When Falun Gong books became bestsellers in 1996, they were banned; When state media estimated that 70 million people practiced Falun Gong, which was more than the number of members of the Chinese Communist Party at that time, the media was overwhelmed by a wave of lies about Falun Gong, and state security agencies began to spy on practitioners and harass them in every possible way.
It is in response to these violations by the authorities of the Constitution of their country that practitioners gathered in Beijing in April 1999.
A Washington Post article published in 1999 states that “Jiang single-handedly decided that Falun Gong “must be destroyed” (article on English). Journalists and inside sources noted Jiang's "envy" of Falun Gong and his obsession with "eradicating" the practice.
China analyst Willy Lam believes that by organizing a national campaign, Jiang wanted to "rig" the government for himself, while at the same time destroying a group he considered a threat to his power.
In addition, the difference between the ideology of the atheistic Communist Party and the ideology of the spiritual practice of Falun Gong, which is based on the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, played a role.
Finally, as noted in the book Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the persecution of Falun Gong is the latest in a series of brutal campaigns used by the Party to remind the population that the people are under its constant control.
Mao Zedong once said that in China a cultural revolution should be carried out every seven or eight years. Indeed, since 1950, not a decade has passed without the state carrying out some brutal campaign aimed at suppressing the masses. From the suppression of counter-revolutionaries, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the brutal suppression, and the persecution of Falun Gong, the Party killed between 60 and 80 million Chinese citizens.
- The Chinese Communist Party is not stupid - it is unlikely that it would kill innocent people like that?
Hitler is not stupid - but he killed 6 million Jews. Why did the Khmer Rouge kill one out of every four Cambodians? If Tibetan monks They only want to worship and meditate piously, why are they still tortured and killed in Chinese gulags? If teenage girls in Darfur did nothing wrong, why were they raped? Mladic was not a fool, why did he want to kill all the Muslim men in Srebrenica?
It is possible to look at things from the point of view of the perpetrators and thus understand their economic and political motivation behind the massacres. However, we believe that to some extent there is an evil involved that is difficult to come to terms with - how can such things be done to a person?
On the other hand, many Chinese either take part in this campaign or turn a blind eye to it precisely because they intuitively know what evil the Communist Party can commit. After carrying out public executions, organizing, cannibalism and massacres - in total, 60 to 80 million relatives of these people died during the CCP's rule - the evil committed against Falun Gong was already all too well known.
- If Falun Gong is good, why was it banned? Why don't they do this to other groups?
Firstly, many other groups have also been banned and are being persecuted. Christians who refuse to attend Party-controlled churches, Tibetan Buddhists and, of course, democrats and other human rights activists are all persecuted in China, in some cases the persecution lasts for decades. There are also qigong movements that are prohibited, and you will no longer see their followers performing exercises in Chinese parks.
There is no need to look for those who are persecuted more than others. These groups are subject to gross abuses, resulting in tragedy for countless relatives of these people. Moreover, the aggressor against these groups is the same person.
If asked how the persecution of Falun Gong is different from the persecution of other groups today, the answer can be that the difference is as follows:
In terms of the number of followers, Falun Gong was the most large group in society, not counting the Communist Party. According to the calculations of the Chinese government itself in the late 90s. At least 70 million people engaged in this practice, reflecting the sheer number of people affected by the persecution. The US State Department notes that Falun Gong practitioners reportedly make up about half of all prisoners in forced labor camps in China. Based on reports from survivors of these camps, it can be concluded that in some cases, about 90% of the prisoners are Falun Gong practitioners. In the winter of 2007, a huge number of additional Falun Gong practitioners were placed in new cells.
Jiang Zemin and the Communist Party began a thorough campaign to destroy Falun Gong. IN early period persecution, the Chinese typically responded to the campaign as Maoist, evocative, and which they believed was a thing of the past. In this regard, Falun Gong, like groups during the Cultural Revolution, has become a target for repression: the practice and followers are attacked by intense propaganda, followed by door-to-door searches for followers, beaten, publicly shamed, and subjected to torture for which no one is held accountable. Like many groups in the 1960s, Falun Gong has been subject to financial ruin and mass exile in forced labor camps on a scale not seen since Mao's death in 1976.
