Federal Judge Dismisses Frivolous Lawsuit against Falun Gong, Shen Yun Campus

New York—In a decision serving as an important bulwark against a key Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tactic of transnational repression, a New York district court judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a local environmental group with ties to China. The complaint had been lodged against Dragon Springs, a campus established by Falun Gong practitioners that houses the training facilities for Shen Yun Performing Arts. On September 11, Judge Kenneth M. Karas ruled that the plaintiffs can no longer file similar complaints for the same claims, given that this was their fourth attempt and that they cannot simply “keep throwing [complaints] at the wall until one sticks.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of complaints filed by the Mid-New York Environmental and Sustainability Promotion Committee (NYenvironcon), a seemingly grassroots and local group but whose founder has documented ties to China. The complaint alleged falsely that Dragon Springs had discharged waste into waters surrounding its property in violation of approved permits and the Clean Water Act.

In the court ruling, the judge rejects the plaintiffs’ suit, saying the complaint is “riddled with deficiencies,” including the failure to state what Dragon Springs “is doing wrong,” repeatedly changing accusations, and even failing to identify the alleged source of pollutants. Throughout the decision, Judge Karas uses terms like “vague,” “illogical,” and “an oxymoron” to describe the complaint’s allegations.  

In addition to rejecting the current complaint, the judge ruled to dismiss it “with prejudice,” meaning that the group cannot make further attempts to lodge complaints over the same alleged discharges, noting that this is the “second Action and fourth attempt to state a CWA claim” without addressing the inadequacies prior judges had pointed out in their notifications.

“From the beginning, it was clear to every third-party engineer and lawyer who looked at the allegations that they were nonsensical,” says Dr. George Xu, President of Dragon Springs. “But it was also clear the plaintiffs were not filing to win. They were trying to tie up our resources and generate bad press. That was the main reason for these lawsuits.”

Such lawsuits have not appeared in isolation. They are part of a broader and well-known tactic used by the CCP and its proxies to target overseas activists and dissidents.

In another example of this tactic unrelated to Falun Gong, an indictment unveiled by the Department of Justice in October 2022 charged six people with illegally acting as agents of the PRC in a scheme to force the return to China of a Chinese national residing in the United States. Among the tactics they deployed were civil suits that defendant Quanzhong An acknowledged were without merit and filed at the behest of the Chinese government. He reportedly told the victim that the regime “will keep pestering you through a lawsuit” because the cost of it “really is a drop in the bucket for a country to spend $1 billion or $0.8 billion to meet the political task assigned by the Central Government.” And that PRC government officials “don’t really care if they can establish a case here, that’s beyond that point, their intent is to make your life difficult.”

This type of lawfare is used to drain the financial resources of diaspora organizations and harm the reputation of the CCP’s targets by garnering negative reports in local media at the time of filing. This is precisely the modus operandi that the NYenvironcon and the Deerpark Rural Alliance, whose founder was also a party in this lawsuit, have used repeatedly in their campaigns against Dragon Springs and Falun Gong.

Plaintiff’s ties to China, CCP

Despite being a seemingly local group concerned with the environment, a closer examination of the activities and background of its key members reveal ties to China, raising further suspicions that their repeated “vague” and “illogical” complaints are not accidental. For example, Alex Scilla, a central figure in the lawsuits lived in Tianjin in China for over 15 years prior to moving to New York. There he held positions in the American Chamber of Commerce and engaged regularly with local Chinese government officials. According to Scilla’s LinkedIn profile, he was a general manager at a Chinese recycling company that, despite being described as “leading,” has virtually no online presence.

It was only in November 2018 that he began engaging in local advocacy objecting to construction related to Dragon Springs’ campus. In January 2019, he established NYenvironcon out of an address in New Paltz, 40 miles from Dragon Springs, although the group’s work is almost exclusively focused on Dragon Springs and other Falun Gong-affiliated properties in Orange County. A month after Scilla started the group, he also registered a company in China that had a starting capital of $120,000—despite there being no indication the company had conducted business of any kind

Broader campaign to sabotage Shen Yun

Adding to suspicions surrounding the factors driving NYenvironcon actions in filing frivolous lawsuits is the fact that the CCP is engaging in a much broader campaign to sabotage Shen Yun and eliminate Falun Gong globally, especially in the United States. For example, when discussing the “overseas struggle” against Falun Gong, a 2017 leaked document from a Henan Provincial Committee specifically instructs cadres to target Shen Yun’s “headquarters,” referring to Dragon Springs. When referring to Falun Gong, the document orders, “Tightly focus on the overseas […] core backbones, the headquarters bases and foreign political figures, carefully organize strategies to strike and divide them.” Prior leaked documents have long shown that the CCP views targeting Shen Yun as “an important part of the current struggle against ‘Falun Gong,’”

Indeed, a report by the FDIC published in January documented 135 incidents in 38 countries. More recently, leaked memos from internal meetings of the Chinese security apparatus and a state-run thinktank indicate renewed attention and resources being devoted to damaging FG’s reputation in the United States and even attempting to turn the U.S. government against Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

“From internal documents and recent incidents, it’s clear that the CCP is intensifying its campaign of transnational repression and defamation against Falun Gong as part of a broader scheme to ‘eliminate’ Falun Gong worldwide,” says Levi Browde, Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. “At this critical time, it’s reassuring to see a U.S. judge uphold the rule of law and see through the dubious and illogical complaints being made against a Falun Gong related entity like Dragon Springs.”