International Religious Freedom Summit 2022: The Persecution of Falun Gong in China

Okay, I want to welcome you to the Falun Dafa Information Center's panel today. We are primarily going to be covering a report that we just released, a biannual report that focuses on the last two years, what's been happening with Falun Gong, the persecution in China, as well as its impact around the world. The Falun Dafa Information Center is an all-volunteer non-profit organization based in New York. We focus on exposing the persecution in China and its impact around the world. I'm joined here with the panel today with four folks I'd like to just briefly introduce before we dive in. On my far left is Nick. Nick Haley is a researcher with the Falun Dafa Information Center. He's currently an undergraduate student studying biomedical sciences at the University of Cincinnati, and he does a lot of research for our organization over the last year or so. To my immediate left here is Dr. Larry Liu. He's the Deputy Director of Government and Advocacy with the Falun Dafa Information Center. He's been working on outreach for well over 10 years now, and he's actually been published in the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Boston Globe, and other places. He holds a PhD in statistics from the Washington University in St. Louis and a BS in applied mathematics from Tsinghua University, otherwise known as China's MIT. I will say he's an upstanding guy and also a very good friend and an excellent researcher. On my right here, Simon Zhang. He's an architect here in Manhattan. Tragically, his mother recently was killed amidst the persecution in China, and he's going to share a little bit of that story with you. And then on my far right, Han Yu. She's originally from Beijing. When she was only 14, her father was first arrested in China for practicing Falun Gong. When she was 19, he died in police custody after being detained for less than three months, and she's going to share some of that tragic story with you today. So as I mentioned, we're going to focus mainly on the latest developments. The trends provide some analysis on what's really been going on the last two years. But before we do that, we're going to ask Dr. Liu to cover some important background. It's important to have some context about how we got here with the Falun Gong persecution. So Larry, I'll hand it to you. Thank you, Levi. So just a little brief summary of the history, because the persecution of Falun Gong has been going on for 23 years, so it's a long time. And so just a little debrief. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, and it's a meditation spiritual practice in a Buddhist tradition, and it consists of five meditative exercises, qigong exercises, and also a moral philosophy centered on the principle of truth, compassion, and tolerance. It has a long history, thousands of years of history, and it was first made public, introduced to the public in 1992 in China, exactly 30 years from this year. And initially, the Chinese government was very supportive to Falun Gong, and it quickly became the most popular qigong in China. Every morning, every park, every city, you can see people practicing Falun Gong at that time. And I remember back in 1995, when I was still studying in Tsinghua, I saw faculty, students practice on a university campus in the morning. By that time, I was busy preparing to come into the States to study, so I didn't really pay much attention. But until one year later, when I was studying for my PhD here, my mother sent me a letter saying she just started practicing Falun Gong, and how it's different, beneficial, much more than all other qigong practices she has done before. So that's how I started practicing Falun Gong. And that's really the case for most people, just by word of mouth. That's how Falun Gong spread in China. And so by 1998 or early 1999, the Chinese government's own estimate was between 70 million to 100 million people in China practice Falun Gong. That's from all walks of life, including government officials, senior military leaders. And so, something maybe even very surprising to people today, actually, Falun Gong's founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, was invited by the Chinese government to teach Falun Gong in the Chinese embassy in Paris in 1995. And here in D.C., Falun Gong practitioners participated in the Cherry Blossom Parade in April 1999. That was just three months before the persecution, and Chinese embassy officials came out to praise Falun Gong for promoting Chinese culture. But then, three months later, when the persecution started in July 1999, everything just turned upside down. So what happened? So one thing is the size, 70 to 100 million people in China, that's more than the membership of Communist Party at that time, which was just 60 million. And so Falun Gong was the largest independent civil society group at that time in China. So that's something kind of difficult to tolerate for some of the CCP leaders. But also, on the other hand, some of the hardliners inside the Communist Party consider Falun Gong as an ideological competitor, because the CCP, the Communist regime, is atheist in nature, and they're hostile to spiritual belief, religion, but they have been trying to destroy Chinese traditional culture for decades. For example, the Cultural Revolution. But Falun Gong is reviving all of these traditional Chinese cultural values, which is very, very spiritual. So some of the hardliners inside the Communist Party feel Falun Gong is competing for the heart and mind of Chinese people with the Communist Party. But there is also a personal factor at that time. Jiang Zemin, the chief of Communist Party at that time, he didn't feel secure about his power, and he wanted to be the next paramount leader of China, just like Mao and Deng. So he started his personal Cultural Revolution and persecution on Falun Gong so that he