(Minghui.org) The brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China has continued for over 20 years. Because of upholding their belief in the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, a large number of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained, imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the persecution began in July 1999. 

Earlier this month, Minghui.org published a list of 105,580 perpetrators involved in the persecution of Falun Gong. The list contains the perpetrators' personal information and crimes committed against Falun Gong practitioners, and is intended to aid the Department of State in identifying known human rights violators. According to Minghui, “The purpose of compiling this list is to stop the persecution, preserve what is good, and uphold justice.”

The compilation of the list was made possible after many practitioners responded to a notice from Minghui in late May 2019 calling on Falun Gong practitioners throughout the world to “take immediate action to collect, compile, and submit to Minghui.org information on the perpetrators, their family members, and their assets, so as to locate and verify their identities.”

Countless Crimes

Jiang Zemin, former Chinese Communist Party leader, launched the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. Millions of practitioners have since been targeted for refusing to renounce their faith. Many have sustained irreparable physical and mental harm as a result of abuse in custody. Practitioners who have experienced the brutalities of persecution firsthand reside across the entire country and come from all walks of life.

The entire state apparatus has been mobilized to persecute Falun Gong, from the Political and Legal Committees (PLAC) to 610 Offices at all levels, from judicial bureaus to state security bureaus, from domestic security offices to public security (police) systems, from procuratorates to courts, and from detention centers to prisons. In addition, persecution has been carried out in mental hospitals and brainwashing centers where practitioners are detained in conjunction with businesses, schools, neighborhood committees (in urban areas) and village committees (in the countryside).

More than 200,000 criminal complaints have been submitted to China’s Supreme People's Court against Jiang Zemin for initiating the persecution of Falun Gong. The complaints jointly describe the severe abuse and over 100 torture methods used against Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps, detention centers, prisons, mental hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, and brainwashing centers.

Unprecedented Torture

As described in the Minghui 20th Anniversary Report, extensive use of torture is applied to practitioners in order to force them to renounce their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. 

According to the report, beating is a common torture method. The tools used to beat practitioners, however, can be sorted into 10 categories with 79 types in total. They include police equipment, maces, whips, bamboo rods, and plastic or wooden batons. Often, many torture methods are combined. For example, a practitioner may be hung up while simultaneously shocked with electric batons.

In addition to physical abuse, CCP officials often send perfectly healthy practitioners to mental hospitals, brainwashing centers, or drug rehabilitation centers for psychological abuse. Across China, practitioners have been held in such facilities and injected with or force-fed nerve-damaging drugs. Many practitioners were held in these places for months or years, and the long-term punitive psychiatry, specifically the misuse of psychiatric drugs, has led to blindness, hearing loss, paralysis, memory loss, and mental illness. Other injuries include ulcer and internal organ failure.

Multi-Front Efforts to End the Persecution

The publication of the list of perpetrators by Minghui.org will augment the existing efforts on many fronts to stop the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and bring the perpetrators to justice.

An official from the U.S. State Department said earlier this year that 28 countries have passed or planned to enact laws similar to the U.S. Global Magnitsky Act. This would allow a government to sanction any foreign government officials for human rights abuse, including denial of entry and freezing assets and financial transactions.

In response to the U.S. Department of State's plan to tighten visa vetting of human rights violators, Falun Gong practitioners in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have recently submitted to their respective governments an identical list of perpetrators involved in the persecution of Falun Gong in China. The practitioners are requesting visa denial and freezing of assets of these human rights violators. 

There have also been efforts at the grassroots level to resist the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong. In a remarkable popular movement, more than 340 million Chinese people have quit the CCP and its subordinate youth organizations upon learning of the CCP's brutality against Falun Gong practitioners and other innocent Chinese citizens.

The author believes that all of these efforts, along with the newly published list of perpetrators, act to serve as a warning to CCP officials and others still involved in the persecution of Falun Gong: sooner or later, justice will be served.

In November 2018, a UN-backed international tribunal in Cambodia charged Nyon Chea, 92, deputy leader during the brutal extremist regime of Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, 87, former Cambodian head of state, with exterminating the Cham Muslim and ethnic Vietnamese communities between 1975 and 1979.

While Chea and Samphan were prosecuted decades after their crimes of genocide, supporters of Falun Gong have been seeking justice for practitioners who have been imprisoned, tortured, or even had their organs harvested while still alive.

In June 2019, an independent people's tribunal in London issued a statement announcing the results of its in-depth investigation of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. The statement concluded that the Chinese Communist Party has been harvesting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners in China for many years, and that this brutality continues today.

In response to the Tribunal's statement, the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China called on the international community to help stop the forced organ extraction from prisoners of conscience.