UK Parliamentarians Hear About The CCP’s 26 Years of Persecuting Falun Gong And Its Regime’s Constant Breach of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Which Guarantees The Right To Believe, Not To Believe, Or To Change Belief.
Speakers included Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, Marie Rimmer MP, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, Dr.David Matas, and Falun Gong practitioners who gave first hand accounts of transnational repression -including the testimony of a practitioner who had been physically attacked outside the British Museum in London.
Remarks by Lord Alton of Liverpool:
Firstly, I’d like to welcome all our guest speakers and our attendees for this morning’s seminar “FoRB in China & the CCP’s Accelerating Transnational Repression”.
Today we will be hearing from the former leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan-Smith, Labour MP, Marie Rimmer, International human rights lawyer, Dr David Matas, Caroline Yates from the UK Falun Dafa Association, Jinghua Fu, a Falun Gong practitioner who was violently attacked outside the British Museum and a Falun Gong practitioner who was imprisoned in China for her faith and has experienced the CCP’s transnational repression while living in the UK, whose pseudonym is Susan.
Today’s seminar has been organised by the UK Falun Dafa Association. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa is a faith that originates from China and has been hugely popular among the Chinese population, with estimates of around 100 million people from all walks of life, practising Falun Gong in China during its peak in the nineties.
Unfortunately, July 20th will mark 26 years of brutal persecution against Falun Gong in China and it is one of the most highly targeted groups of the Chinese Communist Party’s transnational repression around the world, with other groups being Hong Kong activists, Uyghurs and democracy activists. I, myself, like Sir Iain and David Matas also on this panel, have been sanctioned by the CCP because of my work supporting Uyghur Muslims.
I will start by talking about some of the recent death threats, rape threats and bomb threats that Falun Gong practitioners – particularly those involved in the performing arts production, Shen Yun, have received.
Over the past year Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance and music production that was created by Falun Gong practitioners in the US, as a way to revive traditional Chinese culture, has undergone a barrage of violent threats.
Attacks on Shen Yun, as a way to target Falun Gong, have taken place since the show’s inception. In every country Shen Yun has visited, theatres have been pressured by the local Chinese Embassy to stop the performance.
Since March 2024, Shen Yun performances, Shen Yun’s training campus, and other Falun Gong practitioners have been targeted with over 150 anonymous threats of violence, including graphic depictions of bombings, shootings, and sexual assault. The threats are typically sent via email or website contact forms and to date, no actual acts of violence have occurred following these threats. Nevertheless, the threats serve to intimidate, deter potential audience members, and increase security costs.
In the UK this year, three theatre venues received bomb threats from Chinese named outlook email accounts, each of which were reported to the police. One such threat stated:
“I placed multiple bombs in the theatre. If you don’t want the theatre to be blown to rubble, please cancel the Shen Yun performance immediately and cancel all cooperation with Falun Dafa. If the Shen Yun performance starts, we will directly detonate the bombs.”
Thankfully, on each occasion no weapons were found and the show carried on, but security was heightened and disruption was caused.
On April 5, the Taiwanese newspaper Liberty Times reported that the police’s Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) had launched an investigation into a series of bomb threats targeting performances in Taiwan by Shen Yun. The police investigation concluded that the source of the threatening messages was in Xi’an, a city in Shaanxi Province, China, specifically from the “Huawei Research Institute,” tying the threats to the Chinese tech giant with close CCP ties.
According to the paper:
“Although the perpetrators used foreign VPNs to disguise their locations, with IP addresses traced to various countries, the CIB’s cybercrime unit, along with other units, compiled data and traced the source back to Xi’an, China. The most critical clue pointed to the Huawei Research Institute in the region, and investigators concluded that suspects associated with Huawei might be involved in the threats.”
25th April is of great significance to Falun Gong practitioners, commemorating their peaceful 1999 appeal in Beijing. Practitioners worldwide traditionally hold parades and public events on this date.
On 25th April, the Global Tuidang Center—an NGO founded by Falun Gong practitioners which encourages Chinese people to quit the CCP, and who organised a rally and parade in Flushing, New York—received a bomb threat via its online contact form. The threatening message read in broken English:
“Place a lot of explosives around! Don’t want the explosives to detonate, prepare 10 million US dollars before the day after tomorrow!”
The Global Tuidang Center promptly alerted the New York Police Department (NYPD), which evacuated and searched the office building.
Just four days before, on April 21, the Flushing branch of Queens Public Library was evacuated after bomb threat emails demanded the cancellation of 25th April events commemorating the 1999 Beijing appeal. After a two-hour search, the building was declared safe and reopened. Library spokeswoman Elisabeth de Bourbon and the NYPD’s 109th Precinct confirmed that the threats traced to IP addresses in China.
