Timeline of Persecution

1996

As Falun Gong becomes more popular, early signs of state oppression appear. Shortly after they are named bestsellers, Falun Gong books are banned form publication. The first major state-run media article criticizing Falun Gong appears in the Guangming Daily on June 17. Mr. Li moves to the  United States.

1997

The Public Security Bureau conducts an investigation into whether Falun Gong should be deemed an “evil cult,” but the investigation concludes: “no evidence found thus far.” (report)

1998-1999

Police disrupt routine morning Falun Gong exercise sessions in parks and search the homes of Falun Gong adherents who help organize group activities.

Attacks on Falun Gong continue in state-run media. The Falun Gong respond to the critiques by visiting, and sometimes petitioning outside, the local newspaper or television stations in order to explain what Falun Gong is and clear their reputation. Such events take place in Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and other major cities.

Chinese media and government surveys report that at least 70 million people in China practice Falun Gong. (report)

April 1999

He Zuoxiu, a prominent Marxist-atheist, disparages Falun Gong and qigong in general in a Tianjin college magazine. Local Falun Gong gather in Tianjin, asking the magazine to repair the damage done to their reputation.

Although the gathering is peaceful, on April 23 and 24, riot police is sent, 45 practitioners are arrested and some are beaten.  When practitioners ask Tianjin authorities to release those who were arrested, they are told that the orders came from Beijing; if they want to petition, they were told, they must go to the capital.

April 25, 1999

The following day, on April 25, over 10,000 adherents from Beijing, nearby Tianjin, and other cities in the area gather outside the State Council Office of Petitions in Beijing.

The office is located right next door to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party leaders’ residential compound. In spite of the Party’s later accusation that the Falun Gong “seized” Zhongnanhai, the gathering is actually remarkably peaceful and orderly, with adherents keeping entrances, exits, and footpaths clear – as also reported by Western media.

Adherents request that those arrested in Tianjin be released, that the ban on publishing Falun Gong books be lifted, and that they be able to resume their practice without government interference.

Then-Prime Minister Zhu Rongji meets with Falun Gong representatives in his office. By the end of the day, those arrested in Tianjin are released and the gathering quietly disperses.

Within hours, however, then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin opposes Zhu’s assuaging position, and states that if it cannot defeat Falun Gong, the Party will become a “laughing stock.” (report)

June 10, 1999
Jiang Zemin creates the 6-10 Office, a secret security agency with a mandate to eradicate Falun Gong. Jiang grants it authority over all local levels of police, government, and courts, and the 6-10 Office later becomes the primary tool for arresting, torturing, and killing the Falun Gong. (more on 6-10 Office)

July 1999

From the April 25 gathering until mid July, adherents throughout China report being followed and interrogated by plainclothes police officers, as the Party collects lists of adherents and makes final preparations for the ensuing ban.

On July 20, 1999 police begin arresting adherents that they consider to be key organizers. On July 22, 1999 a media blitz commences. Airwaves, television screens, and newspapers columns are filled with attacks on Falun Gong. Sound trucks drive around city streets and college campuses warning people that practicing Falun Gong is now illegal. Among the ban’s stipulations, protesting the ban is also banned. (report)

October 1999

Falun Gong adherents hold a secret press conference for foreign media in Beijing aiming to expose the persecution they are facing. At the end of the press briefing, participants are arrested. Ms. Ding Yan, one of the adherents who spoke at the press briefing, is later tortured to death in custody.

Jiang pushes through legislation that retroactively justifies the ban on Falun Gong. (Human Rights Watch report)

Winter 1999-2000

As rounds of arrest continue and the first reports of deaths from torture in custody emerge, the Falun Gong throughout China travel to Beijing to petition their government and appeal to the world for help by meditating or raising banners on Tiananmen Square. The banners often simply say: “Falun Dafa hao” (Falun Dafa is good).

International media repeatedly capture images of police pouncing on people meditating on the square and beating them to the ground before taking them away. (report)

January 2001

State-run media claim that several Falun Gong practitioners ignited themselves in protests on Tiananmen Square. The so-called self-immolation becomes the centerpiece of the Party’s propaganda against Falun Gong and is used to give credence to what had by then become an increasingly unpopular campaign.

