Highlight: US Sanctions Chinese Official for Persecuting Falun Gong - Falun Gong Bulletin Ep 02

So we're filming this episode on Human Rights Day. Yesterday the State Department, U.S. State Department, came out with a release called Combating Global Corruption and Human Rights Abuses. And I just want to read from it for a second. So on the occasion of the International Anti-Corruption Day and the eve of International Human Rights Day, the U.S. is taking the following actions to promote accountability of corruption and human rights abuse around the world. These actions include financial sanctions, building upon the implements of the Global Minitsky Act, four additional country-focused executive orders. The actions also include visa restrictions pursuant to Section 7031C of the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriation Act 2022. So this is very important. And so what they say exactly in relation to Falun Gong is that Tang Yong, former Deputy Director of the Chongqing Area Prisons in the PRC, pursuant to Section 7031C, the State Department is designating Tang for his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely arbitrary detention of Falun Gong practitioners, which also amount to particularly severe violations of religious freedom. This is the second time that the Biden State Department has sanctioned an official for violations of human rights against Falun Gong. The first one was done last year, which was Yu Hui, who was a former office director of the so-called central leading group on preventing and dealing with heretical religions, who was also sentenced under the Section 7031C. So the Section 7031C is a broad sanction that actually applies not only to the official being sanctioned, but also to their families not being allowed entry to the U.S. And so some of these sanctions have financial repercussions, such as if you have property in the U.S. or you have any sort of assets in the U.S., they can be seized. But some officials in the CCP don't have assets in the U.S. So by using the 7031C, the State Department broadens that sanction by saying that you won't even be allowed admission—college admission or other admissions. So this is a very powerful sanction that actually has effects on the ground in China. We mentioned in our last show, this was one of the things that we recommend for more of this to happen. When these sanctions happen, officials on the ground in China try to change their title or the department that they work in, in order to try to get away from these sanctions. And in some isolated cases, we know that even some of the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners gets better or they're released entirely, although that's not on a broad scale. We hope to see more of this in the future.