- How did the persecution begin?
The persecution officially began at 3:00 pm on July 22, 1999, when China Central Television (CCTV) began broadcasting programs about the new ban with anti-Falun Gong propaganda. Falun Gong followers who were on their way to petition the government in defense of the practice at the time were rounded up, placed on buses, and detained in stadiums and conference halls. Immediately after this, Falun Gong book burnings were organized and show trials were held.
Two days before the nationwide crackdown was announced, Falun Gong coordinators, who were regarded as the main ones, were arrested at night at their home.
More than a month before the start of the persecution, on June 10, Jiang Zemin created the 610 Office to destroy Falun Gong. Two months earlier, about 20 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested and beaten for peacefully protesting in the form of sitting meditation in front of a magazine that had slandered Falun Gong. This arrest led to the famous event at the walls of Zhongnanhai, where thousands of practitioners gathered there. During 1998, Falun Gong practitioners meditating in parks were closely monitored and interrogated by security forces.
The beginning of the persecution can be seen as early as 1996, when the first article criticizing Falun Gong appeared in the Chinese newspaper Guangming Daily, marking the beginning of attacks on Falun Gong in state media.
Didn't Falun Gong followers surround Zhongnanhai? Didn't this provoke the Chinese government?
On April 25, 1999, approximately 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside the Zhongnanhai government headquarters in Beijing. This meeting was legal, and the people gathered intended to appeal to the nearby State Appeals Office, not to the government house.
The right to appeal against abuses committed in China is guaranteed by the Constitution. In fact, on the eve of these events, authorities in the city of Tianjin, located near Beijing (where Falun Gong practitioners were arrested and beaten), advised Falun Gong practitioners to submit a petition directly in Beijing.
Practitioners gathered in response to the government's persecution that had already begun. IN in this case this was the result of a 3-year media attack on Falun Gong, the beating of 45 Falun Gong supporters in the city of Tianjin, and the banning of Falun Gong books.
This gathering of people was completely peaceful. Also, not a single passage or passage was blocked; movement was free.
In fact, it could have led to a completely different result. That day, Zhu Rongji, then the prime minister, met with Falun Gong representatives and promised to resolve their problems. The practitioners who were detained in Tianjin were released. However, a few hours later, when everyone had already left, Jiang Zemin intervened and completely changed the policy. He accused practitioners of keeping Zhongnanhai under "siege" and said that if Falun Gong was not destroyed, it would be a disgrace to the party and show its weakness.
- It seems that Falun Gong has changed its nature and has now become highest degree politicized?
First, despite the fact that Falun Gong followers protest, file lawsuits against Chinese officials, and convince the Chinese to leave the Communist Party, they remain persistently disinterested in gaining power.
Falun Gong's founder and practitioners in China and abroad have constantly made it clear that they do not want to gain power, they only want to stop the persecution. Many years have passed and the Communist Party has not changed its genocidal policy towards Falun Gong, so the only apparent possible way to stop the persecution is to destroy the Communist Party.
Secondly, such activities by Falun Gong practitioners were not carried out in any form before the persecution began. All Falun Gong practitioners did before the suppression began was to meditate and read Falun Gong literature in a group or at home and introduce other people to the practice.
Lastly, even if Falun Gong were involved in politics, what's wrong with that? In any free society this clearly cannot be grounds for persecution. Only in a state with an authoritarian communist party regime, a regime that does not tolerate any ideology different from it, is it considered a crime to engage in politics.
- In what form does persecution take place?
In China, the Communist Party uses all available methods to force people to abandon their faith through intimidation and pressure. Falun Gong followers are denied education, fired from their jobs, and deprived of custody of their children; they are publicly humiliated, kidnapped and sexually abused in police stations. Those who expose the abuses they suffered in custody are sent to prison for "divulging state secrets."
All practitioners are denied legal representation, and some are sentenced to up to 18 years in prison simply for their faith. Hundreds of thousands were reportedly sent to forced labor camps ( Chinese system GULAG) without trial or investigation. Lots of healthy ones normal people were sent to psychiatric hospitals, where they were forcibly injected with drugs that destroy the nervous system.
