华尔街日报的克莱格·史密斯（英语：Craig S. Smith）称，中国政府没有精神信仰，欠缺在道德上战胜精神对手的信誉，故对任何挑战其意识形态且有能力组织自己的信仰体系感到威胁。[58]朱莉娅·张在《美国亚洲评论》表示，“代表中国传统宗教复兴的法轮功信仰体系，被众多中共党员和军队成员所奉行，这个事实特别令江泽民感到困扰；江泽民把法轮功视作在意识形态领域对中国政府崇尚斗争的无神论和历史唯物主义构成威胁的精神信仰；希望在政府和军队消灭这样的精神信仰。”[59]
Banding after the Ban: the underground Falungong in China, 1999–2011 Tong, James W.著 Journal of Contemporary China. Nov 2012, Vol. 21 Issue 78, p1045-1062.
Leung, Beatrice (2002) 'China and Falun Gong: Party and society relations in the modern era中国与法轮功-现代的政党与社会关系, Journal of Contemporary China当代中国期刊, 11:33, 761 –784
Lam, Willy Wo-Lap. China's sect suppression carries a high price. CNN. 5 February 2001 [2023-02-20]. （原始内容存档于2022-06-29）. By unleashing a Mao-style movement, Jiang is forcing senior cadres to pledge allegiance to his line," said the party veteran. "This will boost Jiang's authority -- and may give him enough momentum to enable him to dictate events at the pivotal 16th Communist Party congress next year.
Julia Ching, "The Falun Gong: Religious and Political Implications", American Asian Review, Vol. XIX, no. 4, Winter 2001, p. 12
Jiang accepts the threat of Falun Gong as an ideological one: spiritual beliefs against militant atheism and historical materialism. He [wished] to purge the government and the military of such beliefs.
Twiss, Sumner B. "Religious Intolerance in Contemporary China, Including the Curious Case of Falun Gong" in The World's Religions After September 11. Arvind Sharma (ed), Greenwood Publishing, 2009 pp. 227–240
Vivienne Shue, "Legitimacy Crisis in China?" In Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen (eds.), State and Society in 21st-century China. Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation, (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
similarly writes that Falun Gong presented a comprehensive challenge to the Communist Party's legitimacy. Shue argues that Chinese rulers historically have derived their legitimacy from a claim to possess an exclusive connection to the "Truth". In imperial China, truth was based on a Confucian and Daoist cosmology, where in the case of the Communist Party, the truth is represented by Marxist-Leninism and historical materialism. Falun Gong challenged the Marxist-Leninism paradigm, reviving an understanding based on more traditionally Buddhist or Daoist conceptions.
David Ownby, "China's War Against Itself". New York Times, 15 February 2001.
[Falun Gong's] evocation of a different vision of Chinese tradition and its contemporary value is now so threatening to the state and party because it denies them the sole right to define the meaning of Chinese nationalism, and perhaps of Chineseness."
David Ownby, "China's War Against Itself". New York Times, 15 February 2001.
[Falun Gong's] evocation of a different vision of Chinese tradition and its contemporary value is now so threatening to the state and party because it denies them the sole right to define the meaning of Chinese nationalism, and perhaps of Chineseness."
Michael J. Greenlee（University of Idaho College of Law）. A King Who Devours His People: Jiang Zemin and the Falun Gong Crackdown: A Bibliography34 (2). International Journal of Legal Information]: 561–562. 2006 [2012-12-25]. （原始内容存档于2012-06-16）. In all, more than 3,000 public security agents investigated Falun Gong activities in China and abroad prior to the official ban on July 22, 1999
Daniel B. Wright. The Promise of Revolution: Stories of Fulfillment and Struggle in China's Hinterland. Rowman & Littlefield. 2003: 156 [26 December 2012]. ISBN 978-0-7425-1916-9. outlawed on July 22, 1999, China Central Television's thirty-minute evening news program aired practically nothing but anti-Falun Gong rhetoric in which academics, former followers, and ordinary citizens spoke about how the cult cheats its followers, separates families, damages health, and hurt social stability. The government operation has been a study in all -out demonization. In the first seven days after the campaign began, Chinese authorities rounded up at least 5,000 Falun Gong members, ransacking homes and confiscating printed materials. Another 1200 government officials were detained and required to study Communist Party documents and to renounce any allegiance to the movement.
