On 20 July 1999, security forces abducted and detained thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who they identified as leaders. The same day, the Ministry of Public Security issued a circular forbidding citizens from practicing Falun Gong in groups, possessing Falun Gong's teachings, displaying Falun Gong banners or symbols, or protesting against the ban. The
U.S. Department of State and
Congressional-Executive Commission on China cite estimates that as much as half of China's reeducation-through-labor camp population is made up of Falun Gong practitioners. Researcher Ethan Gutmann estimates that Falun Gong practitioners represent an average of 15 to 20 percent of the total "
laogai" population, a population which includes practitioners who are currently being held in
re-education through labor camps as well as practitioners who are currently being held in prisons and other forms of administrative detention. Former detainees of the labor camp system have reported that Falun Gong practitioners comprise one of the largest groups of prisoners; in some labor camp and prison facilities, they comprise the majority of the detainees, and they are often said to receive the longest sentences and the worst treatment. A 2013 report on labor reeducation camps by
Amnesty International found that in some cases, Falun Gong practitioners "constituted on average from one third to 100 per cent of the total population" of certain camps. According to Johnson, the campaign against Falun Gong extends to many aspects of society, including the media apparatus, the police force, the military, the education system, and workplaces. An extra-constitutional body, the "
610 Office" was created to oversee the effort.
Human Rights Watch (2002) commented that families and workplace employees were urged to cooperate with the government. Xinhua also asserted that "the so-called 'truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by [Falun Gong] has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve", and it also argued that it was necessary to crush Falun Gong in order to preserve the "vanguard role and purity" of the Chinese Communist Party. Other articles which appeared in the state-run media in the first days and weeks after the ban was imposed posited that Falun Gong must be defeated because its "theistic" philosophy was at odds with the
Marxist–Leninist paradigm and the
secular values of
materialism. Willy Wo-Lap Lam writes that Jiang Zemin's campaign against Falun Gong may have been used to promote allegiance to himself; Lam quotes one party veteran as saying "by unleashing a
Mao-style movement [against Falun Gong], Jiang is forcing senior cadres to pledge allegiance to his line". Human Rights Watch commented that the crackdown on Falun Gong reflects historical efforts by the CCP to eradicate religion, which the government believes is inherently subversive.
The Globe and Mail wrote: "any group that does not come under the control of the Party is a threat".
Craig S. Smith of
The New York Times wrote that the CCP feels increasingly threatened by any belief system that challenges its ideology and has an ability to organize itself. That Falun Gong, whose belief system represented a revival of
traditional Chinese religion, was being practiced by a large number of Communist Party members and members of the military was seen as particularly disturbing to Jiang; according to
Julia Ching, "Jiang accepts the threat of Falun Gong as an ideological one: spiritual beliefs against militant atheism and historical materialism. He [wished] to purge the government and the military of such beliefs." Yuezhi Zhao points to several other factors that may have led to a deterioration of the relationship between Falun Gong and the Chinese state and media.
Vivienne Shue similarly writes that Falun Gong presented a comprehensive challenge to the CCP's legitimacy. Shue argues that Chinese rulers have historically derived their legitimacy from their claim to possess an exclusive connection to the "Truth". In imperial China, truth was based on a
Confucian and
Daoist cosmology, where in the case of the Communist Party, the truth is represented by Marxist–Leninism and historical materialism. Falun Gong challenged the Marxist–Leninism paradigm, reviving an understanding which is based on more traditionally
Buddhist or Daoist conceptions. David Ownby contends that Falun Gong also challenged the Communist Party's hegemony over the
Chinese nationalist discourse: "[Falun Gong's] evocation of a different vision of Chinese tradition and its contemporary values are now so threatening to the state and the party because it denies them the sole right to define the meaning of Chinese nationalism, and it even denies them the sole right to define the meaning of Chineseness." Maria Chang commented that since the overthrow of the
Qin dynasty, "
Millenarian movements had exerted a profound impact on the course of
Chinese history", culminating in the
Chinese Communist Revolution, which brought the CCP to power.