can see who is with him, who is not. And he thought he picked the easy target, and that's a personal factor. And all the other six members of the Politburo Standing Committee at that time disagreed about this persecution decision. But that was just the beginning. But with the persecution going on, the response of Falun Gong practitioners is also very remarkable, which is something Levi will talk about. And they really launched the largest independent civil disobedience movement or information freedom movement in Chinese history. They not only just exposed the persecution of Falun Gong, but also in general, the nature of Communist Party and all their lies, all their tyranny. So that's also made Falun Gong a potent whistleblower of CCP's crime. And that can be another reason for the CCP to escalate the persecution against Falun Gong in recent years. Well, about the scale and the scope of the persecution, I just want to give you a few numbers. I'm a statistician, so I'm pretty fond of numbers. So just a few numbers. In 2009 State Department Human Rights Report, they estimated at least half of the labor camps inmate in China at that time were Falun Gong practitioners. So what does that mean? Lao Gai Foundation actually estimated China had three to five million inmates in labor camp. So half of that means 1.5 to 2.5 million Falun Gong practitioners in labor camp just in that year. So if you consider all the past 23 years, easily at least several million practitioners of Falun Gong have been detained, imprisoned. In terms of torture, United Nations Special Rapporteur of Torture, Mr. Novak, actually had a report in 2006, and he estimated 66%, that means two-thirds of the reported torture cases in China were against Falun Gong practitioners. And also, nearly 5,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been confirmed to be persecuted to death, either by torture or abuses in custody. But this is only the number that we can confirm. But thinking about the danger, the difficulty of discovering and confirming these cases and sending the information overseas, this will be just at the tip of iceberg in terms of the death toll. But there is also a much larger death toll due to the forced organ harvesting. What I mentioned is just only due to the torture and abuses, which is something we will see a little later. But the China Tribunal estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced organ harvesting in China. That means hundreds of thousands of people have been killed for their organs, and the majority of them were Falun Gong practitioners. So you can easily see from these just a few numbers, you can easily see this is the most severely persecuted group in China over the past two decades, even though a lot of these were underreported. So just a little background of the history. Okay. Thank you so much, Larry. So now we'll hand it over to Nick, and Nick's going to go through some of the highlights of this report, key trends, key statistics, some of the analysis that we've done. Go ahead, Nick. So as Levi mentioned, this report covers the past two years. So from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic up through the 2022 Beijing Olympics. And the reason this period is so significant for Falun Gong practitioners is because they have made themselves somewhat of a prolific whistleblower of the CCP's crimes. And this has largely been an effort to help people understand the nature of the Chinese Communist government, and therefore the persecution that Falun Gong practitioners are currently enduring. So just to get into the numbers, prior to the pandemic of reported cases, so this is only what has been confirmed, there are about 3,500 cases of harassment reported in 2019. In 2020, this number nearly tripled to about 9,000 cases, and remain this high in 2021 as well. And just a point of clarification, I mean, you know, he has, you notice he's got arrested in sentences. We all know what that is. There's a lot of things that happen to Falun Gong practitioners, right, inside China, just shy of arrest and sentencing. They could break down your door while you're in the middle of dinner, and ransack your home, and issue a threat, and then leave. You know, that's an instance of what we're calling harassment, and there's a wider range of those, and a lot of people suffer from that. Go ahead. So those are the harassment cases that we've seen reported. In terms of sentencings, the year prior to COVID in 2019, there were 775 cases of confirmed sentences reported. In 2020, despite COVID lockdowns and courts being closed for the majority of the year in 2020, we still saw an increase of about 100 cases. In 2021, this grew still further to about 1,400 cases. And something worth noting is these are cases where practitioners actually had a trial, and a significant portion of Falun Gong practitioners are not granted a trial, and are just detained for years on end. And some of these cases where they've been sentenced, they've been detained for two years already before they actually get this trial. So several factors, in addition to the pandemic, contributed to these increasing numbers, one of them being the initiation of the CCP's new Zero Out campaign. So it was dubbed the Zero Out campaign for its goal of reaching China's ideal goal of zero practitioners throughout all of China. In one province, in Jilin, thousands of practitioners were reported to be harassed by Chinese officials to sign statements guaranteeing that they would give up the practice. And those who refused to do so were almost immediately taken to so-called re-education centers. Since the onset of the persecution, we've seen a pattern where there's increase in persecution around politically sensitive dates, such as last year's centennial anniversary of the CCP's founding, as well as high profile events such as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. In 2008, we also saw significant increases