Currently, the Center has confirmed 3,415 deaths of Falun Gong adherents as a result of the persecution (it is believed that there are many more); Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned in prisons and forced labor camps. Independent experts also confirmed the fact that it was being sold to imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners.
Domination in one political party and religion alone never leads to good. Either the film will not be allowed to screen, or another innocent cultural figure will be locked up. From latest news- rumors about a sect falun gong. Why was it banned in Russia and is it even true?
What is Falun Gong?
The new belief has its origins in the qigong movement. The latter is a set of practices that incorporate the achievements of Buddhist monks, Taoist warriors and Confucian sages. The communists of China in the mid-20th century saw in qigong an opportunity to improve the level of health of the nation, cheaply and cheerfully. The practice was cleared of the metaphysical component and included in traditional Chinese medicine.
In 1992, one of the followers of qigong, Li Hongzhi, decided to slightly modify the teaching. This is how he founded the Falun Gong movement, main ideas which were:
- The universe is based on three tenets: truthfulness, compassion and patience. All a person’s energies should be directed toward cultivating these virtues;
- The path to enlightenment lies through the renunciation of things, desires and attachments;
- Every person has positive energy ( yeah), and negative ( de). They are generated, respectively, through the performance of good and shameful deeds;
- Absolutely every person is kind by nature. But some of us have descended into the realm of delusion and suffering due to selfishness. To soar upward, you need to return to the “true Self.”
These provisions found a lively response in the hearts huge amount people. As of 1999, the number of Li Hongzhi's supporters was approximately 70 million.
Physical exercises practiced
The teaching of the Wheel of Dharma is not limited to a serious foundation of moral philosophy. His An integral part is a set of constant exercises:
- « Buddha with a thousand arms outstretched" - designed to allow the flow vital energy qi passed through the body and opened the meridians;
- « Standing position" - includes four static poses in which a person holds an invisible wheel in his hands. According to the founder of the teaching, this will help increase wisdom, vitality and sensitivity to the influence of divine forces;
- « Passage of cosmic opposites" A set of three movements that aims to expel from the body negative energy and absorb the positive;
- « Space orbit» - ensuring free circulation qi throughout the entire volume of the body;
- « Strengthening supernatural abilities"- performed in the lotus position for the longest possible period of time.
Exercises are carried out both in groups and individually. The intensity and timing are not important and are determined by the specific needs of the participant.
Persecution by the PRC authorities
In 1992-1996, the number of followers of the teaching in the Middle Kingdom increased sharply. Some of them began to occupy government positions. The Communist Party saw this as a threat to its boundless ideological dominance.
The following measures were taken in response to the challenge:
- In 1999, it was stated that the organization “is engaged in illegal activities, promotes superstitions and misconceptions, and poses a threat to social stability”;
- In the same year for all largest means mass media a campaign was launched to discredit the movement;
- According to the US Congress, hundreds of thousands of Li Hongzhi's followers were detained without trial. Enhanced interrogation methods were used against them, including torture, psychological violence and forced labor;
- Repression continues to this day. Thus, according to a report by Amnesty International, in the mid-2010s, in some camps the proportion of those practicing “false religion” reached 100%.
Accusations of Chinese authorities of crimes against humanity
Wrongful imprisonment of citizens is the mildest thing the Chinese Communist Party is accused of. In 2006, the whole world was shocked by the terrible news that the enterprising authorities of the Celestial Empire were deliberately putting repressed people to death for the sake of trading in their organs:
- The first investigation was initiated in 2006 by Foreign Affairs Canada;
- During the study of the case materials, it was discovered that in China the waiting period for organs for transplantation is 7-14 days (in developed countries- on average 2-3 years);
- The frequency of transplant operations has increased dramatically since 1999. According to this indicator, China ranks second in the world, although the institution of voluntary donation is virtually absent;
- In 2008, the issue of organ removal from victims of political repression was raised at the UN. But then the representatives of the Celestial Empire avoided answering;
- In 2014, journalist Ethan Gutman published his own investigation, in which he claimed that 64,000 were executed for transplant purposes;
- A 2016 report by human rights activist David Kilgour put the figure at 200,000 deaths. The scale of the crimes forced the world media to talk about genocide.
