive Falun Gong issue and because he resigned from the CCP. Attorney Guo Guoting had previously spoken out against the persecution and was subsequently disbarred (Gao Zhisheng book in English A China More Just)
June 2005 - The number of documented cases of Falun Gong adherents killed as a result of the persecution exceeds 2,500.
Former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin and former 6-10 Office policeman Hao Fengjun defect to Australia, smuggling out documents. Chen claims there are 1,000 Chinese spies operating in Australia alone. Hao says he left China after witnessing the torture of a Falun Gong adherent.
March 2006 - A woman who had worked in a Chinese hospital and a Chinese journalist step forward to reveal that Falun Gong practitioners in northeastern Sujiatun are being killed by the thousands for their organs. As evidence from investigation mounts in the following weeks, a Chinese military doctor comes forward to reveal that the atrocities are taking place throughout the country.
July 2006 - Former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and international human rights attorney David Matas release a report with evidence showing that harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners in China appears more widespread than previously thought. (http://
March 2007 - The number of documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners in China killed as a result of the persecution surpasses 3,000. Estimates place the number of actual deaths at many times higher.
May 2008 - The Falun Dafa Information Center reports that over 8,000 Falun Gong adherents were reported to have been taken into custody from December 2007 - May 2008 as part of a pre-Olympic campaign of arrests. Several adherents die of torture within days or weeks of being taken into detention, and many others are sentenced to lengthy prison terms
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