International support grows for the persecuted spiritual movement, notwithstanding the fake news spread by the CCP.
by Marco Respinti
It is an unprecedented move, 606 lawmakers from 30 countries issued a joint statement calling on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately stop the “systematic and brutal campaign to ‘eradicate’ the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong.” Signatories (whose complete list is available) are from Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Additionally, over 20 U.S. parliamentarians and other officials have published separate personal statements with similar content. All documents were released on the anniversary of the beginning, 21 years ago, of the ferocious CCP persecution against Falun Gong, which started July 20, 1999.
On that day, Jiang Zemin, at the time Secretary General of the CCP, launched a campaign to repress Falun Gong practitioners in all possible ways. Eventually, they became the preferred target of organ harvesting, the staggering practice of taking organs from the body of prisoners of conscience to feed an enormous and lucrative black market of transplants. The systematic CCP policy in this field has been documented and denounced over the years by such authoritative specialists as Mr. David Kilgour, an MP, and Dr. David Matas, a human rights lawyer, both Canadian, and Dr. Torsten Trey, a well-known medical doctor, and bodies like DAFOH, or Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, The International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China and lately the “China Tribunal.” Although it denies it, the Beijing government is still implementing this policy. It is still a flourishing industry, now extended to other religious groups such as Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang (that they prefer to call East Turkestan) as well as members of The Church of Almighty God.
One of the most incredible aspects of this sad story is that the only fault of Falun Gong practitioners is to practice a spiritual path and to grow in number. Both statements contradict the Marxist dogmas that religion and spirituality in a Communist society are doomed to disappear and die.
The joint international statement by the 606 parliamentarians acknowledges past resolutions from the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress condemning the persecution of Falun Gong, while also referring to the final judgement issued in spring by the China Tribunal.
China will probably dismiss all this as “foreign interference.”
Further images and video of the Rome protest
Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), author, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.