Restrictions on activities in Russia
Organizations also put up obstacles on the territory Russian Federation. There is no formal ban on activities, but certain problems arise with local administrations.
As claims from the latter, the following are presented:
- Antisocial behavior of sect supporters. The argument is a fabricated video of a self-immolation that allegedly took place in 2001;
- Another argument that is of paramount importance today is rumors of community funding from abroad. The China-born movement's alleged sponsors live in the United States, according to critics;
- Participation in an organization is harmful and detrimental to mental health material well-being. Allegedly, the leaders extort money from ordinary members.
However, among human rights activists, all these arguments are met with a barrage of criticism. Critical thinkers believe that real reasons the ban on Falun Gong in our country is more mundane:
- Deepening trade and economic cooperation with the Middle Kingdom;
- The growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. She does not tolerate competitors in the spiritual field.
This movement professes only the ideals of goodness and love for one's neighbor. It is popular all over the world and preaches compassion even towards its persecutors. But in China, everything that has the slightest connection with the Falun Gong teachings is repressed. Why was this movement banned? In Russia they cannot yet find an answer.
Video: How the Falun Gong movement is being oppressed
In this video, correspondent Anna Rodionova will tell you how adherents of this practice ask to stop the repression directed against them:
The swastika is a common Buddhist symbol of Falun Gu'n (Chinese: 法輪功, simplified 法轮功, pinyin Fǎlún Gōng, lit. meaning "practice of the Wheel of Law") or Falun Dafa (Chinese: 法輪大法, simplified: 法轮大法 , pinyin Fǎlún dàfǎ, literally means “Great Law of the Wheel of Law”) is a Chinese organization whose adherents call it “the school of self-improvement of soul and life,” which became widely known in the early 1990s in China. Falun Gong is said to teach meditation techniques through exercises to improve physical health and moral and spiritual purity. Falun Gong is also called Falun Dafa (“The Great Law of Falun”). The school has millions of followers in almost all countries.
Falun Gong followers claim that they strive to follow truth, kindness, and patience in their daily lives.
Critics of the Falun Gong teachings believe that hatred is preached against any individual or organization that criticizes the leader - Li Hongzhi, as well as refusal of medical care and taking pharmaceuticals, which supposedly led to countless cases of death and spiritual insanity of followers. In critical literature the organization is called a sect.
Founder of Falun Gong
The founder of Falun Gong is Li Hongzhi. In 1992, he introduced Falun Gong at the Oriental Health Exhibition in Beijing. In 1993, Falun Gong also participated in this exhibition, where it was awarded three highest awards At the same time, this method of practice in China began to be called Golden Falun Gong - for its effectiveness in terms of healing the body. Soon the Falun Gong way of practicing became popular throughout China. Li Hongzhi graduated from the main book of the educational system, Zhuan Falun, in 1994. In addition to describing the principles of Falun Gong, the book touched on topics of development, the meaning of place and time, and the mysteries of the Universe.
Falun Gong practitioners demonstrate exercisesFalun Gong practitioners do exercises outdoors designed to promote health. Principles this method practices in in full presented in Zhuan Falun and other books, also on video and audio cassettes, and on websites.
Suppression of Falun Gong in China
In 1999, the Chinese government stripped Falun Gong of its legal status and legal protection and banned its publication. In 1996, Li left China to give Falun Gong lectures in Europe, Asia and Australia. In 1998 he moved to New York. Falun Gong practitioners in China, under orders from above, began to be persecuted by the police. On April 25, 1999, approximately 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners held a daylong peaceful demonstration outside the Central Appeals Office.
The government responded on July 22, 1999, by completely banning Falun Gong in China. It also tried to issue an international arrest warrant for Li Hongzhi on charges of developing a “sinister cult” that spreads superstitions to deceive people. As a matter of political judgment, the warrant was not taken into account by the United States government and the international police organization Interpol. Falun Gong followers around the world are taking the initiative to explain the truth about the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party.
Falun Gong practitioners themselves claim that this teaching is neither a religion nor a cult, and has nothing to do with politics. They say that followers should not leave material property, work or family life. The goal of the practice is to gradually get rid of selfish desires.
