Marking 26 Years of Falun Gong Persecution in Communist China

On Thursday, July 17, VOC’s Serkan Tas, associate director in China Studies, spoke at a rally marking 26 years since the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Tas’s remarks were as follows:

Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting us to be here today in solidarity with the millions of people who continue to courageously practice their faith despite unprecedented persecution. 

Today we commemorate 26 years since the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners in July 1999. What began as a peaceful spiritual movement centered on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance has endured more than a quarter-century of systematic persecution, torture, and industrial-scale forced organ harvesting. 

Since the CCP banned Falun Gong, religious freedom conditions in China have only gone from bad to worse, with Falun Gong practitioners facing the brunt of the state’s persecution of religious groups. Chinese authorities have relentlessly harassed, surveilled, fined, detained, imprisoned, denied medical care, and tortured to death Falun Gong practitioners for their religious activities. 

In 2024, we learned of the first known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting—Cheng Pei Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner who discovered that segments of his liver and a portion of his lung had been surgically removed while imprisoned. This confirms what has been documented for years: that the CCP operates one of the world’s largest organ transplant programs while having extremely low rates of voluntary organ donation. 

The persecution has expanded beyond China’s borders and beyond Falun Gong practitioners alone. The CCP is now collecting genetic data from Uyghurs as part of a forced organ-transplant program, with DNA-matched so-called “donors.” Most alarmingly, China plans to triple the number of organ harvesting facilities in Xinjiang by 2030. 

We must remain vigilant as China’s persecution of Falun Gong extends far beyond its borders. Chinese authorities regularly engage in transnational repression, including within the United States. We sadly see that the repression against Falun Gong practitioners has ramped up with fines, home raids, and detentions across the globe. 

The US government has designated China a Country of Particular Concern for religious freedom violations, sanctioned government officials involved in gross human rights abuses, and established coalitions to address China’s violations. The House of Representatives has passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act to combat these crimes. 

However, we must do more. Medical organizations must impose moratoriums on publications from Chinese transplant surgeons. Governments must pressure international bodies to adopt more proactive positions and address their complacency, while utilizing sanctions against complicit surgeons. Human rights groups must highlight the evidence and express concern about the vulnerability of prisoners of conscience. 

On behalf of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, I want to thank you again for your courage and tireless determination to advocate for freedom in China. We will continue to fight to spread the truth about the perils of communism and hold the CCP accountable for its horrific abuses.  

We cannot and will not stop until Falun Gong practitioners and members of all religious faiths can worship freely in China without fear of persecution. 

Thank you all.