    [Joint House and Senate Hearing, 112 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                     FALUN GONG IN CHINA: REVIEW AND UPDATE

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                          ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               DECEMBER 18, 2012

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

             Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov

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                  CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                        LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

    House

                                         Senate

    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey,    SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Cochairman
    Chairman                             MAX BAUCUS, Montana
    FRANK WOLF, Virginia                 CARL LEVIN, Michigan
    DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois         DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    EDWARD R. ROYCE, California          JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
    TIM WALZ, Minnesota                  SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
    MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio                   JAMES RISCH, Idaho
    MICHAEL HONDA, California

                         EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                      SETH D. HARRIS, Department of Labor
                        MARIA OTERO, Department of State
                  FRANCISCO J. SANCHEZ, Department of Commerce
                     KURT M. CAMPBELL, Department of State
         NISHA DESAI BISWAL, U.S. Agency for International Development

                         Paul B. Protic, Staff Director

                     Lawrence T. Liu, Deputy Staff Director

                                      (ii)

                                 CO N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                                   STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page
    Opening statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S.
      Representative from New Jersey; Chairman, Congressional-
      Executive Commission on China..................................     1
    Brown, Hon. Sherrod, a U.S. Senator from Ohio; Cochairman,
      Congressional-Executive Commission on China....................     3
    Chung, Bruce, Technology Manager in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Falun Gong
      Practitioner Arrested in China.................................     5
    Hu, Zhiming, Twice-Imprisoned Falun Gong Practitioner and Former
      People's Liberation Army [PLA] Air Force Officer...............     7
    Cook, Sarah, Senior Research Analyst, Freedom on the Net in East
      Asia, Freedom House............................................     8
    Xu, M.D., Jianchao, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Mt. Sinai
      School of Medicine; Medical Director, Doctors Against Forced
      Organ Harvesting...............................................    11
    Lee, M.D., Charles, Spokesperson, Global Center for Quitting the
      Chinese Communist Party........................................    22
    Tong, James, Associate Professor, University of California-Los
      Angeles........................................................    25
    Ford, Caylan, Independent Scholar and Human Rights Consultant,
      Ottawa, Canada.................................................    27
    Xia, Yiyang, Senior Director of Policy and Research, Human Rights
      Foundation.....................................................    30

                                    APPENDIX
                              Prepared Statements

    Chung, Bruce.....................................................    42
    Hu, Zhiming......................................................    44
    Cook, Sarah......................................................    48
    Xu, M.D., Jianchao...............................................    56
    Lee, M.D., Charles...............................................    62
    Tong, James......................................................    99
    Ford, Caylan.....................................................   106
    Xia, Yiyang......................................................   111

                              FALUN GONG IN CHINA:

                               REVIEW AND UPDATE

                                  ----------

                           TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012

                                Congressional-Executive
                                           Commission on China,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10 o'clock
    a.m., in room 418, Russell Senate Office Building,
    Representative Christopher Smith, Chairman, presiding.
        Also present: Senator Sherrod Brown, Cochairman.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S.
        REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-
                     EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

        Chairman Smith. The Commission will come to order. Good
    morning to all of you.
        In the early 1990s, the Chinese Government and the
    Communist Party welcomed the contributions of the Falun Gong
    spiritual movement: Its exercises and meditation had health
    benefits; its core teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and
    forbearance promoted morality in a society increasingly aware
    of a spiritual vacuum.
        All that changed, however, in 1999, when several thousand
    Falun Gong practitioners peaceably assembled at Zhangnanhai
    Leadership Compound in Beijing. Chinese leaders were astonished
    that Falun Gong had grown so large and prominent outside of the
    Party's control; so large that Falun Gong practitioners might
    outnumber the Communist Party's 60 million members.
        In the year afterward, the Chinese Government and the
    Communist Party began the campaign of persecution against Falun
    Gong that now has lasted more than 13 years. The persecution
    has been amply documented by the Department of State, the U.S.
    Commission on International Religious Freedom, Amnesty
    International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and many
    other human rights non-governmental organizations [NGOs].
        The campaign has been severe, brutal, ugly, and vicious.
    Many tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been
    detained and arrested. No one can count those sent to prison
    for long terms, and too many remain there. Many were sentenced
    to reeducation through labor, others just disappeared.
        Those released have told of long and brutal interrogations,
    beatings, sleep deprivation, and other forms of torture. Their
    captors demand statements and confessions. They demand that
    those in custody name other practitioners, better to roll up
    the movement.
        Rights movements have documented more than 3,000 deaths of
    practitioners from torture and mistreatment, and doubtless
    there have been many more who have died in custody, their
    stories yet untold.
        Parallel to the treatment of practitioners was a
    comprehensive propaganda campaign designed to demonize the
    movement. From their radios and televisions, Chinese learned
    Falun Gong was a ``heretical cult organization.'' The schools
    taught the same dictated talking points to the young and the
    impressionable.
        On September 12, Dana Rohrabacher of California and I co-
    chaired a joint hearing of the House Foreign Affairs
    Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and my
    subcommittee, the Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights
    and International Organizations Subcommittee. We heard horrific
    testimony on the issue of organ harvesting in China.
        The witnesses touched on many issues: Transplants in
    Chinese medicine, transplant tourism, organ donors' reliance on
    death row prisoners, and disturbing testimony that Falun Gong
    practitioners and other prisoners of conscience may have been
    involuntary victims. For those interested in reviewing the
    evidence in full, I would recommend the transcript of that
    hearing. One of our witnesses today, however, will review this
    issue.
        In addition to arrested practitioners' imprisonment,
    sentences to reeducation through labor, and deaths, the Chinese
    Government and Communist Party have pressured Falun Gong
    practitioners to renounce their belief and practice. This
    ``transformation'' campaign has been documented by our
    Commission in its Annual Reports and by other human rights
    organizations.
        Amnesty International described the campaign as a ``process
    through which individuals were pressured, often through mental
    and physical torture, to renounce their belief.''
        An extralegal Party-run security apparatus created in June
    1999 to eliminate the Falun Gong movement, the 6-10 Offices,
    spearheaded the campaign. The Commission observed this past
    year official Web sites providing education and training
    materials for local officials who continue to support their
    effort to suppress the Falun Gong.
        The Chinese Government and Communist Party have also
    continued to harass and detain persons who attempted to assist
    Falun Gong practitioners, including human rights lawyers such
    as Wei Liangyue, Wang Yonghang, and Gao Zhisheng.
        In the campaign against the Falun Gong, we see in high-
    relief so many features of governance in China. The Chinese
    people's hopes are the ordinary hopes of mankind: To be free to
    work, to speak, to pray, to move, to enjoy healthy lives, to be
    free of poisonous pollution, to organize for better workplaces
    and better pay, and to find justice.
        What do they get? It is repression, unchecked police
    powers, prisons and labor camps, arbitrary courts, pressure
    against defense attorneys, punishment of family members as well
    as individuals, control of the media, blindness to the human
    cost of the Party's policies, indifference to life, and
    demonization of those who dare to disagree or speak out.
        We see this in the repression of believers, be they Tibetan
    Buddhists, members of house churches, or Falun Gong
    practitioners. We see this in the rough and brutal resort to
    forced abortions and involuntary sterilization of Chinese women
    who dare to hope that they could enjoy the same rights as the
    world's other women to decide on their own how many children
    they will have.
        In this year's 2012 Annual Report, the Commission urged the
    Chinese Government to permit Falun Gong practitioners to freely
    practice inside of China, to freely allow Chinese lawyers to
    represent citizens who challenge the legality of laws,
    regulations, rulings, or actions by officials, police,
    prosecutors, and courts that relate to religion; to eliminate
    criminal and administrative penalties that target religions and
    spiritual movements and have been used to punish Chinese
    citizens for exercising their right to freedom of religion.
        In the Annual Report, the Commission also called for the
    elimination of certain articles of law. Article 300 of the PRC
    Criminal Law criminalizes using a ``cult'' to undermine
    implementation of state laws. Article 27 of the PRC Public
    Security Administrative Punishment Law stipulates detention or
    fines for organizing or incenting others to engage in cult
    activities and for using cults or the guise of religion to
    disturb social order or to harm others' health.
        Today we repeat those recommendations. The purpose of this
    hearing is to allow a panel of experts on China and Falun Gong
    to review the persecution of the Falun Gong by the Chinese
    Government and the Communist Party and to update members of
    this Commission and the general public on recent developments.
        Again, I look forward to our witnesses and thank them in
    advance for being here. I yield to my good friend and
    colleague, the Cochairman of our Commission, Sherrod Brown.

      STATEMENT OF HON. SHERROD BROWN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM OHIO;
        COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

        Senator Brown. Thank you, Chairman Smith. It's been a
    pleasure working with Chris Smith during this Congress. I so
    appreciate his leadership on this issue. I want to thank the
    staff of the Commission, Lawrence Liu and Paul Protic
    especially, the two staff directors, and all of you who helped
    to put together the Annual Report that came out of these
    hearings and the work that you all do for human rights.
        This is our last hearing for the 112th Congress. This
    Commission and others have well-documented the abuses committed
    by the Chinese Government and Communist Party against
    practitioners of Falun Gong. I would add to that my thanks for
    the work on the Annual Report and this hearing and other
    hearings, the work of the person on my staff, Doug Babcock, and
    the good work he has done on this.
        In this Annual Report we describe the 13-year campaign that
    Chairman Smith just discussed against Falun Gong as extensive,
    systematic, and in some cases, violent. It is indeed one of the
    harshest campaigns against a group of believers in modern
    times. Countless practitioners of Falun Gong face arbitrary
    detention, torture, and psychiatric abuse, and in some cases
    death, simply for practicing their beliefs.
        Unfortunately, the Communist Party apparently believes that
    the only way it is to survive is to stamp out diversity of
    opinion and belief wherever it occurs. For Falun Gong
    practitioners, this means renouncing your beliefs and being
    transformed--they use the word ``transformed''--through
    reeducation. Those who seek to defend Falun Gong practitioners
    are harassed and detained.
        All of us are aware of these abuses because of the many
    Falun Gong practitioners, a number of them in my State of Ohio,
    who possess the courage to speak out. That is why we are lucky
    today to have Bruce Chung with us. Bruce flew all the way from
    Taiwan on short notice to be here today. He traveled here with
    his brother because he believes, as I believe, that the truth
    must be told.
        This summer--and Bruce will discuss this obviously in more
    detail as our first witness--Bruce was visiting relatives in
    the People's Republic of China when authorities there detained
    him. They held him for 54 days. He was monitored around the
    clock while in custody. He was subjected to long hours of
    questioning without access to a lawyer. His interrogators
    sought to force him to sign a confession.
        For what? Authorities claim he threatened national security
    by trying to broadcast Falun Gong materials in China, but his
    real crime was trying to overcome China's censorship and
    exercise his right--a human right--to free expression. I thank
    Bruce and other witnesses for being here today. I know it is a
    difficult decision to decide to speak out and tell your story,
    especially when the facts can be painful and sensitive.
        But know, too, that you're doing something extremely
    important, for you are speaking out for the countless others
    who could not be here today and letting the world know what is
    happening inside of China.
        In the United States, we believe that our strength as a
    nation comes from the diversity of our people. China cannot
    keep responding to diversity as a threat to be suppressed. This
    is not an effective strategy. It's not working on the Tibetan
    plateau, where a policy of repression has led to a series of
    terrible tragedies. Nearly 100 Tibetans have committed self-
    immolation in protest of policies against their religion and
    against their culture.
        It's not working on the Internet, where hundreds of
    millions of Chinese thirst for a place where they can share
    uncensored and diverse views about their society and their
    government. It's not working against the Uyghur people either.
    The strategy won't work in the case of Falun Gong, whose
    practitioners simply want to live in peace and freedom.
        In the United States, we fight for the right of our
    citizens to practice their belief. China seems too often to
    fight against those practices of its people. China must end all
    repression of Falun Gong practitioners, guarantee their freedom
    of belief, expression, and assembly, and release all political
    prisoners.
        Threats to freedom only strengthen people's resolve, people
    like Bruce Chung. It makes them fight harder for what is right.
    The sooner China realizes this, the better off their people,
    and this world, will be.
        So, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you very much for your excellent
    statement.
        I would like to now welcome to the witness table our first
    panel, beginning with Bruce Chung, who is a technology company
    manager in Taiwan and Falun Gong practitioner. He was arrested
    in June of this year after he visited relatives in China. He
    was detained and interrogated for ``endangering state security
    and health'' for 54 days, even though he was not indicted on
    any charges. His cause was taken up by family, Amnesty
    International, and many civil organizations in Taiwan.
        We will then hear from Mr. Zhiming Hu, who was serving as
    an Air Force officer in Beijing and began practicing Falun
    Gong. After the Chinese Communist Party began the persecution
    of Falun Gong in 1999, Mr. Hu joined many peaceful appeals
    calling for religious freedom.
        Bypassing China's controls on the Internet, he downloaded
    information on the persecution from the Internet. For these
    activities he was imprisoned twice, for a number of years. He
    was accepted by the United States as a refugee in August of
    this year.
        We will then hear from Sarah Cook--we welcome her back--a
    Senior Research Analyst for Freedom on the Net in East Asia at
    Freedom House. She is a member of the China Media Bulletin and
    Weekly News Digest. Before she joined Freedom House, she co-
    edited the English translation of ``A China More Just,'' a
    memoir by prominent rights attorney Gao Zhisheng.
        Then we will finally hear in this first panel from, again,
    Dr. Jianchao Xu, who is currently Assistant Professor of
    Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He
    received his M.D. from Shenyang Medical School in China and his
    Ph.D. from Yale University, where he also completed his post-
    doctorate research and was trained as a kidney specialist.
        We will also thank Helen Gao, who is our interpreter for
    today.