Conversion programs According to James Tong, the regime aimed at both coercive dissolution of the Falun Gong denomination and "transformation" of the practitioners. By 2000, the CCP escalated its campaign by sentencing practitioners who returned to Falun Dafa activities after previous detention to "
re-education through labor" in an effort to have them renounce their beliefs and "transform" their thoughts. According to Bejesky, the majority of long-term Falun Gong detainees are processed administratively through this system instead of the criminal justice system. Upon completion of their re-education sentences, those practitioners who refused to recant were then incarcerated in "legal education centers" set up by provincial authorities to "transform minds". Much of the conversion program relied on Mao-style techniques of indoctrination and
thought reform, where Falun Gong practitioners were organized to view anti-Falun Gong television programs and enroll in Marxism and materialism study sessions. Traditional Marxism and materialism were the core content of the sessions. According to Yanfei Sun of China’s state-run Zhejiang University, conversion programs also included study of Buddhist writings and the Confucian primer
The Codes of Conduct for Students and Children. The cases appear verifiable, and the great majority identify (1) the individual practitioner, often with age, occupation, and residence; (2) the time and location that the alleged abuse took place, down to the level of the district, township, village, and often the specific jail institution; and (3) the names and ranks of the alleged perpetrators. Many such reports include lists of the names of witnesses and descriptions of injuries, Tong says. The publication of "persistent abusive, often brutal behavior by named individuals with their official title, place, and time of torture" suggests that there is no official will to cease and desist such activities.
Amnesty International said at least 100 Falun Gong practitioners had reportedly died in the 2008 calendar year, either in custody or shortly after their release. Investigative journalist
Ethan Gutmann estimated 65,000 Falun Gong were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008 based on extensive interviews, Chinese authorities do not publish statistics on Falun Gong practitioners killed amidst the crackdown. In individual cases, however, authorities have denied that deaths in custody were due to torture.
Forced organ harvesting allegations In 2006, allegations emerged that a large number of Falun Gong practitioners had been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry. These allegations prompted an investigation by former Canadian Secretary of State
David Kilgour and human rights lawyer
David Matas. The
Kilgour-Matas report was published in July 2006, and concluded that "the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centers and 'people's courts', since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience." The report, which was based mainly on circumstantial evidence, called attention to the extremely short wait times for organs in China—one to two weeks for a liver compared with 32.5 months in Canada—implying it was indicative of organs being procured on demand. It also tracked a significant increase in the number of annual organ transplants in China beginning in 1999, corresponding with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong. Despite very low levels of voluntary organ donation, China performs the second-highest number of transplants per year. Kilgour and Matas also presented self-accusatory material from Chinese transplant center web sites and to explain a source for the organs that would account for the sudden increase in organ transplants in China since 2000. Chinese officials have responded by denying the organ harvesting allegations, and insisting that China abides by
World Health Organization principles that prohibit the sale of human organs without written consent from donors. Responding to a U.S. House of Representatives Resolution calling for an end to abusing transplant practices against religious and ethnic minorities, a Chinese embassy spokesperson said "the so-called organ harvesting from death-row prisoners is totally a lie fabricated by Falun Gong." In August 2009,
Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, said, "The Chinese government has yet to come clean and be transparent... It remains to be seen how it could be possible that organ transplant surgeries in Chinese hospitals have risen massively since 1999, while there are never that many voluntary donors available." In 2014, investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann published the result of his own investigation. He reported that organ harvesting from political prisoners likely began in
Xinjiang province in the 1990s, and then spread nationwide. Gutmann estimates that some 64,000 Falun Gong prisoners may have been killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008. In a 2016 report,
David Kilgour found that he had underestimated. In the new report he found that the government's official estimates for the volume of organs harvested since the persecution of Falun Gong began to be 150,000 to 200,000. Media outlets have extrapolated from this study a death toll of 1.5 million.
