Press Release

The ICHRRF Speaking Up Series was honored to host esteemed Professor Sen Nieh who educated the Commission and attendees from the public about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) repression of religious freedom and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong is an ancient ‘cultivation practice’ of refining the mind and body. It combines meditation and ancient spiritual Qi Gong practices. Falun Gong values include truthfulness and compassion.

Falun Gong practices peaked in popularity in approximately May of 1992. Unfortunately, due to its growing size, spiritual teachings, and independence from state control, the CCP increasingly viewed Falun Gong as a potential threat to its political agenda. State-sponsored propaganda and censorship makes it extraordinarily challenging for Chinese citizens to understand how the world perceives and responds to their current situation, or to appreciate how diverse global cultures address their strengths and challenges. State-sponsored behavioral conditioning has encouraged Chinese citizens to betray their own parents, spouses, professors, and other elders by advising the CCP when they have opposing views of the CCP including whether they practice Falun Gong (FLG). FLG practitioners are simply unable to practice their beliefs and value systems freely while living in their homeland with the people they love.

To date, there have been millions of innocent citizens of China who have been kidnapped, jailed, tortured, fired from their jobs, expelled from school and even killed. Over 54,000 have been placed in detention camps to recondition them while over 22 thousand were forced into prison labor camps. Over 3,800 have been killed from persecution and hundreds have been psychiatrically hospitalized. Thousands of these victims have been forced into being living organ donors with reverse matching. Between 1999 and 2006, for instance, there were over 14,000 liver transplants forced from living, non-consensual FLG organ donors. This is an absolute atrocity of crimes against humanity at the hands of the CCP. Cultures and temples are being destroyed, books are being burned, families are being traumatized and individuals are being tortured or killed. The culture is being shaped by the dynamics of fear and control, and families and communities will suffer the lasting impacts of this trauma.

Prof. Sen Nieh shared that the book, “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party”, published November 2004 by the Epoch Times, has exposed the CCP’s history of practices and that citizens of China who are identified with this book face jail time and fines.

Sharing a deep love of Chinese civilization, Prof. Sen Nieh shared that anyone wanting to learn more about China’s rich history can see the musical Shen Yun. Shen Yun is a current performing arts revival which exemplifies China’s rich classical dance, art, and spiritual history.

Prof. Sen Nieh also cautioned that the CCP’s recent overtures towards honoring traditional Confucian culture are an act to paint a superficial exterior over its own unchanged ideological underpinnings.

The ICHRRF will prepare to have special hearings to follow on these eye-opening, heart-breaking concerns and hopes to unite the international community to end these horrifying inhumane policies.