Falun Gong
The Falun Gong movement (practice of the wheel of law) was founded by retired military officer Li Hongzhi in 1992. It combines elements of Buddhism, Taoism and the classical healing practice of qigong.
The movement gained enormous popularity. According to some estimates, up to 70 million people took part in it in China. Chinese immigrants to the United States also became interested in the new teaching. Their number is believed to be around 8 million.
The Chinese authorities were frightened by the unusual popularity of the religious movement and began to fight it. Falun Gong leaders brought thousands of their own followers to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, demanding official recognition of the movement. But this demonstration significant number adherents led to the opposite result. The movement was banned in July 1999.
Video: Qigong exercises “Falun Dafa Falun Gong”
Since then, its activists have occasionally held public protests, but their participants have been arrested. At the end of 2000, several alleged Falun Gong adherents committed self-immolation in Tiananmen Square. But the organization’s management considered this to be the result of a police provocation and refused to admit that the dead belonged to the movement.
Falun Gong favorites have repeatedly emphasized that it is not a religion, but a spiritual practice. Li Hongzhi, for example, states that members of the movement can belong to any religion. In this he is similar to neo-Hindu gurus who say that the practice of Indian yoga is compatible not only with Hinduism, but also with other religions. But the syncretic teaching that frames the practice of Falun Gong contains Buddhist and Taoist postulates.
The movement has no fixed membership and no clergy. Its participants emphasize that they are not so much an organization as a group of like-minded people, united on a volunteer basis. This frightened the Chinese authorities, who do not like amateur activities, especially in the sphere of religion.
Lishai Lemish looks at the history and reveals the reasons why the Chinese Communist Party is pursuing a campaign of persecution of Falun Gong
"If Falun Gong is good, then why is the Chinese government so afraid of it?" After nine years of persecution, this issue remains valid. Here I will try to answer it.
In the 80s Every day at dawn, an estimated 200 million Chinese filled parks in China to perform gentle movement exercises known as a form of qigong. In 1992, Master Li Hongzhi began transmitting Falun Gong as a regular Qigong practice. However, Master Li placed the main emphasis not on healing the body and developing supernatural abilities, but on self-improvement to achieve spiritual perfection.
Falun Gong gained enormous popularity almost instantly. Master Li traveled all over China, passed on the practice, and talked about its principles. Information about Falun Gong spread by word of mouth, and soon [Falun Gong practitioners] could be found in thousands of parks. The Chinese consulate in Paris invited Master Li to teach the practice at its premises, and official data showed that Falun Gong had saved the government millions in medical costs.
Rapidly spreading until July 1999, Falun Gong suddenly became the number one socially dangerous element in the opinion of the communist government. Practitioners are sent to "re-education labor camps" where they are starved, beaten, and tortured with electric batons. By 2008, more than 3,000 cases of practitioners' deaths due to government persecution had been reported. Very strong evidence suggests that many more practitioners have become unwilling donors of kidneys, livers and hearts. We do not know the actual number of these victims.
Why does this cruel persecution occur?
Unconvincing explanations
Faced with international criticism and domestic sympathy for Falun Gong, China's ruling Communist Party began to search for rationale for its campaign. She stated that Falun Gong was a threat to society, that it was a superstition-based, well-organized overseas, dangerous group of meditators. State media reported horror stories of mutilations and suicides, but to strangers these cases were not allowed to be investigated. When people somehow manage to thoroughly investigate such cases, they find that it happened to people who do not exist at all, and the crimes were committed by people who have nothing to do with Falun Gong. Human rights organization Human Rights Watch calls such official statements simply “fake.”
Some scholars believe that party leaders feared Falun Gong because it reminded them of past religious uprisings. However, judging only by general impressions, it is impossible to see how bloody these groups were: for example, the often mentioned Taiping Uprising, which resulted in the death of 20 million people. Falun Gong has always been strictly non-violent and has no plans related to insurgency.
One of the latest explanations to denigrate Falun Gong is that on April 25, 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered in the political heartland of Beijing, which frightened the party leaders and caused the persecution to begin.
