Since 1999, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has been persecuting practitioners of Falun Gong. Practitioners have been and continue to be subject to a wide range of human rights abuses, including death, torture, unjustified detaining and arrests. As of July 1999, the CPC declared it a crime to practice Falun Gong in groups, possess its teachings, display banners or symbols or protest the ban.
Falun Gong is a system of beliefs and practices founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992, emerging at the end of China’s “qigong boom” (a period of growth of similar practices). The practice focuses on morality, including truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, and includes teachings from Buddhist and Taoist practices. The movement grew significantly between 1992 and 1999, with about 70 million practitioners in China by 1998.
In the mid-1990’s skeptics and critical reports began to emerge, leading practitioners to respond with peaceful protests, mainly requesting the assurance to lawfully pursue Falun Gong cultivation. In April of 1999, after a protest in Tianjin (which resulted in beatings and arrests) 10,000 practitioners gathered at the residence compound of China’s leaders. As a response, the CPC began a crackdown and campaign against the practice. In July 1999, security forced abducted thousands of Falun Gong leaders, and continued to “eradicate” the group through imprisonment, coercion and many times death. According to the U.S. State Department, about half of China’s reeducation-through-labor camp population is Falun Gong adherents. In addition, practitioners were among those most harshly persecuted by the government in 2008.
The reeducation-through –labor camp was part of the government’s conversion program, attempting to have detainees renounce their beliefs and transform their minds. Reports indicate that disturbing forms of torture have been a part of coercing practitioners who resist renouncing their beliefs. Sever beatings, psychological torment, corporal punishment and intense labor, solitary confinement, heat treatment, electric shocks, deprivation of food and sleep, rape, and more gruesome practices have been used as part of the conversion program by the government. Even faced with such cruel torture and injustice, Falun Gong practitioners remain truthful to their faith, while thousands of them are killed in the process. The Falun Dafa Information Center has reported that over 3,400 Falun Gong adherents have been killed as a result of the torture and abuse.
On June 16, 2005, 37-year-old Gao Rongrong, an accountant from Liaoning Province, was tortured to death in custody. Two years before her death, Ms. Gao had been imprisoned at the Longshan forced labor camp, where she was tortured and badly disfigured with electric shock batons. Gao escaped the labor camp by jumping from a second-floor window, and after pictures of her burned visage were made public, she became a target for recapture by authorities. She was taken back into custody on March 6, 2005, and killed just over three months later. On January 26, 2008, security agents in Beijing stopped popular folk musician Yu Zhou and his wife Xu Na while on their way home from a concert. The 42-year-old Yu Zhou was taken into custody, where authorities attempted to force him to renounce Falun Gong. He was tortured to death within 11 days.
Below are links to two-minute long videos on the Truth-Compassion-Tolerance International Art Exhibit.