Although most foreign media simply copy-paste the reports from Party mouthpieces Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television, the self-immolation incident appears increasingly suspicious, not least because Falun Gong teachings consider suicide a sin. Investigations by the Washington Post and others, most notably slow-motion analysis of the Party’s own video footage, poke hole after hole in the Party’s version of the story and raise alarming questions.

November 20, 2001

A group of 35 Falun Gong practitioners from 12 different countries gathers on Tiananmen Square to meditate under a banner that reads: “Truth, Compassion, Tolerance” – Falun Gong’s principles. They are arrested and beaten within minutes. Similar protests by foreign Falun Gong practitioners continue in the following months. (report1 / report2)

March 5, 2002

Falun Gong practitioners in northeastern Changchun city tap into state-run television broadcasts. They air 45 minutes of video that otherwise cannot be seen in China, including how Falun Gong is practiced freely outside of China yet persecuted in the mainland. (news)

Enraged, Jiang orders police to “shoot to kill” Falun Gong adherents caught posting informational materials (news).

Over three days, the city of Changchun turns into chaos as some 5,000 people are arrested; the number of deaths during those days remains unknown (news). Of those who participate in the broadcast, several are later tortured to death in custody, including Mr. Liu Chengjun, the subject of an Amnesty International urgent action (news). Similar overrunning of broadcast signals continues sporadically throughout China in the following years.

November 2002

Hu Jintao begins officially taking over the leadership from Jiang, although Jiang and his highly-placed supporters who have been wedded to the persecution of Falun Gong – primarily Luo Gan, Zhou Yongkang, Liu Jing, Li Lanqing, and Zeng Qinghong – continue to push the campaign.

July 2004

The number of documented cases of Falun Gong adherents who died as a result of the persecution, mostly due to torture in custody, reaches 1,000. Estimates place the actual number of deaths at over 10,000 deaths.

November 2004

The “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” a series of editorials critical of the Party published overseas by The Epoch Times (www.ninecommentaries.com), begins being clandestinely circulated throughout China (www.ninecommentaries.com); tourists bring copies back from Hong Kong, others download them from the Internet or receive them in the mail.

The Nine Commentaries includes a chapter about the persecution of Falun Gong (full chapter text),  and sets of a wave of denunciations and withdrawals from the Party and its affiliated organizations throughout China and the Chinese diaspora (see http://www.ninecommentaries.com/).

December 2004

Prominent human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng in Beijing writes to the National People’s Congress about the persecution of Falun Gong.  In the following months Gao’s firm is shut down, he is disbarred, stalked, put under house arrest, and eventually detained – largely because of his outspoken stance on the sensitive Falun Gong issue and because he resigned from the CCP. Attorney Guo Guoting (report) had previously spoken out against the persecution and was subsequently disbarred (Gao Zhisheng book in English A China More Just)

June 2005

The number of documented cases of Falun Gong adherents killed as a result of the persecution exceeds 2,500 (news).

Former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin and former 6-10 Office policeman Hao Fengjun defect to Australia, smuggling out documents. Chen claims there are 1,000 Chinese spies operating in Australia alone. Hao says he left China after witnessing the torture of a Falun Gong adherent (report).

March 2006

A woman who had worked in a Chinese hospital and a Chinese journalist step forward to reveal that Falun Gong practitioners in northeastern Sujiatun are being killed by the thousands for their organs. As evidence from investigation mounts in the following weeks, a Chinese military doctor comes forward to reveal that the atrocities are taking place throughout the country (more on Organ Harvesting).

July 2006

Former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and international human rights attorney David Matas release a report with evidence showing that harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners in China appears more widespread than previously thought. (http://organharvestinvestigation.net/)

March 2007

The number of documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners in China killed as a result of the persecution surpasses 3,000 (news). Estimates place the number of actual deaths at many times higher.

May 2008

The Falun Dafa Information Center reports that over 8,000 Falun Gong adherents were reported to have been taken into custody from December 2007 – May 2008 as part of a pre-Olympic campaign of arrests. Several adherents die of torture within days or weeks of being taken into detention,  and many others are sentenced to lengthy prison terms

May 2012

300 villagers have signed their real names and thumbprints to a petition calling for the immediate release of a respected school teacher from their village who was abducted by authorities because of his Falun Gong practice.