in detainment of practitioners. Another contributing factor is China's growing surveillance state. So the proliferation of heavily monitored apps, such as WeChat, and the placement of facial recognition cameras in public areas have facilitated the detection, identification, and detention of Falun Gong practitioners. Also worth noting, during this period we've seen a number of transnational repression cases. So instances of Falun Gong practitioners outside of China being either beaten, their homes broken into, or booths that raise awareness of the persecution being destroyed by CCP proxies. Some of these being members of the China Anti-Cult Association, which has members here in the United States. And pictured here is an incident from Hong Kong, the man who attacked this woman who practices Falun Gong was just recently sentenced for doing so. Also during the reporting period, we saw new evidence emerge that Falun Gong practitioners are being used as an organ supply in China's transplant industry. A few months ago, the American Journal of Transplantation published an article that found about 70 instances in China's, in Chinese medical research papers, in which the dead donor rule was violated. So these patients were determined to be legally brain dead prior to being intubated, which is a violation of the dead donor rule. There was also continued phone call investigations by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, and in these investigations, investigators would call these hospitals claiming that they, pretending that they need to schedule an organ transplant, and asking hospital officials to assure them that the organ could come from a Falun Gong practitioner. And in numerous cases, the hospital staff will try to assure the investigator that yes, this can be done. Also something that was noted was in 2019, the Central Military Commission of the CCP, in a way to separate the Chinese Communist Party from these accusations, has banned organ transplants of kidney and livers in military hospitals, and we believe this is largely an effort just to avoid responsibility. But in a few of these cases, these hospitals are just converted into, these military hospitals are converted into civilian hospitals, or the staff that is accused of being involved in forced organ harvesting, they just move to a different hospital. So those are more of the recent updates that we've seen. Okay. Thank you, Nick. So this last topic that he covered obviously is a grave, grave topic, the idea of forced organ harvesting, and we've known about this really since 2006, and most third-party investigators would say that 60 to 100,000 Falun Gong each year have been killed in this process. And so I think because the topic is so important, Nick, you have a short video that's kind of going to give you an overview of exactly what's happening in the forced organ harvesting space. So let's watch that, and then we'll move on to the other panelists. For over three decades, the People's Republic of China has been accused of harvesting the organs of its own citizens by force. The victims are killed in the process, and their organs are used in transplant operations. This organ trafficking is a human rights abuse that affects all of us. But what is forced organ harvesting in China? How does it differ from transplant systems in other countries? And what evidence is there that it's taking place? Most countries have a voluntary donation system. Recipients wait for an organ to become available, sometimes for three or four years. When a donor dies, the best-matched person on the waiting list is rushed to the hospital to receive their transplant. China has a very different system with reverse matching. Recipients pay for an organ to be made available. A prisoner who is the best match for the paying recipient is chosen from a large pool of detainees. The prisoner is then killed, and their organs extracted for transplantation. Transplants for organs such as hearts, livers, and kidneys are scheduled in advance and performed in a matter of weeks. It is not possible for an ethical organ donation system to provide transplants on demand. For years, there has been controversy over whether prisoners of conscience are being killed for organs. An independent People's Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, was formed to assess all available evidence. After 12 months, including five days of public hearings, the China Tribunal concluded that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale. Falun Gong practitioners have been one and probably the main source of organ supply. And the vulnerability of the Uyghurs to being used as a bank of organs is also obvious. To understand how this atrocity began, we need to go back to the late 1970s, when Chinese surgeons began transplanting organs from death-row prisoners, a practice that was widely condemned. In 1994, Human Rights Watch reported three key findings. Political offenders and other non-violent criminals were being used as sources for organs. Chinese doctors participated in pre-execution medical tests and matching of prisoners with recipients, often on a first-paid, first-served basis. And executions were deliberately mishandled to ensure that prisoners were not yet dead when their organs were removed. From 2000 onwards, China's transplant system rapidly expanded. At the same time, the authorities conducted a violent campaign to eradicate the Buddhist Qigong and meditation practice Falun Gong, which is practiced by millions in China. As the labor camps, black jails and prisons filled with Falun Gong practitioners, so the volume of transplant operations dramatically increased. These rapidly available organs could not have come from death-row prisoners alone. And, in comparison, Falun Gong practitioners are a healthier source for organs, as they do not drink or smoke, and do Qigong exercises regularly as part of their spiritual practice. The