Victim of Past Assault Rejoins Brooklyn Falun Gong Parade; New U.S. Bill Targets CCP Religious Persecution

Dear Reader,

As autumn approaches, nearly a thousand Falun Gong practitioners joined a parade through Brooklyn’s Chinatown on August 23, as they have for years. Led by the Tian Guo Marching Band and featuring a dragon dance, taiko drums, a float of heavenly maidens, and hundreds of colorful banners, the parade brought Mid-Autumn Festival greetings to the local community and showed support for the over 460 million people who have renounced their ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations.

Two years ago, however, a physical assault took place along the same route. A Chinese man with apparent hostility toward Falun Gong practitioners hit a female practitioner twice during the parade. An email arrived two days later claiming responsibility for the incident, accompanied by additional threats. This year, the practitioner who was assaulted rejoined the parade and shared her thoughts with us during the event, offering a glimpse of how Falun Gong practitioners remain resilient after more than two decades of the CCP’s persecution and its global transnational repression.

Also in this issue:

• U.S. Senators introduced a bipartisan bill targeting the CCP’s persecution of religious groups; Germany’s domestic intelligence service named Falun Gong practitioners among Beijing’s overseas targets.

• A Falun Gong practitioner in her late seventies died 27 days after her release from Guizhou Province No. 1 Women’s Prison with her body bearing multiple fractures.

• Tong Shuying, the sister of a New York resident, has been placed under criminal detention in Wuhan for her Falun Gong activities—her fifth detention since 1999.

• The Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC) documented six new incidents of transnational repression in July 2026, including a bomb threat directed at Shen Yun’s headquarters in New York.

​Finally, we’re again sharing a documentary that tells the story of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng who was disappeared by the CCP nine years ago and has since been missing.

Sincerely,

Levi Browde, Executive Director
Falun Dafa Information Center

Falun Gong Practitioners Parade in Brooklyn Under the Shadow of Beijing’s Reach

Lily (Left) & Jing (Right, Lotus Team). Read Jing’s interview in the full story

What’s new?

On August 23, about a thousand practitioners marched along Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn on a sunny Sunday afternoon, calling for an end to the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong and its global transnational repression. They also sought to show support for the over 460 million people who have withdrawn from the CCP and its affiliated organizations in a movement called Tuidang.

Among them was Lily, a practitioner who was assaulted two years ago during the parade along the same route. In 2024, a Chinese man approached Lily and hit her twice. An email arrived two days later claiming responsibility, accompanied by additional threats. The incident was deemed a hate crime by local law enforcement, though no further developments or arrests have been reported.

Despite that experience, Lily returned to the same spot without fear, fulfilling her sense of duty as she had two years ago—keeping the parade line in order. “Today I came back to this parade, again as a volunteer,” she said in an interview with the FDIC. “Even when he attacked me for no reason, right in the middle of the parade, I did not give in to fear. Evil deeds cannot overcome righteous actions.”

Why does it matter?

Lily’s case is one of 92 instances of physical assault and property damage documented in the FDIC’s recent report on the CCP’s transnational repression. The report draws on a nationwide survey of 1,080 Falun Gong practitioners in the United States, and its core finding is that Beijing is waging a deliberate, escalating campaign against the Falun Gong community in the country.

Asked how safe they feel in the United States, about one-third of respondents said they feel unsafe or very unsafe. Among those who had been persecuted in China, the share was even higher—55 percent said they feel unsafe.

Even so, Falun Gong practitioners around the globe have not surrendered to pressure, just as their fellow practitioners in China have not given up their faith even in the face of brutal persecution and forced organ harvesting by the CCP.

“Falun Dafa teaches people to live by Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance,” Lily said. “To be good people, and then better ones. Those who act as the Party’s proxies cannot frighten practitioners. What they do is expose the Party’s malice to the whole world.”

What else do you need to know?

Despite the CCP’s repression and censorship, many Chinese people have found ways to distance themselves from its brutality. More than 460 million Chinese people have now publicly renounced their ties to the Communist Party and its youth organizations, many using aliases to avoid reprisals. A global petition calling for the Party’s end has surpassed 5.38 million signatures.

“The situation has changed enormously,” Lily said. “The more the Party does, the more people understand the difference between good and evil.”

New U.S. Bill Targets CCP Religious Persecution; German Intelligence Names Falun Gong Among Beijing’s Overseas Targets

Two governments acted this month on the CCP’s persecution of religious believers, naming Falun Gong practitioners explicitly among the regime’s victims.

