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Faluninfo.net | Faluninfo TV | Faluninfo LIBRARY |
GO
* WHAT IS FALUN GONG?
* WHY PERSECUTION?
* THE STORY
* 01 | Ancient Roots, Almost Lost
* 02 | The Rise of Falun Gong
* 03 | Eve of Persecution
* 04 | Terror Unleashed
* 05 | Violent Suppression
* 06 | Peaceful Resistance
* KEY TOPICS
* What Is The Evidence?
* Forced Organ Harvesting
* Genocide
* Why Haven’t I Heard about This?
* CCP Targets Shen Yun
* Family Rescue
* Transnational Repression
* Independent Documentation
* Government Actions
* Investigative Journalism
* Misconceptions
* NEWS
* Latest News
* Films & Videos
* Survivor AccountsTest content
* Deaths
* Newsletters
* In the NewsThird-party news reports from media outlets around the world.
* Press Releases
* Events
* Key Topics
* Photo Galleries

What is Falun Gong? Why persecution? Brutal & widespread? Genocide? What is the
evidence? Why haven’t I heard? Misconceptions?
Falun Gong Story
Ancient Roots The Rise of Falun Gong Eve of Persecution Terror Unleashed Violent
Suppression of 100 Million Peaceful Resistance
KEY TOPICS NEWS TAKE ACTION

TERROR UNLEASHED

It began in the middle of the night, July 20, 1999.

Across China under the veil of darkness, police dragged ordinary people from
their beds. Many would be taken to holding centers and jails, others beaten, and
some would die from torture.

Police were acting on directives from the top, from Communist Party head Jiang
Zemin, who ordered the group crushed. By most accounts, Jiang was resentful of
the popular practice—its believers numbering 100 million—and wished to make a
show of power.

Two days later, on July 22, Falun Gong was banned across the land, marking the
official beginning of a violent campaign in China that has raged for more than
two decades and cast tens of millions of apolitical citizens as enemies of the
state.

“ERADICATE THEM IN THREE MONTHS!”

Early arrests of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners revealed that some were
officials in the central government, the police and even the military. The
practice attracted people from all walks of life, from factory workers, to
university professors to family members of cadres in the Politburo.

Jiang Zemin as the head of an atheist, communist, totalitarian state harbored a
lot of fear. The popularity, rapid growth, and sheer size of Falun Gong for one.
But also the teaching’s strength to restore spiritual life and traditional
Chinese culture in society — something the communist party had been trying to
destroy for decades.

> “Defame their reputations. Bankrupt them financially. And destroy them
> physically!” —Jiang Zemin

After a stand off with the party’s Politburo, the majority of which were opposed
to a crackdown on Falun Gong, Jiang labelled the practice a threat to the Party
and said it would be an international loss of face if Falun Gong were not
immediately crushed. Jealous of Falun Gong’s popularity, he ordered the practice
to be eradicated within 3 months, using any means necessary.

THE GESTAPO-LIKE “610 OFFICE”

The 610 Office is the extra-legal police task force responsible for carrying out
the mission of eliminating Falun Gong.

There is no legislation establishing the 610 Office—named after its June 10,
1999 date of creation—nor are there laws delineating its powers. Instead, it was
established by Jiang and announced in his speech to elite cadres over a month
before Falun Gong was officially banned. Jiang’s orders for the new bureau?
“Immediately organize forces,” “form battle strategies,” and “get fully prepared
for the work of disintegrating [Falun Gong].”

Copies of Jiang’s speech about the 610 Office were immediately circulated to
every level of China’s bureaucracy, telling cadres they “must cooperate” closely
with the 610 and its affiliates. Aided by the fact that all Chinese judges were
Communist Party members, Jiang essentially placed the agency above the law.

The 610 Office had virtually unlimited powers. China’s vast security apparatus,
including the police force and intelligence officers, were to serve at the beck
and call of the 610 Office. From large corporate offices down to the smallest of
neighborhood organizations, 610 staff were empowered to dictate orders in any
effort aimed at detaining Falun Gong practitioners.

Furthermore, Jiang gave orders to that the 610 Office use “every means
necessary,” a mandate that led to what the 610 Office soon become most notorious
for—the use of extreme torture.

