The United States Calls on the Chinese Communist Party to End Its Campaign to Exterminate Falun Gong

The persecution of the faith group enters its 26th year as the Chinese regime expands its repression across borders. The U.S. State Department is calling on Beijing to end its campaign of extermination against Falun Gong ahead of July 20, the day marking the beginning of the persecution in 1999. 

 “For more than 26 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has waged a campaign of repression against Falun Gong practitioners and their families,” a State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times. 

 “We reiterate our call on the CCP to end its campaign of extermination against Falun Gong.” 

 An estimated 70 million to 100 million people practiced Falun Gong in China in the late 1990s, with many believing that the teachings’ values and meditative exercises helped them become better and healthier individuals. 

 Initially, the regime welcomed the practice, but later saw its popularity as a threat to its power. On July 20, 1999, the CCP launched a nationwide persecution, using forced labor, torture, and other forms of violence to force practitioners to renounce their faith.

To date, Minghui.org—a resource center on the persecution of Falun Gong—has verified thousands of deaths based on firsthand information. The actual death toll is difficult to verify and is likely much higher given the lack of transparency in China.

Furthermore, an unknown number of people are believed to have been killed for their organs to support the regime's highly profitable organ transplant industry, according to independent investigations.

An independent tribunal in London found in 2019 that Falun Gong practitioners were a major source of organs for transplants.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed two bills this year to push for an end to these abuses: the Falun Gong Protection Act and the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act. Five U.S. states have passed laws to prevent their citizens from receiving organ transplants in China.

Both federal bills now await further action in the Senate.

“These bills need to be brought up for a vote immediately,” U.S. Senator Rick Scott told The Epoch Times’ sister publication, NTD.

He called the practice of forced organ harvesting “abhorrent.”

Scott highlighted the mysterious death of a Chinese medical student who had gathered extensive documentation to support allegations that organ harvesting was taking place at the hospital where he worked.

“We must let the Chinese government know that we will not be silent about this,” Scott said.

Current U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a vocal opponent of the regime’s abuses against Falun Gong, was a key proponent of the Protect Falun Gong Act during his time as a senator in the previous Congress.

“Communist China has unimpededly carried out a widespread campaign of atrocities,” Rubio said in 2024. “The United States will not tolerate these practices.”

In May, Rubio said the State Department would help “in every way we can” to push for passage of anti-forced organ harvesting legislation during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

Republican U.S. Representative Brian Babin described forced organ harvesting as “beyond the bounds of human reason.”

“This is worse than anything I have ever heard,” he told The Epoch Times on July 15.

 “They hold people in prison—dissidents, prisoners of conscience, political prisoners—and the regime has their blood type and tissue data, and then when someone orders an organ, they come and force that person to give it up, even to the point of death.

This is beyond anything I can imagine. And it’s a multibillion-dollar business.”

Repression on American Soil

Repression of Falun Gong practitioners abroad, particularly in the United States, has escalated in recent years, driven by an order from Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping in 2022, according to leakers.

This new strategy is being led by China’s Ministry of State Security—the regime’s foreign intelligence and subversive operations agency—with a primary tactic being the spread of disinformation about Falun Gong through social media and Western media outlets.

Other tactics include using the legal system as a weapon against Falun Gong and related entities in the US and encouraging the US government to launch investigations against them.

In one high-profile case, two Chinese agents were sentenced for attempting to bribe IRS officials to revoke the tax-exempt status of Shen Yun Performing Arts, a classical Chinese dance and music troupe founded by Falun Gong practitioners to showcase “China before communism.”

The plot was foiled by an undercover FBI agent.

The Falun Gong community at large has also been the target of more than 140 threats since 2024, including threats of physical violence, bombings, and other forms of terror aimed at disrupting activities exposing the regime’s persecution.

Earlier this year, a bomb threat forced the evacuation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on the opening day of a Shen Yun performance, which drew condemnation from the White House.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul, former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said such aggression is part of the regime’s nature.

"They hate Falun Gong. They hate people who talk about what China was like before communist rule," he told NTD.

The regime's efforts to export the repression make it even more important for the West to understand Falun Gong, said Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center.

“The Falun Gong issue is no longer simply about stopping gross human rights violations in China. It is also a test of how Western democracies can defend their sovereignty and national security in the face of the CCP’s increasingly intense and sophisticated transnational repression,” he said in a statement.

Ahead of the Falun Gong rally in Washington on July 17, Democratic Representative Johnny Olszewski expressed gratitude to anyone who “takes the time to speak out and peacefully oppose” the regime’s abuses.

“It’s the right thing to do from a human rights perspective,” he told NTD, “and it’s also in America’s long-term interests.”

Lawmakers are increasingly seeing trade as a potential weapon to address Beijing’s human rights abuses.

“Everything should be based on human rights,” U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville told NTD.

Echoing US Representative Chris Smith, he called trade “the greatest weapon we have against export economies like China.”

“If, for human rights reasons, Chinese exports cannot find a market in the United States, then the regime will be forced to change,” Smith told The Epoch Times. (asr)