Ethan Gutmann estimated from this update that 60,000 to 110,000 organs are harvested in China annually, observing that it is (paraphrasing) "difficult but plausible to harvest 3 organs from a single body" and also calls the harvest "a new form of
genocide using the most respected members of society". In June 2019, the
China Tribunal— a non-governmental tribunal set up by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China—concluded that detainees including imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement are still being killed for organ harvesting. The Tribunal, chaired by British barrister
Geoffrey Nice, said it was "certain that Falun Gong as a source—probably the principal source—of organs for forced organ harvesting". In June 2021, the Special Procedures of the
United Nations Human Rights Council voiced concerns over having "received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations." The press release stated that UN's human rights experts "were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged 'organ harvesting' targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China."
Media campaign The Chinese government's campaign against Falun Gong was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspapers, radio and internet. Falun Gong was compared to "a rat crossing the street that everyone shouts out to squash" by
Beijing Daily; other officials said it would be a "long-term, complex and serious" struggle to "eradicate" Falun Gong. State propaganda initially used the appeal of scientific rationalism to argue that Falun Gong's worldview was in "complete opposition to science" and communism. For example, the ''
People's Daily'' asserted on 27 July 1999, that the fight against Falun Gong "was a struggle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism". Other editorials declared that Falun Gong's "idealism and theism" are "absolutely contradictory to the fundamental theories and principles of Marxism", and that the truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by [Falun Gong] has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve." Suppressing Falun Gong was presented as a necessary step to maintaining the "vanguard role" of the CCP in Chinese society. Despite Party efforts, initial charges leveled against Falun Gong failed to elicit widespread popular support for the persecution of the group. In the months following July 1999, the rhetoric in the state-run press escalated to include charges that Falun Gong was colluding with foreign, "anti-China" forces. In October 1999, three months after the persecution began, the ''People's Daily
newspaper claimed Falun Gong as a (). A direct translation of that term is "heretical teaching", but during the anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign was rendered as "evil cult" in English. According to a Washington Post'' report, it was Jiang Zemin who issued the order to label Falun Gong a "cult".
Ian Johnson argued that applying the 'cult' label to Falun Gong effectively "cloaked the government's crackdown with the legitimacy of the West's anticult movement". He wrote that Falun Gong does not satisfy common definitions of a cult: "its members marry outside the group, have outside friends, hold normal jobs, do not live isolated from society, do not believe that the world's end is imminent and do not give significant amounts of money to the organisation... it does not advocate violence and is at heart an apolitical, inward-oriented discipline, one aimed at cleansing oneself spiritually and improving one's health." like "evil cult", "sect", or "superstition". The group's silent protests were reclassified as creating "social disturbances". In this process of relabelling, the government was attempting to tap into a "deep reservoir of negative feelings related to the historical role of quasi-religious cults as a destabilising force in Chinese political history". on the grounds that the movement's teachings explicitly forbid suicide and killing, The incident received international news coverage, and video footage of the burnings were broadcast later inside China by
China Central Television (CCTV). The broadcasts showed images of a 12-year-old girl, Liu Siying, burning, and interviews with the other participants in which they stated a belief that self-immolation would lead them to paradise. But one of the CNN producers on the scene did not even see a child there. Falun Gong sources and other commentators pointed out that the main participants' account of the incident and other aspects of the participants' behavior were inconsistent with Falun Gong's teachings. Media Channel and the International Education Development (IED) agree that the supposed self-immolation incident was staged by CCP to "prove" that Falun Gong brainwashes its followers to commit suicide and has therefore to be banned as a threat to the nation. IED's statement at the 53rd UN session describes China's violent assault on Falun Gong practitioners as
state terrorism and that the self-immolation "was staged by the government".
Washington Post journalist Phillip Pan wrote that the two self-immolators who died were not actually Falun Gong practitioners. As public sympathy for Falun Gong declined, the government began sanctioning "systematic use of violence" against the group. In February 2001, the month following the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident, Jiang Zemin convened a rare Central Work Conference to stress the importance of continuity in the anti-Falun Gong campaign and unite senior party officials behind the effort.