number of liver transplants in 2000 reached 10 times that of 1999. In 2005, the number tripled further. As the Chinese transplant system continued to grow, so did the pool of prisoners. In 2017, Muslim Uyghurs began to be incarcerated in vast numbers, with many reported missing. And although China recently began developing a voluntary donation system, there is still no transparency about the source of organs. From July 2018 to June 2019, members of the China Tribunal with expertise in international human rights law, organ transplantation, international relations, China studies and business reviewed multiple lines of evidence, including testimonies from relatives of deceased victims, fellow internees, and from Uyghur and Falun Gong detainees who were forced into blood tests and organ scans, including chest x-rays and ultrasounds. Some were overtly threatened with forced organ harvesting. Undercover phone call and video investigations from as recently as 2019 revealed admissions by government officials and surgeons that organs are available on demand, and that Falun Gong organs are also available. In one forensically examined phone call, the former PLA minister for health, Bai Huzhong, stated that ex-president Jiang Zemin directly ordered the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. The China Tribunal also reviewed investigations compiling Chinese records, including bed utilization rates, surgical teams and hospital revenue, that show 60 to 100,000 transplants have been performed each year, far more than officially claimed. In 2010, just one hospital carried out over 5,000 transplants. Other lines of evidence examined include official Communist Party documents of policy and practices, scientific studies in Chinese journals that detail suspicious data consistent with killing individuals for organs, and a statistical analysis of China's organ donation system, showing that organ donation figures have been falsified and do not represent the real numbers. Based on these lines of evidence and proof of other acts, the China Tribunal not only found that forced organ harvesting has and continues to happen in China, it also found that commission of crimes against humanity against the Falun Gong and Uyghurs has been proved beyond reasonable doubt. But whose responsibility is it to act? And what should be done? Medical institutions and companies must abide by their business and human rights obligations. This means cutting ties with China in relation to organ transplantation practice, research and training. States should enact laws combating international transplant tourism, and Chinese perpetrators should be sanctioned. Governments around the world should take the necessary steps to seek justice, and the Chinese Communist Party should be held accountable for its actions. As global citizens, it is our responsibility to speak out against forced organ harvesting. If we don't act now, many more lives will be lost. Thank you, Nick. So a lot of times when we're talking about the persecution of Falun Gong, due to the numbers involved, we're talking about huge numbers. We know that there are tens of millions of people who practice Falun Gong still today in China that are suffering from this persecution. But I think what also gets lost is the personal story. Pretty much every Falun Gong practitioner I know from China has a story, either themselves being subject to horrific things or their family members or friends. We have two folks here today that will share their stories with you. Simon, why don't we start with you? Thank you, Yvonne. So I'm here to help my mom present her case. If she's able to do so, she'll be happy to tell you how wonderful it is to practice truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance in her life. But she couldn't. This is a photo of her, a very nice lady and smart. But she couldn't because she died in custody this past March 21st. She endured twice of labor camp before. In 2001, she was taken to a detention center, beaten, then sent to labor camp, where she was tortured by an electric baton for two hours, and that destroyed her health. In 2001, she almost died there, too. So we were allowed to bring her home pretty much at the edge of her death. In 2008, a similar thing happened. Right before the Summer Olympics, she was grabbed to labor camp again, tortured, almost died there, and narrowly escaped. So we were allowed to bring her home. The doctor told us we're not sure she will arrive at home. But she skipped death, fortunately. And this morning, right before the day of Chinese New Year, the policemen forced into our apartment, my parents' apartment, and took her away, simply because they believed that there are evidences in our apartment that she is practicing Falun Gong. And they did find something, because she is a very active local practitioner known to the police. They found books, they found materials that she distributed. And she was taken to the local detention center, tortured, beaten, and she refused to give up, and she refused to admit that she did say anything wrong. So she went on a hunger strike, and they responded with even worse torture. She lost consciousness after 11 days of such maltreatment, and they sent her to hospital. My father was allowed to see her once. He saw that she was handcuffed to bed, also with iron feathers on her ankle, as if she was about to escape in such a condition. And she spent her last month in the hospital. Nobody of our family saw her ever again. On March 20th, my father was told that your wife is about to die. He went there, and the police did not allow him to bring her home. They simply said, our leader did not approve. The next day, they notified my father that your wife has died. And they sent, instead of giving any explanation, what happened, who is responsible, they sent about 50 policemen guarding her body and monitor our apartment. So after seven days of pressure, my father gave up