Leeshai Lemish, Media and New Religious Movements: The Case of Falun Gong, A paper presented at The 2009 CESNUR Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, 11–13 June 2009
Robin J. Munro, "Judicial Psychiatry in China and its Political Abuses", Columbia Journal of Asian Law, Columbia University, Volume 14, Number 1, Fall 2000, p 114
Human Rights Watch, "We Could Disappear at Any Time （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）," 7 December 2005. Quote: "Several petitioners reported that the longest sentences and worst treatment were meted out to members of the banned meditation group, Falungong, many of whom also petition in Beijing. Kang reported that of the roughly one thousand detainees in her labor camp in Jilin, most were Falungong practitioners. The government's campaign against the group has been so thorough that even long-time Chinese activists are afraid to say the group's name aloud..."
Chinese Human Rights Defenders,Re-education through Labor Abuses Continue Unabated: Overhaul Long Overdue（页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）, 4 February 2009. Quote: "More than half of our 13 interviewees remarked on the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in RTL camps . They said Falun Gong practitioners make up one of the largest groups of detainees in the camp, and that they are often persecuted because of their faith...'Of all the detainees, the Falun Gong practitioners were the largest group'".
US Department of State, 2008 Country Report on Human Rights: China (includes Hong Kong and Macao) （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）, Oct 2008. Quote: "Some foreign observers estimated that at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in the country's reeducation-through-labor camps were Falun Gong adherents. Falun Gong sources overseas placed the number even higher."
Congressional Executive Commission on China, Annual Report 2008 （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）, 31 October 2008. Quote: "International observers believe that Falun Gong practitioners constitute a large percentage—some say as many as half—of the total number of Chinese imprisoned in RTL camps. Falun Gong sources report that at least 200,000 practitioners are being held in RTL and other forms of detention."
Rachel Stark. Halloween decorations carry haunting message of forced labor. oregonlive. 2012-12-23 [2012-12-23]. （原始内容存档于2019-01-31） （英语）. That's when Keith found it. Scribbled onto paper and folded into eighths, the letter was tucked between two Styrofoam headstones. Sir:The letter describes conditions at a forced labor camp in China.If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.The graveyard kit, the letter read, was made in unit 8, department 2 of the Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang, China.Chinese characters broke up choppy English sentences.People who work here have to work 15 hours a day without Saturday, Sunday break and any holidays. Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. Nearly no payment (10 yuan/1 month).Ten yuan is equivalent to $1.61.People who work here, suffer punishment 1-3 years averagely, but without Court Sentence (unlaw punishment). Many of them are Falun Gong practitioners, who are totally innocent people only because they have different believe to CCPG. They often suffer more punishment than others.The letter was not signed.
HOUSTON – A member of the Falun Gong sect who was tortured in China before a harrowing escape to the United States was released from a Houston hospital Saturday after treatment for severe burns. Tan Yongjie, who hitchhiked to Houston after escaping to Hong Kong and stowing away aboard a California-bound cargo ship, was admitted to Park Plaza Hospital on July 13 after his wounds opened. "He's had extensive skin graft surgery on his legs," said Jack Xiong, a member of the Houston Falun Gong community, adding that doctors expect Mr. Tan to make a full recovery. Mr. Tan returned to the Star of Hope homeless shelter, where he was living before his admission to the hospital. Mr. Xiong was hopeful the estimated 100 to 200 local Falun Gong members could help Mr. Tan. Through translators, Mr. Tan said his story began as a factory worker in Baoan, Guangdong Province, where he began practicing Falun Gong since June 1998. China banned the sect in 1999, and Mr. Tan said he was detained 15 days four different times, each time refusing to renounce his beliefs. He said he was arrested April 26 for distributing fliers calling for an end to government persecution of Falun Gong members. He said he was beaten, then sent without trial to a labor camp in Baluo County. After repeated torture sessions, Mr. Tan said, he was hung by handcuffs for more than five hours. On June 2, Mr. Tan said he was tied to a post and burned about his legs 13 times with a red-hot iron rod, urging him to give up Falun Gong. Mr. Tan escaped the camp soon after and fled to Hong Kong, where he sneaked aboard a cargo ship headed to Long Beach, Calif. After two weeks of living in a crate at sea, Mr. Tan said he caught a ride with someone headed to Florida on Interstate 10 and was dropped off in Houston. Houston police directed him to the Star of Hope shelter.
