Persecution Without Borders: 27 Years of Beijing’s Campaign Against Falun Gong

On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a violent campaign to wipe out Falun Gong. For over a quarter century, the regime has waged an unrelenting effort to erase the peaceful meditation and spiritual practice grounded in truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, thereby inflicting an enormous human and societal cost.

“This tragic anniversary is a stark reminder of what the Chinese Communist Party is capable of: turning the entire state apparatus against tens of millions of innocent people. That threat is not confined to China or to the Falun Gong community. The CCP’s repression and manipulation now reach into the United States and countries around the world, threatening freedom and security far beyond its borders,” said Levi Browde, Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center.

“On this day, we remember the millions in China who have sacrificed their careers, their families, and even their lives. For what? For the right to choose their faith. For the right to practice exercises that improve their health. For trying to educate fellow citizens so they don’t become complicit in horrific abuses. Twenty-seven years on, their resilience in the face of brutality has not wavered, and neither can ours. The struggle to save them, and to protect freedom everywhere the CCP’s reach extends, must continue.”

As Falun Gong practitioners worldwide mark the anniversary of this campaign, the Falun Dafa Information Center is highlighting four trends related to the persecution, drawing on evidence that emerged over the past year.

1. The persecution’s toll on the practitioner community is severe—and ongoing.

Inside China, reports from the past year make clear that the persecution is not abating and that the human cost of the regime’s brutality continues to mount. Practitioners across China continue to be harassed, detained, imprisoned, and tortured for meditating, reading spiritual texts, or trying to tell their fellow Chinese about the atrocities occurring. Many have been caught by police because of increasingly high-tech surveillance or fellow citizens reporting on them after being deceived by the regime’s vicious propaganda.

Thousands of documented cases from the past year show the machinery of persecution grinding on. In August 2025, Ms. Zhang Fengxia, a 52-year-old practitioner from Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, died in custody just seven days after being arrested for her faith.

The regime’s harsh treatment of the elderly and the disabled has become increasingly evident in recent years, with over 1000 cases of harassment and arrest targeting practitioners over 60 being recorded over the past two years. In March 2026, a 90-year-old resident of Jinan, Shandong Province, was sentenced to two years simply for speaking about Falun Gong to fellow passengers on a public bus. In May 2026, a 77-year-old practitioner from Linqing City, also in Shandong Province, was imprisoned just thirteen days after her arrest and secretly sentenced to three years. Her family was told nothing about any charge or trial. A blind woman in Kunming, Yunnan Province, recently disappeared into custody under alarming circumstances.

In total, there have been more than 5,300 well-documented deaths of Falun Gong practitioners from abuse in custody since 1999, with the true figure believed to be far higher due to the regime’s censorship and forced organ harvesting.

Even for many practitioners outside China, the persecution still casts a long shadow over their lives.

“Since the persecution began in 1999, I have not been able to safely return to China,” a Chinese practitioner in New York said. “I’ve had to make the painful decision to stay away because my presence could put my relatives at risk of harassment or retaliation. Some family members have been so afraid of being targeted that we stopped contacting each other entirely. That is what persecution looks like in real life. It separates families. It forces people into impossible choices between love and safety.”

2. The persecution has corroded Chinese society itself.

The damage done by the CCP’s anti-Falun Gong campaign extends far beyond those who follow the spiritual practice. To sustain an effort targeting the faith of tens of millions of citizens, the regime has built an extralegal security apparatus, saturated the media with propaganda, and enlisted courts, schools, workplaces, and families as instruments of coercion.

The result is a deepening erosion of the rule of law, an entrenchment of authoritarian control, and a coarsening of public life in which fabrication, informing on neighbors, and official impunity have been normalized.

In one example from February 2026, the government of Xianning City, Hubei Province, offered rewards ranging from 100 yuan (around $US 15) up to 50,000 yuan (around $US 7,400) to those who report on Falun Gong practitioners. Neighbors were called upon to report on practitioners engaging in activities like posting slogans or banners favorable to Falun Gong, handing out leaflets, discs, or books, spreading information about the persecution through online platforms, or organizing gatherings to study spiritual texts. The highest rewards cited in the announcement are reserved for tips that help police seize so-called “key members” or “large amounts of the funds” from Falun Gong believers.

