Just seven years after being introduced to the public in China, Falun Gong went from being widely popular throughout the country to becoming the number one enemy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But why? What led up to the brutal crackdown? There were four main factors that gave rise to this tragedy.

1. Falun Gong’s Massive Popularity and Rapid Growth, Outnumbering CCP Membership
2. Falun Gong’s Complete Independence from CCP’s Control
3. Falun Gong’s Guiding Principles Incompatible with Communist, Atheist Ideology
4. One Man’s Jealousy and Political Motivations

If 100 million people were targeted in a violent campaign consisting of illegal abductions, imprisonment, torture, and killing, we’d know about it right? Especially in the modern, interconnected world of endless cell phone-captured videos and instant messaging, surely, evidence of such a campaign would make headlines around the world.

Tragically, the answer is, in this case, no, and the story of the silence that has ensued features a hard-core tyranny that has coerced and manipulated a broad range of people and institutions across Asia and the West into appeasement.

There have been a series of news and magazine articles published in the U.S. recently that grossly distort the teachings and beliefs of Falun Gong. In fact, these articles mimic with shocking similarity the hate-filled propaganda prominent in communist China, which fuels terrible persecution of people who practice Falun Gong there.

What exactly is going on? What kind of mischaracterizations or outright lies are we seeing in these reports, and why would these U.S. media companies engage in this kind of bigotry?

We’re going to dig into these questions and find some answers.

The remarkable and largely untold story of how practitioners of Falun Gong went from being the pride of a nation to "public enemy number one" -- all in the span of several months. And how all this was just the beginning of a global struggle for the conscience of the world.

Originally embraced by the government and civil society alike, Falun Gong was widely popular in the 1990s with an estimated 100 million people practicing by early 1999. Its popularity, however, provide too much for some Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders. In July 1999, they launched a nationwide campaign to stamp out Falun Gong.

Despite its brutality and death toll, the campaign, in many ways, backfired on the CCP, giving rise to the largest civil disobedience movement in the world, and launching a global effort to systematically expose the crimes of the CCP on the world stage.

What is one place on Earth that is more authentically Chinese than China? Many would argue it’s Taiwan.

The island of Taiwan sits off the coast of Mainland China. Taiwan and China share the same ethnicity, same culture, same history, and same language. But there’s one very big difference: since 1949, China has been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party whereas Taiwan is now a democracy. That one difference has caused these two places, situated a mere 100 miles from each other, to seem like two different worlds.

There is no greater example of this difference than with the treatment of Falun Gong.

Today in China, Falun Gong practitioners are kidnapped from their homes for meditating, seized while handing out leaflets, or arrested for posting information online—and they are frequently tortured and killed.

Today in Taiwan, there are hundreds of practice sites in parks and public spaces where people can go to learn Falun Gong free of charge. Falun Gong is widely acclaimed for its healthy life style and moral living from civil groups as well as the highest levels of government in Taiwan.

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.

For more than a decade, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been systematically killing innocent people on a large scale, and extracting their vital organs to fuel a multi-billion dollar organ transplant industry.A vast majority of the victims are Falun Gong practitioners, who have been detained by the CCP simply because of their faith.

Both the United States Congress and European Parliament passed resolutions condemning this horrible crime. Israel, Spain, Italy and Taiwan all passed laws aimed at preventing their citizens from any involvement with China’s forced organ harvesting.

Most significantly, an internationally renowned expert on genocide and crimes against humanity, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who famously lead the prosecution against former Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, chaired an independent tribunal based in London called the China Tribunal. This tribunal conducted the most thorough and substantive analysis of forced organ extraction in China to date. The tribunal’s findings, announced in June 2019, concluded that prisoners of conscience have been—and continue to be—killed in China for their organs “on a significant scale.” And that most of the victims are Falun Gong practitioners.

It’s an early Sunday morning at Veterans Park in Otisville, upstate New York. At a time of year when the trees are still green, but the mornings start to have a slight chill in the air.

People of various ages, ethnicities and backgrounds slowly begin to fill up the otherwise empty park. They move quietly into a circle. With their eyes closed, they perform graceful, slow movements following meditation music from a loud speaker placed in the middle.

For the last 20 years you’ve heard journalists talking about them on the T.V. and radio. You’ve seen them holding rallies and peace protests around the world.

They are practitioners of Falun Gong.

Who are these people? What motivates them? And how might their struggle to expose the Chinese Communist Party have far reaching implications for all of us?

Learn more: faluninfo.net

UNDER THE VEIL OF DARKNESS across China, on July 20, 1999, police dragged Chinese citizens from their beds. It was the beginning of an unprecedented, nationwide persecution.

The CCP ordered nationwide book burnings and ransacking of homes to destroy all Falun Gong instructional materials. Corporations, schools, and government offices held mandatory re-education sessions to root out the spiritual practice and reinforce communist ideology. Propaganda saturated state-run media, demonizing 100 million people.

MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE in China have been fired from their jobs, expelled from school, jailed, tortured, or killed simply for practicing Falun Gong. Human rights lawyers call this persecution a genocide.

ORGAN HARVESTING: A NEW FORM OF EVIL

In 2020, an international tribunal in London concluded that Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their vital organs “on a significant scale.” Investigators estimate tens of thousands are killed each year to fuel a multi-billion dollar organ transplant business in China.

Learn more: faluninfo.net

Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) is an ancient spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition.

Falun Gong combines meditation and gentle exercises (similar to yoga or tai chi) with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance (or in Chinese, Zhen 真, Shan 善, Ren 忍). Falun Gong practitioners aspire to live by these principles in their daily lives.

In traditional Chinese culture, the process of perfecting and refining mind and body is called “cultivation”. Our modern language uses the word qigong to describe it.

What differentiates Falun Gong from other forms of qigong, is its emphasis on one’s morality and the cultivation of virtue.

By 1999, Falun Gong had grown to become the largest and fastest growing practice of the sort in Chinese if not world history. In just seven years since its 1992 introduction to the public, an estimated 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong.

Learn more about what Falun Gong: What is Falun Gong?