On April 20, two identical death threats were submitted to websites of the Falun Dafa Information Center and the Global Tuidang Center. Both messages were signed in Chinese as “Li Rui”—an impersonation of a relative of Falun Gong’s founder. The emails described in detail a violent plot targeting the April 25 Falun Gong parade in Flushing, New York, as well as Dragon Springs, Shen Yun’s training facilities in Upstate New York. Written in Chinese, the messages threatened:
“On April 25, a car will crash into the Falun Gong parade on Kissena Boulevard! Anyone wearing Falun Gong clothes will be shot! Homemade bombs made from a mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder will be thrown! At the same time, another team will shoot and kill the security guards at the Dragon Springs Temple, break in, shoot everyone, and set it on fire!”
On April 28, a threatening message was submitted via the Falun Dafa Information Center contact form, impersonating Mr. Levi Browde, executive director of the Information Center. The message contained graphic and violent threats directed at Falun Gong practitioners and their families in Flushing, New York. It stated:
“All Flushing protesters and their family members will be hacked to death! Their children will also go missing and be found again! Their children’s body parts will be found in downtown Washington!! Their female family members will be gang-raped, have their throats cut and dumped in downtown New York City! The male family members will have a car accident and be run over! I swear to Mazu, Jesus, God, and Guanyin Bodhisattva! This! Will! Happen in the near future!”
On April 27, the Global Tuidang Center received an alarming threat via its online contact form targeting Falun Gong supporters. The message warned:
“All Falun Gong members and their supporters in the United States and Taiwan, including dignitaries, celebrities and entertainers who support Falun Gong, as well as their family members, will be in danger in the near future! Shot! Kidnapped! Car accidents! Fire at their homes! Vehicles will explode! I swear to Jesus, this is not a joke!!!”
Someone using the name of a Shen Yun dancer sent an email to Shen Yun’s training campus, Dragon Springs, as well as several emails affiliated with the U.S. Federal Election Commission threatening to carry out a violent attack at the campus on the day of the U.S. election last year.
“We secretly purchased remote control bombs, time bombs, booby traps, plastic C4, simple landmines and other explosives, as well as automatic rifles, pistols and other weapons. On election day, we will detonate explosives, then break into Dragon Springs and shoot all survivors!”
These are just a handful of examples of the ongoing violent threats Falun Gong practitioners have been receiving globally.
Another tactic is the spread of propaganda and misinformation. Newly leaked CCP documents last year, revealed a worldwide disinformation campaign to try to “eliminate” Falun Gong and Shen Yun globally. The leaked information shows a strategic decision by the CCP to escalate its persecution of Falun Gong around the world and outlines detailed plans to turn global public opinion against Falun Gong and Shen Yun.
Tactics include “fully supporting” YouTubers who spread disinformation; using agents and false information to sow discord within the Falun Gong community and between Falun Gong and the U.S. government; manipulating search engine optimisation; and feeding defamatory information about Falun Gong to mainstream Western media.
The regime’s stated goal is to “attract the continuous attention of the entire United States society and force the U.S. government to strike on all fronts, eliminating the force of Falun Gong.”
Tim Pool, an American YouTuber, disclosed that the CCP has been offering money to influencers to propagate anti-Falun Gong narratives on popular channels. Pool’s YouTube channels have 4 million subscribers and 3 billion views. On October 24, 2024, he recounted how he was personally approached with an offer to disseminate CCP-backed content. Pool said –
“The Falun Gong people were handing out flyers… it’s funny because China started hiring YouTubers… They said they’d give me $200 to post a video to my YouTube channel.”
The video featured a fabricated attack against Falun Gong, portraying the group in a negative light. Thankfully, Pool declined the offer, but others might not.
Just days after the New York Times published problematic articles on Shen Yun and Falun Gong, which Dr David Matas will address in more detail in a moment, a Beijing-backed YouTuber boasted on X that:
“I was the one who introduced people [former performers] to the New York Times, especially for the initial interviews.”
Several of these former performers, have been found to have traceable ties to the CCP.
In leaked meeting notes from China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) in June 2024, this YouTuber was named as an individual who should receive the regime’s support. The YouTuber also faces possession of illegal weapons charges in the United States and has made threats of violence against Shen Yun performers and Falun Gong.
In August last year, Shen Yun received a threatening message demanding the removal of its statement responding to the New York Times’ reports. The message warned that if the statement was not removed within a month,
“Shen Yun Performing Arts and Fei Tian school employees, and family members very likely will have some inexplicable car accidents, their houses will unexplainably catch fire and burn, and also may be attacked by New York gangsters.”
Forced Organ Harvesting. See Matas-Kilgour Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilgour%E2%80%93Matas_report