Such efforts seek to encourage ordinary Chinese citizens to participate in the persecution, relegating their neighbors unknowingly to months or years of torture and abuse.

3. The persecution has become a global threat to sovereignty and freedom.

Almost immediately after the persecution began, the Chinese regime sought to extend its silencing and eradication of Falun Gong beyond China’s borders. For more than two decades, practitioners abroad—Chinese nationals, members of the diaspora, and non-Chinese believers alike—have faced harassment, intimidation, break-ins, assaults, and beatings.

However, this effort has dramatically intensified since 2022, when Xi Jinping ordered an upgraded global campaign. Evidence from the past year signals a continually escalating campaign of transnational repression, one deployed with a refined and sophisticated playbook.

Physical assaults have become more frequent. Volunteers were beaten at information booths in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Chinese nationals attacked a Falun Gong information site in South Korea.

Anonymous bomb and shooting threats, where no actual violence occurred, have become a signature weapon against Shen Yun Performing Arts. Just between January 28 and February 1, 2026, more than 200 violent messages were blasted out to a Shen Yun website. Threats against Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre forced the cancellation of six performances, even after police found no evidence of planned violence. The scare tactic was sufficient to intimidate and provoke censorship.

The regime has also pressured foreign governments directly. In April 2026, Chinese consular officials met with City of Vancouver staff in an unsuccessful attempt to push for the cancellation of local Shen Yun performances.

Beijing is also extending the campaign into the information space. In February 2026, the analysis firm Graphika exposed a China-linked network of 43 domains and 37 subdomains posing as trusted Western outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. The sites were used to amplify distorted narratives attacking Falun Gong, its founder, and Shen Yun.

Such disinformation and misinformation campaigns are having real-world effects. An overwhelming majority of respondents (90%) to a recent survey of U.S. practitioners conducted by the Falun Dafa Information Center reported noticing a rise in negative news coverage and social-media commentary about Falun Gong since 2022. Nearly two-thirds said this climate had affected them by creating emotional distress, strained family ties, and discrimination at work, school, or in their communities.

Taken together, the violence, false information, and intimidation Beijing exports are not merely attacks on one faith or community. They undermine the rule of law, raise national security concerns, and erode the sovereignty and freedom of every nation where they take place.

4. Despite the pressure, practitioners are not alone.

Inside China, practitioners continue their peaceful civil disobedience at great personal risk, as they have for the past 27 years. Numerous Chinese democracy advocates, human rights lawyers, grassroots activists, and ordinary citizens have offered their solidarity and support, sometimes resulting in their own detention or harassment. Outside China, practitioners continue to proudly exercise their faith, telling the world “Falun Dafa is Good.”

Their resilience has won continual support around the world, while independent judges in democratic systems have affirmed their basic rights. The European Court of Human Rights ruled against a ban in Serbia of Falun Gong practitioners’ efforts to hold peaceful demonstrations during a visit by Xi Jinping. Canadian parliamentarians have welcomed Shen Yun and condemned Beijing’s transnational repression. In the United States, the House of Representatives passed the Falun Gong Protection Act by unanimous voice vote on May 5, 2025. A similar bill (S.4009) has now been introduced in the Senate with bipartisan support.

“China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is an attack on religious freedom and human rights,” said Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), a co-sponsor of the Senate bill. “It’s long past time to dismantle the CCP’s state-sponsored organ harvesting industry. I urge my colleagues to join me in countering these human rights violations and ensuring the CCP is held accountable.”

“I’ve had the privilege of visiting many times, spending time with a whole host of [Falun Gong] community members… We must do everything in our power to hold the CCP malign actors and organ traffickers accountable for their unspeakable crimes,” said Congressman Pat Ryan (D-NY), one of the co-sponsors of the Falun Gong Protection Act in the House.

As we mark this solemn anniversary, the Falun Dafa Information Center calls on governments, media, civic institutions, and citizens everywhere to recognize the persecution of Falun Gong for what it is: one of the largest campaigns of religious persecution in the world today—waged in the second-largest economy—and a frontline test of whether free societies can defend their own values against a determined authoritarian assault.