      STATEMENT OF BRUCE CHUNG, A TECHNOLOGY MANAGER IN HSINCHU,
           TAIWAN; FALUN GONG PRACTITIONER ARRESTED IN CHINA

        Mr. Chung. I want to thank Chairman Smith and Cochairman
    Brown for holding this important hearing and inviting me to
    testify today. My name is Chung Ting-Pang, manager of Intek
    Technology Company, Ltd., in Taiwan.
        Like hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese citizens, I
    practice Falun Gong. I traveled to Ganzhou City in China's
    Jiangxi Province to visit some family members on June 15 this
    year. During the several days of visit I didn't do any Falun
    Gong activities or contact any Falun Gong practitioners in
    Mainland China.
        On June 18, I was on my way back to Taiwan as planned. When
    I was just about to board the flight from Ganzhou to Shenzhen,
    I was forcefully taken away by state security agents. I was
    then detained for 54 days under the vague accusation of
    sabotaging national security and the public safety until my
    release on August 11.
        I protested with a hunger strike. It wasn't until the
    second day of my unlawful detention that I was allowed to see
    my family and make one supervised call to my home in Taiwan. It
    wasn't until the next month that I was able to see my attorney,
    Guo Lianhui, but they only let us meet once and not in private.
        Without the presence of my attorney, I was subjected to
    marathon interrogation sessions that drove me to deep fatigue.
    The main content of the interrogations was all about my
    activities in Taiwan, of which they seemed to know a great
    deal, suggesting that I had been monitored in Taiwan for some
    time.
        The points the interrogation concentrated on were as
    follows:
        (1) An incident in 2003 in which I mailed TV hijacking
    equipment to Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China;
        (2) I had once asked a Mainland China Falun Gong
    practitioner to provide me with government documents regarding
    the persecution of Falun Gong;
        (3) I tried to broadcast truth films regarding persecution
    of Falun Gong via satellite signals in Taiwan;
        (4) they wanted to know all the methods that Taiwan Falun
    Gong practitioners use to expose the prosecution of Falun Gong
    in Mainland China; and
        (5) they tried to force me to provide all names, phone
    numbers, email addresses, and participating projects of Falun
    Gong practitioners in Taiwan.
        Throughout the interrogations, they threatened me that if I
    did not cooperate they would bring in the harsher team to
    handle me, that they would change my civil detention to a
    criminal detention, and that they would send me to judicial
    authorities to be sentenced to prison.
        What is most unacceptable to me was that the state security
    agents forced me to sign a ``Confession Statement'' and asked
    me to admit that I committed a crime to endanger national
    security, public safety, and sabotage public property.
        Three weeks before I went back to Taiwan, they began to
    threaten me to admit my ``guilt'' and ``remorse.'' I was forced
    to write and rewrite many times the statement and I was
    videotaped again and again. I was threatened not to be too
    outspoken after I got to Taiwan.
        Undeterred, I called for a press conference on the third
    day after I landed in Taiwan, openly stating that:
        (1) What I wrote in that so-called ``Confession Statement''
    and all the interrogation records were not done with my free
    will. All the details I provided were made up by me to deal
    with their threats;
        (2) I will continue to spread the truth to the Chinese
    public until the day the persecution ends; and
        (3) as an individual living in free and democratic Taiwan,
    it is an appropriate and just action for me to help the Chinese
    public, who have been deceived and persecuted by the Chinese
    Communist Party.
        Not until I returned to Taiwan did I realize that the
    people of Taiwan had put in tremendous efforts to rescue me.
    About 200,000 people in Taiwan signed a letter campaign that
    urged President Ma Ying-jeou to gain my release. Over 30 NGOs
    came together to organize activities and on three occasions
    accompanied my family during their petitions at the Office of
    the President.
        Additionally, I wish to make two points clear. First, the
    Chinese Communists do not only prosecute Falun Gong
    practitioners in China. According to the Taiwan Falun Gong
    Association, I am the 17th Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner
    subjected to persecution from the Chinese Communist Party.
    Second, the Chinese Communist Party has hired spies overseas to
    illegally collect Falun Gong practitioners' personal
    information and information on their activities.
        Finally, I would like to thank Members of the U.S. Congress
    and the European Parliament for their efforts to secure my
    release. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Mr. Chung, thank you so very much. Like
    Chairman Brown, we are very grateful that you made the trip
    here to be here to convey this very powerful testimony to us.
    So, thank you so very much.
        Mr. Chung. Thank you. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Professor Hu?
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Chung appears in the
    appendix.]

         STATEMENT OF ZHIMING HU, TWICE-IMPRISONED FALUN GONG
     PRACTITIONER; FORMER PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY [PLA] AIR FORCE
                                OFFICER

        Mr. Hu. First, I wish to express a heart-felt thank you to
    Chairman Smith and Cochairman Brown for holding this important
    hearing.
        I came to the United States as a refugee in August of this
    year. I witnessed the popularity of Falun Gong before 1999. I
    saw the horrors of the persecution between 1999 and 2010. I
    also have seen how the peaceful and valiant grassroots efforts
    of so many in China are turning back tyranny.
        I'll start at the beginning.
        My brother told me about Falun Gong in 1997. I loved it
    right away. My nasal problem that bothered me all of my life
    was gone after practicing Falun Gong for two weeks. The
    teaching also made me full of joy and peace. Falun Gong gave me
    a renewed outlook on life and on human society.
        In 1997, I was an officer in the Air Force. I lived and
    worked on a base in Beijing. We had an exercise practice site
    at the Air Force Command University. I went almost every
    morning along with 40 or 50 other Air Force officers or
    professors. We helped each other to be more ethical in our
    behavior, more responsible in our work, and more noble in our
    actions. I cherish these memories immensely.
        But on July 20, 1999, former Communist leader Jiang Zemin
    started a violent campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. The
    situation around the entire country was extremely tense. At
    first, we were confused. But then I began to use a proxy server
    to read reports on Minghui.org, the main Falun Gong Web site. I
    read how many practitioners were being tortured and killed. I
    had to act.
        By early 2000, many of us had a proactive attitude. We
    wanted to help, so I decided to leave the Air Force compound so
    I had more time and freedom.
        Within a week, however, the Air Force found me. They
    detained me for more than two months. But they couldn't
    transform me. Instead they forced me to retire from military
    and took me back to my hometown in Liaoning Province, in May
    2000.
        I returned to Beijing to continue the work of peacefully
    exposing the persecution. We made a plan to travel the country,
    and train practitioners to get around the Internet blockade and
    share information on the Minghui Web site. We were successful
    in seven major cities. But in Shanghai, in October 2000, police
    raided my hotel room and arrested me. They put me in a
    detention center and prison for four years. I could easily have
    died from mistreatment there.
        I was released in October 2004. But in 2005, a plainclothes
    policeman saw me give a copy of the Nine Commentaries DVD to
    someone on the street in Beijing.
        They put me through a show trial and sent me to four more
    years of prison. For more than three of these years I was very
    close to dying. Hunger strikes, force-feedings, and injections
    of poisonous chemicals made me an immobile and skeletal whisper
    of a man. During this time they often conducted blood testing
    and comprehensive physical exams. But they never gave me
    treatment that helped me get better. When I later learned of
    organ harvesting, I can't help but wonder if I might have been
    a candidate. When I was released in 2009, doctors told my
    family that I would probably die. If I didn't, I would be
    disabled.
        At home, I resumed my Falun Gong practice and was able to
    walk in two months. Soon I could take long walks outside.
        My experience of recovery is similar to how Falun Gong is
    still being practiced in China. The prisons failed to transform
    me and the Communist Party has failed to wipe out Falun Gong.
        In 2000, I saw no signs of Falun Gong practitioner activity
    in my hometown. But when I left China in 2010, I saw many Falun
    Gong posters hung in public for a long time. More and more
    people see through the once-widespread lies and are refusing to
    be accomplices in this persecution.
        Because of hearings like this, awareness is spreading and
    pressure on the Communist regime is mounting. I believe this
    persecution will end soon. Please do all that you can to help
    the persecution end more quickly.
        Thank you for your time.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you very much for your testimony.
        Ms. Cook?
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Hu appears in the appendix.]

     STATEMENT OF SARAH COOK, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, FREEDOM ON
                  THE NET AND EAST ASIA, FREEDOM HOUSE

        Ms. Cook. Good morning, Chairman Smith and Cochairman
    Brown, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for convening
    this hearing.
        I've been asked to address the origins of the campaign that
    led to the arrest of these two men on my right. Today, as we
    have just heard, Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong live
    under constant threat of abduction and torture. The name of the
    practice, and various homonyms, are among the most censored
    terms on the Chinese Internet.
        Any mention by Chinese diplomats is inevitably couched in
    demonizing labels. But this was not always the case. Throughout
    the early and mid-1990s, Falun Gong, its practitioners, and its
    founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, were often the subject of awards,
    positive media coverage, and government support.
        In an occurrence almost unimaginable today, Mr. Li gave a
    series of lectures at the Chinese Embassy in Paris in 1995.
    Chinese from every strata of society--doctors, farmers,
    workers, soldiers, some Communist Party members--began taking
    up the practice.
        Students of Falun Gong would gather in groups to perform
    its meditative exercises, but many saw the discipline as a
    personal, rather than collective, endeavor to enhance their
    health, mental well-being, and spiritual wisdom.
        There were no signs of a political agenda, or even the kind
    of criticism of the Communist Party that appeared in Falun Gong
    literature after the persecution began. By 1999, according to
    government sources, Western media reports, and Falun Gong
    witnesses, tens of millions of people were practicing.
        So what went wrong? The answer lies in a combination of
    ideological fears, institutional factors, and an individual
    leader's fateful decision. As you all know, Falun Gong is a
    spiritual practice. Its key features are qigong exercises and
    teachings reminiscent of Buddhist and Daoist traditions that
    have been part of Chinese culture for thousands of years.
        But for decades the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] has
    displayed a low tolerance for groups or individuals who place
    any authority above their allegiance to the Party. For
    Tibetans, this is the Dalai Lama. For Falun Gong practitioners,
    it is spiritual teachings centered on the values of
    truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
        Falun Gong's emphasis on these particular three values as
    part of its theistic world view appears to have especially
    attracted the Party's ire. The concepts seem to conflict with
    Marxism and other ideas that have been a source of legitimacy
    for the Party's authoritarian rule, like materialism, political
    struggle, and xenophobic nationalism.
        In fact, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, hinted at this
    in one of its articles in 1999 after the ban: ``In fact, the
    so-called truth, kindness, and tolerance principle preached by
    Li Hongzhi has nothing in common with the Socialist ethical and
    cultural progress we are striving to achieve.''
        The Communist Party also feels threatened by independent
    civil society entities. In 1996, the state-run Qigong
    Association instructed the establishment of Party branches
    among Falun Gong followers and wished to profit from the
    practice, so Li Hongzhi parted ways with it. Falun Gong's
    spiritual independence was then coupled with a loosely-knit
    organizational network.
        From 1996 to 1999, many in the government and the Party
    held favorable views of Falun Gong and publicly cited its
    benefits for health, and even social stability. But as Falun
    Gong's popularity and independence from Party control grew,
    several top cadres began viewing it as a threat. This
    translated into repression that showed its first signs in 1996,
    not 1999.
        The publication of Falun Gong books by state printing
    presses was banned shortly after these were listed as best-
    sellers. Sporadic articles smearing Falun Gong appeared in
    state-run news outlets. Security agents began monitoring
    practitioners and occasionally dispersing meditation sessions.
        It was in this context that in April 1999 the escalated
    harassment culminated in several dozen practitioners being
    beaten and arrested in Tianjin. Those calling for their release
    were told that the orders had come from Beijing.
        On April 25, over 10,000 adherents gathered quietly outside
    the National Petitions Office in Beijing, adjacent to the
    Zhongnanhai Government Compound. They asked for an end to
    abuses and recognition of their practice.
        Some observers have pointed to this incident as taking
    Party leaders by surprise, and triggering the suppression that
    followed. But such an interpretation is flawed when one
    considers that it was escalating harassment led by central
    officials, including then security czar Luo Gan, that sparked
    the appeal in the first place.
        Rather, the event was pivotal because of how individual
    leaders responded to it. Premier Zhu Rongji adopted an
    appeasing stance and met with several of the petitioners'
    representative. The practitioners in Tianjin were released and
    those in Beijing went home. But Party Secretary Jiang Zemin
    overruled Zhu. He called Falun Gong a serious challenge to the
    regime's authority, in fact one of the most serious challenges
    since the founding of the People's Republic.
        In a circular dated June 7, he issued his fateful order to
    ``disintegrate'' Falun Gong. Indeed, several experts have
    attributed the campaign in part to Jiang's personal jealousy.
    He reportedly disliked the sincere enthusiasm Falun Gong
    inspired, while his own standing in the eyes of the Chinese
    public was weak.
        But whatever the specific event of the late 1990s, the
    repression of Falun Gong in China cannot be viewed in a vacuum.
    Rather, it is one episode within the Communist Party's long
    history of arbitrarily suppressing independent thought and
    launching political campaigns against perceived enemies.
        The Party's tactics have become more subtle and
    sophisticated over time, but the underlying dynamics remain the
    same. The decision of what is approved or forbidden is made
    arbitrarily by Party leaders and the institutions, like an
    independent judiciary, that might curb their excesses are kept
    within the Party's realm of influence. We see this with daily
    censorship directives, and it is the same when it comes to
    spiritual movements like Falun Gong.
        Once Jiang made his decision, there was little to stop what
    came next. In July 1999, a full-scale campaign reminiscent of
    the Cultural Revolution was launched. The full weight of the
    CCP's repressive apparatus was turned on Falun Gong.
        The Communist Party and Chinese officials typically assert
    that Falun Gong needed to be banned because it was ``an evil
    cult'' that was having a nefarious influence on society. But
    these claims have not held up to scrutiny when investigated in
    China, nor when one considers Falun Gong's spread in other
    parts of the world, including democratic Taiwan.
        In fact, it was only several months after Jiang had already
    initiated the campaign that the Party apparatus zeroed in on
    this very effective term for its propaganda purposes, a
    manipulated English translation of the Chinese term
    ``xiejiao.'' Zhao Ming, a former Falun Gong prisoner of
    conscience, summed up the dynamics as follows: ``The Party's
    machinery of persecution was there, Jiang pushed the button.''
        Thank you very much. In my written testimony you will find
    comments on some of the long-term consequences this campaign
    has had, both for Falun Gong and for the rule of law in China.
    Thank you very much.
        Chairman Smith. Ms. Cook, thank you very much.
        Now, Dr. Xu?
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Cook appears in the
    appendix.]

        STATEMENT OF JIANCHAO XU, M.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF
       MEDICINE, MT. SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE; MEDICAL DIRECTOR,
                DOCTORS AGAINST FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING

        Dr. Xu. Good morning. Honorable Chairman Christopher Smith
    and Cochairman Mr. Brown, Members of Congress, and
    distinguished panelists, my name is Jianchao Xu. As a kidney
    specialist, I am also a tenured staff physician at James J.
    Peters Veterans Administration Hospital in New York. I am also
    Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of
    Medicine.
        In addition, I serve as Medical Director for the nonprofit
    organization, Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, DAFOH,
    which is comprised of medical professionals from around the
    world who investigate the practice of illegal organ
    transplantation. We are particularly concerned about the
    reports of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in
    China who, we believe, have been victimized on a very large
    scale.
        The medical community has known about unethical organ
    transplantation in China since the 1990s. At a congressional
    hearing in 2001, it forced their hand and direct evidence of
    unethical organ transplant practices in China surfaced.
        Dr. Wang Guoqi, a Chinese medical doctor, testified to the
    House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights. Dr. Wang
    testified that prisoners receive blood tests in prison to
    determine their compatibility with interested donors. On
    execution day, the prisoners who are to become organ donors are
    the first to die. That was over a decade ago. Since then,
    things have gotten worse, much worse.
        There are vastly more transplants in China today than the
    identifiable source of organs. The government of China has
    openly admitted to using the organs of executed prisoners. But
    even if we were to assume that every single execution results
    in organ transplant, there is still not enough to account for
    the vast discrepancy between organ donations and the transplant
    operations.
        Falun Gong practitioners are the most likely source of many
    of the organs used in transplant procedures in China over the
    past decade. There was an enormous increase in transplants
    after 1999, with no reported changes in the organ donation
    process.
        The one thing that did occur in 1999 was the beginning of
    the persecution of Falun Gong, which now stands as the alleged
    explanation for the 41,500 official transplants from 2000 to
    2005 and would explain the donors. Even if we use the Chinese
    Deputy Minister Wang Jiefu's own data, there were approximately
    30,500 unexplained source organs from 1997 to 2007.
        Mr. Ethan Gutmann, an adjunct Fellow of the Foundation for
    Defense of Democracies painstakingly interviewed the victims
    who were imprisoned in China, as detailed in his chapter in the
    book, ``State Organs.'' His estimate is that 65,000 Falun Gong
    practitioners have been killed for their organs. We have every
    reason to believe that organ harvesting is ongoing in China to
    this day.
        According to a report from NTD-TV [New Tang Dynasty TV], a
    patient this year traveled from Taiwan to Mainland China, to
    Tianjin First Central Hospital and received concurrent liver
    and kidney transplantations. It only took one month to find a
    matching liver and kidney, while he had waited for years in
    Taiwan. Organ harvesting is an ongoing problem and it remains
    widespread. Fortunately, the movement to stop this gruesome
    practice is gaining momentum.
        The Taiwan Government is now requiring citizens to provide
    details of the transplant from the surgeons and donors if they
    go abroad to have an organ transplant, and subsequently seek
    health insurance coverage for their post-operative treatments.
        Starting in May 2011, instructions from the American
    Journal of Transplantation state that the publication will not
    accept manuscripts whose data is derived from transplants
    involving organs obtained from executed prisoners.
        In the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Clinical
    Investigation, an editorial stated that the practice of
    transplanting organs from executed prisoners in China appears
    to be widespread. They have vigorously condemned this practice
    and effective immediately will not consider manuscripts on
    human organ transplantation for publication, and so on and so
    forth.
        As you can see, there has been progress, but more needs to
    be done. Membership in an international professional society by
    Chinese transplant professionals must be conditioned by
    acceptance that no organs will be used from executed prisoners.
        Insurance companies must ensure that no executed prisoners
    are the source of organs used in their studies. I urge the U.S.
    Government and anyone with any knowledge of organ harvesting to
    publicly release all evidence they have with regard to China's
    use of prisoners as a source for organ donation.
        Those are the steps we can take. Some of them are underway.
    Let us strive further and even faster. I would like to express
    my deepest gratitude to the CECC for holding this hearing, and
    especially to the honorable chairman, Christopher Smith. You
    have been a true champion in advocating for Falun Gong and
    human rights.
        I particularly applaud your recent effort, the Dear
    Colleague letter, expressing concerns about China's forced
    organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, particularly
    from Falun Gong detainees, and asking the Department of State
    to share any information they have received about unethical
    organ harvesting in China, including anything that Wang Lijun,
    a Chinese police chief who met with the consulate officials in
    China might have divulged to U.S. consulate officials.
        One is believed to have been intimately involved in organ
    harvesting and has received an award for innovation in organ
    harvesting by the government. Also, as a police chief who
    directly oversaw the persecution of Falun Gong in his
    jurisdiction, which included the hospital. Thus, this
    information may hold the key to unlock the mystery of organ
    harvesting in China. Revealing this information may put an end
    to this horrific crime against humanity. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Xu appears in the appendix.]
        Chairman Smith. Dr. Xu, thank you very much for your
    testimony.
        Without objection, all of your full statements will be made
    a part of the record because they are very detailed and very
    chilling in the information they convey to this Commission.
        Dr. Xu, if I could just ask you first, I would note
    parenthetically when I held a hearing back in the mid-1990s on
    organ harvesting, Harry Wu, the great survivor of the laogai,
    actually helped smuggle out a man who was a guard who gave
    expert testimony and eventually got asylum, because he
    obviously could not go back, about executed prisoners. He
    showed how they would execute the prisoners, take their organs,
    the pain and the suffering often accompanying that because
    anesthesia was not given to the prisoners.
        Hearing your testimony talk about how much worse this has
    gotten and the numbers that you have in your testimony is
    absolutely numbing. You point out, for example, that Ethan
    Gutmann has estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have
    been killed for their organs.
        I remember reading a book some years ago about the Japanese
    Unit 731, which did horrific experimentation on especially
    Chinese but also on others--he was the Josef Mengele, of the
    Nazis, but in this case for the Japanese, a horrifying war
    crime and crimes against humanity. Yet, this is being
    replicated today.
        As you pointed out, Dr. Wang was so upset--tormented is the
    word you used--after he followed orders to remove the skin of a
    still-living prisoner in October 1995. The incident prompted
    him to alert the international community to the inhumane
    practice of organ harvesting in China. As you and others have
    pointed out, it has only gone from bad to worse.
        So I thank you, and I thank all of you for bringing one
    abuse after another that is imposed upon the Falun Gong to the
    attention of this Commission, but this practice and the
    widespread nature of it begs correction. Actually, we need to
    do far more than we have done to combat it.
        So my question to you is: Are we doing enough, the United
    States, the President, the Congress? How is the United Nations
    doing on this? I mean, they have the Human Rights Council that
    is supposed to be taking up these issues. It seems to me that
    very often if it's not Israel that's in the crosshairs, very
    little is done human rights-wise by the Human Rights Council.
    So if you could speak to that as well.
        You also point out, Dr. Xu, about the monitoring at a
    national level. When someone goes and gets an organ transplant,
    there needs to be a filing as to who was the provider of that
    organ, and under what circumstances. Because when they do come
    back, as we all know, they're going to need anti-rejection
    drugs like CellCept and other things that are very expensive,
    but they work.
        But for all of that after-care, if the organ has been
    procured in a totally inhumane way, we need to know it and
    people need to be held accountable. So if you could speak to
    what we could do legislatively as well, and others who would
    like to join in on that question.
        Dr. Xu. Thank you, Chairman Smith. The persecution
    [inaudible] just to give you an example [inaudible] Dr.
    [inaudible] effort to expose [inaudible] and the Israeli
    Government has implemented legislation on this that they will
    not cover patients for their medical care if they got the organ
    from tourism overseas.
        In our country, I think what we can do is institute similar
    legislative changes to expose the truth of what is going on in
    China, to expose what organ trafficking involves, to expose the
    live organ harvesting especially going on in China. If our
    citizens know that if you go to China to receive an organ that
    another person has to die, I think our citizens would stop
    going there, and so other citizens around the world would do
    the same.
        We can also, at the economic level, implement legislative
    changes, such as, we can have a witness protection program so
    that doctors, who I believe are the most powerful witness to
    stand in front of you to testify against the crimes against
    humanity--if we don't offer such protection, I think it's very
    difficult to have a doctor to come forth and who is involved in
    this crime to testify.
        Other things, like we could--at the government level, as I
    mentioned, we can have--for example, as you mentioned, when
    patients get organ transplantation overseas often the operation
    is a butchered operation and less than our standards.
        When they come back home--like Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, my
    dear colleague who is an expert in transplantation--when he
    sees patients who have high complications and whose mortality
    and morbidity are much higher than our standards, and they
    spend much money and impose a bigger economic burden to our
    country to take care of these patients post-operatively. I
    think that is how I can answer your question.
        Chairman Smith. Could you tell us what kind of profit is
    derived per organ? Who gets it? What are the countries where
    the recipients are coming from? Is it the United States, Japan,
    South Korea, Taiwan? Is there any kind of breakdown? Do we have
    any detailed information concerning who they are?
        Dr. Xu. I cannot give you the exact number or precise
    number offhand.
        Chairman Smith. Sure.
        Dr. Xu. But what I can tell you, like, Taiwan has
    recipients on the order of the hundreds and thousands. Saudi
    Arabia, the richest countries, richest states, they can afford
    this kind of tourism. They are a large portion of the
    recipients. Certainly the United States, but because
    anecdotally my colleagues have seen patients returning home
    getting an organ from China who received post-operative care.
        In terms of the price for each organ, I think it's on the
    order of $60,000, for example, for a kidney. For a heart, it's
    over $100,000. For a liver, it's on the order of $80,000 to
    over $100,000. The precise number is advertised in China's
    hospitals' Web sites. This number I can provide to you, to
    precise numbers, but it appears to be in that range.
        Chairman Smith. Now, in a parallel way, I never visited it,
    but I did look at it on the Web when it was in this area--The
    Bodies Exhibition. What struck me was how unbelievably healthy
    the people look--there was some East German doctor that
    perfected this method of preserving those people.
        There have been suggestions that they are Falun Gong and
    that they are incredibly healthy, they're prisoners, and then
    they are killed for these exhibitions. It's not the same as
    organ harvesting obviously, but it's the same macabre genre. Do
    you know anything about that?
        Dr. Xu. I focused my study on organ harvesting, but I also
    was told of such body preservation of young people that were
    killed and they are Falun Gong practitioners. I understand,
    because when Falun Gong practitioners are detained, some of
    them are afraid of their family, friends, and relatives being
    persecuted if they disclose their name, so some of them don't
    even tell the police their name. So those people are subject to
    being a very vulnerable group of prisoners. I would not be
    surprised--in fact, there is some evidence to suggest--that
    those bodies come from Falun Gong practitioners.
        Chairman Smith. Cochairman Brown?
        Senator Brown. Well, thank you, Chairman Smith.
        Dr. Xu, one more question on that and then I want to ask
    Mr. Chung some questions and others. You had mentioned
    membership in international organizations and pharmaceutical
    companies. What do you suggest we do, how can we help, and how
    can those two groups, membership in international physician
    organizations, in allowing Chinese or not allowing Chinese
    physicians into those organizations, and the role of
    pharmaceutical companies.
        There are a number of U.S. companies that do a lot of
    production of pharmaceuticals in China. I know that's not
    related to this, but there is certainly a connection between
    our countries and the pharmaceutical industry that way.
        Do you have thoughts on how we can, perhaps in terms of
    hope to answer some of the issues that Chairman Smith brought
    up, how to stop this practice by working with international
    organizations and international physician organizations and
    with the drug companies?
        Dr. Xu. We are not opposing the pharmaceutical companies
    from setting up their shops to manufacture their goods to serve
    the patients. However, I think if they do a clinical trial to
    develop new drugs and if they use the organs which are from
    executed prisoners, living prisoners, Falun Gong practitioners,
    the international community should condemn and should oppose
    such a practice. If they manufacture a drug, let's say you
    order whatever anti-rejection medicine for FDA-approved use, I
    think that is standard practice and we have no objection to
    that.
        In terms of what the international community, medical
    community, can do to end this horrific crime, one thing we
    propose is to have the membership to ask the training centers,
    the hospitals, to stop taking trainees from China who will not
    sign the affidavit that they will not participate in organ
    transplantation involving executed prisoners.
        I think that's a step we can take. Until the international
    community is satisfied that Chinese law on organ transplant is
    effectively implemented, like foreign funding agencies, medical
    organizations, or individual health professionals should not
    participate in any government--China--meetings on organ
    transplant research.
        Foreign companies that currently provide goods and services
    for China's organ transplant program should stop if they know
    their services and goods are involved in organ transplantation
    which is coming from executed prisoners.
        Foreign governments should not issue visas to doctors, to
    trainees, to medical professionals who are involved in the
    organ or body tissue transplantations involving executed
    prisoners. I think that's a step we can take.
        Senator Brown. Do you have evidence that U.S. or Western
    companies are doing clinical trials in China using either
    living prisoners doing clinical trials or using organs from
    executed prisoners?
        Dr. Xu. In fact, there was at least one company I know of,
    however, I cannot recall the name of the company. If I do, I
    should probably give it to you in a private manner. Because of
    our effort to expose the truth at different meetings,
    international meetings such as World Transplant meetings, that
    company has stopped and withdrew their status using the
    compound of chemicals to test the efficacy of their organ
    donations--organ transplants. In addition to this company,
    whether there are more companies involved, I do not have an
    answer to that. I don't know.
        Senator Brown. Okay. Thank you.
        Mr. Chung, thank you, again, for being here. This
    commission has done a series of hearings that Chris Smith has
    convened on all kinds of human rights abuses. Talk to us if you
    would about if you believe the campaign by your family, by
    organizations in Taiwan and outside of Taiwan, and just
    international human rights organizations, if those efforts, you
    think, moderated the treatment you received, that the treatment
    was less harsh as a result of those efforts, were they or not,
    and do you think those efforts play a role in being freed as
    you were, after far too long in confinement?
        Mr. Chung. Sure. I believe that I safely came back to
    Taiwan because of those people supporting me, many Taiwanese
    people in public supporting me. Everybody knows my case. That
    is the main reason that I can safely go back to Taiwan.
        Senator Brown. The other side of that is that Chinese
    authorities--I mean, nobody likes being preached to or told
    what to do by people, by outsiders. Nobody does. We don't like
    it when other countries criticize our behavior, and the Chinese
    Government doesn't like it when we do that, understandably to a
    point.
        Is there some chance that authorities dig in when we are
    critical of their practices and we speak out, when this
    commission or individual elected officials or human rights
    advocates like Ms. Cook speak out for you against the kinds of
    practices aimed at you, that it causes the Chinese officials to
    dig in more and resist and make the treatment worse in some
    cases?
        Dr. Xu. I think they do everything to hide their ugly
    things. They are afraid that what they've done, those ugly
    things, will be exposed. So we have to let everybody know what
    they have done, those ugly things.
        Senator Brown. Okay.
        What lessons from your experience should you tell this
    country, should you tell people in this country that pay
    attention to Chinese-American relations and Taiwan-American
    relations, and Taiwan-Chinese relations? So what lessons would
    you take from your experience?
        Dr. Xu. The most important thing is to let everybody know
    what they have done. They hide everything. They control the
    media, they control Internet access for their citizens. They
    hide everything. They control any media they can. So the most
    important thing is, the things they hide, to expose. That's
    what I think is the most important thing that we can do to stop
    the persecuting or anything.
        Senator Brown. Do you think your family members in China
    face persecution for your speaking out today or face
    persecution for your speaking out on human rights for the last
    several weeks?
        Dr. Xu. Yes, including my family in Taiwan. We are
    potentially in some kind of unsafe condition. But in my case, I
    think everybody is watching so I think basically we are safe
    just because everybody is watching.
        Senator Brown. Okay.
        Mr. Hu, you were one of many--I thought Ms. Cook's history
    was very good, the sort of documentation of how Falun Gong
    was--I'm not sure you used the word ``celebrated,'' but close
    enough, in the 1980s and into the 1990s, and then what happened
    in the mid-late 1990s.
        So many military personnel were practitioners of Falun
    Gong, apparently. Mr. Hu, did most of the personnel in the
    Chinese military who were practicing Falun Gong, did they cease
    to be practitioners? Did they stop practicing? And those that
    did and those that didn't, what happened to them?
        Mr. Hu. First, if I can correct one of the time issues.
    Falun Gong started in 1992 in Mainland China.
        Senator Brown. Oh, in 1992? Okay. Thank you.
        Mr. Hu. As far as I know, starting in 1992, a lot of
    military personnel, just like a lot of civilian people, started
    to practice Falun Gong. In 1999, the Communist Party started to
    persecute Falun Gong and we learned about the 7-20 [July 20th]
    incident. From that date on, we were prohibited from connecting
    with each other.
        So we could only communicate with each other in private. I
    could only connect with less than 10 military officials who
    formerly practiced in the same practice site with me. When I
    left China, I could only make contact with two of them, they
    were still practicing.
        When you ask the question, what happens to these people,
    for those who continue to practice like myself? We would be
    dismissed from the military. For those who do not want to give
    up but still want to remain in the military, they will receive
    forced transformation.
        Actually, in fact, China, under the rule of the Communist
    Party, within that realm, all the military officials,
    government officials, and the public are banned from practicing
    Falun Gong. That's my answer. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Brown.
        Just a few final questions. Mr. Hu, what was your rank in
    the military? You talked in your testimony about how the
    soldiers respected you because you were an officer, but you
    were subjected to endless hours of brainwashing. What does that
    brainwashing look like? Do they try to say that it is a
    psychological disorder to be Falun Gong?
        I read the People's Daily frequently and I am amazed that
    the propaganda is so intense almost on a daily basis, at least
    in the American version of the People's Daily, and I'm
    wondering what that brainwashing looked like.
        Second, earlier in the year I was visited by a number of
    high school students, the equivalent of high school from China.
    None of them spoke English. They were here on some visitor's
    program. We had about a two-hour meeting and I asked them very
    specific questions about Falun Gong.
        The prejudice and the bias against the Falun Gong, a direct
    result of the propaganda and what's being taught in the
    schools, was mind-boggling. I challenged every one of their
    views and they had no answers, other than that Falun Gong is
    wrong and horrible, and went on and on.
        I am wondering, since there are so many college students,
    and some high schoolers, here in the United States, what effort
    is the Falun Gong undertaking to educate them as they sit on
    U.S. campuses and European campuses about the big lie that they
    have been fed by Beijing with regard to the Falun Gong? Hate
    radio works. Hate TV works. We saw that in Rwanda, where it led
    to genocide. So if you could speak to that.
        Charles Lee, in his testimony, talks about how China is
    facing an unprecedented moral crisis and is going overboard in
    trying to destroy Christians, Buddhists, Uyghurs, and Falun
    Gong. Is it because of the moral crisis? Is the dictatorship
    that fragile?
        Finally, are Falun Gong in any way singled out for even
    worse persecution under the one-child policy as a means of
    eliminating Falun Gong children? I mean, Rebiya Kadeer
    testified some time ago that forced abortion is being used as a
    means of genocide, that systematically the Uyghurs are being
    eliminated at birth or immediately prior through these programs
    and it's part of a planned elimination of the Uyghur people.
    That's not all to Mr. Hu, but if you could about the
    brainwashing.
        Mr. Hu. The degree of the brainwashing that is experienced
    in the military compared to prison was different. In my
    testimony I mentioned that when I was detained in the military
    compound the soldiers were respectful to me because I was still
    an officer within the military.
        Compared to the other Falun Gong practitioners, I did enjoy
    a certain level of respect. Whereas, the other practitioners
    would be scolded and tortured every day. I didn't experience
    that when I was still in the military.
        What the soldiers did to me is that they would prohibit me
    from learning what was going on in the outside world; the
    window, for example, was blocked by a cotton quilt. I was
    monitored 24 hours a day and they needed to have two shifts of
    people monitoring me. So I would have four people watching me
    at any given time.
        Even while I was asleep, they would be standing right by
    me. Each morning after I woke up, they would play a video at
    very high volumes. This video defamed Falun Gong. For most of
    the time, they would find people from other agencies to attempt
    to brainwash me. They would tell me bad things about Falun
    Gong.
        You asked what rank I held when I was with the military. I
    was mainly conducting administrative work in an office. My rank
    was equal to a major level.
        I would say the level of brainwashing in prison was much
    more severe. I was imprisoned in Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai.
    One Falun Gong practitioner was locked with two criminal
    prisoners in a three-square-meter cell. The two criminal
    prisoners chosen to stay with us were usually the more vicious
    criminals and they were ordered to ``transform'' us. If their
    transformation was not successful, they would not be let out
    earlier. But if they could transform us, their sentence would
    be reduced.
        This is a method that the authorities have been using for a
    long time. Many Falun Gong practitioners, if they were put into
    detention centers or prisons, like myself, would face a long
    time of scolding and torture. I was forced to do labor. I was
    subjected to brainwashing sessions where I was forced to sit
    inches from a video monitor with deafening speakers blaring
    hateful messages. Under such circumstances, I spent two years
    at Tilanqiao prison in Shanghai.
        During the last two months of my time in prison, because I
    was not transformed, the level of persecution actually
    increased. Each day they would forbid me from sleeping. As soon
    as I fell asleep, they woke me up in a very violent way.
        In this situation I had no way but to make a hunger strike.
    After two days of hunger strike, I was almost in a coma. In
    that situation they sent me to a hospital, but I did not
    receive any medical treatment. They stretched out my limbs and
    bound me to a bed.
        At the same time, they injected a kind of substance that
    gave me a severe headache. They also force-fed me. I spent the
    entire month bound to the bed. I had to relieve myself in bed,
    too.
        It was a situation that human beings really cannot stand.
    But, I did survive that period.
        Let me go back to the brainwashing activities of the
    military. At first, they said bad things about Falun Gong. They
    fabricated some stories and examples, trying to persuade me to
    give up my belief. When I argued back with them, they had
    nothing to say. When they had nothing to say, they started to
    show me a report that the government did at that time.
        From that report, I saw two sets of statistical data. The
    first data, I don't remember the precise time over which it was
    collected, told at that time there were over 80 million Falun
    Gong practitioners in China. A second survey was conducted
    after this first one because by that time the government had
    already began to think there were too many people practicing.
    The survey team thought too high a number would cause a
    negative impact, so then they came out with a new number, which
    was 60 million practitioners. They asked me, ``How could the
    government be happy with so many people not being atheist? How
    could they allow this many people to practice Falun Gong? ''
    This is what I experienced in military detention.
        From these personal experiences, I learned that the
    persecution the Chinese Communist Party used against Falun Gong
    practitioners was based lies and violence.
        In the beginning, they used lies to deceive the Chinese
    public and the people in the international community. As a
    result, the general public would be deceived by all these lies
    when they were not really aware of the truth of Falun Gong.
        But they could not deceive people like us who knew the
    truth of Falun Gong. To people like us, they would use violence
    to try to transform us. That is why, when I was in the
    military, I refused the transformation. They dismissed me and
    then later put me into prison. However, to those in the public
    who were not aware of the truth of Falun Gong, the lies did
    take effect.
        That is why, when you might have talked to the Chinese
    students who were visiting this country, they would give you
    some negative comments about Falun Gong. That is the result of
    this lies-based education. For people like us who are
    practitioners now in the United States, we have tried our best
    to tell the people in China and in the world the truth of Falun
    Gong.
        So I sincerely hope that the U.S. Government, the U.S.
    Congress, could provide us with more support and address the
    serious persecution of human rights. Thank you.
        Senator Brown. One last question. Ms. Cook, his comments
    about the college students coming here and their beliefs about
    Falun Gong. Do you find in your extensive kind of travels and
    studies and observations with human rights, do you find in
    China that neighbors and colleagues at work, or relatives of
    persecuted Falun Gong practitioners sometimes rise up, speak
    out, show support? What do you see in Chinese society sort of
    around the practitioners' social networks when they are
    persecuted?
        Ms. Cook. I haven't had such conversations in China with
    people, but speaking with people who have come out it's
    interesting because it seems that there has been a change over
    time. Initially, quite a few people, especially after the
    incident of the supposed self-immolation in 2001 and some of
    the other propaganda, a lot of practitioners talked about how
    their own family members would be afraid of them. Their brother
    was worried that they were going to do something to them or to
    their children.
        To the credit of individuals like Mr. Hu, they have spoken
    to their family members about the lies told about Falun Gong,
    but increasingly a lot of Falun Gong literature also touches on
    the lies and the propaganda of the Communist Party more
    broadly. And they have managed to convince those they speak
    with. Many talk of their family members' attitudes changing.
        What you see happening is things like family members going
    to hire lawyers, so you have the human rights lawyers then
    going to defend Falun Gong practitioners, despite the risks, in
    part because the family members of those Falun Gong
    practitioners who may not be practitioners themselves have gone
    to seek out the lawyers to get their help.
        Increasingly, you're seeing these cases of petitions, that
    family members have started, to rally villagers who will then
    actually sign petitions calling for the release of a Falun Gong
    practitioner.
        But in other ways I think a lot of the change happens more
    quietly. So in conversations even with people from some Chinese
    Government think tanks, in private, they'll admit that the
    campaign against Falun Gong was a mistake. It's just that they
    can't say that publicly because of their own position and that
    they may be put at risk.
        So when you speak to people publicly, there are a lot of
    people who still have very negative views of Falun Gong. But
    you also see people who are aware, even on the inside of the
    system, who have started to change their views.
        I just wanted to make one more comment also with regard to
    the organ harvesting issue. There is a two-prong approach that
    can be taken. One aspect is to respond to what is very clearly
    happening and the question of where these organs are coming
    from, because clearly China does not have a voluntary organ
    donation system. Whether they're coming from executed
    prisoners, or increasingly the evidence that they may be coming
    from Falun Gong or also from Uyghurs, there's the element of
    what we can do with regard to transplant tourism.
        But Ethan Gutmann's research also showed that some of these
    organs, originally in the Uyghur case, were going to high-
    ranking Chinese officials. So you also have a market for these
    things within China. The other prong would be to seriously
    investigate and create some kind of mechanism, I would think,
    to really look into these questions about whether it's
    pharmaceutical companies, whether it's medical exchange
    programs and mechanisms of accountability, not just with regard
    to the transplant tourism but also with regard to the whole
    industry itself. Because one could see a situation where,
    besides the tourism, people within China, including possibly
    Party officials, may be the recipients of these organs.
        So I just wanted to mention, in terms of looking into that
    investigative side, to follow up on some of the research that
    individuals like Ethan Gutmann or others have done. As you saw,
    there are still a lot of questions about how this is actually
    playing out and how it may be spreading to other groups.
        We have seen generally with the campaign against Falun
    Gong, that tactics and entities like the 6-10 Office have
    started to be used to target other individuals, whether they're
    spiritual groups or ethnic minorities. There are a lot of
    Uyghurs who have disappeared as well, so there's a real
    question of what the actual current scope is of these organ
    transplant abuses. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you very much to all of you for your
    very detailed testimony. It certainly helps our Commission do a
    better job, and hopefully our government. Thank you so much.
        I would like to now welcome our second panel. But as you
    go, Dr. Xu, you mentioned Dr. Wang. I think it's worth noting
    very briefly from his testimony back in 2001, and I would just
    quote the pertinent part. He says,