and allowed the cremation of my mom. She is a very good example of the persecution, the brutal, how brutal the persecution is in the past 23 years. Forced labor camp, torture, maltreatment, harassment, humiliation, and eventually death in custody with no explanation, and nobody is responsible for that. So the reason I tell her story here is because, first, I do not want her death to be invalid. This should be known to the world. Second, I want people to know that more exposure, more people know about this, the less possibility that people get persecuted in China for such a simple thing, for simply believing in truthfulness, compassion, forbearance. Thank you. Thank you, Simon. Okay. Next, we'll hear from Han Yu, who has a tragic story that actually is very much related to the video that we just saw, the forced organ harvesting atrocities that are going on in China. My name is Yu Han. I believe my father, Jun Qinghan, was a victim of forced organ harvesting in China. When I was 14 and my younger brother was 9, our parents were first taken away by the police and detained for practicing Falun Gong. It was a very difficult period for us. At school, parents told their kids to avoid me and my brother out of fear, seeing their families would be implicated. My brother became very introverted after that. My father was arrested a few times in the Central Labor Camp, where he was tortured. I was 19 when he was last arrested on February 28, 2004, detained in Fengshan District Detention Center in Beijing. On May 4, 2004, my father was persecuted to death. The police claimed he died of a heart attack. I thought it must be a mistake because he was so healthy before the arrest. On June 18, 2004, more than a month after my father's death, the police allowed our family to see his body. On that day, a lot of police cars and officers came to closely monitor us. We were not allowed to change clothes for my father, and they also forbid my family from bringing cameras. Only the immediate family members were allowed to see the body, two persons in each turn, under the close watch of policemen on site. When I saw my father's body, I still couldn't believe that it was real. My father was lying there with green and purple bruises all over. His face was gunned and scarred in several places. Although there was a thin layer of makeup on his face, I could still see his left eye with a missing chunk of skin, and his cheeks were bruised. But what shocked me the most were the thick, black stitches on his throat area. The incision extended down into his clothes. I stepped closer to unbutton the clothes and examine the wounds, but within seconds of opening two buttons, the police immediately blocked me and forced my family out of the facility. Next, my uncle and my aunt went in. They tore open my father's clothes when the policemen were looking, and they found that the incision stretched from his throat all the way down to his abdomen. When they pressed his abdomen, they found that it was stuffed with hard ice. My uncle was furious and confronted the police about what they had done to my father. The police just said that this was due to an autopsy. But no one in my family had consented to an autopsy, and the police also refused to release the autopsy report. After our final viewing, my father's body was transferred to a crematorium in desperation of the police. When they moved my father's body into a vehicle, my stepmother found that my father's left arm was broken. After seeing his body, I was left with more questions than answers. The purpose of an autopsy is to determine the cause of death. But if my father was tortured to death, the police knew exactly how he died. Why would they bother to do an autopsy to determine the cause of death? At that time, the CCP's secret operation of killing prisoners of conscience for their organs was not exposed yet. I had no clue until three years later. In the summer of 2007, when I was browsing the internet, one piece of news popped up on the Tencent QQ platform, revealing all kinds of crimes related to live organ harvesting. My whole body was trembling after reading the report. I could hardly believe that things as evil as that could happen. Then I thought about my father's death and the incision and the stitches on his body, which clearly indicated that my father's organs had been harvested, likely while he was still alive. This realization crashed upon me like a violent wave. I could not imagine what he had suffered before he died. I cried all night long until I passed out. It hurts every time I retell this story, but I don't want my father's death to happen again. We can't stop forced organ harvesting in China, and we must before more innocent people are killed for their faith in China. Thank you. Thank you very much, Hanyu. As we mentioned, most of the credible third-party investigators would put these forced organ harvesting, the numbers of people being killed, between 60,000 to 100,000 a year, Falun Gong practitioners. We know from undercover investigation phone calls that have been done as recently as 2020 that this practice, despite almost a decade of being exposed somewhat in the West, still goes on. It's very much happening in China. It's very much a money-making business. It's a billion-dollar industry, the act of killing innocent people and selling their organs. Coming back to the report, there was a few pieces of analysis that I think are important to highlight. When Nick showed his statistics, one thing I think should really pop out, and that's the difference between the numbers you saw between 2019 and 2020. If you remember, as of March 2020, China was locked down for a great deal of time, and yet in that year, the number of harassments and even arrests doubled. What's going on? If the country is locked down, why is there an extra effort to go after Falun Gong and intimidate them and put them into prison? I think one thing that highlights is