CCP Violence Here At Home; 622 Sentenced in China in 2020
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Dear Reader,
ONE OF MY DEAR FRIENDS was once left beaten and bloody on his front lawn in a quiet suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Undoubtedly, the assailants were Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thugs. This is but one of many cases of the CCP conducting illicit, sometimes violent, activities outside China in order to silence dissent. Therefore, we applaud the latest work from Freedom House to call out this global thuggery in their new report: Out of Sight, Not Out of Reach (see below).
A woman from northeast China recounts her harrowing experience of torture and abuse in a Chinese prison, as well as her moving attempts to help her abusers turn over a new leaf.
Also in this newsletter, a closer look at the year 2020 by the numbers; how many were targeted for their faith via ransacking of homes, extortion, illegal imprisonment, torture, or death in custody.
And finally, a new forced organ harvesting whistleblower steps forward, adding to the overwhelming amount of evidence for how the CCP is killing people for their organs.
Sincerely,
Levi Browde, Executive Director
Falun Dafa Information Center
Repression from authoritarian countries such as China is now transnational and affects people globally, including Falun Gong practitioners in many parts of the world. That’s according to a new report by Freedom House, a U.S.-based democracy watchdog. Transnational repression happens when “governments reach across borders to silence dissent, including through assassinations, illegal deportations, abductions, digital threats, Interpol abuse, and family intimidation.”
Falun Gong is targeted by the Chinese Communist Party outside of China on a regular basis. The report points out “frequent harassment and occasional physical assaults [against Falun Gong practitioners] by members of visiting Chinese delegations or pro-Beijing proxies at protests overseas, as in cases that have occurred since 2014 in the United States, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Brazil, and Argentina. Media and cultural initiatives associated with Falun Gong have reported suspicious break-ins targeting sensitive information, vehicle tampering, and pressure from Chinese authorities for local businesses to cut off advertising or other contractual obligations with them. Multiple Falun Gong practitioners in Thailand have also faced detention, including a Taiwanese man involved in uncensored radio broadcasts to China and several cases of Chinese refugees formally recognized as such by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In October 2017, a Falun Gong practitioner who had survived a Chinese labor camp and become a high-profile informant on CCP abuses—sneaking a letter into a Halloween decoration when detained and later filming a documentary with undercover footage—died of sudden kidney failure in Indonesia. Some colleagues consider his death suspicious, but no autopsy was performed.”
A fraction of the Falun Gong practitioners persecuted to death in 2020.
According to information collected by the Minghui website, at least 83 Falun Gong practitioners died in 2020 as a result of the Chinese communist regime’s persecuting them for upholding their faith, owning certain books or music, speaking to others about it, and so on.
The 83 deceased practitioners include 45 women and represent 20 provinces and municipalities in China.
At least 622 Falun Gong practitioners were unlawfully sentenced in 2020. After 47 practitioners were sentenced in January 2020, most of China went into lockdown due to the pandemic and the monthly sentencing cases remained at around 20 between February and May.
By the time Mr. Ma Zhiwu gets released from the wrongful prison sentence he received on Dec. 17, 2020, he will have spent 26 and a half years behind bars for practicing and talking about Falun Gong. This is his fourth years-long detention. Bitter Winter, a Chinese religious freedom magazine, reports his story.Ma’s first detention came in 1999 when he was kept in jail for three years and tortured.
“After serving his term, he continued to protest against what he saw as an unjust detention. He was arrested again and, as a recidivist, was sentenced by the Guyuan Intermediate Court to another six years in jail.
Upon his release, he was kept under surveillance. The police concluded he was still active in Falun Gong, and arrested Ma for the third time. On September 12, 2010, he was sentenced by the same Guyuan City Intermediate Court to a jail term of three years and six months.”
After his fourth abduction in June 2020, the Guyuan City Intermediate Court regarded Ma as a particularly serious case, and sentenced him to 14 years in jail.
Doctors in China carry fresh organs for transplantation.
A California man risked retaliation from the CCP when he testified to researchers about chilling conversations between himself and a Shanghai transplant doctor. The doctor is a family member and surgeon who asked the California man to send new patients to her in China where they would get quick organs that are “good quality, all fresh and alive,” she allegedly told him. She said the surgeries were performed at a military hospital and that it’s “quick money and the sum is quite large.” She then detailed exactly how the surgeries of unwilling “donors” take place, with little or no anesthesia, which sends the victims into agonizing screams. According to her, the victims were Falun Gong practitioners.
Lu Shuping used his full and real name when he reported this evidence. The researchers waited four years to release his testimony out of fear for Lu’s safety.
Today in China, Falun Gong is demonized whereas in Taiwan it is celebrated. This one fact speaks volumes to the difference between Communist China and democratic Taiwan.
Today in Taiwan, there are hundreds of Falun Gong practice sites in parks and public spaces where people can go to learn free of charge. Falun Gong is widely acclaimed for its healthy lifestyle and moral living by civil groups as well as the highest levels of government in Taiwan.
Learn more about the one place in the world that may be more authentically Chinese than China.
From ancient roots extending back thousands of years, to a house-hold name in China during the Qigong boom in the 1990s, to the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the world, this is the complete story of Falun Gong…