              Before the execution I administered a shot of heparin to
            prevent blood clotting to the prisoner. A nearby policeman told
            him it was a tranquilizer to prevent unnecessary suffering
            during the execution. The criminal responded by giving thanks
            to the government.
              At the site, the execution commander gave the order to go and
            the prisoner was shot to the ground. Either because the
            executioner was nervous and aimed poorly, or intentionally
            misfired to keep the organs intact, the prisoner had not yet
            died but instead lay convulsing on the ground.
              We were ordered to take him to the ambulance anyway, where
            the urologist extracted his kidneys quickly and precisely. When
            they finished, the prisoner was still breathing and his heart
            continued to beat. The execution commander asked if they might
            fire a second shot to finish him off, to which the county court
            staff replied, ``Save that shot. With both kidneys out, there's
            no way he can survive.''

        That is brutality beyond comprehension.
        Thank you for your testimony, and thank you to this panel.
        I'd like to now ask our second panel if they would proceed,
    beginning with a medical doctor by training. Dr. Charles Lee
    pursued his medical studies at Harvard Medical School in the
    mid-1990s. In 1999 when the Chinese Communist Party began
    persecuting Falun Gong, Charles decided to go to China to help.
        He was arrested unlawfully and sentenced to three years in
    prison. He returned to the United States in 2006. I would say
    parenthetically that no one has done more and been more
    tenacious in defending Falun Gong than Charles Lee, so thank
    you for being here today.
        We will then hear from Professor James Tong, who is a
    Scholar of Comparative Politics, specializing in Chinese
    politics and political violence. He is currently director of
    the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of
    California at Los Angeles.
        We will then hear from Caylan Ford, an independent scholar
    and human rights consultant currently residing in Ottawa. She
    holds honors in World History from the University of Calgary,
    and a master's degree in International Security and Chinese
    Politics from George Washington University.
        She has authored numerous publications, including academic
    papers and op-eds in publications like the Washington Post and
    the Christian Science Monitor. Most recently, she co-authored a
    manuscript on the current status of Falun Gong in China, which
    is now under review with a leading China journal.
        Then we will hear from Mr. Xia, Senior Director of Policy
    and Research at the Human Rights Law Foundation. He's an expert
    on Chinese politics, the structure and functioning of the
    Chinese propaganda and judicial systems, and a range of
    extralegal Communist Party entities involved in human rights
    abuses in China.
        Over the past decade, he has overseen research and
    investigations contributing to numerous analytical reports. He
    has presented his research and analysis at the European
    Parliament, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and
    academic institutions in the United States and Southeast Asia.
    He has a rich and multifaceted Chinese cultural background,
    including work with military personnel, a university lecturer,
    and medical research here in the United States.
        Dr. Lee?

    STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEE, M.D., SPOKESPERSON FOR GLOBAL CENTER
                FOR QUITTING THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

        Dr. Lee. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith and Cochairman
    Brown, and all the distinguished members and staff members of
    the CECC for giving me this opportunity to testify today.
        Falun Gong actually had members from 70 to 100 million
    people, practicing at the end of 1998, according to government
    sources. Since the persecution started, the severity is
    tremendous. According to the 2006 U.N. Special Rapporteur
    Report, two-thirds of the torture cases in China were against
    Falun Gong practitioners. The torture methods include sexual
    assaults, beatings, shocks with electric batons, and violent
    force-feedings with feces and salt solutions.
        The cruelty of this persecution is unprecedented. We have
    heard of these organ harvesting issues for a long time. What is
    more, Chairman Smith mentioned about the Body Exhibit. We have
    this investigative report from the World Organization to
    Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, which confirms that
    those body exhibits, most of them were of Falun Gong
    practitioners. So I can give this report to you later.
        Chairman Smith. Actually, I would like to make that, or at
    least a major part of that, part of our record.
        Dr. Lee. Okay. That is good. I will give that to you.
        What we have heard, the Nazi's, after the gas chamber was
    used on those Jews, they used their hair as pillow stuffing and
    their skins for lampshades and gloves, and their bones were
    ground for fertilizer. What the Communist Party has been doing
    to the Falun Gong practitioners is very much comparable,
    sometimes even more horrific. They harvest organs when people
    are alive and then use the body's remains for the body
    exhibits--to maximize their profit.
        For the deaths of Falun Gong practitioners, there are three
    levels of evaluations. The first one, is that we have 3,627
    reports of deaths which have been well documented and confirmed
    by Falun Gong practitioners inside China, but there are still a
    lot of people missing.
        The organ harvesting--deaths--estimates by David Kilgour
    and Matas--50,000 people, and 65,000 by Ethan Gutmann. But the
    actual number could be much, much bigger than this because the
    CCP has always been manipulating the numbers. When they feel
    like the numbers are not good for them, they can just scale it
    down.
        Another thing is that China is a big country. They have
    about a 300 million transient population in China. These
    include the migrant city workers from the countryside, and tens
    of millions of appellants who constantly appeal to the
    government for their injustices, and also millions of
    unyielding Falun Gong practitioners who have lost their jobs,
    school, and families and they left their hometown to escape the
    persecution. In the past decade, many of them have disappeared
    or vaporized and nobody can trace them down.
        Also, in March 2006 there was a retired military doctor
    that revealed that there were 36 concentration camps for Falun
    Gong practitioners in China. The biggest one he claimed was in
    Jilin Province called 672-S Camp, which held 120,000 Falun Gong
    practitioners. On the other side, there are tens of millions of
    Falun Gong practitioners who have recovered from their
    illnesses, including terminal diseases, and benefited from
    improved health.
        The persecution on Falun Gong in the past 13 years has
    forced many of them into giving up the practice and, as a
    consequence, facing deteriorating health and eventually dying.
    My mother actually is one of them. So the death caused by the
    persecution should have reached several millions if all types
    of death are included.
        What is outlined here is only part of the clues on this
    heinous crime to humanity. It is extremely important for
    governments and people, both in the West and the East to know
    and find out the scale and the severity of largely undisclosed
    persecution.
        Much more efforts are needed to stop this crime against
    humanity and to fully investigate and lay down the framework
    for the long-overdue justice to be served. I would say that the
    persecution of Falun Gong is comparable to the Nazi's holocaust
    and genocide. It's a very big issue and we really need much
    more efforts.
        On the other side, Falun Gong practitioners have been
    peacefully resisting in the persecution. In the last 13 years,
    even though they have had so many people tortured to death,
    there is no single case in which Falun Gong practitioners used
    violence against the perpetrators.
        Practitioners have been trying their best to reveal the
    truth in China and overseas. Also practitioners outside of
    China have developed media outlets as well as firewall
    circumvention software to help people in China.
        I am one of those people. I went to China to bring true
    information to the Chinese people and I was detained and later
    arrested in 2003. When I was unlawfully imprisoned, they also
    tried everything possible to brainwash me and intimidate me in
    addition to the physical torture and the forced slave labor.
    The brainwash sessions lasted for all three years.
        They forced me to watch TV programs defaming Falun Gong and
    praising the Communist Party. Very often they have cut off all
    of my information sources for weeks on end, not even letting me
    talk with anybody. After those periods of isolation they would
    subject me to intensive brainwashing sessions in the hope that
    my resistance would be reduced.
        If I weren't an American citizen whose case was
    internationally known, the treatment I experienced would have
    been much worse. I am thankful very much for this strong
    support from friends around the world, especially the U.S.
    Congress, that allowed me to come back to this country with my
    body intact and my will unbroken.
        Another thing I want to emphasize is the awakening of the
    Chinese people during this decade. While I was imprisoned I
    wondered to myself how it was that people could so readily
    abuse and torture their own compatriots, and I wondered to
    myself how they allowed themselves to be deceived and how they
    came to be so full of hatred.
        At the end of 2004, the book titled, ``Nine Commentaries on
    the Communist Party,'' published by Epochtimes, has given
    answers to these questions and truly led to a historic
    awakening of the Chinese people. In the past 60-plus years, the
    Party distorted the Chinese people's sense of right and wrong
    and taught them to really view each other as enemies and to
    struggle against each other. The Party's ideology is so
    pervasive that people are even unaware of their inability to
    think independently.
        What is more, from a young age, Chinese people are taught
    that the Party and the country are the same concept, so
    whenever someone criticizes the Party they fear that it is an
    attack on the Nation of China and on themselves as Chinese.
        What has happened in the last eight years is that more and
    more people are quitting the Communist Party membership and
    other organizations affiliated with the Communist Party. There
    are many people who have stood out, like attorney Gao Zhisheng.
    He quit the Communist Party in 2005 and announced that it was
    his happiest day because he denounced the Communist Party and
    he was no longer part of the Communist Party.
        These people are making the choice to live according to
    their own conscience. That is really an awakening of the
    conscience and not according to the will of the Party, and they
    are refusing to participate in further violations against human
    rights. The process of denouncing the Party known in Chinese as
    ``Tuidang'' is thus a deeply spiritual, personal, and moral
    process and a method of reconnecting with traditional Chinese
    values of human-heartedness and compassion.
        To date, there are 129 million people in China renouncing
    and quitting the Party, taking this important step. More and
    more people's consciences are free from the CCP's control. The
    broad social and political environment is changing. The CCP is
    losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Chinese
    people. This is a process that will ultimately lead to the
    CCP's disintegration.
        Today, Chinese people are becoming unafraid of suppression
    and crackdowns by the CCP regime, and more and more people are
    taking a public stand to support Falun Gong and oppose the
    persecution.
        I would like to conclude my testimony by thanking the
    leadership of Congressman Smith and Congressman Andrews, along
    with the other 106 Members of Congress from 32 States for their
    bipartisan ``Dear Colleague'' letter to Secretary Clinton
    explaining the serious concerns over China's forced organ
    harvesting from prisoners of conscience and asking the
    Department of State to release all information about organ
    harvesting in China, including what Wang Lijun might have
    shared with U.S. diplomats while seeking asylum at the U.S.
    consulate in Chengdu. To my knowledge, the Department of State
    has not yet responded to the ``Dear Colleague'' letter.
        We believe that the United States is the world leader in
    protecting human rights and has a moral obligation to speak out
    and help bring an end to this horrific crime against humanity,
    and we also believe that by doing this the United States will
    protect itself from being further deceived and harmed by the
    CCP regime. I did submit a report on the Quitting CCP movement,
    so maybe you can take that for the record.
        Thank you very much.
        Chairman Smith. Dr. Lee, thank you very much for your
    testimony and for your leadership.
        Professor Tong?
        [The prepared statement and report of Dr. Lee appears in
    the appendix.]

