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1. What is Falun Gong?

Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that includes exercises and meditation. After being passed down in different forms for generations, the practice was first made public by Mr. Li Hongzhi in China in 1992. It quickly spread by word of mouth throughout China and then beyond—70-100 million Chinese were said to have practiced it by 1998 and today it is practiced in over 70 countries. The discipline is taught and practiced without charge, and its central books—Falun Gong and Zhuan Falun—can be downloaded for free.

Rooted in the Buddhist school of practices, Falun Gong emphasizes moral rectitude. Three values—truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance—form the backbone of Falun Gong’s teachings and represent its highest ideals. Practitioners aspire to live by these values in their daily lives, achieving, over time, a state of selflessness along with a release from attachments and desires. Many who practice Falun Gong find a deep sense of joy in putting others first and aspiring to goodness. With a belief that mind and body are one, Falun Gong sees this process of purifying one’s thoughts as also key to better physical health. In Chinese, practices of this nature are often referred to as “cultivation” paths and form important parts of traditional Asian cultures.

2. Why is the Chinese Communist Party persecuting Falun Gong?

The complex rationale behind the campaign can be broken into four elements: Falun Gong’s popularity, the role of Jiang Zemin, conflicting ideology, and the very nature of China’s Communist Party.

While a common misconception is that the gathering of 10,000 adherents in Beijing on April 25, 1999 is what led to the Party’s opposition to Falun Gong, oppression of the practice actually began at least three years earlier. The more popular Falun Gong became, the more the resistance it encountered. When Falun Gong books became bestsellers in 1996 they were banned; when state-run media estimated that over 70 million people practiced Falun Gong—more than the Communist Party membership—the media began attacking Falun Gong; state security began spying on and harassing practitioners. It was in response to these early abuses that practitioners gathered in Beijing. Party leaders fear any large, independent group beyond its direct control, and Falun Gong was perhaps the largest.

Fearing Falun Gong’s rapidly growing popularity was overshadowing his own legacy, then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin ordered the practice “eradicated.” According to a 1999 Washington Post article, “Communist Party sources said that the standing committee of the Politburo did not unanimously endorse the crackdown and that Jiang alone decided that Falun Gong must be eliminated.” Journalists and inside sources have described Jiang as “jealous” of Falun Gong and “obsessed” with eliminating the group. As China analyst Willy Lam has argued, by creating a national campaign Jiang sought to both align power to himself and eradicate a group he saw as a threat to his power.

A third element is the ideological differences between the atheist Communist Party and the spiritual Falun Gong. While religion is becoming increasingly popular in China, and the Party does allow some religious affiliations, spiritual groups must submit to the state and their leaders must be Party approved. Other groups who, like Falun Gong, have chosen to preserve their belief system and refused to tender to the Party have also met persecution, including Tibetan Buddhists and house church members.

Finally, as the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party has argued, the persecution of Falun Gong is the latest in a continuum of violent campaigns that the Party uses to remind the population of its control. Mao Zedong once said that China should have a Cultural Revolution every seven or eight years. Indeed, since the 1950s not a decade has gone by without some violent state-led campaign aimed at the masses. From the suppression of “counterrevolutionaries,” the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the 1989 crackdown on the democracy movement, to Falun Gong, the Party has killed 60-80 million Chinese citizens.

3. What form has the persecution taken?

Inside China, the Party has used every method available to terrorize and pressure people to renounce their faith. Practitioners are denied schooling, jobs, and custody of their children; they are publicly humiliated, raped and sexually assaulted by police. Those who disclose the abuses they experience in captivity are jailed for “leaking state secrets.” Adherents are denied legal representation, and some have received prison sentences of up to 18 years for merely their beliefs. Hundreds of thousands have reportedly been sent to labor “re-education” camps—China’s gulag system—without any legal trial. Many healthy, normal Falun Gong practitioners have been committed to psychiatric wards where they are abused with nerve-damaging drugs. As of July 2008, 3,163 deaths have been documented, mostly from torture, of which there are over 63,000 accounts in total. The real death toll is believed to be in the tens of thousands.

4. How have Falun Gong practitioners responded to the persecution?

Falun Gong has responded with markedly nonviolent means, refusing to use force throughout nine years of suppression. Inside China, adherents’ response has consisted of trying to file petitions or writing letters to China’s rulers, informing fellow citizens about the persecution they face and its illegality, meditating in public, hanging banners and posters in visible places, calling labor camps and prisons to directly speak with the perpetrators, and publishing records of the persecution online.

Overseas, practitioners have been holding round-the-clock vigils for years outside Chinese embassies and consulates, have held parades, rallies, hunger strikes, and cross-country car tours to raise awareness of the persecution in China. Other activities have included compiling reports for United Nations special rapporteurs, holding forums, producing printed, electronic, and broadcast media about the persecution, as well as developing advanced software to help Chinese break through China’s Internet firewall.

5. How has the rest of the world responded to the persecution?

First, it should be noted that Chinese people both in China and abroad are increasingly standing up in defense of Falun Gong. Chinese lawyers like Guo Guoting and Gao Zhisheng, in particular, have risked and lost their careers trying to defend Falun Gong practitioners in recent years. After initially being greatly influenced by mainland propaganda and pressures, overseas Chinese have also become more supportive recently, and have given Falun Gong awards recognizing its contributions to the community and to the cause of freedom in China.

Prominent individuals, including leading members of the Jewish religious community, have been speaking out about the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have issued urgent appeals for Falun Gong practitioners and have helped document the persecution. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture has repeatedly queried the Chinese authorities and issued reports in which cases of Falun Gong torture comprise the majority of the China section. The U.S. Department of State has highlighted the persecution of Falun Gong in its annual reports, as have other countries. Two resolutions condemning the persecution have been passed in Congress and others have been passed in European parliaments. With the notable exception of Taiwan, however, executive branches throughout the world have yet to firmly speak out. After an initial interest in the story, the Western press has been largely avoiding the issue.