On Aug. 7, U.S. Senators Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced S. 5370, the Combatting the Persecution of Religious Groups in the People’s Republic of China Act, which would treat Chinese officials responsible for religious freedom abuses as candidates for U.S. sanctions.

The abuses listed in the bill include arbitrary detention, forced sterilization, torture, and forced labor, along with serious restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, expression and movement involving ethnic and religious minority groups. The groups named are Tibetan Buddhists, Christians, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners. Notably, the bill reaches abuses committed “in the People’s Republic of China or globally.”

Separately, on Aug. 20, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence service, released a public brochure on transnational repression titled “Invisible Shackles — Persecution into Exile.” It names China among the principal actors and Falun Gong practitioners among the groups Beijing pursues on German soil. The brochure catalogs methods including coercion and duress, censorship, covert intelligence gathering, online defamation, cyberattacks, and the intimidation of family members still in the country of origin. These tactics all closely match what the FDIC has documented on the CCP’s transnational repression in the U.S. and globally.

Elderly Woman Dies 27 Days After Release From Guizhou Prison, Body Found to Bear Multiple Fractures

Ms. Liu Shuling, a Falun Gong practitioner in her late seventies from Zunyi City, Guizhou Province, died on June 23, 2026, just 27 days after being released from a five-year prison sentence served for her faith. According to Minghui.org, she had entered prison able to speak and walk, yet left it incapacitated and mute, and, as a hospital later discovered, with several ribs and a thigh bone broken.

Ms. Liu was arrested in May 2021 and held at Guizhou Province No. 1 Women’s Prison, also known as Yang’ai Women’s Prison, in Guiyang. She was tortured for refusing to renounce Falun Gong and had lost the ability to speak by the time of her family’s second visit. When her term expired on May 26, 2026, police took her not to her home but to a nursing home under surveillance. A hospital later identified the fractured bones as the cause of her incapacitation. She died within a month of her release.

Minghui’s compiled record identifies the facility as the principal site for imprisoning female Falun Gong practitioners in Guizhou since 1999, with at least 130 sentenced practitioners held there over the years and at least seven reported to have died as a result of the persecution.

Sister of New York Resident Held in Criminal Detention in Wuhan

Pictured: Tong Shuzhen holding a photograph of her younger sister, Tong Shuying

Ms. Tong Shuying, the younger sister of a New York resident, was arrested along with 16 other Falun Gong practitioners in Wuhan on April 15, 2026, when they gathered in private to study spiritual texts together. The mass arrest followed months of covert police surveillance of two Falun Gong study groups. 

Ms. Tong has since been held at the Wuhan No. 1 Detention Center in Hubei Province. On June 3, her case was transferred to the Xinzhou District Procuratorate under Article 300 of the PRC Criminal Law, a provision routinely used to prosecute Falun Gong practitioners. It is the fifth time she has been detained for her faith since 1999.

Her older sister, Ms. Tong Shuzhen, moved to the United States in 2016 after suffering earlier persecution for her own practice of Falun Gong. On May 30, she stood outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., calling for her sister’s release and recalling the torture Ms. Tong Shuying had endured in past detentions: “My sister was handcuffed and hung from windows for long periods at the labor camp. The handcuffs cut into her flesh.”

July 2026 Transnational Repression Update

In July 2026, the FDIC documented six new incidents of transnational repression targeting Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun Performing Arts, in the form of anonymous threats and impersonation. The number of documented violent threats has reached 308 since March 2024.

One message sent through the FDIC’s public contact form warned that all national leaders who support Falun Gong and their families would be in danger. The same IP address behind that message also sent a bomb threat through a Shen Yun-related channel, claiming explosives had been placed at Shen Yun’s headquarters in New York and naming the kitchen staff as intended victims.

To date, the threats appear to be false alarms intended to intimidate, but they nonetheless violate U.S. and other applicable laws. Even as hoaxes, they have driven up security costs, forced building evacuations, and delayed or canceled cultural events and film screenings.

This month marks nine years since Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng went missing. Born into poverty and largely self-taught, Gao rose to be named one of China’s top ten lawyers in 2001. He could have built a comfortable life on that reputation. Instead, he used it to defend those being persecuted in China, including Falun Gong practitioners. For that, the CCP disbarred him, shut down his firm, imprisoned him, and tortured him. On August 13, 2017, the Chinese communist regime forcibly disappeared him, and his whereabouts remain unknown.

The 2012 documentary Transcending Fear tells his story—a man who stood between the Chinese Communist Party and the people it targeted.