      STATEMENT OF JAMES TONG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
        POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES

        Mr. Tong. Chairman Smith, thanks for organizing this.
        I have personally learned from this hearing from the other
    witnesses. I have done research on Falun Gong. Of course I've
    read many accounts of persecution of the Falun Gong, I have
    even read some of the publications by other witnesses, but they
    are not as moving as hearing them saying it firsthand, in
    person.
        So, let me begin with what Mr. Hu earlier alluded to, which
    is that Falun Gong was founded in 1992. This means that this
    year is the 20th anniversary of the Falun Gong. At the
    anniversary, the Falun Gong, as well as its Grand Master Li
    Hongzhi, was inundated with many greetings from China. In all,
    there are 2,788 greeting cards from all over China from six
    different administrative regions in China, as well as 23
    occupational groups, including teachers, military, law
    enforcement, and steelworkers, et cetera.
        What this suggests is that: (1) there is an extensive
    network of Falun Gong survivors who outlived the 1999
    crackdown; (2) there has been regular and frequent
    communication with the global Falun Gong community; and (3)
    China's regime is either less willing or less able to persecute
    them.
        There are some interesting developments. One, is that the
    Chief Procurator, the equivalent of the Attorney General in
    China, has to deliver an annual report to the national
    legislature in China.
        In this annual report, he has to list what the major law
    enforcement problems facing China were in the previous year.
    From 1999 through 2002, the Falun Gong was listed as a major
    law enforcement problem in China. But from 2004 onward, it has
    not been listed as such. That is on the national level.
        China has 31 provinces. In each of these provinces, each of
    the provincial procurators also has to make an annual report to
    the provincial legislature. In 1999, 29 out of the 31
    provincial procurators also listed Falun Gong as a major
    problem in their province; in 2000, 28 of the 31.
        But through 2004 onward, then the number has become single
    digits. In the last three years, 2009, 2010, 2011, there is not
    a single province which lists the Falun Gong as a major law
    enforcement issue in its jurisdiction.
        There are other developments as well. One of the earlier
    witnesses mentioned the 6-10 Office. The 6-10 Office was
    created on June 10, 1999, with the exclusive function to manage
    the Falun Gong problem. But starting in 2002, it changed its
    name to become the Leading Committee on Maintaining Social
    Stability, along with changes in its function. Its function is
    no longer exclusively on handling the Falun Gong. It has to
    deal with other law enforcement issues like peasants
    demonstrating against being evicted from their land, workers
    for being fired because their factories were closed, and also
    citizens protesting high prices.
        Other developments also suggest that Falun Gong is no
    longer perceived as a serious political threat. If it was an
    important policy matter, then the Politburo would convene a
    meeting, the Central Committee would issue an important
    document, and the entire national media would be launched to
    get involved on the campaign. Xinhua, the official news agency,
    would have a special commentary. The People's Daily would have
    an editorial, and then China's Central Television would have a
    special program on the case. These were all part of the
    crackdown campaign in 1999, but in the past decade none of
    these things have happened.
        Similar changes also take place at the local level. Unlike
    what happened in 1999, there are no roadblocks to stop Falun
    Gong practitioners from going to Beijing or to provincial
    capitals. There has been no systematic checking of hotels or
    rental properties for registered Falun Gong members.
        Now, this is not to suggest that Falun Gong has been
    decriminalized, nor does this suggest that this is the end of
    persecution in China. For sure, as Mr. Hu earlier suggested, if
    you are a member of the People's Liberation Army or if you work
    for the government or you work for the Party, you would be
    expelled from the military, from the government, from the
    Party.
        And if you unfold a banner of the Falun Gong in public, if
    you participate in collective meditation in a public park, if
    you print or distribute Falun Gong publications, you will also
    be arrested. And if you have been registered as a Falun Gong
    member, then you are under a surveillance network which is
    either in your residence or in your workplace. So, all those
    things would still be true.
        It is not a case of persecution or no persecution. It is a
    case of different levels of persecution and different degrees
    of perceived threat. It is similar to the case in the United
    States, where there are five levels of perceived risks of
    terrorism. So the levels of risks are the severe, the high, the
    elevated, the guarded, and the low levels. Right now we're in
    an elevated level of risks as far as the Department of Homeland
    Security is concerned.
        So if you look at the Falun Gong problem in China,
    certainly the case was severe in 1999, and from 2000 to about
    2003 it was high. But right now it is probably in the low and
    guarded level. On special occasions like, say, May 13, which is
    the foundation day of the Falun Gong, or July 20, which is the
    anniversary of the crackdown on the Falun Gong, then it would
    be elevated. Then on special events like the 2008 Olympics,
    then the perceived risk level would be high.
        In my prepared statement I have dealt with other issues and
    I will refer interested parties to look at my prepared
    statement. Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you, Professor Tong.
        Ms. Ford?
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Tong appears in the
    appendix.]

    STATEMENT OF CAYLAN FORD, INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR AND HUMAN RIGHTS
                       CONSULTANT, OTTAWA, CANADA

        Ms. Ford. Thank you. I'd like to thank the Congressional-
    Executive Commission on China for convening this very important
    hearing today.
        I'd like to begin my testimony with a story about one man
    whose experience I believe is representative of Falun Gong
    practitioners in China. This is the story of Qin Yueming. He's
    a father and businessman from Yichun City in the northeastern
    province of Heilongjiang.
        Qin learned about Falun Gong in the spring of 1997 while
    visiting a friend's home. That evening he practiced Falun
    Gong's one-hour meditation for the first time, and borrowed a
    copy of its central text, Zhuan Falun.
        Soon, Qin's family and friends noted that his temperament
    changed for the better. He was no longer irritable. He gave up
    drinking, stopped quarreling with his wife. Neighbors recall
    that he took it upon himself to repair the potholes on Lixin
    Street where he lived. Witnessing these changes, Qin's wife
    also began practicing Falun Gong, as did the couple's two
    daughters and several of their neighbors.
        In October 1999, three months after the persecution of
    Falun Gong was launched, Qin traveled to a local petitioning
    office to appeal against the persecution. He was sent
    immediately to the Yichun City forced labor camp for two years.
    Not long after his release in April 2002, security agents broke
    into his home, took him and his wife and their 15-year-old
    daughter into custody.
        In a Kafkaesque trial, Qin was sentenced to 10 years at the
    Jiamusi Prison. There he endured regular torture and
    humiliation as guards sought to coerce him into renouncing his
    spiritual faith. In the spring of 2010, the Communist Party's
    Central 6-10 Office initiated a new three-year campaign to
    intensify the ideological reeducation of Falun Gong adherence
    across the country.
        Party Web sites in every province of China carried details
    of the campaign, which set quotas for each region, specifying
    the percentage of adherents who were to be ``transformed,''--a
    process, as you've already heard, of coercive and often violent
    indoctrination that ends when the victim renounces Falun Gong.
        On February 1, 2011, the Jiamusi prison where Qin Yueming
    was held established a ``Strict Transformation Ward'' in
    compliance with the 6-10 Office directives. At least nine Falun
    Gong practitioners were transferred to the ward. Within two
    weeks, three of them were dead.
        Qin was the first victim. Less than five days after the
    establishment of the Strict Transformation Ward, his wife
    received a phone call from the prison informing her that her
    husband had died, ostensibly of a heart attack. He was 47 years
    old.
        When she arrived at the prison, she found his entire back
    covered in deep purple bruises, with dried blood around his
    nose and mouth. Other inmates and a sympathetic guard related
    that he'd been violently force-fed the night before. They
    believed a feeding tube may have punctured his lung.
        The two other men who were killed were 48-year-old Yu
    Yungang--abducted in 2009 and sentenced to eight years in
    prison--and 55-year-old Liu Chungjing. They all died within
    days of each other.
        But Qin's story did not end here. News of the deaths at
    Jiamusi quickly were related via an underground network of
    Falun Gong adherents and published on Web sites overseas. His
    oldest daughter issued a petition to authorities demanding
    redress and accountability for his death. Soon, the petition
    garnered over 15,000 signatures.
        I should mention as well that Qin's wife and his youngest
    daughter were sentenced to a forced labor camp because they
    were seeking a death certificate, and seven other Falun Gong
    practitioners were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 11 to
    14 years simply for visiting Qin's widow. Those sentences were
    handed down just two months ago.
        Similar petitions to the one that I've alluded to have
    sprung up in Heilongjiang, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Liaoning,
    Henan, and other provinces, demanding justice for Falun Gong
    practitioners. They have been signed by thousands of ordinary
    citizens, including members of security forces.
        The petitioners have not changed the will of Central Party
    authorities. Every year they launch renewed efforts to
    eliminate Falun Gong and undermine public sympathy for the
    practice. In 2007, as the Congressional-Executive Commission on
    China documented, security czar Zhou Yongkang, a Politburo
    Standing Committee member, ordered the nation's security forces
    to wage a ``Strike Hard'' campaign against Falun Gong ahead of
    the 17th Party Congress and the Beijing Olympics. References to
    this crackdown were found in provincial jurisdictions of every
    province in China.
        In the first six months of 2008, there were at least 8,000
    Falun Gong adherents who were abducted by security agents,
    typically from their homes. In 2009, the Central CCP leadership
    initiated the 6521 project aimed at intensifying surveillance
    and suppression of Tibetans, democracy activists, and Falun
    Gong practitioners. The campaign was rumored to have been led
    by Xi Jinping.
        Zhou Yongkang led his own top-level CCP committee which
    exhorted security agencies to ``closely watch out for and
    strike hard against Falun Gong.'' Top officials have
    consistently launched such campaigns, the recent three-year
    transformation campaign being one iteration.
        Now, interestingly, as Dr. Tong mentioned, anti-Falun Gong
    propaganda has been largely absent at the national level since
    around the time of the 16th Party Congress in 2002. The
    campaign's continued prominence in national media was
    attracting unwanted international attention to the suppression
    and the new generation of leaders may have decided that a
    better PR strategy was to allow the issue to fade away.
        But while the high-profile national propaganda campaign
    petered out, propaganda activities against Falun Gong at the
    local level have continued unabated. Earlier this year, for
    example, the Central 6-10 Office launched a comprehensive
    campaign to clean up Falun Gong information or literature.
        The initiative mobilized neighborhood committees to tear
    down Falun Gong messages that were plastered on billboards,
    light posts, and telephone poles. In Weifang City, authorities
    were required to conduct twice-daily patrols looking for Falun
    Gong pamphlets. In Qingdao, they demanded 24-hour vigilance
    against Falun Gong's posters.
        The notices also required neighborhood committees to hold
    study sessions to unify their thinking on the anti-Falun Gong
    work. They mobilized local Party functionaries to screen anti-
    Falun Gong forms and go door-to-door, collecting promises from
    families that they would not support Falun Gong.
        A Party document uncovered in several geographically
    disparate locales earlier this year exhorts authorities to
    create a climate in which Falun Gong are ``like rats running
    across the street that everyone shouts out to smash. Don't
    leave them any space.''
        A Party document from the Laodian township in Yunnan
    Province dated May 15, 2010, notes that the Falun Gong
    adherents in custody, however, are ``becoming more and more
    difficult to transform.'' The practitioners were returning to
    the practice with greater frequency and new people were taking
    up the practice. It further notes that Falun Gong is ``fighting
    with us to win the masses and the struggle to win people's
    hearts is still very intense.''
        Party documents published this year repeatedly admonished
    cadres to ``overcome their paralysis of thought'' and truly
    understand that the anti-Falun Gong struggle has always been a
    ``long-term, important political task to grasp unremittingly.''
        The continued suppression campaign launched against Falun
    Gong evinced two things. First, to senior leaders of the
    Communist Party, the eradication effort remains of great
    importance and continues to command tremendous human and
    material resources.
        Recently released prisoners from China continue to report
    that in many detention facilities, Falun Gong practitioners
    comprise the majority population. In the Beijing Women's Labor
    Camp, for instance, they are between two-thirds and 80 percent
    of the imprisoned population. They are singled out for abuse,
    and of course there are ongoing allegations that the organs of
    Falun Gong prisoners of conscience are sold for transplant.
        Yet, the official Communist Party literature coming out in
    recent years also reveals that the 13-year-old campaign to
    defeat Falun Gong has failed, that local cadres are
    increasingly unwilling to pursue the campaign, despite orders
    from their superiors, that more and more people are returning
    to or taking up the practice, and that despite all of its
    efforts, the Party is losing the battle for the hearts and
    minds of the Chinese people.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Ms. Ford, thank you very much for your
    testimony and for your insights.
        Mr. Xia?
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Ford appears in the
    appendix.]