Man Convicted of Spying on Falun Gong in Germany. Before It's News Inc.,. [2012-01-04]. （原始内容存档于2017-12-01）. CELLE, Germany—For the first time a Chinese agent has been convicted of spying on practitioners of Falun Gong... The guilty party, John Zhou, was given a two-year suspended sentence on June 8, along with a hefty fine. Zhou, 55, a Chinese doctor by profession… He began working with Chinese agents over five years ago. The court handed down a suspended sentence of two years in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros (US$21,530), to be paid to the human rights group Amnesty International. Zhou’s desire in 2005 to visit his sick father in China first led to his establishing contact with Tang Wenjuan, head of the Chinese Embassy’s Consular Section in Berlin and then to his career as a spy, according to court documents. Tang is actually a member of the Ministry of State Security, a domestic spy agency, according to a May 2010 piece in Der Spiegel... Months later, in March 2006, Zhou was introduced to three agents of the “610 Office” at a hotel in downtown Berlin. The 610 Office is an extralegal, secret task force with sweeping powers set up by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to coordinate and carry out the persecution of Falun Gong. It also conducts espionage and harassment against Falun Gong practitioners abroad, attempting to reduce the influence of the group’s vocal criticism of human rights abuses against Falun Gong adherents in China. Falun Gong is a Chinese meditation practice with five meditative exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance; it has been the target of a vast CCP-led persecution in China since 1999, and soon after also became an important target of the Chinese regime’s overseas espionage efforts. Chen Yonglin was the former consul for political affairs in China’s Sydney, Australia, and was tasked with handling the Falun Gong issue. After defecting in June 2005, he testified before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, “The war against Falun Gong is one of the main tasks of the Chinese mission overseas.” Chen listed several examples of how the Sydney consulate attempted to interfere with and restrict Falun Gong practitioners, including strictly “monitoring” Falun Gong activities.
A Question of Influence. Maclean's. [2012-01-04]. （原始内容存档于2019-05-02）. Far from admonishing the Epoch Times for its characterization of Chau as a stooge for Beijing, Justice Catherine Mandeville of the Quebec Superior Court all but confirmed the thesis, highlighting Chau’s close ties with Beijing’s propaganda apparatus, along with evidence suggesting his paper had gotten money from the Chinese government. Chau’s self-stated belief that the overseas Chinese press is duty-bound to “maintain a positive image of the motherland”—part of a impassioned speech he delivered at a state-sponsored media conference in Shanghai—didn’t help. The Epoch Times story, wrote Mandeville, “constitutes an opinion which is drawn from a factual premise.”
It was the end of 1999, and he had returned from China after almost a year in Dublin studying on a scholarship at Trinity College. A top-grade computer science student, he was looking forward to spending time with his parents and three brothers, all of whom had carved a career out of computing.
While in Dublin, Ming had been dismayed to hear that the Chinese government had begun persecuting members of the spiritual Falun Gong movement, of which he was a follower. Shortly after returning to China, he went to his local government appeals office in order to register his opposition to the persecution. He was arrested on the spot, detained for several days and his passport was confiscated.
I went home to China from Trinity -- and was put in a torture jail for two years. Independent News & Media PLC [INM]. 2009-02-06 [2012-12-29]. （原始内容存档于2011-01-22）. It was an experience that didn't deter him from spreading the Falun Gong message of "truthfulness, compassion and tolerance". But his luck soon ran out. At a peaceful rally in Beijing in early 2000, he was one of several arrested. And so began two years of internment in a 'labour camp' where torture was a frequent occurrence. Today, Ming, a 38-year-old Dublin-based web designer, recalls the nightmare of the Chinese justice system for many arrested Falun Gong followers. "They used electric batons to shock us," he says. "They would tie me to a bed-board when giving me the electric shocks. It was incredibly painful -- the skin would go red immediately and the following day it would be black. Fear of the shocks was almost as bad as the shocks themselves." His quiet, softly spoken voice only serves to heighten the trauma that he describes. He was subjected to regular bouts of sleep deprivation. "The other inmates would be told not to let me sleep," he says. "It was terrible -- I thought I was losing my mind. And that's what they wanted, of course." And there was worse to come in the Tuanhe 'Re-education through labour' Camp in Beijing. "They ordered inmates who were there for other crimes to beat me up. They were given special benefits for carrying out the beatings -- sometimes they were released early as a result. Once I was beaten so badly I couldn't walk for two weeks." Nor was he able to use the toilet. "My legs were so badly beaten I couldn't squat. It was an evil place." The physical scars eventually disappeared, but the psychological wounds remain. He looks visibly distressed when recalling the beatings that he was frequently subjected to in captivity. 'My life is happy now, but I cannot forget. And thinking about what happened to me makes me realise that at this very moment there are thousands of Falun Gong followers who are experiencing the same sort of torture in prisons throughout China.
