(Minghui.org) Michael Pompeo, United States Secretary of State, issued a statement on July 20, 2020, calling on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to stop the persecution of Falun Gong immediately.

Michael Pompeo, United States Secretary of State

In the statement published on the U.S. State Department website, Pompeo condemned the CCP’s attempt to eradicate Falun Gong, a spiritual practice based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. He said that Falun Gong practitioners are peaceful and have been striving for the right to practice their belief in China. Extensive evidence points to the CCP’s brutality against practitioners over the past 21 years.

Pompeo said he met Zhang Yuhua, a Falun Gong practitioner and victim of the suppression, during the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom last year. “After surviving what she described as torture while in a labor camp and a prison in China, she advocates on behalf of her imprisoned husband, Ma Zhenyu, who has endured months of torture because he refuses to renounce his Falun Gong beliefs,” wrote the statement.

“We call on the PRC government to immediately end its depraved abuse and mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, release those imprisoned due to their beliefs, such as Ma Zhenyu, and address the whereabouts of missing practitioners,” wrote the statement in both English and Chinese, “Twenty-one years of persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is far too long, and it must end.”