        STATEMENT OF YIYANG XIA, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND
               RESEARCH, THE HUMAN RIGHTS LAW FOUNDATION

        Mr. Xia. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Cochairman Brown,
    for holding this hearing. Thank you to the CECC.
        I would like to address how this persecution operates
    without a legal basis. We have established the argument that
    the Chinese Government never legally banned Falun Gong. This is
    based on Chinese lawyers who defended Falun Gong practitioners,
    based on the Chinese Constitution and the Chinese laws.
        Since the Falun Gong practitioners didn't break any law,
    the regime couldn't apply the rule of law to deal with the
    Falun Gong issue. It initiated a political campaign instead.
    Political campaigns cannot co-exist with the rule of law, so
    the regime used special tactics to create a very sophisticated
    system, including setting up a new chain of command outside the
    legal system, this is the 6-10 Office; using an existing Party
    system, such as the Political and Legal Affairs Committee
    [PLAC]; using internal Party documents to override the laws and
    the Constitution. It used this method to persecute Falun Gong.
    So the regime created a system to systematically break the law,
    to persecute Falun Gong. I have included details in my written
    statement. This is the result: When the regime systematically
    breaks its own laws, then nobody is safe. That is the current
    situation in China.
        I will also talk about why Wang Lijun is so important. Wang
    Lijun fled to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, setting off one of
    the biggest political scandals in China in recent years. But
    most people don't realize that Wang Lijun's human rights abuses
    went way back, way before he took the position in Chongqing.
        So I would like to mention, Wang Lijun set up and directed
    a research facility in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province to study and
    refine the harvesting of organs from prisoners. In 2006, Wang
    Lijun received the Guanghua Innovation Special Contribution
    Award for his research on organ transplantation from donors who
    had been subjected to drug injection.
        Why is this so important? Because Wang Lijun's case was
    well documented and published by the Chinese media before he
    fell, so the evidence is already there. We know the following
    facts from the Chinese media and official reports.
        First, Wang admitted that he did the organ removal
    operations.
        Second, from the published information, his experiments at
    least included developing a brand-new protective fluid to
    preserve the organs that enabled the recipient's body to
    receive the organ.
        Third, during the award ceremony for his organ research,
    Wang explained that the so-called on-site research is the
    result of several thousand intensive on-site cases. According
    to available data, the executions in Jinzhou from 2003 to 2006
    would not exceed 100. So the numbers don't match.
        Wang Lijun doesn't have medical training. Without any
    medical background, he collaborated with top universities, both
    inside and outside China. He was just a middle-level city
    police chief. The only reason for the cooperation is that he
    could offer something the others couldn't: Taking organs from
    live human beings.
        Last, execution is not under a police chief's jurisdiction,
    and so he is not supposed to execute prisoners.
        Then, who are those thousands of prisoners who are under
    the police chief's jurisdiction? This is where Falun Gong comes
    in. In November 2009, a World Organization to Investigate the
    Persecution of Falun Gong investigator interviewed a former
    member of the Armed Police.
        The armed policeman witnessed a female Falun Gong
    practitioner's organs being removed when she was alive. At the
    end of the interview, the officer mentioned that he had taken
    orders from Wang Lijun, who had said to eradicate them all,
    referring to Falun Gong practitioners.
        Taking the entire interview into account, the investigators
    concluded that although the organ harvesting incident the
    police officer witnessed had occurred in Shenyang, the victims
    were likely from Tieling, where Wang was the police chief, and
    that her detention and prior torture had occurred there.
        Finally, I would like to say something about the new
    leadership. There are several reasons to believe that the
    policy of persecution of Falun Gong will not have a big change
    in the near future under the new leadership. The new leadership
    will face a big challenge on Falun Gong issues. The Hong Kong
    Trend magazine published an article in October listing three
    major challenges that the new leadership would face. One of
    them was how to handle the anti-Falun Gong campaign.
        But why can't the policy of persecuting Falun Gong change?
    One reason is that the CCP lacks self-correction mechanisms,
    and the CCP has never fully redressed a political campaign
    targeted at ordinary Chinese people, never. The Cultural
    Revolution is the only exception. But the Cultural Revolution
    was targeted at the Chinese Communist Party itself and at high-
    ranking Party officials.
        Some newly selected members of the Standing Committee of
    the Politburo are also involved in the persecution. Before and
    after the 18th Party Congress, the persecution of Falun Gong
    has become more severe, along with harassment of other
    religious groups. Finally, the social, political, and economic
    crisis the CCP is facing will get worse, thus the human rights
    abuses will get worse.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Xia appears in the
    appendix.]
        Chairman Smith. Mr. Xia, thank you very much for your
    testimony.
        Let me begin. Professor Tong, your information which you've
    conveyed to the Commission, I think, is very interesting,
    particularly Table 2 where you talk about how, on the national
    level, the enforcement problem from the various counties shows
    that it probably peaked in 2001, maybe 2003, but then it began
    to abate.
        Now, my question is, so no one draws the wrong conclusion
    that somehow there's been an easing, is it that--and the others
    might want to speak to this as well, and Ms. Ford, you spoke
    about that, and so did Mr. Xia--there seems to be a morphing of
    how they do it and a change of direction rather than a lack of
    persecution or an abatement of the maltreatment of Falun Gong
    practitioners. Is that true or is it a mixed bag?
        I mean, I've heard that local cadres are unwilling, and yet
    the labor camps are overflowing with Falun Gong practitioners,
    but at the local level it continues unabated in terms of how it
    is implemented. What is the accurate picture in terms of the
    level of persecution? Has it changed or has it abated? Are the
    numbers growing of Falun Gong practitioners?
        In light of this gross disinformation campaign, this hate
    campaign that's being leveled by the government at all levels,
    are people moving away from the Falun Gong?
        Mr. Tong. I would rely on the other, more knowledgeable
    Falun Gong practitioners to comment and say whether the number
    of Falun Gong practitioners inside China has been growing or is
    about the same. Compared with, say, 1999 when we had more or
    less reliable numbers, the lowest range is 2.3 million and the
    highest number, as Mr. Hu mentioned, is 80 million. The 2.3
    million--I believe, is every one of these 2.3 million number
    has a name, has an address, so these are actual people with
    faces.
        But after 1999, because the Falun Gong has gone
    underground, the number will be difficult to know, whether it
    has been growing or not. It will also be difficult to know at
    the local level whether the persecution has been intensifying
    or abating or not. China has 3,000 counties and over 700
    cities, so it's difficult to know what happens at the local
    level.
        Plus, in the case of the Falun Gong and religious
    communities, China subscribes to the policy of local
    management. So there's really no uniform national policy and
    that makes the picture all the more confusing.
        Chairman Smith. But is there a national strategy that's
    being implemented at a local level in a way that is more
    efficacious for the outcome? I mean, I think, Mr. Xia, you've
    spoken about the extralegal chain of command.
        Mr. Xia. I would like to answer this question.
        Chairman Smith. Yes, please.
        Mr. Xia. I would like to answer this question. First, this
    is a political campaign of the Party. The 6-10 Office belongs
    to the Party, not the state, so it's not required to report to
    the People's Congress. It's an option, but it's not required.
    This is first.
        Second, the 6-10 Office continues to exist independently
    from the Maintaining Stability Office. People mix them together
    because, first, the Maintaining Stability Office was
    established on the experience of persecution of Falun Gong. So
    at the beginning, the office members were overlapping,
    especially when the director of both offices are the same
    person, Liu Jing. When Liu Jing retired, the offices separated
    again. You can see it's a totally different office.
        Now, the leader of the 6-10 Office, Central 6-10 Office, is
    Li Dongsheng and the leader of the Maintaining Stability Office
    is the Vice Minister of Public Security. So it's a totally
    different person. So we cannot mix them together. But they have
    the same strategies because the Maintaining Stability Office
    learned experience from the 6-10 Office.
        This is a nationwide political campaign. Since there has
    never been any National People's Congress that authorized the
    persecution, we cannot say the persecution never happened. It's
    never been state action. It's a Party action, but it used the
    state organ as the instrument. That's my observation.
        Chairman Smith. Dr. Lee?
        Dr. Lee. I want to just mention that before the persecution
    started in 1999, the Communist Party's Sports Commission did an
    investigation on Falun Gong practitioners. They estimated there
    were 70 to 100 million people practicing Falun Gong at that
    time and the National Congress head--his name is Qiao Shi--he
    also was involved in the investigation. His conclusion was that
    Falun Gong has nothing bad, but all goodness to the society.
    Many other officials in the high-level CCP, they all supported
    Falun Gong.
        The number was mentioned and published in the publications
    before the persecution. When the persecution started, the
    Communist regime changed the number to 2.3 million. The reason
    was that they were going to scale down the numbers of Falun
    Gong practitioners because if they say there are so many
    people, like 100 million people practicing, then the target is
    too big and it's a very bad image. So those are the tactics of
    the CCP when they do these political movements. They always
    twist around the numbers.
        Another thing. Professor Tong mentioned that after 2002,
    there was almost no Falun Gong in the media in China. This is
    also the strategy, because in the first two years of the
    persecution it caused a lot of international attention. People
    saw clearly that there were human rights violations. Everybody
    was questioning, what's going on in China? So they decided to
    go underground, but the persecution never stopped, never
    reduced or abated.
        My personal case is exactly the kind of case they want to
    cover up in the persecution of Falun Gong. When they arrested
    me they tried to brainwash me, trying to transform me to give
    up Falun Gong. After they failed, they changed the tactics.
    They said we're not going to talk about Falun Gong anymore
    because your case is not a religious persecution, your case is
    a criminal case. So that's what happened.
        They did not allow me to talk about anything concerning
    Falun Gong at the court and they did not allow me to show the
    evidences, what were the reasons for which we wanted to reveal
    the truth. So that is exactly what the Communist Party wanted
    people to believe in, that Falun Gong is no longer a major
    problem in China and they do not publicize the persecution, but
    underground the persecution never abated.
        On the other side, because of the resistance by the
    petitioners, a lot of people, including those policemen, they
    found their conscience--many of them even helped Falun Gong
    practitioners in the police station and those kind of places.
    So that's like both sides of the story. So I just want to
    mention this is a tactic of the regime. Thank you.
        Ms. Ford. I would be happy to address the question that you
    had asked about members. Obviously it's a very opaque climate
    and it's very difficult to get a sound assessment. In 2009,
    there was a human rights lawyer in Beijing who told the
    Telegraph that he believed there were tens of millions of Falun
    Gong practitioners, and perhaps more significantly that the
    practice was growing. This is consistent--we find references to
    this both within Falun Gong literature and within Party
    literature. They refer to newly discovered or new practitioners
    quite frequently, actually with increased frequency.
        There was a study done by Falun Gong's primary overseas Web
    site in 2009 that produced an estimate of about 40 million
    people who continued practicing. Not only practicing but who
    had some level of contact with the wider community. This
    calculation was based on the number of underground Falun Gong
    material sites in China.
        These material sites are a Samizdat-like network that
    practitioners have established, where they upload and download
    information about Falun Gong to and from the international Web
    site. There are 200,000 of these material sites, and they
    estimated that each one was connected to dozens or hundreds of
    Falun Gong practitioners.
        There is also some evidence that comes from local-level
    documents. You will find a particular township or district
    sometimes referring to the fact that they've got 1,600 Falun
    Gong practitioners that they're monitoring, for instance. It's
    very difficult to piece together a coherent picture, but I
    think it's safe to say that the number is, I would say, still
    probably in the millions.
        As far as your question about the willingness of
    authorities at local levels to implement the persecution, my
    answer to James Tong's question is--is this a matter of the
    Party's willingness or their ability to fully sort of
    disintegrate Falun Gong--and I would say that at the Central
    level the Party is completely willing to pursue the campaign to
    its end.
        They refer to this in official documents from the 6-10
    Office at the Central level, they describe this as a matter of
    ``life and death for the Party,'' as a ``test of the Party's
    ability to govern,'' in these very hyperbolic terms.
        But as Dr. Lee was mentioning, at the local level--this
    isn't to say that there aren't a good number of very sadistic
    police officers and so on, but at the local level we find
    increasingly that even members of the security forces are
    sympathizing with Falun Gong.
        You hear stories about 6-10 Officers who visit Falun Gong
    practitioners, that tell them, ``I'm going to have to arrest
    you in a couple of days because my superiors are watching, but
    don't worry, we'll let you out really fast and we'll try to
    protect you.'' So this is some of the dynamic.
        Of course, it varies from locale to locale, but
    increasingly we are finding that at the grassroots level, as
    evidenced as well by these petitioners, that people are
    increasingly sick of this and that even the cadres who are
    charged with performing this transformation work, authorities
    were having a more and more difficult time convincing them of
    the necessity of the persecution of Falun Gong.
        Chairman Smith. Let me ask you, in his testimony Dr. Xu had
    a final concluding set of paragraphs: What can we do? He had a
    number of admonitions to the medical community, to society, and
    to the U.S. Government. One, is the petition that they've
    launched, Dr. Kaplan, Dr. Centurion, and Dr. Xu. They've gained
    over 10,000 signatures within two weeks, asking that President
    Obama speak out against this horrific practice. I'm wondering
    what your thoughts are on that approach.
        Second, he also asks that Congress adopt legislative
    changes to prohibit patients from going abroad to receive
    illegal organ transplants, and then suggests a registry that
    would include the source of the organ donation. Your thoughts
    on that?
        Finally, in 2000, I authored a law that empowered the U.S.
    Government to deny visas to anyone who is involved with forced
    abortion or forced sterilization. Sadly, both the previous
    administration and the current administration has so
    inadequately enforced it, that only some 27 people have been
    denied entry into the United States, despite the fact that
    forced abortion is absolutely commonplace throughout China. So
    it has been very ineffectively implemented.
        The other side, or a contrary-positive, in 2004 I authored
    the Belarus Democracy Act, which also has a visa ban in it, and
    some 200 top people associated with the Lukashenko regime, the
    last dictatorship in Europe, are denied entry into the United
    States. The Europeans have a similar annex that lists people
    and their families who are denied entry into Europe and it has
    had a huge positive, and I think over time will have a very
    positive, impact.
        I heard from some Belarusian leaders last week at a forum
    with Freedom House that there are judges who do not want to
    handle human rights cases because they don't want to be put on
    that list and be denied access to the United States. I just got
    news a moment ago that Jacob Ostreicher, a man that I've been
    working to get out of prison at the Palmasola Prison in
    Bolivia, and I actually visited him in June and was down there
    just last week, he just got bail.
        But I introduced a bill called Jacob's Law that would say
    that anyone who is engaged in human rights abuse against an
    American will be denied a visa to the United States, as well as
    their families, so they can't send their kids here to college,
    and hopefully this will have a chilling effect on barbaric
    practices by these individuals.
        There's a bill that's pending now, and I've introduced it,
    called H.R. 2121--and I'd appreciate your thoughts on it--that
    would say that anyone who engages in human rights abuse is
    inadmissible to the United States. We have already had one
    hearing at the Judiciary Committee on H.R. 2121. Chai Ling, the
    great Tiananmen Square activist who now heads up All Girls
    Allowed, was one of those who testified, as did I.
        It seems to me that a very focused sanction of this kind
    that says to individuals who engage in barbaric practices,
    well, at the very least you're not allowed to come to the
    United States--hopefully the Europeans and other countries will
    follow suit--will have potentially a chilling effect over time,
    but will also hold to account those who commit these. It
    comports, I think, with what Dr. Xu basically is talking about,
    holding the individuals to account who commit these crimes.
        Your thoughts on a visa denial policy, and the other
    questions that I asked earlier?
        Mr. Xia. I think that the State Department already has
    questions on the online application form, do you ever, I don't
    remember exactly, ever involved in forced organ removal
    operation. They already have one. But I think it should be
    well-publicized to let everybody know.
        Another thing I would like to think about on that ``Dear
    Colleague'' letter that Representative Smith initiated and the
    petition. I think the U.S. Government should respond to those
    letters and petitions. As I mentioned, Wang Lijun's case is
    important because this is the first and only case we know that
    is published by the Chinese authorities and all the evidence
    pointed to that one person.
        Before, it was all collected evidence: How many? All
    numbers. But now this is individual. So, this is very
    important. That's why the government should get involved,
    because the individuals, the non-government organizations have
    limited resources, so the governments should get involved in
    the investigation. That's what I think.
        Another thing, really short, is there should be some kind
    of protection for whoever testifies against themselves. Because
    if the doctor who operates did the organ harvesting and then he
    testified, then he is against himself. He lost a chance to
    practice either in China or in the United States. He's against
    himself because his actions violated the ethical code. So there
    should be some kind of protection to protect those who can step
    out to testify, because whoever testifies practically loses
    everything, their reputation, career, everything.
        Chairman Smith. Like Dr. Wang.
        Dr. Lee. I have some suggestions. First, the State
    Department should speak out. We heard that in 2009 the
    Secretary of State said that human rights should not interfere
    with the trading, which is totally wrong because human rights
    are for every human being. If we do not respect human rights,
    if we do not protect human rights, we cannot be called a human
    being.
        So the U.S. Government should have this right stance. There
    should be no exceptions. If there is any human rights
    violation, the U.S. Government should speak out; let alone
    these severe, heinous crimes happening in China, as the scale
    that I just talked about. It's comparable to the Nazi's
    holocaust or genocide.
        For visa denials, the second step, we can do that in the
    legislative branch. Also, what we can do is like the Bo Xilai
    case. We know that their family has $6 to $8 billion U.S.
    dollars outside of China. We can trace this money down, maybe
    freeze these accounts. Also, for these confirmed human rights
    perpetrators--against humanity--they should be arrested if they
    come to the United States or other countries. There should be
    this kind of law and it should be explored in this direction
    later on. But the U.S. Government should speak out clearly to
    the CCP regime that no such thing could happen in this world,
    we cannot see it happening and do the trading normally. Thank
    you.
        Ms. Ford. With respect to H.R. 2121, I think it has the
    potential to be very powerful. Falun Gong sources have already
    compiled massive lists with the names, often the addresses,
    phone numbers, educational backgrounds of those who are
    particularly egregious in their use of torture and coercion in
    the persecution. So these lists already exist and are often
    fairly well corroborated.
        To give an example of why this kind of thing is powerful,
    just at the micro-level within China, one of the things that
    Falun Gong practitioners have done very effectively to mitigate
    the worst excesses of persecution is precisely to adopt a kind
    of name-and-shame tactic against the perpetrators.
        So if there's one police officer or prison guard who's
    particularly vile, they'll post information about them, about
    their crimes and their use of torture, they'll give it to the
    man's wife, to his kids, they'll put it on telephone poles, and
    that person will largely stop doing that. They will also
    publish it overseas with their phone numbers and the person
    will be inundated with phone calls explaining to them why they
    shouldn't be complicit in crimes against humanity.
        So even though that's just at the local level, the risk of
    people losing their reputation, their standing in the community
    because of these things, I think is very potent. At the larger
    level, many Chinese officials at the mid-levels and higher have
    assets abroad or have children that they've sent abroad or
    intend to and hold foreign passports, so I think it could be a
    very strong deterrent.
        On the question that was raised in the previous panel as
    well about the impact of public pressure in individual cases, I
    think the Chinese Government has sometimes been deliberately
    inconsistent in how they respond to such pressure, precisely so
    that Western policymakers can't figure out the most effective
    way to engage with them on human rights. So in some cases
    attention on a particular case can exacerbate the abuses.
        But what I have found, and I think the Falun Gong victims
    on these panels would agree, is that on a whole the pressure is
    beneficial. Take the case of Bu Dongwei, an Amnesty
    International prisoner of conscience, who was detained twice at
    the same labor camp in Beijing.
        The first time there was no international attention
    attached to his case and he was tortured very severely. The
    second time he noticed that other prisoners were still being
    tortured severely, but he was not. What he didn't know is that
    Amnesty had listed him as a prisoner of conscience, his wife
    was lobbying for him at the State Department, and that
    contributed directly to an improvement in his condition.
        Mr. Tong. Diplomacy is always a two-way street. American
    citizens are paying a very high visa fee to go to China. It's
    because the U.S. Government is requiring Chinese citizens
    coming to the United States to pay a high U.S. visa fee.
        So if we say the State Department wants to deny visas to
    certain categories of Chinese citizens, it is quite likely that
    China will also reciprocate and deny visas to certain
    categories of American citizens, so it needs to be thought
    through. That's my only comment.
        Chairman Smith. Let me just say, the State Department
    celebrated the one millionth visa granted to an American
    citizen just a few months ago, but this Chairman--me--I have
    been denied a visa, as have members of our staff, to travel to
    China because we've raised the case of Chen Guangcheng and
    wanted to visit him. So it is a one-way street.
        When you're talking about abusers, any collateral damage
    that might be done if it has any mitigating effect on the abuse
    is well worth it, in my opinion, which is why I think we need
    to promulgate lists. Again, I heard it as recently as two weeks
    ago from Belarusian leaders that certain judges--and I want to
    get more information on this to see how widespread it is--
    simply will not take up human rights cases because they don't
    want to be on the list.
        I think if we are serious about it and promulgate these
    lists and hold our own government to account and say we don't
    want them coming here--when I was in La Paz, I raised with
    government officials of Evo Morales that Jacob's Law, which is
    a parallel to everything we're talking about here--we're saying
    if you want to send your kids, and you're an abuser, to
    University of Miami or some other school, forget about it
    because we're serious about abuse.
        All these other positives that you might glean from coming
    to the United States, like going on a shopping spree, enjoying
    the benefits of Disney World, or sending your kids to Yale or
    Harvard, or wherever you want to send them, from our point of
    view is part of the price of trying to help victims, because
    this Commission and everything we do on the Human Rights
    Committee and what we should be first and foremost all about,
    in my opinion, is victims, to try to mitigate and lessen the
    number of victims.
        It seems a no-brainer that holding abusers to account, they
    should be before a court of law, on their way to the Hague, or
    if it's an international issue for crimes against humanity,
    rather than whether or not there might be some corresponding
    retaliation by the Chinese.
        Bring it on. I would say to the Chinese Government, we need
    to be very serious about abuse. We have not been, and as a
    government, it goes through successive administrations that
    have been very weak and vacillating when it comes to human
    rights of the Chinese people. That has to change.
        On May 26, 1994, Bill Clinton de-linked most-favored-nation
    status from our trade policy. We have seen a deterioration--it
    was already bad, obviously--every since. I think while we may
    never get that back again, we do have other tools in the
    toolbox and we need to use them. If any of you have any final
    comments, any statement you'd like to make before we conclude
    the hearing, please. Dr. Lee? You don't have to if you don't
    want to.
        Dr. Lee. Yes. I just want to thank you and all the other
    members on the CECC for their hard work. It's extremely
    important for us to face the human rights violations in China
    because China is such a big country. As I said, even the
    transient population in China is 300 million. It's like the
    entire United States population is moving around, moving from
    city to city looking for jobs, that kind of thing.
        The impact is huge so we have to really look into these
    things and do whatever is possible. As I also said, people in
    China are awakening, so we do see hope and we do know that we
    need to do a lot more things. We hope we can do this together
    with the U.S. Government. Thank you very much.
        Chairman Smith. Professor?
        Mr. Tong. I just want to commend Mr. Smith's principled
    position on human rights.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you.
        Ms. Ford. I'll just echo that. Thank you again for
    convening this hearing.
        Mr. Xia. Thank you for holding this hearing. Another thing
    is the petition outside. I think whoever attends this meeting
    and hasn't signed, please do so when the hearing is finished.
    Thank you.
        Chairman Smith. Thank you very much.
        The hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:34 p.m. the hearing was concluded.]
                                A P P E N D I X

