Woman Threatens to Report Falun Gong Practitioner to Chinese Embassy During Athens March

A Chinese woman repeatedly photographed a Falun Gong practitioner at a march in central Athens on October 9, 2026, and threatened to send the pictures to the Chinese Embassy. She also warned the practitioner, Ms. Teng, who is Chinese, lives in Germany and had traveled to Athens for the event, that Teng would never be able to return to China.

Greek police officers on duty at the event intervened and told the woman to delete the photos. She refused, but ultimately left the site. This account draws on Teng’s testimony and her own video footage of the incident.

The Falun Dafa Information Center thanked the Greek police for protecting practitioners’ right to gather peacefully and express themselves freely. Threatening to report someone to the Chinese Embassy, or warning of consequences back in China, amounts to exporting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution. Such conduct should have no place on Europe’s streets or anywhere else in the world.

Threats in front of the tourists

Ms. Teng, wearing a yellow “Falun Dafa is Good” T-shirt, was talking with two tourists from China when the woman abruptly interrupted them. The woman began shouting at and threatening the practitioners, saying she would take photos and send them to the Chinese Embassy.

Practitioners told her she was free to film the march and the rest of the public event. Instead, she kept photographing Ms. Teng alone and warned her that Teng would never be able to return to China.

Several Western practitioners also tried to explain the situation to her. One recalled that the woman claimed Falun Gong practitioners say China is bad and that they all hate China. “That’s not true, because we love China, but we don’t love the CCP,” the practitioner replied. “All the Chinese people here want to go back to China, but the CCP is persecuting them.”

For a Chinese practitioner living abroad, the threat carries real weight. As documented below, Chinese authorities have used relatives in China to pressure people overseas.

The tourists stayed

A Greek police officer intervened and told the woman to delete the photos. She refused, but eventually walked away from the site. In Ms. Teng’s video footage, the woman can be heard saying she holds a “green card” in Greece.

The woman’s outburst did not end the conversation she had interrupted. After she left, Ms. Teng found the two Chinese tourists again at the site and picked up where they had left off.

She told them that Falun Gong had once been widely popular in China because it improved people’s health and raised their moral standards. As the number of practitioners grew, she said, the CCP banned the practice and began persecuting those who followed it. The persecution will one day be held to account, she told them, and she hoped Chinese people who understood the truth would not be implicated.

After listening, the two young tourists agreed to withdraw from the CCP and the Communist Youth League under pseudonyms. By doing so, they renounced the oath they had taken on joining to devote their lives to communism.

The incident took place during a two-day event in which practitioners from across Europe joined the Tian Guo Marching Band in four parades through central Athens, calling for an end to the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.

A recurring pattern

The Athens incident is the latest in a series of confrontations targeting Falun Gong practitioners who raise awareness of the persecution in public spaces abroad.

In late February 2026, two female practitioners were assaulted at information booths in New York City and London within four days. In a letter responding to the London assault outside the British Museum, UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis wrote that “any foreign state-directed crime against an individual in the UK will never be tolerated.” On September 22, a man threatened to have a practitioner shot outside the Chinese Consulate in Toronto after tearing down her display.

Between March 2024 and May 2026, the Falun Dafa Information Center documented 388 transnational repression incidents against Falun Gong across 25 countries, according to its written testimony to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

In its 2025 China Targets investigation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that half of the 105 targets it and its media partners interviewed said relatives in China had been intimidated and interrogated by police or state security officials. Several said this happened within hours of their taking part in protests or public events abroad. That is the leverage behind a threat to report someone to an embassy.

Call to action

The Falun Dafa Information Center calls on:

• The Hellenic Police to document the October 9 incident, retain any record of the woman’s identity and photos, and continue protecting practitioners’ right to gather and speak freely.

• The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make clear to the Chinese Embassy in Athens that intimidation of people on Greek soil, including threats of reporting them to Chinese authorities, will not be tolerated.

• The European Union and its member states to recognize threats of this kind as transnational repression and to strengthen protections for those targeted.

• Members of the public and the media to report on the incident and to stand with practitioners who are threatened for speaking out against persecution.