Falun Gong Rescue: UN Refugee Father Reunited with Family for Thanksgiving After 10 Years Apart
After 10 years apart, Tom Hua, a UN refugee and Falun Gong practitioner, was finally reunited with his wife and daughter in the United States.
Thanksgiving is usually a holiday for celebrating family, crowded around the dinner table with loved ones. But for many Falun Gong families separated by religious persecution and displacement, this holiday is less a date on the calendar than a lifetime goal: to be together again, safely, after years of waiting.
The Falun Dafa Information Center is privileged to share the following reunion story of hard-earned gratitude. After 10 years apart, Tom Hua—a UNHCR-recognized refugee and Falun Gong practitioner—was finally reunited with his wife and daughter in the United States. This Thanksgiving will mark the Hua family’s first one together.
We are filled with gratitude to God for today’s reunion and time together.
Fighting for faith
In 2023, his daughter in America began pursuing a new path to freedom for her father, organizing a small support group through a private community sponsorship effort. For years, Mr. Hua had been living in a third country as a refugee recognized by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), unable to return back to China due to the real risk of persecution or move forward to the United States while waiting through a legal immigration process.
According to an official document related to his case, he was sentenced without trial to a Shandong re-education labor camp in 2000 for appealing in Beijing. Public report about his 32-month imprisonment describes severe mistreatment in custody and pressure to renounce his beliefs, including being pinned down by prison guard and shocked with eight electric batons. He resisted, but his bravery cost him everything.
His life unraveled while he was in custody—Mr. Hua was fired from his job at a bank, and he missed the birth of his daughter. When his child turned one, his wife was also detained in a brainwashing center and nearly died. It would take another year before he met his daughter for the first time, but their time together didn’t last long.
In 2007, he was imprisoned a second time during a nationwide mass arrest of Falun Gong practitioners ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Between “re-education” sessions, Mr. Hua was forced into manual labor, including straightening thousands of diodes—small components used in modern electronics—each day.
For Mr. Hua, the cost of his beliefs was not abstract. It shaped where he could live, whether he could work, and when he could watch over his child. And unfortunately, due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) continuing persecution of Falun Gong, he was separated from his family in 2014.
The fateful day
Over the next decade, he would escape China and gain United Nations refugee status in a third country. And as the years stretched longer, Mr. Hua would learn a second and third language and build his life for a second time alone as he awaited the day he would be able to meet his wife and daughter again.
But the effort paid off. Finally, Mr. Hua safely arrived in the United States. His first words, speaking to his daughter at the airport, were simple and unforgettable. “It feels like a movie,” he said in Chinese. “I couldn’t recognize you [at first], daughter. You’ve grown taller. You’re an adult now. I can’t believe my eyes. You used to be so small.”
On the drive away from the airport, he kept looking out at the skyline and repeating that it felt like a scene from an American film. Half disbelief and half wonder filled his face, as if his life had finally crossed into a chapter he’d only been allowed to imagine.
Rebuilding in freedom
Mr. Hua has expressed deep gratitude for the support he has received from the U.S. government, and he’s determined to become fluent in English quickly so that one day, he can personally express thanks to the many people who helped make his family whole again.
Although he is rebuilding his life for the third time now, Mr. Hua is grateful he can live in freedom and practice his faith in America without fear of persecution.
“We are filled with gratitude to God for today’s reunion and time together,” said Mr. Hua. “We are also deeply thankful for every kind-hearted person—known or unknown—who has helped us along this difficult and winding journey. The Hua family sincerely wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.”
For privacy and security reasons, the family has chosen to keep the reunion private until now. But their story still carries a message worth sharing this Thanksgiving: family is not merely who we love. Family is who we fight to spend time with, and who we refuse to forget.
And this year, Mr. Hua is home.
The Falun Dafa Information Center will continue to adopt and advocate for family rescue cases. If you have a recommendation, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you.
