The IMPACT. Episode 5. The Falun Dafa Case: Terror in China (Video & Text Version)

Washington: In China, what the anti-cultists in Russia and Europe aspire to is already happening—legislative bans on alternative religious movements and the transition to the third stage of persecution, involving brutal physical reprisals against stigmatized victims. For instance, the Chinese authorities, with the involvement of anti-cult organizations, initiated a ruthless campaign of persecution against followers of Falun Dafa.

Narrator: Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong) is a religious movement that emerged in the early 1990s, based on traditional Chinese qigong health exercises, and quickly became very popular in China. The number of practitioners grew rapidly, and by 1997, it numbered tens of millions of people. 

The practice of Falun Gong was independent of party control, which is an unprecedented phenomenon in China. This led to tense relations between the Falun Dafa movement and the Chinese government. State media and the propaganda apparatus were mobilized to demonize Falun Gong, turn public opinion against it, and legitimize further persecution of its members. 

Chinese Communist Party, putting out just massive volumes of disinformation and propaganda denouncing Falun Gong, demonizing them.

Narrator: Just as Dvorkin introduced the term “totalitarian cult” into active usage, the Chinese authorities of that time incorporated the terms “cult” and “evil cult” into their discriminatory rhetoric. In these regions, such terms carry very negative connotations and are associated with a specific negative historical context. This seemingly insignificant yet very effective tool allowed them to initiate one of the most brutal hate campaigns in their history. This is that very first stage, the same one the Nazis started with.

For a long time, Falun Gong practitioners believed that the media writing defamatory articles about them simply did not understand the essence of their movement. However, it soon became apparent that this was an organized and deliberate campaign of harassment. The events that followed took a tragic turn. In 1999, the Chinese parliament passed the Resolution on Banning Heretical Cults. This decision meant that the Falun Dafa movement and any other unofficial religious movements were now prohibited by law. The law also stipulated that those who allegedly committed “especially serious” acts within cult organizations would be subject to imprisonment for seven years to life or even the death penalty. Although the law did not explicitly mention Falun Gong, it was clearly aimed at its practitioners.

After the resolution was passed, a wave of repression began in the country. Falun Gong practitioners were arrested, imprisoned, and sent to labor camps where they were subjected to cruel treatment, beatings, torture, and, as it was later revealed, forced organ harvesting for subsequent transplantation in Chinese clinics. This was conducted on a scale comparable to “industrial” production. 

Narrator: Simultaneously, there was round-the-clock propaganda in the media, book burnings, and a purge within the party ranks to eliminate potential sympathizers or supporters of the Falun Gong movement.  To eradicate Falun Gong, a special agency called “Office 610” was established by order of the former leader of China, endowed with a wide range of powers. Agents of “Office 610” were not bound by any laws in their use of methods to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their beliefs. This lack of restrictions allowed them to employ ruthless torture, which led to the death of many Falun Gong adherents. Chinese lawyers compare “Office 610” to Hitler’s Gestapo in terms of its functions. More than 3,500 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners have been documented and recognized as resulting from the repression. The officially registered number of those imprisoned for practicing Falun Gong exceeds 100,000. Unofficial estimates suggest that the actual figures could be much higher, considering the strict information control in China and the real danger faced by those attempting to investigate law enforcement actions.

Narrator: The global community’s attention was drawn to the repression of Falun Dafa by the publication of  a report by two independent human rights advocates. After conducting an investigation, they confirmed cases of mass forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in prisons, with the organs subsequently sold for transplantation.

To convey the full horror of what these people face, here is an excerpt from an interview with a police officer who witnessed the murders of Falun Dafa practitioners, published by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. 

Washington: Can you imagine that all this is happening today in the 21st century? This is no longer just propaganda; these are concrete actions. Looking at this example, you can see the ultimate fate of a person branded as a cultist, stripped of their legal rights and freedoms, and deprived of their human status. These horrific things occur when people allow their rights and freedoms to be trampled upon , are intimidated by a series of psychological terror tactics, and remain silent, thinking it does not concern them. Do you really think that something or someone will protect you from the same fate if you allow democracy to perish?

Narrator: It is noteworthy that during the period of repression against Falun Gong followers, representatives from RACIRS and FECRIS visited China on business trips. In other words, the anti-cultists actively participated in these events and openly expressed their support for the ruling party’s actions.

Some members of the French group CCMM, associated with FECRIS, were invited to a conference in Beijing in 2000, whose primary purpose was to criticize Falun Gong. At that time, human rights violations were already widely criticized by Western governments, the UN, and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Nevertheless, FECRIS members cooperated with the Chinese authorities in denouncing Falun Gong without hesitation. Similarly, their Russian counterparts, represented by the ideological center of the anti-cultists and its leader, Alexander Dvorkin, did the same.

The cooperation between Russian anti-cultists and their Chinese counterparts began at the very onset of the discrimination against Falun Gong practitioners in China. In 2001, Zhang Baichun, a Chinese specialist in cults, visited Nizhny Novgorod. 

