Latest news with #Minghui.org
Epoch Times
30-04-2025
- Epoch Times
2 Sisters Sentenced as CCP Intensifies Big Data Suppression on Falun Gong
Two sisters in southern China have been sentenced to prison for their belief in Falun Gong, amid a broader persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that's increasingly fueled by big data and digital surveillance. According to a clearinghouse for first-hand information about the spiritual practice and the persecution it suffers in its home country, Luo Suling, a 67-year-old resident of Meizhou City in Guangdong Province, was sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined $3,500 after being detained for possessing Falun Gong materials. Her case highlights how the CCP's surveillance apparatus is being used to identify and target practitioners of the spiritual group, also known as Falun Dafa. Luo Suling was detained on July 18, 2024, at Meizhou West Railway Station while preparing to travel by train to Zhuhai, approximately 300 miles away. She was flagged at the security checkpoint as a Falun Gong practitioner, and railway police searched her belongings, finding materials related to the practice. Later that day, police raided her home, seizing additional personal items and Falun Gong books. Her younger sister, Luo Shiya, 61, also a Falun Gong practitioner from Meizhou, was taken from her home on July 30, 2024, by local police and officers from the Guangzhou Railway Police Bureau. Authorities confiscated a Falun Gong book, a multimedia player, and roughly $200 in cash. Related Story 4/15/2025 Luo Shiya was later sentenced to two years in prison and fined more than $4,000 by the Meixian District Court—the same court that sentenced her sister. The specific charges against both women remain unclear. Massive Surveillance The Luo sisters are among the many Falun Gong practitioners under stringent surveillance in China by the communist regime. To control its nationals, the CCP has installed as many as 600 million surveillance cameras across China. According to a Falun Dafa Information Center 2022 special The report highlights how the CCP uses a combination of various technology projects, such as Skynet, a surveillance network used in China's cities, and Dazzling Snow, a monitoring system in rural areas, to monitor and identify Falun Gong practitioners. The Falun Dafa Information Center reports that the CCP has arrested many Falun Gong practitioners through the use of these technologies and systems. 'Falun Gong practitioners known to police have long been considered targets of detailed surveillance. Their biometrics and other data has been collected and stored in 'key individual' databases for over a decade. This facilitates cross-referencing and identification,' the report says. In addition to the massive surveillance networks, the CCP implemented a real-name identification system, effective from June 2011, for train ticket purchases and station entry, which enables Chinese railway police to identify Falun Gong practitioners easily by leveraging ID cards and personal information from big data systems. Since then, incidents of persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by railway police have been reported across the country. Railway police are on duty in the waiting room in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on April 7, 2020. Getty Images Seventeen Falun Gong practitioners have been harassed or arrested by Shanghai railway police at railway stations in Shanghai between 2014 and 2024, according to Some Falun Gong practitioners were detained for up to one month in detention facilities. Minghui has been able to obtain the names of these Falun Gong practitioners. Minghui has also recorded several instances of Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted by railway police in China's eastern Zhejiang Province. Since March 2021, police at several major train stations in the province—including Hangzhou East, Jiaxing South, Shaoxing North, and Ningbo—have used ID-linked data to target Falun Gong practitioners. Police have searched their luggage, forced them to reveal phone contents, photographed their IDs and faces, and demanded personal information such as phone numbers and workplaces, often threatening to block travel or detention if they refused. Falun Gong practitioners are subjected to severe sentences if they are found to carry materials related to their faith. On Oct. 20, 2021, Xu Yongqing, a senior engineer from Shanghai, was stopped at Longquan Railway Station in Zhejiang Province for carrying a Falun Gong book, a USB drive, and a laptop. He was detained by local police from Jianchi Police Station and later transferred to the Longquan Detention Center. On Nov. 2, 2022, the Liandu District Court in Lishui, Zhejiang, sentenced him to four years in prison. Decades-Long Peaceful Protests Falun Gong is a traditional meditative spiritual practice that teaches moral tenets based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The practice was introduced to the public in 1992, and it spread quickly across China because of its moral teachings and health benefits. By 1999, Chinese official data estimated that 70 million to 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong, outnumbering the number of CCP members. Fearing the potential loss of control of the Chinese populace, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin personally decided to 'eradicate' Falun Gong and launched a nationwide campaign to persecute the faith in July 1999. Since then, Falun Gong practitioners in China have been harassed, stalked, monitored, detained, and imprisoned for their beliefs by the CCP. The communist regime deprives them of their jobs, tortures those behind bars in Chinese detention facilities, brainwashing centers, labor camps, and prisons, and also harvests their organs for sale. Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas has For their part, Falun Gong practitioners have engaged in various peaceful ways in and out of China to raise public awareness of the persecution. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, Falun Gong practitioners in China have set up around 200,000 underground printing houses to produce leaflets, DVDs, and other materials aimed at exposing authorities' actions and countering the CCP's anti-Falun Gong propaganda. They have also devised ways to spread information beyond traditional flyers. In some provinces, they stamp messages such as 'Falun Gong is good' on Chinese banknotes. In cities, they use AirDrop and Bluetooth to share digital materials with public transit riders. In 2004, Falun Gong practitioners launched the Tuidang ('Quit the Party') As of April 29, more than 445 million Chinese have quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations. To support the people who have quit the organizations, Wei Libin, New York director of the China Democracy and Human Rights Alliance, participated in a rally held by Falun Gong practitioners in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City on April 19. He hailed Falun Gong's Tuidang movement as a ' 'It's the most practical path of redemption for the Chinese people,' he said at the rally. 'Only by doing this can the evil CCP regime collapse, allowing Falun Gong to return to China, the land of the divine. Then, the Chinese people will finally be able to live happy, free, and dignified lives.' Dorothy Li contributed to this report.