POLICE RAIDS, RANSACKING HOMES, KIDNAPPING AND IMPRISONMENT

Beginning in July, 1999 when the CCP launched the campaign against Falun Gong,
the dark days of the Cultural Revolution returned.

Police raided homes, confiscating valuables, destroying Falun Gong materials,
and hauling people away to detention centers or forced labor camps.

Trucks drove down the streets with mounted loud-speakers through which
denunciations of Falun Gong pierced the air.

July 22, 1999 • police arresting Falun Gong practitioners in the streets.

A Hong Kong newspaper reported that 50,000 individuals were detained in the
first week of the crackdown. In fact, during the first few weeks, Falun Gong
practitioners were rounded up and held in stadiums because the sheer number of
detainees could not fit in China’s vast array of detention centers and prisons.

NATIONWIDE BURNINGS OF FALUN GONG BOOKS BRING MEMORIES OF CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Under the order from the CCP leadership, local authorities across the country
made an all-out effort to eliminate Falun Gong books and other promotional
materials. Searching bookstores, vendors, multimedia stores, copy-centers and
print shops, and punishing anyone for possessing or distributing any of these
items.

In just three months, Chinese authorities confiscated, burned, and destroyed
tens of millions of Falun Gong books, videotapes, audio-cassettes, and other
related materials across the country.

Afternoon of July 28 • The first nationwide unified destruction of Falun Gong
publications and promotion materials is held in Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Jilin
and Hubei Provinces and is scheduled to continue in Guangdong, Shandong, Hubei,
Shanghai, Liaoning, Sichuan and Shanxi Provinces the following day. — People’s
Daily, July 29, 1999.

Destroying Falun Gong publications sent a signal to the Chinese public regarding
the regime’s seriousness about the campaign. However, this type of public
display back-fired in the eyes of many who shuttered at the idea of reliving the
horrors of the Cultural Revolution.

The mass destruction of Falun Gong books also made clear that the regime sought
to destroy any evidence that could readily disprove the fabrications and
distortions about Falun Gong’s beliefs that would come to dominate anti-Falun
Gong propaganda in the state-run media. Tragically, this was effective. As the
public lost access to Falun Gong books, the central propaganda agencies and
media were better equipped to fill the void by twisting Falun Gong teachings to
justify the campaign against the group.

SECRET PRESS CONFERENCE WITH WESTERN MEDIA PROVES DEADLY

October, 1999 • The persecution campaign against Falun Gong was in its third
month.

With no channel for speaking out and an increasingly brutal environment
engulfing them, several Chinese people who practice Falun Gong secretly arranged
a press conference in Beijing with Western media. Reporters from Reuters, The
Associated Press and the New York Times were invited.

During the press conference, Falun Gong practitioners revealed to media what
they were suffering in the persecution, and explained that they simply wanted an
environment to freely practice their faith.

Photos of the press conference made the front page of the New York Times the
following day.

Two of the Falun Gong practitioners that attended the conference were later
tortured to death in Chinese custody.

Risking their lives, Falun Gong practioners in Beijing are holding a secret
press conference for western media. Most who spoke out at the press conference
later disappeared. Ding Yang (bottom right) was tortured to death. Interpreter
Cai Mingtao (left) was killed too.

Chinese authorities began to harass foreign journalists who had been covering
the unfolding crackdown on Falun Gong.

The five foreign reporters who attended the secret news conference had their
credentials temporarily taken away by Chinese public security authorities. The
following week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called in these journalists to
issue warnings. One of the foreign reporters was issued a very severe admonition
that was described as “just short of an expulsion.”

> “Our members have been followed, detained, interrogated and threatened.
> Television reporters have had satellite transmissions interfered with and
> video shipments delayed. A number of members have had their press cards and
> residence permits indiscriminately confiscated, and some have been threatened
> with further, more serious action.” —The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China
> letter of protest to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, November 10, 1999

SHOW TRIAL: 18 YEARS IN PRISON FOR PRACTICING FALUN GONG

December 26, 1999 • Clearly timed so that Western media would be unlikely to
pick it up, the day after Christmas, the Chinese government put on a show-trial,
sentencing four prominent Falun Gong practitioners from seven to eighteen years
in prison.