    =======================================================================

                              Prepared Statements

                                  ----------

                       Prepared Statement of Bruce Chung

                               december 18, 2012
        I want to thank Chairman Smith and Co-chairman Brown for holding
    this important hearing and inviting me to testify today.
        My name is Chung Ting-pang, manager of INTEK TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.
    in Taiwan. I have been practicing Falun Gong since 2001. Like hundreds
    of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in Taiwan, I follow this
    spiritual path because Falun Gong has not only brought me good health
    but also provided me with meaningful spiritual guidance.
        I traveled to Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province to visit my family
    members on June 15, 2012. My father's ex-wife and my two elder half-
    brothers live there. During the several days of visit, I didn't do any
    Falun Gong activities or contact any Falun Gong practitioners in
    Mainland China. On June 18, I was on my way back to Taiwan as planned.
    When I was just about to board the flight from Ganzhou to Shenzhen, I
    was forcefully taken away by the State Security agents. I was then
    detained for 54 days under the vague accusation of sabotaging national
    security and public safety until my release on August 11.
        My family members in both Mainland China and Taiwan didn't know
    about my secret arrest. First, I protested with a hunger strike. I
    demanded that these plain-clothed State Security agents should inform
    my family members. At the same time, I should have an attorney.
    However, my legal rights were ignored. No attorney came to my defense.
    In the afternoon of the second day of my detention, I was allowed to
    see my family members in Ganzhou City. Then, while under police
    surveillance, I was allowed to make a call home. They instructed me to
    inform my wife that I would be able to go home two days later, but that
    turned out to be a lie.
        Without the presence of my attorney, I was subject to marathon
    interrogation sessions that drove me to deep fatigue. They verified my
    answers over and over again. On July 11, I finally saw Attorney Guo
    Lianhui, who my family in Ganzhou retained for me. However, I couldn't
    communicate with my attorney in private. He only saw me once. He was
    turned down by the State Security when he requested to see me for the
    second time. During my detention, I was deprived of my basic human
    rights. I had no protection at all. My pain was beyond words.
        The place I was detained included a bedroom, an interrogation room,
    and a dinner table. Two or more people were watching me at all times. I
    had to keep the bathroom door half open--I had no privacy at all.
        The main content of the interrogations was as follows:

             1. An incident in 2003 in which I mailed TV hijacking
            equipment to Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China.
             2. I had once asked a Mainland China Falun Gong practitioner
            to provide documents regarding how the Chinese Communist Party
            (CCP) tried to systematically eliminate and persecute Falun
            Gong. At the time, this Mainland China practitioner was an
            officer himself. Afterwards however, he was arrested later and
            forced to sign the so-called ``guarantee letter'' not to
            practice Falun Gong.
             3. I tried to broadcast truth films regarding persecution of
            Falun Gong via satellite signals in Taiwan.
             4. The wanted to know all the methods that Taiwan Falun Gong
            practitioners use to expose the persecution of Falun Gong in
            Mainland China.
             5. They tried to force me to provide all names, phone numbers,
            email address and participating projects of Falun Gong
            practitioners in Taiwan.

        Without the presence of my attorney, State Security agents
    interrogated me for a long time and threatened me if I did not
    cooperate with them. These threats included:

             1. That they would bring in a harsher team to handle me.
             2. That they would change my civil detention to a criminal
            detention. Once this change was made, I would then be detained
            with other prisoners and interrogated behind bars.
             3. That they would send me to judicial authorities and
            threaten that I would have to serve at least three years of
            jail term.

        What is most unacceptable to me was the State Security Bureau in
    Ganzhou City forced me to sign a ``Confession Statement'', and asked me
    to admit that I committed a crime to endanger (Chinese) national
    security, public safety, and sabotage public property. They said my
    help to intercept TV signals resulted in losses for the nation and
    society. Among all these nonsense accusations, they never asked why I
    would think of using satellite interception technology to help the
    Chinese public understand the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong
    (in the first place); Chinese people are entitled to freedom of belief
    under the Chinese Constitution, and they should be not be persecuted
    for what they believe.
        The day before they allowed me to go back Taiwan, they told me that
    as early as one week before I arrived in mainland China, they had
    already prepared to put me under ``house arrest'' and waited for me.
    This showed that when I was preparing for the trip to mainland, they'd
    known my itinerary and were ready to take action against me.
        Three weeks or so before I went back Taiwan, they began to threaten
    me to admit my ``guilt'' and ``remorse.'' I was forced to write and re-
    write many times the statement. The night before they let me go back to
    Taiwan, Jiangxi Television (the government TV station in Jiangxi
    Province) was arranged to be where I was held in Nanchang City (the
    capital city of Jiangxi Province) to video-tape my ``remorse,'' and I
    was threatened ``not to be too outspoken'' after I got to Taiwan. If I
    spoke out, they threatened to release this ``remorse'' video.
        Undeterred, I called for a press conference on the third day after
    I landed in Taiwan, openly stating that:

             1. What I wrote in that so-called ``confession statement'' and
            all the interrogation records, were not done with my free will.
            All the details I provided (during the interrogation) were made
            up by me to deal with their threats.
             2. I will continue to spread the truth to the Chinese public
            until the day the persecution ends.
             3. As an individual living in free and democratic Taiwan, it
            is an appropriate and just action for me to help the Chinese
            public, who have been deceived and persecuted by the Chinese
            community party.

        Not until I returned to Taiwan did I realize that Falun Gong
    practitioners in Taiwan, non-government organizations, and the people
    of Taiwan had put in tremendous efforts to rescue me: about 200,000
    people in Taiwan signed a letter campaign that urged President Ma Ying-
    jeou to strive to gain my release; over 30 non-government organizations
    came together to organize activities and on three occasions accompanied
    my family during their petitions at the Office of the President. As far
    as I know, the main reason that I was able to come back to Taiwan as a
    free man was the support from the people in Taiwan, while the
    Administration was relatively passive. Up to now, the Taiwan government
    has not formally responded to the requests of myself, my family, and
    other organizations regarding the protection of Taiwanese personal
    safety in Mainland China.
        Additionally I wish to make two points clear.
        First, the Chinese Communist does not only persecute Falun Gong
    practitioners in China; they have also extended the persecution
    overseas toward Taiwan. According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association,
    I am the 17th Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner subject to persecution
    from the Chinese Communist Party.
        Second, the Chinese Communist Party has hired spies overseas to
    illegally collect Falun Gong practitioners' personal information and
    information of their activities. The regime has illegally abducted
    foreign Falun Gong practitioners that travel to China. The
    international society should condemn these behaviors.
        In Taiwan, I am a respected and highly educated intellectual with a
    decent job and no criminal record. I am the same as the hundreds of
    thousands of people in Taiwan who practice Falun Gong and adhere to the
    principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance. I enjoy the freedom of
    expression and freedom of belief guaranteed by the Constitution of the
    Republic of China. I also join the great efforts of tens of millions of
    fellow Falun Gong practitioners in spreading the facts of the
    persecution and calling for the international community to stop this
    prolonged persecution.
        Finally, I would like to thank members of U.S. Congress and
    European Parliament for their efforts to secure my release. At the same
    time, I am also worried about many Falun Gong practitioners in prisons,
    labor camps, and detention centers in China who are facing torture and
    even facing the risks of been killed for their organs. The United
    States is the world's leader in human rights. I hope that the U.S.
    Congress and President Obama publicly ask the Chinese Communist Party
    to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. I sincerely hope that when the
    regime's crimes against humanity are finally put to an end, all the
    Chinese people around of the world will be able to thank the righteous
    efforts from the United States.
        Thank you.
                                     ______

                        Prepared Statement of Hu Zhiming

                               december 18, 2012
        I wish to express a heart-felt thank you to Chairman Smith and Co-
    chairman Brown for holding this important hearing. I am truly honored
    to be your guest and hope that my experiences below will be helpful to
    you.
        I have organized my written testimony into four sections.

