Anti-Falun Gong campaign

The persecution of Falun Gong refers to the campaign initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China. It is characterized by a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education and a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as reportedly arbitrary arrests, forced labor and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.

Falun Gong is a modern qigong discipline combining slow-moving exercises and meditation with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. It was founded by Li Hongzhi, who introduced it to the public in May 1992 in Changchun, Jilin. Following a period of rapid growth in the 1990s, the Communist Party launched a campaign to "eradicate" Falun Gong on 20 July 1999.

An extra-constitutional body called the 6-10 Office was created to lead the persecution of Falun Gong. The authorities mobilized the state media apparatus, judiciary, police, army, the education system, families and workplaces against the group. The campaign was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspaper, radio and Internet. There are reports of systematic torture, illegal imprisonment, forced labor, organ harvesting and abusive psychiatric measures, with the apparent aim of forcing practitioners to recant their belief in Falun Gong.

Foreign observers estimate that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in "re-education through labor" camps, prisons and other detention facilities for refusing to renounce the spiritual practice. Former prisoners have reported that Falun Gong practitioners consistently received "the longest sentences and worst treatment" in labor camps, and in some facilities Falun Gong practitioners formed the substantial majority of detainees. As of 2009, at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been reportedly tortured to death in the persecution campaign. Some international observers and judicial authorities have described the campaign against Falun Gong as a genocide. In 2009, courts in Spain and Argentina indicted senior Chinese officials for genocide and crimes against humanity for their role in orchestrating the suppression of Falun Gong.

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