Zhiwen Wang (at microphone on the left) stands trial with three other Falun Dafa
practitioners. This show trial was meant to influence other practitioners,
helping convince them to give up the spiritual discipline. (via Wang family)

Chinese officials prevented foreign media from reporting on the show trial, and
no further details were released because Western media coverage was not the
goal. The trial was televised throughout China (where Christmas is not a major
holiday) sending a strong message to discourage the public from continuing to
practice Falun Gong.

Human Rights Watch condemned the harsh sentences. “These Falun Gong members
should never have been arrested, much less given heavy sentences.”

TORTURE AND DEATHS IN CUSTODY

October 25, 1999 • The death of 17-year-old Chen Ying is the first confirmed
report of a Falun Gong practitioner dying in police custody.

In the coming months, more reports followed, many including details of torture
and severe abuse in custody.

Due to the difficulty and risk involved in collecting details of deaths in
custody, and transmitting those details to human rights workers outside China,
it was often weeks or months after the fact when a case was made public.

By the middle of 2000, however, that pattern was evident: Falun Gong
practitioners were being routinely tortured in detention facilities across
China, and in many cases, people were dying from the torture. Furthermore, the
freedom to “use any means necessary” to force Falun Gong practitioners to give
up their faith was resulting in widespread atrocities.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: A DEADLY EXERCISE

April 20, 2000

“The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce
her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle
prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head.

Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two
days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with
pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident.
She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness,
and died on Feb. 21.”

Throughout 2000, the Wall Street Journal‘s Ian Johnson published a
ground-breaking series of articles that detailed the brutal ramping up of
the Chinese regime’s violence toward Falun Gong practitioners and how the
directives for the campaign came directly from Beijing.

Mr. Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for this Falun Gong series to report
that officials in China had received explicit orders to torture and maim Falun
Gong practitioners who did not abandon their beliefs.

A year after Johnson’s articles, the Washington Post published an article
detailing how local officials had received explicit orders to torture and maim
Falun Gong practitioners who did not abandon their beliefs.

THE WASHINGTON POST: TORTURE IS BREAKING FALUN GONG

August, 2001

After a year and a half of difficulties in suppressing the movement, the
government for the first time this year sanctioned the systematic use of
violence against the group, established a network of brainwashing classes and
embarked on a painstaking effort to weed out followers neighborhood by
neighborhood and workplace by workplace.”

PRACTITIONER’S LAST RESORT: TIANANMEN SQUARE

January, 2000 • For months, the state-run media has been saturated with
fabricated reports vilifying Falun Gong.

Falun Gong practitioners are being expelled from university, and fired from
their jobs. Their homes are ransacked at will by police, and anyone who
practices faces the real threat of being hauled away by policy at any moment.

Many would be sent to forced labor camps with no trial.

All official channels for appealing to the government are closed.

And so, with nowhere else to turn, Falun Gong practitioners begin making public
appeals in Tiananmen Square.

At first, the demonstrations are small and only occasional, but soon people are
flocking to Beijing from every corner of China to step onto the square, hold up
a banner with Falun Gong’s core tenets — Truthfulness, Compassion and
Forbearance — and proclaim their innocence.

The Last Resort • Falun Gong practitioners appealing in Tiananmen Sqaure with
banners carrying characters: 真 Truthfulness, 善 Compassion, 忍 Forbearance. The
main tenets of Falun Gong’s teachings.

“Falun Gong members make unlikely protesters,” noted Reuters in its report on
Chinese practitioners making an appeal to the authorities. “On October 29,
dozens of members escalated their civil disobedience by sitting in the lotus
position in the square and staying stoically silent as police kicked, punched,
and dragged them to minivans by the hair.”

“We don’t hate the people who beat us. We understand they have been told too
many lies. They don’t know the truth about us,” one practitioner explained.

Despite the public security police, armed police and plainclothes police present
everywhere on the Square, practitioners kept coming and tirelessly exposing the
CCP’s lies to the public.

On February 4, 2000 Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve, a group of Falun Gong
practitioners had barely started to practice their meditation in Tiananmen
Square when “police pounced on the protesters immediately, running toward them
from all corners of the square. They kicked, punched and dragged them to their
feet, herded them into vans and drove them away,” reported AFP on February 5,
2000. “Chinese police have detained hundreds, and possibly thousands of
practitioners,” the report said.