October 2012

In an unprecedented step to unveil organ transplant abuses in China, 106 members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on October 3. The letter requests the release of information about transplant abuses in China that the U.S. government may possess, including details that former Chongqing deputy mayor Wang Lijun is believed to have transmitted during his stay in the U.S. Consulate in February. 

December 2012

A letter hand-written by a prisoner in one of China’s most notorious labor camps, Masanjia, was secretly stuff into a holiday decoration product that was purchased at Kmart. A report published on Christmas Day corroborates numerous testimonies from labor camp survivors taken over the last decade of how, under brutal conditions, Chinese prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, are forced to make products often sold in the West. The Oregonian picked up the story from a resident of Portland, Oregon who found the hand-written letter squeezed between Styrofoam Halloween decorations. The letter was a plea for help from a prisoner at Masanjia Labor Camp, one of China’s deadliest facilities, and known to be especially dedicated to torturing and “transforming” Falun Gong practitioners.

April 2013

As Chinese censors rush to delete mention of a daring 14-page exposé of torture, forced labor, and political persecution at Masanjia Labor camp published in a Chinese magazine last week, the Falun Dafa Information Center urges foreign media to dig deeper, for there is much more to this story. For over a decade, Falun Gong eyewitnesses emerging from the camp and their family members have recounted the systematic use of torture employed there. Documented abuses go beyond forced labor and torture for not meeting work quotas. Female Falun Gong detainees were reportedly pushed into male criminal cells in 2001 and gang-raped. Meanwhile, personnel from other detention facilities in China have come to Masanjia for training in innovative “transformation” methods aimed at breaking the will of Falun Gong practitioners through torture and brainwashing. The goal of these abuses is to force practitioners to renounce their belief and pledge allegiance to the Communist Party.

November 2013

Amidst labor camp closures, Chinese regime launches renewed campaign of brainwashing and abuse. While many Western media reports characterized the Communist Party’s decision to close the widely-scorned Re-education Through Labor (RTL) system as progress in the area of human rights, a new campaign, which aims to brainwash millions of Falun Gong practitioners across China — through psychological and physical torture — demonstrates Beijing’s mechanisms of suppression remain as functional and utilized as ever.

December 2013

The European Parliament passed a resolution yesterday condemning “systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from…prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners.” (full text) The resolution calls upon member states to publicly condemn the gruesome practice, and ensure that all of those involved are prosecuted.

April 2014

Four prominent human rights lawyers representing Falun Gong practitioners illegally detained in a Black Jail, officially called a “Legal Education Center,” have been detained and beaten in northeastern China. Lawyers Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jitian, Wang Cheng, and Zhang Junjie were abducted by police after being followed to their hotel on March 22. Several relatives of the illegally-detained Falun Gong practitioners were also abducted with the lawyers. 

October 2018

BBC Radio publishes a two-part expose on China’s organ harvesting atrocities against Falun Gong. Reporter Michael Hill filmed Chinese transplant officials slipping away from pointed questions. He talked to preeminent experts from the UK, US, Israel, and the UN who have been sounding the alarm on this for years.

 June 2019

An independent tribunal in London unanimously concluded that prisoners of conscience have been—and continue to be—killed in China for their organs “on a significant scale.” Chaired bySir Geoffrey Nice QC, the chair of the tribunal who also prosecuted Slobodan Milošević at The Hague for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia, the tribunal concludes “Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China,” and that Falun Gong practitioners constitute the majority of victims.

July 2019

Ms. Zhang Yuhua was among the 27 survivors of religious persecution from 17 countries, who met with President Trump in the Oval Office in the White House on July 17, 2019. The 27 survivors were in town to attend the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom this week, which was held in the U.S. Department of State in Washington D.C. July 16-18, 2019. Ms. Zhang, 59, told the President about the persecution of her husband Mr. Ma Zhenyu, who is currently imprisoned at Suzhou Prison in Jiangsu Province. READ MORE

March 2020

Even with the CCP Virus pandemic sweeping across China, the Chinese communist regime doubled the number of Falun Gong arrests in February 2020 over the prior year. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to persecute Falun Gong while clamping down on coronavirus coverage in China. According to data collected by Minghui.org, February 2020 saw a rise in arrests, with 282 Falun Gong practitioners arrested, 15 sentenced, and 113 harassed for their faith.