However, in reality, the peaceful demonstration was a consequence of the previous three-year escalation of the suppression [of Falun Gong]. In fact, this was a direct response to the arrests and beatings of practitioners that took place in nearby Tianjin and the media's smear campaign against Falun Gong.
One leader's opinion
This was the main incident, but it was caused by other reasons. On that day in April, Premier Zhu Rongji received representatives of this group of practitioners and listened to their complaints. Those arrested were released. Practitioners who took part in this incident told me that they were very encouraged by the fact that negotiations had begun between the government and the people.
However, that evening, Chairman Jiang Zemin sharply rejected Zhu's conciliatory position. He branded Falun Gong as a threat to the Party and said that it would be humiliating for the Party if Falun Gong was not destroyed immediately. Indeed, many experts attribute the execution of this campaign to Jiang's obsession with Falun Gong as much as to other factors.
Result of popularity
It appears that Jiang and other party hardliners (some of whom still hold high positions and support the campaign) were afraid of Falun Gong's great popularity among various social strata of society. In northern cities, workers did exercises together in the courtyards of factories before going to the machines. Professors and students meditated on the lawns of Tsinghua University. The wives of party leaders and senior party cadres created their own small group in central Beijing.
This fear of Falun Gong's popularity explains why, just weeks after the 1996 general ledger Falun Gong Zhuan Falun became a bestseller and its publication was banned. And also why, after the government released a report that, according to its estimates, the number of Falun Gong practitioners (70 million people) exceeds the number of party members, special agents began to interfere with the practitioners' exercises.
The robber party-state explanation
For decades the Party has been persecuting various groups: intelligentsia, people involved in the arts, clergy, conservatives, reformists, and for this she organizes various political movements. Some are persecuted because they fall outside party control or have their own ideology. Falun Gong, with its spiritual teachings, sense of community and independent community, falls into this category.
Persecution targets other groups when the party leadership begins to intrigue to align power to itself. It appears that Falun Gong has also become a victim of this situation, since the persecution can be used as an excuse to strengthen the state security apparatus. This provided an opportunity for the party to add fuel to its [state] machine, from the purges of the Cultural Revolution to Internet surveillance.
As torture survivor Zhao Ming told me when we met in Dublin: “The Party machine of persecution already existed—Jiang simply pressed the button.”
Lichen Lemish
One of the reasons why Falun Gong was banned in China was its enormous popularity in the Middle Kingdom at the end of the twentieth century. So it will be better if I first talk about the reasons for its popularity.
Briefly tell the history of Falun Gong, we can say that until the 90s of the twentieth century, Falun Gong was a very small school - the master taught only one student per generation.
But seeing that after cultural revolution, numerous qigong schools have turned into gymnastics and do not fulfill the main task - to provide people with opportunities for spiritual improvement, Master Li Hongzhi decided to open his school to everyone.
If we express the self-improvement principle of Falun Gong in Russian words, then these would be the words: Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. Those. A Falun Gong practitioner should always try to tell the truth, act truthfully, and maintain a calm mind with patience and kindness.
In 1992, the master registered Falun Gong as a regular school of qigong and began giving lectures throughout the country, which were later published in the form of the book Zhuan Falun. By 1999, about 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong throughout China. The specific number was unknown because according to the school's rules, it did not keep lists of people who practice Falun Gong. The school also had neither centralized management nor tuition fees.
The process for new students to join looked like this. A person came to a practice site - usually it was some kind of city park, learned the Falun Gong exercises there and began to practice.
But it was precisely the large number and rapid growth of popularity that became one of the reasons why the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party decided to ban Falun Gong. And then they began to repress the people involved in it.
Illegal ban on Falun Gong
Since the existence of Falun Gong did not violate any laws of the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party could not ban it from legally, and all suppression was carried out along party lines, in the form of “telephone law”. This is when a higher party official simply orders his subordinate to perform illegal actions without leaving written orders.
Thus, despite the fact that the persecution of Falun Gong in China has been going on since 1999, there is not a single known written order from the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to ban Falun Gong. And according to all existing Chinese laws - official There is no ban on Falun Gong in China. We’ll talk about the reasons for the unofficial ban below.