Elisabeth Rosenthal. China Admits Banned Sect Is Continuing Its Protest. New York Times. Apr 21, 2000 [2023-02-20]. （原始内容存档于2023-02-20）. July 22, 1999, Falun Gong members have been causing trouble on and around Tiananmen Square in Central Beijing nearly every day.
Johnson, Ian. Defiant Falun Dafa Members Converge on Tiananmen. The Wall Street Journal. Pulitzer.org: 21. 25 April 2000 [2015-02-18]. （原始内容存档于2021-03-09）. ELDERLY MEN WERE PUNCHED. Women with children were fiercely knocked to the ground, and more than a dozen people were arrested after attempting to sit in a circle and meditate under the watchful gaze of a huge portrait of Chairman Mao. An all-day series of cat-and-mouse skirmishes spilled across Tiananmen Square in Beijing on April 25, 2000 - the one-year anniversary of huge protests by the since-outlawed group Falun Gong. ...Tiananmen Square was the scene of nearly constant protest throughout the day. In small clusters, teams would race into the center of the square, pulling out a hidden banner before police converged. This reporter watched as one man was knocked to the ground and hustled away in seconds. The series of protests, clearly organized in advance, reiterated what many have been murmuring for months in official circles: Beijing's hard-headed approach is not winning the year-long battle with the pesky Falun Gong. Beijing would desperately like to deliver a knockout blow to the group...The Falun Gong was outlawed last July. Yet, despite mass arrests, long sentences in labor camps administered without trial, and other harsh measures that have earned China fresh-new condemnation by human rights groups worldwide...- Beijing has been unable to crush the Falun Gong. That has been the hope of the ruling party in Beijing, which has endured months of almost daily protests in the square. Hardly a day goes by without new reports of protests, arrests and condemnation of the group. Most protests have been small in recent weeks. A few members of the group would appear and try to unfurl a banner before being spirited away by secret police. But Tuesday's confrontations were seen as something of a showdown. All week, the state-run press unleashed a barrage of condemnation rare even for the Chinese government. The official China Daily ran editorials every day last week, linking the Falun Gong to all of China's perceived enemies, from human-rights groups at the United Nations to arch-enemy, the Dalai Lama. ...Oddly enough, the crackdown was played out in full view of foreign tourists, who continued to flock to Tiananmen Square and nearby tourist attractions. Among them were a British couple who said they noticed big crowds on the square, but nothing unusual. Tom, a visitor from North Carolina, said many in his group were worried about security on the square during the anniversary. "But I see it as an opportunity," he said, "an opportunity to witness history." Rolf, from Germany, was also aware of his witness status. "I saw the police, pulling people, taking them away," he said. "It was horrible." If a message had been sent on the anniversary of the Falun Gong's first protest, Rolf said he would happily convey it. However, it wasn't quite the message Beijing wants the world to hear. "I'll tell people what I saw today on Tiananmen," he said. Then, before getting in his mini-bus, he said: "This is terrible. This is democracy in China."
Chinese authorities have detained about 40 Western members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement after a brief protest in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Witnesses said the demonstrators threw the square into chaos for about 15 minutes as they unfurled a yellow banner and shouted slogans "Falun Gong is good!"" ...The trouble caused by these Falun Gong members was intended to prevent the Chinese people from celebrating" the lunar New Year, The Associated Press quoted a statement from Beijing police as saying. The agency says it is highly unusual for Chinese police to issue a statement following a protest and may be a sign they are trying to limit damage before next week's visit to Beijing by U.S. President George W. Bush. Witnesses to Thursday's brief protest reported seeing demonstrators dash across the vast plaza of Tiananmen Square screaming slogans as hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes police officers chased after them. Police also tackled some protesters to the ground, kicking and punching some, before wrestling them into police vans. Chinese tourists sightseeing in Beijing for the Lunar New Year holidays crowded round to watch the incident -- the second demonstration this week by Western Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square. On Tuesday, China expelled Canadian Jason Loftus and American Levi Browde after they launched a Lunar New Year protest in the square.