that the campaign against Falun Gong has evolved over the last 20 years. It started as and is still very much a persecution of a religious minority for the reasons that Dr. Du mentioned. However, over the years, out of the Falun Gong community has grown an enormous grassroots movement to expose the crimes of the CCP, both inside China and abroad. We know this movement inside China to be tens of millions of people. Primarily what they do is they will take leaflets and information that's made with the help of people, volunteers overseas and made available on websites. They'll download these leaflets and other pieces of information, and usually under cover of night, they'll go out and they'll distribute them in their town, their city, their village. And this has happened for years, with many Falun Gong practitioners even confronting directly their local Communist Party secretary or the police in the area and talking to them and telling them what's really happening, what is going on, what is Falun Gong really about, and why it's being persecuted and how it's being persecuted. And this is a shock to the Chinese people. We talk a lot about misinformation, but we have to understand that China is the kingdom of fake news. That's all they have. That's all they live with. That's all they've grown up with since they were very young children is enormous amounts of misinformation, whatever the state-run media tells you. And so for years, the story they've heard of Falun Gong has all been lies about how it's terrible and how the government is handling things benevolently and some of these atrocities aren't happening. And suddenly, on your doorstep appears a leaflet that says something different. And then a couple of weeks later, another one and another one. And people are talking to you on the bus and people are talking to you in the market. And pretty soon, it turns into a groundswell of civil disobedience that is larger than anything we've ever seen, certainly the largest thing we see in the world, tens of billions of people strong. That is why, during the pandemic, Falun Gong incarcerations actually went up, because Falun Gong is no longer just a persecuted minority. It's also a whistleblower. And they know if they're hiding something about the virus in Wuhan or other places, Falun Gong is the first one they need to keep quiet, because they're the ones who are going to expose the news about what the CCP is doing. And that's exactly what happened. So I think that is one trend to take note of, is that, again, there's these tens of millions of very heroic people. I mean, if they get caught handing out a leaflet on Falun Gong, you're going to prison and usually worse. And so the first thing to note of is that there are tens of millions of people doing this in China. And secondly, that it's having a real impact. In pockets of China, it's really changing hearts and minds. There's lots of stories. I was just reading one last night that we got out. We get dozens of stories out of mainland China every single day. And I just got one last night, how an old lady in her late 70s was handing out leaflets and over a course of a few days, changed the mind of the party secretary in the local village. So this is happening all over China. But it's also the reason that Falun Gong, one of the reasons, is so targeted there. So that's one of the things that is important to note that we highlight in the report. There are two other things that I just wanted to make note of. Nick mentioned the transnational repression, which is really the act of the Chinese Communist Party taking violent criminal acts against the Chinese diaspora, Chinese people, dissidents outside China. Freedom House did probably a groundbreaking piece of work, probably the best piece of work we've ever seen on transnational repression a year and a half ago, right? They issued a report and lo and behold, they found the Chinese government to be by far the worst aggressor. And so what we've seen in the Falun Gong community in the early days when the persecution first started, it was very much thuggery. A lot of us had our apartments broken into. We were beaten up on the streets by Chinese thugs, death threats, things of that nature. That still continues, as you saw on some of the slides that Nick showed, the woman in Hong Kong. But it has become far more sophisticated in terms of the Chinese diplomats and the Chinese government putting pressure on our Congress, on our political leaders, on our media leaders, our corporate leaders to silence Falun Gong. There was a high-level diplomat from Australia that defected many years ago, and he testified before Congress, and one of the things he revealed is that in every single embassy around the world, there is a department or a group of people that are in charge just with suppressing and maligning Falun Gong in their country. That's their sole goal, and that's what he did in Australia. And that has had, over time, a tremendous effect, unfortunately, in silencing and maligning Falun Gong overseas. And it can take a number of different forms. For example, we might have a local state official who's very supportive of Falun Gong, and suddenly he's not. And usually, sometimes, it happens after he takes a trip to China. There's a lot of these wine-and-dine trips to China. And so the diplomatic pressure has been tremendous in terms of trying to silence the Falun Gong issue. And I think there's one particular area that is troubling that I wanted to highlight, and that is controlling the narrative on Falun Gong here in the country. So when Falun Gong persecution first started, no one knew what that was. And so from a narrative standpoint, that's dangerous. Nobody knows what Falun Gong is. Is it a person? Is it a practice? Is it a city? What is it? Into that void, a lot of CCP propaganda flooded. And so initially, the first thing that people heard about Falun Gong was a lot of propaganda from the