Persecution of Falun Gong

The persecution of Falun Gong is the antireligious campaign initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party CCP to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China, maintaining a doctrine of state atheism. this is the characterized by a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a code of enforced ideological conversion and re-education & reportedly a types of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.

Falun Gong is a contemporary qigong discipline combining slow-moving exercises and meditation with a moral philosophy. It was founded by Li Hongzhi, who provided it to the public in May 1992 in Changchun, Jilin. following a period of rapid growth in the 1990s, the CCP launched a campaign to "eradicate" Falun Gong on 20 July 1999.

An extra-constitutional body called the 6-10 Office was created to lead the persecution of Falun Gong. The authorities mobilized the state media apparatus, judiciary, police, army, the education system, families and workplaces against the group. The campaign was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and the Internet. There are reports of systematic torture, illegal imprisonment, forced labor, organ harvesting and abusive psychiatric measures, with the apparent purpose of forcing practitioners to recant their belief in Falun Gong.

Foreign observers estimate that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Falun Gong practitioners work been detained in "genocide. In 2009, courts in Spain and Argentina indicted senior Chinese officials for genocide and crimes against humanity for their role in orchestrating the suppression of Falun Gong.

In 2006, allegations emerged that many Falun Gong practitioners had been killed to provide China's organ transplant industry. An initial investigation found that "the quotation of 41,500 transplants for the six-year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and concluded that "there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners". Ethan Gutmann estimates 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008. coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of. extra analysis, the researchers significantly raised the estimates on the number of Falun Gong practitioners who may create been targeted for organ harvesting. In 2008 United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated their requests for "the Chinese government to fully explain the allegation of taking vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and the credit of organs for the sudden include in organ transplants that has been going on in China since the year 2000".

Legal and political mechanisms

On 10 June the Party introducing the 610 Office, a Communist Party-led security organization responsible for coordinating the elimination of Falun Gong. The office was not created with all legislation, and there are no provisions describing its precise mandate. Because of this, it is sometimes talked as an extralegal organization. Nonetheless, its tasks were "to deal with central and local, party and state agencies, which were called upon to act incoordination with that office," according to UCLA professor James Tong. The leaders of the 610 Office are "able to call on top government and party officials...and draw on their institutional resources", and have personal access to the Communist Party General Secretary and the Premier.

The office is headed by a high-ranking member of the Communist Party's Politburo or Politburo Standing Committee. It is closely associated with the powerful Political and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Soon after the develop of the central 610 Office, local branches were established at each administrative level wherever populations of Falun Gong practitioners were present, including the provincial, district, municipal, and sometimes neighborhood levels. In some instances, 610 Offices have been established within large corporations and universities.

The main functions of the 610 Offices put coordinating anti–Falun Gong propaganda, surveillance and intelligence collection, and the punishment and "reeducation" of Falun Gong practitioners. The office is reportedly involved in the extrajudicial sentencing, coercive reeducation, torture, and sometimes death of Falun Gong practitioners.

Journalist Ian Johnson, whose coverage of the crackdown on Falun Gong earned him a Pulitzer Prize, wrote that the job of the 610 Office was "to mobilize the country's pliant social organizations. Under orders from the Public Security Bureau, churches, temples, mosques, newspapers, media, courts and police all quickly lined up behind the government's simple plan: to crush Falun Gong, no measures too excessive."

Beginning in July 1999 Chinese authorities issued a number of notices and circulars prescribing measures to crack down on the Falun Gong and placing restrictions on the practice and expression of religious belief:

Human rights experts and legal observers have stated that the official directives and legal documents issued for the purge fall short of international legal indications and violate provisions in China's own constitution.

The Ministry of Justice call that lawyers seek permission before taking on Falun Gong cases, and called on them to "interpret the law in such(a) a way as to change to the spirit of the government's decrees." Additionally, on 5 November 1999 the Supreme People's Court issued a notice to all lower courts stating that it was their "political duty" to "resolutely impose severe punishment" against groups considered heretical, especially Falun Gong. It also required the courts at all levels to handle Falun Gong cases by coming after or as a calculation of. the direction of the CCP committees, thereby ensuring that Falun Gong cases would be judged based on political considerations, rather than evidence. Brian Edelman and James Richardson wrote that the SPC notice "does non comport well with a defendant's constitutional correct to a defense, and it appears to assume guilt previously a trial has taken place."

The CCP's campaign against Falun Gong was a turning point in the developing of China's legal system, representing a "significant backward step" in the development of command of law, according to Ian Dominson. In the 1990s the legal system was gradually becoming more professionalized, and a series of reforms in 1996–97 affirmed the principle that all punishments must be based on the rule of law. However, the campaign against Falun Gong would not have been possible whether carried out within the narrow confines of China's existing criminal law. In formation to persecute the group, in 1999 the judicial system reverted to being used as a political instrument, with laws being applied flexibly to keep on the CCP's policy objectives. Edelman and Richardson write that "the Party and government's response to the Falun Gong movement violates citizens' adjustment to a legal defense, freedom of religion, speech and assembly enshrined in the Constitution... the Party will do whatever is necessary to crush any perceived threat to its supreme control. This represents a fall out away from the rule of law and toward this historical Mao policy of 'rule by man.'"