For Falun Gong, Peaceful Protests Persist

NEW YORK—Fourteen July 20th’s have come and gone since 1999, each one a reminder of another year of persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party in China.

The practice, an ancient spiritual discipline brought to the public in 1992, thrived in China in the 1990s, with as many as 100 million people practicing, according to state statistics. It’s basic tenets are truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

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Jiang Zemin, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the time, saw the popularity of Falun Gong a threat to his absolute control and a threat to the atheist regime. He ordered the eradication of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) by any means necessary.

“It started in the middle of the night. On July 20, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were stolen from their beds, abducted from their homes, and brought to prisons and holding centers where they were forced to undergo brainwashing session and to renounce this practice of Falun Gong,” said Liam O’Neill, a representative from the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC), the official press center and site for documenting the persecution.

O’Neill joined hundreds of practitioners lining Broadway outside New York City’s City Hall on Friday to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the persecution. Speakers shared personal stories of persecution, and appealed for support.

“The persecution of Falun Gong remains the largest modern-day atrocity against a group based on their spiritual beliefs,” said Alan Adler, director of the non-profit Friends of Falun Gong.

“It has been a campaign of terror, imprisonment, lies, torture, and killing; a campaign of pure evil against a defenseless group of people who have no political aspirations.”

Common torture techniques used against practitioners include shocking them electric batons, burning them with irons, tying them up in painful positions for days, force-feeding saline solutions through a violently inserted plastic tube up the nose, and driving bamboo sticks under the finger nails, according to FDIC. “Rape and sexual torture of the Falun Gong in detention are prevalent as well,” the site says.

To date, over 3,000 deaths have been documented, as well as over 63,000 accounts of torture, says FDIC. With the fate of so many imprisoned practitioners undocumented, the real figure is estimated to be in the tens of thousands.

A Personal Account

Wang Jing, who recently escaped to the United States, is a victim of the regime’s torture. She recounted her story of being brutally beaten by police, when her son was 3 years old.

When Wang stood in a public park in 2000 and unfurled a banner that read, “Falun Dafa is Good,” she knew she was risking her life. But she had benefited so much from practicing Falun Gong that she felt compelled to do something to appeal.

Wang, as well as others who joined her peaceful protest, were quickly surrounded by police who began beating them. “They took us one by one and stuffed us into their police cars,” Wang said. Once at the detention center, the police locked them in a steel cage.

“Eventually the police took me out of the cage and pulled me downstairs; they violently hit my face until it was full of blood. The next morning, because I was unwilling to give up my beliefs in Falun Dafa, police dragged me to a room and made me wear a jacket and tortured me for 3 to 4 hours. My arms were cuffed, cutting into the skin. My two hands became black. When they released my hands, I had already lost all feeling in my arms. A long time passed before I could feel them again.

“During this time, I still refused to give up my beliefs, so they brought in another police officer and dragged me downstairs and used a baton to hit my waist and thighs until they turned purplish-gray.”

She was imprisoned for 15 days before being released, but over the course of the next 2 years she was detained by police multiple times, sent to brainwashing classes, and her every move monitored.

Wang’s story is but one of tens of thousands.

Falun Gong practitioners account for two thirds of Chinese torture cases brought to the United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, according to a report in 2006.

There are 500,000 to 1 million Falun Gong practitioners in captivity at any given time in China, O’Neill said.

Organ Harvesting, Mounting Evidence

“The ghastly crowning achievement of this persecution is that the regime perfected techniques of removing organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, killing untold thousands for profit, with the blessing of officials up to the Politburo level,” said Alder.

Practitioners of Falun Gong are being used as organ donors in a macabre state-sanctioned practice that advertises organs for sale through hospital websites, said Dr. Jing Fang, a member of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting.

Read more at The Epoch Times