CCP. They initially stumbled. For months, at the beginning of the persecution, the best excuse they could come up with the international community was to telling people that Falun Gong was disturbing social order and blocking traffic. Hardly the reason to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people in a few weeks. After a few months, unfortunately, with the help of some Western PR firms, they come up with a cult label. And they learned that a cult is a very resonant word. It's a very potent word in the West. And if they can convince the West that Falun Gong is a cult, well, at the very least, they'll have people stand down that would normally speak out for Falun Gong. And so that's what they pushed for many, many years. So if you go on to the English language website of the Chinese embassy, you would see cult this, cult that. And that was their line against Falun Gong. And it had some traction in the West. Something interesting happened in the last few years. Obviously, there's been a lot of racial strife in the US and other Western countries in the last couple of years with the killing of George Floyd and what's happened here. The CCP has took notice. And so now, if you go to the English, and I'm not saying do this, because there's a lot of junk up there. But if you go to the English language webpage on a Chinese government website, they usually have one that's just about attacking Falun Gong. The first thing they talk about is no longer a cult. They now say, oh, Falun Gong is racist. And they prohibit interracial marriage. Now, any even casual observation of the Falun Gong community shows this is garbage. There's a lot of interracial marriages, interracial kids. It's very prominent in the Falun Gong community, as it is with many communities. I myself am married to a woman of a different race. So the line is garbage. But it doesn't really matter to the CCP. What matters is they think that will sell in the market they're trying to pitch this in, which is the West. And lo and behold, when I opened the New York Times article, I think October of 2021, on an article wasn't really about Falun Gong, but it touched upon Falun Gong, there was that line, not quoting from somebody, not sort of stating as hearsay, but as fact that Falun Gong is racist. And I said, huh, how did that get into the New York Times? Now, I don't mean to pick on the New York Times. A lot of the newspapers have had this problem. But it is informative to note that the CCP is able to craft a line that is demonstrably false and push it to the extent that it will make its way into our Western media. And that's also a relatively new development over the last few years. And it's very dangerous, because stopping the persecution, helping people in prison really, to some extent, relies on people standing up in the West. And when these kind of lies are able to make their way into our prominent newspapers, it really deflates enthusiasm for doing that. And so I think that is also one of the troubling developments that we've seen over the last few years, that we do need to address. Okay, so with that, why don't we end up with Dr. Liu, where you could talk about some of the recommendations and ideas we have on what we can do about this. Thank you, Levi. Actually, the US Congress has passed five resolutions, bipartisan resolutions, with lots of co-sponsors in the past 23 years in support of Falun Gong and condemned the persecution of Falun Gong in China, and even on American soil, just about a transnational issue that Levi and Nick mentioned. But none of them is binding. They're all non-binding resolutions. But now there is one pending, a pending bill. It's currently in the House, and it's H.R. 6319, it's Falun Gong Protection Act. So this act actually asks the US government to sanction those people involved in forced organ harvesting in China, and also ask the US government to have a statement of policy to cut any ties with the transplant industry in China, and certainly condemn the persecution. Certainly, we encourage you to contact your congressman to co-sponsor this bill. But there's also another one in the Senate. It's called Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, it's S.602, and there's also a companding bill in the House. It's a general bill about stop forced organ harvesting, and this bill actually is to create some institutional mechanism that would hinder unethical organ transplant, including in China. And so these are the two legislatures, you know, bills that we really encourage you to contact your senator and congressman to support. And also, on the other hand, you know, talking about executive branch, the US government did two sanctions in 2020 and 2021 related to Falun Gong, and they have a very important ripple effect. You know, the first one was in December 2020, still the, you know, Trump administration, the State Department sanctioned Huang Yuanxiong. He is China's Xiamen Public Security Bureau chief in Fujian province for his involvement in gross human rights violation against Falun Gong practitioners, and he and his wife are not eligible to enter the United States, and he was sanctioned. So in May 2021, last year, in Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced sanction against Yu Hui. He is a former 610 office, which is actual legal, you know, office specialized in prosecuting in Chengdu city, Sichuan province for also perpetrating human rights abuses against Falun Gong practitioners. And he and Yu Hui and his family are now ineligible for entry into the United States. And so these sanctions are very important, you know, even though just two officials, there are thousands of Chinese officials or even more are involved in this persecution. But there is ripple effect, because many Falun Gong practitioners outside China are making phone calls, even on daily basis into China, especially calling those detention facilities, police stations, department, and, you