Epoch Times
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Toronto Falun Gong Practitioners Rally to Mark 26th Anniversary of Historic Appeal for the ‘Right to Believe'
Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners rallied outside Ontario's legislative building this week to mark 26 years since a large-scale appeal in Beijing, where thousands of adherents called for the freedom to practise their faith. The peaceful demonstration was soon followed by a widespread suppression of Falun Gong in China that continues today. The Toronto rally was held on April 24, one day before the 26th anniversary of the April 25 'peaceful appeal' by Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing in 1999, when more than 10,000 adherents from across China assembled outside the appeals office to call for the release of 45 practitioners who had been arbitrarily detained by police in the eastern city of Tianjin. They also called on the communist regime to lift a ban on Falun Gong books and to allow adherents a safe environment to practise their faith after incidents of authorities raiding practice sites, forcibly dispersing groups, and entering civilian residences without consent. The demonstration was one of the largest China had seen in recent history, along with that of the Tiananmen Square student protest a decade earlier. More than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gather on Fuyou Street in Beijing on April 25, 1999. Courtesy of Han Yong, a Falun Gong practitioner who spoke at the Toronto rally, said he was a university student in China when he joined thousands of others in the 1999 appeal. 'At that time, there were no slogans, no banners, and no clamour. We just waited quietly, hoping to give feedback on the real situation of Falun Gong through the channel of appeals,' Yong said. Related Stories 7/30/2020 12/10/2024 Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that combines meditative movements with moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. After its introduction in China in 1992, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people had taken up the practice by 1999. Seeing the thousands of practitioners gathered outside the appeals office on April 25, 1999, senior officials agreed to hold talks with practitioners. By nightfall, the detained practitioners in Tianjin were released. 'We all felt very relieved,' Yong said, recalling the scene 26 years ago. 'When we left, we all consciously cleaned up the garbage and debris around us, and even the cigarette butts thrown on the ground by the police were cleaned up, because every Falun Gong practitioner follows the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and require themselves to be a good person, a better person, and that he or she not cause trouble for others,' he added. Falun Gong practitioners practice meditative exercises outside Ontario's legislative building in Toronto on April 24, 2025. Jerry Zhang/The Epoch Times Three months later, Jiang officially launched a systemic and far-reaching campaign against Falun Gong practitioners, Amnesty International, a global human rights NGO, began sounding the alarm over the persecution of Falun Gong in China soon after it began. 'Since the ban on Falun Gong, tens of thousands of its followers have been arbitrarily detained by police, some of them repeatedly for short periods, and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs,' Amnesty wrote in a March 23, 2000, 'Some of those detained have been charged with crimes and sentenced after unfair trials, while others have been sent to labour camps without trial. New arrests and detentions continue to be reported every day.' Although banned in China, Falun Gong is practised in more than 100 countries worldwide. For over two decades, practitioners in China and abroad have 's state-run media. At the rally in Toronto, independent commentator Lai Jianping, formerly a lawyer in China, commended Falun Gong practitioners for standing up against Beijing's authoritarian rule. 'We know that Falun Gong has made significant contributions to the cause of freedom and democracy in China over the past 20 years,' he said. Canada Condemns Human Rights Abuses Against Falun Gong Last December, the Canadian government sanctioned eight senior Chinese officials it said were involved in 'grave human rights violations,' noting the measures were in response to the Beijing-led oppression of ethnic and religious minorities such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, and practitioners of Falun Gong. 'Canada is deeply concerned by the human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet and against those who practise Falun Gong,' said Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly in a Dec. 10, 2024, 'We call on the Chinese government to put an end to this systematic campaign of repression and uphold its international human rights obligations.' Falun Gong practitioner Han Yong speaks at a rally outside Ontario's legislative building in Toronto on April 24, 2025. Jerry Zhang/The Epoch Times Falun Gong practitioners have also been targeted by foreign interference and transnational repression in Canada. In a Those included letters to Canadian officials to discourage them from supporting the meditative practice, physical and verbal abuse against practitioners in Canada, and intimidation of practitioners' relatives in China. 'Falun Gong practitioners still hope, with the goodness of their hearts, that those in power [in China] can understand the people ' s voices, that they can give the people the most basic human right—the right to believe,' Yong said at the rally.