He participated in an anti-cult conference organized by Alexander Dvorkin and the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. One of the official purposes of his visit to Russia was to exchange experiences. However, what occurred during unofficial interactions and what instructions Dvorkin might have given to his Chinese colleague remains a mystery.

In 2008, Alexander Dvorkin himself visited China on a working trip at the invitation of the Chinese Association for Research of Cults. During this trip, he appeared in Chinese media and spoke about the allegedly destructive and aggressive nature of the Falun Dafa movement.

Washington: The paradox of this situation is that atheistic China allowed a Russian Orthodox anti-cultist to conduct propaganda on its territory. Why? This is at a time when in China, Orthodox Christianity is also basically treated as a cult. However, this did not prevent the Chinese authorities from openly inviting an Orthodox researcher of cults and letting him speak on local media. By what principle was he chosen for this mission? How did he earn such authority among the Chinese Communist Party?

Narrator: Additionally, during the time when a new wave of accusations hit China for organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, Orthodox Archpriest and Russian anti-cultist Alexander Novopashin was invited to China for a conference on combating Falun Gong in the city of Harbin.

As some researchers of the Falun Gong persecution in China assert, it was precisely the experience of Russian anti-cultists and their “manuals” that their Chinese accomplices relied on. This is why they were able to advance to the stage of physical reprisals more quickly. They didn’t need to invent anything new; adopting methods already tested on Russian citizens was enough. With the support of their ideological instigators – representatives of anti-cult organizations (including RACIRS and FECRIS), the Chinese authorities initiated persecution and imprisonment in labor camps of Falun Gong practitioners. There, they began vivisecting their chests, because they were supposedly no longer human. 

Washington: There are plenty of such cases. If you think it’s just some random lunatics committing these acts, you’re mistaken. It’s a streamlined production line involving government agencies, law enforcement, doctors, military medics, and, of course, anti-cult organizations – the main suppliers of victims for the butchers. 

And this is China, which is now striving for geopolitical leadership on the world stage. A country where dissenters are herded into labor camps, treated like beasts of burden, and the healthier among them are harvested for use in black transplantology. Because according to their logic, the state is not obliged to support them at its own expense, so they must pay and pay with pieces of their bodies and their lives.

Narrator: There are thousands of horrifying torture stories involving Falun Dafa practitioners that have been made public. Hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of other cases remain hidden from the public eye. In China, censorship severely restricts access to and dissemination of information. It is particularly disturbing that these persecutions have not ceased to this day. Information about the ongoing persecutions, as of 2024, is regularly updated on the official Falun Gong website. Thus, based on the grim experience of religious repression in China and the presented facts about the activities of the anti-cult movement in Russia and Europe, the true aim of these anti-cult organizations becomes evident.

Washington: It is not by chance that the mass organ harvesting cases involving Falun Dafa practitioners became known to the public. The Chinese authorities intentionally allowed this information to leak so that these crimes would be documented and proven. This is their “guillotine” in the central square. It serves as a warning of what will happen to anyone they perceive as a threat to their power. This is an act of informational terrorism, bringing the entire country to its knees and forcing people into a state of subjugation.

What is happening in China is an illustrative example that the methods and legacy of Nazism are alive, masked under the guise of combating religious dissent. Millions of ordinary people practicing their religion have fallen victim to an old, proven method that, at the instigation of anti-cultists, was used by the Nazis of the Third Reich during World War II. The Nazis justified mass extermination of people by declaring that they were soulless animals unworthy of mercy. These methods are being put into practice today, in your time, by the anti-cultists of the Fourth Reich. What do you think they have planned for those already marked with a “yellow star”? They have already targeted around 60 million members of religious minorities and have begun a planned attack on several secular and political organizations. The next person to be labeled a “cultist”—and therefore “not a person”—could be anyone. And God help you if you find yourself in their victims’ place.

Everyone should understand that if global anti-cultism reached its ultimate goal and democracy was destroyed, one day, you would wake up in a totalitarian world where, at any moment, your organs could be cut out alive and without anesthesia without even asking you.

I have said it before and will say it again: “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.“

Now is the time to regain your sanity and examine what is happening right before your eyes. Anti-cultism is a phenomenon that should never have existed in our society. Anti-cultism today is a new form of Nazism. Let me put it this way: the concentration camps are already built. There are already camps where doctors remove organs without anesthesia, and these will become torture chambers and true concentration camps for millions of people tomorrow. For them, you are all on the verge of becoming slaves; you are all already in the midst of a Holocaust.

CHARGE

Narrator: Thus, in accordance with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on December 9, 1948, and ratified by 153 countries, the activities of members of anti-cult organizations and their accomplices are qualified as genocide. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted on July 17, 1998, and ratified by 124 countries, the activities of members of anti-cult organizations and their accomplices are qualified as genocide and crimes against humanity.

In accordance with the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, adopted by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2391 (XXIII) on November 26, 1968, crimes against humanity are considered among the gravest crimes, even if these acts do not constitute a violation of the internal laws of the country in which they were committed. Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations, regardless of when they were committed and whether they were committed during wartime or peacetime.

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