Why is Falun Gong banned in China?
Perhaps the first reason for banning Falun Gong in China is its popularity in the country. After all, the number of people involved in it exceeded the number of members of the Chinese Communist Party.
And from this came the second reason - in China, the Communist Party controls all movements, be it religions or qigong schools. Control is carried out simply - a party official is appointed to the leadership of the school and the entire organization automatically becomes controlled by the party.
But in the case of Falun Gong, which had no centralized leadership, this method did not work. And here we move on to the third reason - in Falun Gong there is no tuition fee, no monetary contributions, and accordingly there is nothing and no one to pay taxes. But the authorities controlling all qigong schools did not want to come to terms with such a “loss.”
It is known that while Falun Gong was not yet “banned” but was already gaining popularity, they approached Master Li with a proposal to introduce tuition fees. But he refused, saying that Falun Gong is for self-improvement, and you cannot take money for it.
But, of course, all this was only indirect reasons, the real reason, and many independent Chinese experts agree on this, was a political adventure by the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin.
By 1999, Jiang did not have sufficient political authority in the party he led. All his predecessors were famous for something, but compared to them he seemed like an ordinary mediocrity.
So he decided to follow the example of Mao Zedong, who, having unleashed repression of dissidents on an unprecedented scale, called the Great Cultural Revolution, achieved absolute power in the country. It was only necessary to find a group of dissidents who could be labeled “enemies of the people.” And why he chose Falun Gong - see the previous three reasons.
Information war
To justify the existence of persecution in modern China, Jiang launched an information war against Falun Gong. The party-controlled media pumped out a ton of negativity, blaming Falun Gong for everything they could think of. This misinformed work continues to this day. Apparently, it serves as a cover for the illegal trade in the organs of Falun Gong practitioners killed in prison.
Why do some people think that Falun Gong is banned in Russia?
The result of this propaganda campaign against Falun Gong was that many websites and even media outlets on the RuNet reprinted materials from Chinese government media. And here’s what’s interesting: in China, the persecution of Falun Gong has been going on secretly for many years, without covering this topic in the media. In fact, on the Chinese Internet, one word “Falun Gong” or “Falun Dafa” is enough for an article or post to social network were blocked.
And Russian sites using Chinese Communist Party propaganda against Falun Gong seem to be ten seconds behind in time extra years. Apparently because of them, some people find this article by searching: why Falun Gong is banned in Russia. I’ll say it especially for them - Falun Gong is not banned in Russia. The main book of Falun Gong, Zhuan Falun, has been banned from distribution because it contains an image of the Buddhist swastika. You can read more about this in the articles:
Let us return to the topic of China.
Illegal trade in organs of disenfranchised people
Since the start of the large-scale persecution of Falun Gong, Chinese prisons and labor camps have been filled with hundreds of thousands of new political prisoners without any rights. The party leadership demanded from the prison authorities their ideological re-education. Which was carried out through torture.
Soon, as a result of such re-education, the first deaths appeared in prisons, whose deaths were recorded as suicides. The bodies were dealt with in the same way as executed criminals - their organs were given to transplant clinics.
Soon, not “random” victims began to die in prisons, but those whose organs were being purchased. This is how Chinese clinics provided a suitable donor organ within 1-2 weeks. (In the USA, for comparison, you need to wait 5-7 years for a donor heart).
When they began to make big money in prisons, and from the deaths of people who posed a problem for the country's leadership, higher authorities willingly turned a blind eye to this.
Rehabilitation of Falun Gong
Most likely, the modern leadership of China would be happy to stop the repression of Falun Gong, but then it will need to be rehabilitated, which means that all officials involved in serious crimes, such as torture, murder and organ trafficking, will have to be punished. Which will put the Communist Party and the state in a bad light.
In addition, the party officials involved in these crimes still occupy high positions in the government and are doing their best to hinder the rehabilitation of Falun Gong. But, judging by the news from China, gradually, the officials who carried out the repression are being put on trial on charges of corruption.
Perhaps Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to quietly deal with the criminals in his party, and then, just as quietly, rehabilitate Falun Gong. But until this happens, the repression continues and people continue to die.