They were an odd trio, Great Sea, Big Truck, and Liang, and initially they had no plans, no journey to the West. Instead, larger events would conspire to bind them together on their personal pilgrimage. From 2000 to 2001, practitioners—perhaps 150,000 or more—had gone to Tiananmen Square to protest the Falun Gong ban. It hadn’t been effective; they wafted in about 500 a day, gusting up to 4,000 or so on special occasions. Even then, they unfurled their yellow banners according to some internal conscience-clock rather than a preconceived strategy and were easy pickings for the security forces. But Tiananmen had given practitioners a focal point, a commonly respected means of sincere expression that dated back to imperial China. Indeed, the Chinese public had never been persuaded by the party’s campaign. The more strident media reports on Falun Gong—a dangerous cult, Li Hongzhi is like Hitler, participants will kill themselves or their parents—simply led most Chinese to silently wonder: Why is the party so deeply threatened? Why don’t they leave those people alone? On the afternoon of January 23, 2001, five protesters, including a mother and a daughter, walked onto Tiananmen, doused their bodies with gasoline, and set themselves on fire. The footage played for weeks, and public disgust was real. Any remaining inhibitions about fair treatment for incarcerated practitioners were replaced by death quotas and mass disappearances to military hospitals. Falun Gong was finally being erased. Incarcerated in Changchun’s Chaoyang Gou prison, Liang’s group discussed the gaping holes in the immolation story: Crucially, Falun Gong teachings decried suicide. Plus there were rumors that CNN hadn’t provided the footage as the authorities claimed. Brushing aside the strange camera angles and inexplicable police behavior, Great Sea recalled a story translated from the Washington Post: A reporter had traveled to the burning mother’s home town only to discover the self-immolator was not a practitioner, but a paid nightclub dancer, that is, a prostitute. They had all used “truth-clarification” techniques: Liang liked tapes and remote loudspeakers, Big Truck swore by his mountains of pamphlets, Great Sea favored slogan-balloons. All seemed faintly ridiculous now. Yet an article on “broadcast interruption” in Minghui had caught Liang’s eye while in detention. The article spoke of the theoretical possibility of intercepting television transmissions by climbing up telephone poles, splicing into wires, and connecting DVD players. No specifics, but Great Sea’s experience in radiology gave him some purchase on the electronics, while Big Truck worked on getting back into shape. ... The Falun Gong broadcast had played on eight channels for 50 minutes, garnering an audience of over one million people, the ratings building as word spread, people calling each other, saying they should turn on their TV immediately. In some neighborhoods, local party officials grew desperate and cut the power, plunging streets into darkness. In others, such as those near Cultural Square, people spilled into the streets to celebrate. The ban is over! Falun Gong is rehabilitated! A few practitioners emerged from factories and hideouts, openly handing out literature. Neighbors, children, random strangers, even the old ladies with the red armbands approached them, everyone talking at once, bubbling over, laughing, slapping them playfully, congratulating them. A few suspected it had not been a government broadcast, but still they smiled broadly and whispered: How did you do it? You Falun Gong are so amazing! And it was almost beginning to seem as if they had been rehabilitated after all, and the euphoria and laughter did not cease, not even at 10 p.m., when the first practitioner got a phone call from a military friend saying they had orders to round up Falun Gong. ... It’s unclear whether Jiang Zemin actually gave an order to “kill [Falun Gong] without mercy.” Yet there is far less debate over whether the Jilin City head of the 6-10 Office, the agency created to eliminate Falun Gong, said: “This time we will tear their skin off.” It is a fact that Changchun and Jilin City officials were warned that they would lose their jobs if another hijacking occurred, plainclothes police were mobilized to stand by television transmission poles throughout Changchun, Western television reporters were ordered not to film any Chinese television broadcasts, and the police rounded up between 2,000 and 5,000 Changchun practitioners while Lei was tied to the iron chair.