Police Brutality on Display • Falun Gong practitioner, who opened a banner with
the words “Falun Dafa is Good”, was beaten to the ground. Still lying in the
middle of the Square, while the policeman is leaving the scene with his banner
in hand. Many people on Tiananmen Square were witnessing the police brutality
against Falun Gong.

THE CRIPPLING COST OF TYRANNY

In 2001, a report from the Party’s Public Security Department revealed that, at
just the one place of Tiananmen Square, the expense of arresting Falun Gong
practitioners was up to 2.5 million yuan per day, which amounts to almost 910
million yuan per year.

In the whole country, from cities to remote rural areas, from the police in
police stations and public security departments to the personnel at all branches
of the “610 Office,” Jiang Zemin employed at least a few million people to
persecute Falun Gong.

The cost in wages alone likely exceeded one hundred billion yuan per year.

> “The financial resources used to deal with Falun Gong have exceeded the outlay
> for a war.” —Justice Department Officer of Liaoning Province, during a
> conference at the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp

Moreover, Jiang spent huge amounts to expand forced labor camps, build
brainwashing centers and surveillance systems. He also used monetary incentives
to encourage greater numbers of people to participate in persecuting Falun Gong.
In many areas, the prize for arresting a Falun Gong practitioner was several
thousand and even ten thousand yuan.

THE PROPAGANDA IS FAILING. PUBLIC’S OPINION ON FALUN GONG HAS NOT CHANGED

After nearly 18 months of CCP’s raging campaign, the Chinese public continued to
express disdain for Jiang’s suppression of Falun Gong practitioners. And the
campaign to turn public opinion against Falun Gong appeared to be destined for
failure.

The CCP leadership’s frustration with their failure to quickly and thoroughly
dismantle Falun Gong was evident in its media coverage. By 2001, contrary to
earlier statements by the Chinese government, the war on Falun Gong had not yet
been won, and the “broad masses” had to be made to understand the “ferocity of
our battle with Falun Gong.”

And so, Jiang and his cronies hatched a plan…

THE “SELF-IMMOLATION” HOAX TURNS THE TIDE

January 23, 2001 • It’s the Chinese New Year’s Eve, and in fact, the eve of the
new millennium. Five individuals allegedly set themselves on fire in Tiananmen
Square. Within hours, Chinese authorities flooded the state-run media with
grisly photos of the event, claiming the self-immolators were Falun Gong
practitioners.

Days later, a Washington Post article revealed that at least two of the
self-immolators had never been seen practicing Falun Gong. And further evidence
uncovered in the subsequent weeks revealed the incident was staged.

> “The regime points to a supposed self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square
> on January 23, 2001 as proof to slander Falun Gong. However, we have obtained
> a video of that incident that in our view proves that this event was staged by
> the government.” —Official statement at the United Nations by IED Office, USA

Inside China, however, where state-run media was saturated with programs
accusing the Falun Gong teachings of causing the tragedy, the incident became a
key tool for Chinese authorities to bend public opinion against Falun Gong.

January 23 • After investigators and journalists analyzed the footage, made
voice and visual comparisons, and also interviewed neighbors of these
“self-immolators” in China, they concluded the incident was staged by the
Jiang’s regime to discredit Falun Gong.

Within a month, authorities issued and started to spread glossy pamphlets which
featured color photographs of the charred bodies. And a new wave of propaganda
efforts saturated the news, television programs, schools and work places. You
could see a reminder of the event everywhere and all the time.

Some eight million students across the nation joined the propaganda and
educational activities using window displays, posters, leaflets, video displays,
to denounce Falun Gong. Anti-Falun Gong classes were scheduled in schools; and
12 million youngsters nationwide reportedly denounced Falun Gong in writing.

School children are not spared • Elementary school textbook from mainland
China, Thoughts and Moral Education, by People’s Education House, has used the
staged Tiananmen “self-immolation” incident to incite children to hate Falun
Gong.

The endless propaganda coverage this “self-immolation” incident turned the
general public from Falun Gong sympathizers into people who accepted the
repression with indifference. Cases of hatred against Falun Gong increased
significantly and Jiang’s regime seized the opportunity to intensify the
persecution.

According to incomplete statistics, during the first eighteen months of the
persecution, 173 practitioners were persecuted to death. After the
“self-immolation” incident, the death toll increased sharply to 869 in the
following thirty-six months.

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