In the education system Anti-Falun Gong propaganda efforts have also permeated the Chinese education system. Following Jiang's 1999 ban of Falun Gong, then-Minister of Education
Chen Zhili launched an active campaign to promote the CCP's line on Falun Gong within all levels of academic institutions, including graduate schools, universities and colleges, middle schools, primary schools, and kindergartens. Her efforts included a "Cultural Revolution-like pledge" in Chinese schools that required faculty members, staff, and students to publicly denounce Falun Gong. Teachers who did not comply with Chen's program were dismissed or detained; uncooperative students were refused academic advancement, expelled from school, or sent to "transformation" camps to alter their thinking. Chen also worked to spread the anti-Falun Gong academic propaganda movement overseas, using domestic educational funding to donate aid to foreign institutions, encouraging them to oppose Falun Gong. It soon progressed to larger demonstrations, with hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners traveling daily to Tiananmen Square to perform Falun Gong exercises or raise banners in defense of the practice. These demonstrations were invariably broken up by security forces, and the practitioners involved were arrested—sometimes violently—and detained. By 25 April 2000, a total of more than 30,000 practitioners had been arrested on the square; seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration in the square on 1 January 2001. Public protests continued well into 2001. Writing for the
Wall Street Journal, Ian Johnson wrote that "Falun Gong faithful have mustered what is arguably the most sustained challenge to authority in 50 years of Communist rule." Falun Gong sources estimated in 2009 that over 200,000 such sites exist across China today. In 2002, Falun Gong activists in China tapped into television broadcasts, replacing regular state-run programming with their own content. One of the more notable instances occurred in March 2002, when Falun Gong practitioners in
Changchun intercepted eight cable television networks in Jilin Province, and for nearly an hour, televised a program titled "Self-Immolation or a Staged Act?". All six of the Falun Gong practitioners involved were captured over the next few months. Two were killed immediately, while the other four were all dead by 2010 as a result of injuries sustained while imprisoned. Outside China, Falun Gong practitioners established international media organizations to gain wider exposure for their cause and challenge narratives of the Chinese state-run media. These include
The Epoch Times newspaper,
New Tang Dynasty Television, and
Sound of Hope radio station. This catalyzed the Tuidang movement, which encourages Chinese citizens to renounce their affiliations to the Chinese Communist Party, including ex post facto renunciations of the
Communist Youth League and
Young Pioneers.
The Epoch Times claims that tens of millions have renounced the Chinese Communist Party as part of the movement, though these numbers have not been independently verified. In 2006, Falun Gong practitioners in the United States formed
Shen Yun Performing Arts, a dance and music company that tours internationally. During Shen Yun's 2024 season, the company's eight touring troupes performed over 800 shows on five continents. By 2024, Shen Yun accumulated $266 million in assets mainly through ticket sales and by keeping its costs down through numerous volunteer hours and sometimes personal savings of Falun Gong adherents. Falun Gong software developers in the United States are also responsible for the creation of several popular censorship-circumvention tools employed by internet users in China. Falun Gong practitioners outside China have filed dozens of lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan,
Bo Xilai, and other Chinese officials alleging genocide and crimes against humanity. According to International Advocates for Justice, Falun Gong has filed the largest number of human rights lawsuits in the 21st century and the charges are among the most severe international crimes defined by international criminal laws. The court in Spain also indicted Bo Xilai,
Jia Qinglin and
Wu Guanzheng. The
United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuit in September 2014. In July 2023, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and ruled the lawsuit may proceed to trial. Cisco filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2025. Sociologist Andrew Junker described Falun Gong's
nonviolent resistance to the persecution as the "most well-organized and tenacious grassroots Chinese protest movement ever to challenge the CCP". He argued that Falun Gong's more effective and enduring mobilization, compared to the pro-democracy movement (), is due in part to its decentralized organizational structure and emphasis on individual initiative. ==Falun Gong outside China==