know, persuade those police or guards not to torture Falun Gong practitioners, telling them these are good people, and what they learned from the Chinese state-run media about Falun Gong are all lies. But at the same time, they tell them that there are these two sanctions by US government about these officials. There are mid-level officials involved in persecuting Falun Gong. And some of them even say, okay, I still want to go to the United States. I may want to send my children to some college in the United States. And so that makes some of these, you know, police think twice. And some of them become reluctant to torture Falun Gong practitioners. Well, in general, the persecution policy and also the implementation of persecution of Falun Gong still remain very severe. But we do see some of the ripple effect of this sanction. So the more sanction, definitely the better. And also, we encourage the State Department to consider to designate a persecution of Falun Gong as a crime against humanity and or a genocide, and really qualifies a genocide. And the other thing we recommend, as Liu An mentioned, the CCP's infiltration in America on many fronts. So we hope that our government can really pay attention, monitor, and curtail the CCP's infiltration on American soil. So that's some of the recommendations from our organization. Okay. Thank you, Larry. Just to expand upon one of the things he said. I mean, the idea, you know, we have many, many volunteers around the world are calling into China. Sometimes it happens very fast. You know, I was reading one of the reports that came out of China the other day where, you know, there were a group of people that were handing out leaflets and one was taken away by the police. And the other people that were with him in his group immediately act. So they get the name of the police officer, they get the phone number, they send it overseas. Imagine that, you're a police officer in some village in some remote part of China. You just detained a Falun Gong practitioner, you know by this point they're good people and that the Chinese regime's policy to persecute them is a bad thing, but you're just doing your job. The phone rings and some person from France is on the phone saying, I know your name, I know who you just detained, and I know what you're doing. It really freaks them out. And this is happening every single day. I mean, this is part of this large grassroots movement to really try and get the Chinese people to stop persecuting Falun Gong. There's one thing we learned early on in this persecution. Obviously we want to stop the abuse against Falun Gong. It's an atrocity. But we also want to stop people from doing bad things because what does that do to their life? You're a regular person, you've got a family, you happen to be a police officer, and now the government is telling you you have to torture people. What does that do to you when you go home and pick up your kids and sit down to dinner with your wife? What does that do to you as a person? This is destroying the moral fabric of China. So there's something very universal in terms of a goal, in terms of a motivation for all this grassroots efforts that we're talking about in China and these call teams they're calling in, is to really get the Chinese people to stop doing these kind of bad things because it hurts the whole society. It decimates the society. And so this persecution has to stop, not just to free Falun Gong practitioners, but to give Chinese people and the Chinese country a chance. So that's really the motivation. Okay, so I just want to reiterate. So this new report is what we just issued. There's one on your chair here. You can take that home or you can read it online at falungong.org, falungong.org, you'll sorry, sorry, falungongreport.org, falungongreport.org. It's online there. You can read it there. I think we have a few minutes for a few questions. So if there's any questions from the audience, we can take those now. Yes. But certainly, you know, Korea, South Korea and Japan, Taiwan are, they're close, they're Asian, you know, and so a lot of them, they all have this problem of very low donation because generally Asian people have this culture that keeping body intact after death. So voluntary donation in this country are very low. So a lot of these people in this country go to China, but also people from America, people from Europe and people from, you know, rich people from Middle East, they all go all over. Yeah, there are several other countries already passed law in this regard. And for example, Israel is the first one. You know, in 2008, Israel passed a law because previously Israel healthcare system give reimbursement for people going to even China or other country to get organ transplant. So their law basically just banned that reimbursement, stopped that. So that basically stopped Israelis from going to China for organ transplant. And very recently, UK passed a law to stop, you know, British people go to other countries for organs. That means organ tourism. So that certainly includes China. And so typically it's a little bit hard to send organ out of China because the duration for the organ, you know, after leaving the body to be transplanted into another body, it's just a few hours typically. So that's kind of hard. You have basically have to go to that country to do transplant. Several other countries, including Spain and Italy, they all passed laws to designate organ trafficking, you know, to ban organ trafficking. But we are behind. We're falling behind the United States. So these two bills that I mentioned are still pending. They haven't been passed by the Congress yet. But several other countries have already done that. Okay. Any other questions out there before we end for the day? Okay. I want to thank you all for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much to the panelists for your insight and your stories. Thank you.