             (1) Personal experiences of finding and practicing Falun Gong,
            both before and after the persecution.
             (2) Resistance to the persecution.
             (3) Details of three instances of detention over 8 years and
            two months.
             (4) Observations on how practitioners' resistance to the
            persecution has rendered it unsuccessful and how it cannot be
            sustained for much longer.
         (1) personal experiences of finding and practicing falun gong
        I was born in northeast China, Liaoning Province, in the middle of
    the Cultural Revolution, in 1972. Because my father had been labeled a
    Rightist, the first fourteen years of my life were spent living on
    different farms with my parents and three older brothers, where we
    received ``re-education'' through manual labor. I vividly remember as
    part of the re-education posters depicting Confucius as a ferocious
    monster and liar when he was criticized by the CCP in its political
    activity. I also remember being terribly cold. Our clothes were always
    tattered and I believe that because of this, I had a runny nose,
    congested sinuses and horse breathing for my entire life.
        My views on Confucius and the cultural legacy he represents, as
    well as my nasal condition dramatically changed when I first started
    practicing Falun Gong in November, 1997. At that time I had already
    earned a B.S. in Radar and a M.S. in Informational Technology from the
    Air Force Engineering University in Xi'An City. I was living and
    working at the Institute of Military Training Equipment under the Air
    Force Headquarters in Beijing. Although I was an Officer in the
    military and enjoyed a good lifestyle, I felt empty. Chinese people as
    a whole knew little of our cultural heritage, which had been
    systematically destroyed by the CCP through its many political
    activities. Still, very few people, if any, believed in Communist
    ideology, either. I believed there was more to life than material
    pursuit.
        My older brother, who was living in San Francisco, mailed the main
    book of Falun Gong, Zhuan Falun, to me. I immediately discovered that
    this practice represented a precious opportunity for any individual to
    raise their spirit, as well as the best opportunity for society to
    stabilize and return to a level where ethical behavior was cherished.
    In these early weeks of practice, the most memorable experiences were
    the inexplicable healing of my life-long respiratory and sinus
    condition as well as dramatic improvement in my outlook of the world.
    The military bureaucracy is extremely politicized and corrupt, with
    bribery and embezzlement being the norm. By adjusting my behavior to
    Falun Gong's guiding principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and
    Tolerance, by taking personal interest more lightly and by striving to
    be unaffected by others wronging me, I felt lightness in my spirit and
    in my step. Work and relationships went more smoothly and I found a
    happiness I had never experienced.
        I benefited greatly at this time from the veteran Falun Gong
    practitioners at the practice site within the Air Force Command
    University, which was across the street from my campus. 40 to 50 Air
    Force officers or professors regularly attended the morning exercises.
        At this time, 1998-1999, Falun Gong practice sites were everywhere.
    Just about every morning, when I left my campus for errands around
    Beijing, I would see scores, even hundreds of people practicing the
    Falun Gong exercises in parks or grassy boulevards.
                      (2) my resistance to the persecution
        Starting in April of 1999, the situation changed dramatically.
    After the ``4-25 Incident,'' in which as many as 10,000 Falun Gong
    practitioners appealed to the central government to, among other
    things, release Falun Gong practitioners detained in Tianjin city and
    stop publishing articles defaming Falun Gong, most workplaces and
    housing units around Beijing put pressure on people to stop practicing
    Falun Gong. Nearly all of the 40-50 Air Force officers and professors
    in my practice group continued, however.
        By June, the situation was more tense. China had sought to have Mr.
    Li Hongzhi extradited from the United States. Mr. Li published a short
    article in response but many practitioners were not able to read it as
    the regular channels among practitioners had been disrupted. Perhaps
    members of the Falun Dafa Buddha Research Society had already been
    detained. Perhaps in some areas the Internet was already blocked. I did
    not know the exact reason but I printed this and several other
    subsequent articles by Mr. Li from the Minghui.org, a website founded
    by US - based practitioners. I distributed copies to the military
    officers.
        By mid-June, the Minghui website was blocked and I had to
    circumvent the blockade using techniques that most computer users would
    be unable to use. At this time we also lost our practice site as a
    regulation had been passed prohibiting military personnel from
    practicing Falun Gong. We tried to practice outside the Air Force
    compound but were usually forced to disperse by public security.
        On July 13, Mr. Li published another short article. I was again
    able to print and make copies of it but by this time there were few
    people left to give it to. They no longer came out to the practice
    sites and I lost contact with them from that point on.
        On July 20, when the practice was officially banned, the whole
    country seemed to be on edge. I later learned that not only all
    military personnel, but even all workplaces and housing units across
    the country ordered all people to watch CCTV news programming that
    explained the ban on Falun Gong. Even people who had never heard of
    Falun Gong were ordered to watch it. The widespread reaction was
    initially one of shock and curiosity.
        Already relatively sheltered because I was living on a military
    compound, in the next two or three months I had very little contact
    with other practitioners. I left Beijing for several weeks in August
    and September for a military exercise and when I returned the situation
    was the same. I decided to bypass the Internet blockade again to find
    out news from the Minghui website. I learned that thousands of
    practitioners from around the country had been pouring into Beijing to
    appeal the government ban. I also learned that there had already been
    cases of abuse, including practitioners being tortured to death.
        I learned that the burden on Beijing practitioners was immense
    because hotels would not give rooms to appealing practitioners from out
    of town, and, more over, there were updates on the increasing gravity
    of the situation that the out-of-towners needed to hear. I realized
    that my skills on the computer were quite valuable at this time and
    took it upon myself to share these with other practitioners.
        By the beginning of 2000, the situation among practitioners had
    changed dramatically. It had gone from one of shock, disbelief and
    confusion to one of urgency and clarity. The persecution was getting
    more and more serious, with deaths and accounts of abuse mounting. We
    needed to be proactive.
        Then-UN Ambassador Kofi Annan was scheduled to visit Beijing in
    March, 2000. I agreed to assist in a plan to collect signatures from
    practitioners around the country for a petition that would ask him to
    intervene. As my days were generally quite busy on the military
    compound I knew I needed more time to accomplish this task and in early
    March decided to leave, with no notice.
        The political affairs committee of my workplace found out and acted
    right away. They had always known I was a practitioner but were loath
    to report me or even put a lot of pressure on me. As the military and
    political organs are different entities, they chose to bide their time
    with the many officers in their ranks who practiced Falun Gong. They
    did not want the responsibility of transforming practitioners, (who
    posed no threat to their organization, and usually, as in my case, were
    model employees,) and yet, at the same time, did not want the political
    blemish of having a Falun Gong practitioner. When I left, however, they
    needed to report my status as a Falun Gong practitioner and, now, one
    who was missing.
        They looked at the records of my apartment landline and within one
    weeks time were able to find me in the act of exchanging signatures for
    the Kofi Annan petition. They took me back to my workplace where the
    Air Force Deputy Commander criticized my boss over my situation.
        They held me for more than two months at an Air Force base outside
    of Beijing. I stayed in a bunker and was watched 24 hours a day by 4
    soldiers at any given time. The soldiers respected me because I was an
    officer but they were ordered to show me endless hours of brainwashing
    programs. I rationally explained why all of the programs were false and
    how they had not convinced me to stop practicing.
        Seeing that they couldn't convince me to quit practicing along
    these lines, officers attempted to appeal to me on ideological grounds,
    stating, ``As a Master's degree holder you are a member of the
    Communist Party? As a military officer you should be especially clear
    ideologically. How could a military officer not be an atheist? '' I
    asked for a piece of paper and wrote, ``Then I quit the Communist
    Party.''
        They then showed me a report that the Central Government had
    written on Falun Gong prior to banning it. It estimated the number of
    practitioners around the country to be 80 million which was later
    lowered to 60 million for the reason that limited the effect. The
    officers then argued, ``But you are still a military officer. Think
    about it. If so many people are practicing, including military
    officers, and they are not ideologically clear, how can our military
    continue to function properly? '' I wrote, ``then I won't be an officer
    anymore.''
        Having failed to transform me, 4 armed officials escorted me back
    to by hometown, Dandong, Liaoning Province, in May. In Dandong, they
    registered my civilian status with local authorities as a matter of
    medical discharge. They did not mention Falun Gong as doing so would
    have placed the burden of transformation on the local authorities, who
    would then have insisted that the Air Force be in charge of
    transforming me. This fact is illustrative of the means of the
    Communist Party system to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong.
    Because the Communist Party decreed Falun Gong to be illegal, it put
    pressure on the military and all levels of government to carry out the
    decree. No level of government wanted the burden of transforming Falun
    Gong practitioners as it was expensive and exhaustive, but if they did
    not they could lose favor with higher authorities who would, in turn,
    lose favor with the Central Government. It was often easier to look the
    other way.
        I stayed with my family for ten days in Liaoning Province but then
    returned to Beijing. As my records as a Falun Gong practitioner were
    only within the Air Force, I felt relatively free as a civilian. I met
    with several Beijing practitioners who were skilled in computers as I
    was. We decided that we needed to share our expertise with others
    around the country so as to create a network of people that could pass
    information to each other. More importantly, Minghui and other media
    would spread the blocked information to the international society,
    exposing the evil activity of the CCP. The free flow of information, we
    realized, was most feared by the Communist Party because it was the
    most important element to withstanding and exposing the persecution.
        Travelling around China was difficult and complicated. Out of
    safety concerns my one companion and I could not contact many
    practitioners. We started with people we knew to be genuine
    practitioners, and then asked them to organize small meetings with 5 to
    15 others who might possesses the necessary technical expertise.
    Between May and October of 2000, we established viable lines of
    communication between Minghui and trained practitioners in at least
    seven cities from all different regions.
        Through our efforts, timely news of practitioner detentions, abuse
    and deaths were reported on the Internet. In time the postings became
    detailed, including the names, addresses and phone numbers of the
    perpetrators. It was found, the years that followed, that as more and
    more information exposing the persecution was published, the pressure
    on local practitioners became less. Minghui also proved to be
    invaluable as a resource for practitioners to learn from each other
    about matters related to personal cultivation and matters of faith and
    courage.
                               (3) incarceration
        Our successes came to a halt on October 4, in the early dawn hours,
    when a group of ten police officers knocked on my Shanghai hotel door.
    I yelled loudly so as to alert two other practitioners in nearby rooms.
    They managed to escape the hotel but the officers detained me and found
    evidence of the Minghui website on my laptop.
        I went through a show trial and was charged with ``using a cult to
    destabilize society.'' They held me at a detention center for 26 months
    instead of placing me in prison because they wanted to find more
    evidence against me, an ex-military official with expertise in
    information technology. They wanted to frame me as a spy working with
    an overseas brother and possibly the American government. They wanted
    to build a story around me that would give credence to some of the
    propaganda that claimed Falun Gong was an established organization with
    a lot of funding from hostile overseas forces with political motives.
        They were unable to collect any other evidence that would help
    those claims and sent me to the Shanghai Tilan Qiao Prison for 22 more
    months. Conditions were considerably worse in the prison. Whereas
    before I was beaten for refusing to wear the detention center uniform,
    I was still permitted to practice Falun Gong exercises and read Falun
    Gong books. In the prison there was no chance for Falun Gong exercises.
    They tried their utmost to ``transform'' me.
        There were approximately 150 prisoners in my division and about 50
    were Falun Gong practitioners. Very vicious criminals with sentences
    normally over 15 years beat us regularly. Their sentences could be
    reduced if they kept practitioners from practicing or even successfully
    transform us. The guards did not beat us themselves but further incited
    the criminals by placing one practitioner and two criminals in a three-
    square meter cell. As a practitioner I could withstand being in such a
    small space, but a violent criminal became even more violent under such
    circumstances.
        In addition there were times when I was forced to watch
    brainwashing programs at deafening volumes, with the TV screen only one
    meter from my face, for 16 or more hours a day. They deprived me of
    sleep as well.
        Under these conditions I was approaching rock bottom, so I started
    a hunger strike that would last from August to October of 2004. They
    bound my limbs and torso to a hospital bed so that I could not move at
    all. They inserted a feeding tube in through my nose to my stomach. I
    was in this position for over a month, during the hottest time of the
    year, unable to move, itchy from sweat as well as weeks of defecation
    matter buildup. They also injected me with an unknown substance that
    would give me headaches that I felt put me on the brink of insanity.
    During this time they also drew large quantities of blood and routinely
    examined my body.
        I survived my prison term and was released in October, 2004, having
    served a total of four years in the detention center and then prison. I
    lived in my hometown in Liaoning for six months but decided to not
    burden my parents and family members, who were not wealthy, any longer.
    I moved to Beijing to seek employment and resume work with
    practitioners there to counteract the persecution.
        Several plain-clothed policeman saw me distributing a DVD of the 9-
    Commentaries to someone on the street in early September, giving rise
    to a chase and eventually capture. Another show trial ensued and I was
    again sentenced to four years in prison on Sept 23, 2005. I entered
    Beijing Haidian District Detention Center that was even more vicious
    that my experiences in Shanghai. Knowing the difficulties involved with
    a hunger strike, it took me some time to summon the will to sustain
    one. But by May 13, 2006, I was once again protesting my detention with
    a hunger strike. Guards shackled me to a hospital bed for six months
    straight and, similar to my experience in Shanghai, force-fed me
    through a tube in my nose, and injected me with drugs that numb the
    nerves. They took my blood samples and performed comprehensive physical
    examinations from time to time but never did they administer medical
    treatment for my ailments. I didn't know anything about organ
    harvesting at that time. Now looking back, I am scared, as they could
    be checking my candidacy for organ harvesting.
        In six months time I was transferred to the Jinzhou Prison Hospital
    in Liaoning Province. They no longer needed to shackle me as by this
    time I was but a skeleton on the brink of death and totally immobile.
    The force feeding continued, as did the painful injections and oddly
    placed medical exams. During the next three years, until my term
    expired, my weight fluctuated. For months at a time I would grow
    bloated and fat, seemingly due to a different force-feeding diet. Then
    I would become skeletal once again when they denied me food.
        I narrowly survived more than three years of such treatment,
    languishing on either a hospital bed or a wheel chair, until my term
    ended in September 2009. Hospital doctors advised my family that I
    would likely die and that, even if I didn't, I would be permanently
    disabled for the rest of my life.
                         (4) the persecution has failed
        The Communist Party's persecution has failed to wipe out Falun Gong
    from China and it can not be sustained for much longer. I make this
    assertion based on observations of the greater situation as well as
    personal experience.
        For the ten years I lived in China under the persecution, I spent
    eight years and two months in custody, and over half of this time
    languishing alone. After my three releases from custody I lived for a
    time with my parents in Liaoning Province. In 2000 I saw no signs of
    Falun Gong practitioner activity in Liaoning Province. In 2004 I saw
    attempts by local practitioners to place posters and signs about the
    facts of the persecution around my hometown. The attempts were
    noteworthy but they were infrequent, sporadic and were destroyed almost
    immediately. In 2009, however, I saw copious posters, signs, flyers and
    informational DVDs. Moreover, the posters hung in public places had
    been there for a long time, with ink faded from the sun and paper crisp
    from dried rain. I believe that, like my hometown in Liaoning, even the
    CCP continues to order people to persecute Falun Gong, more and more
    people know the truth of the persecution. That is, more and more people
    see through the once-widespread lies that substantiated the decision to
    ban the practice.
        I make the above assertion because I have also seen the efforts by
    people like myself, proficient in computer technology and proxy
    circumnavigation software, breed success in making Minghui an accurate,
    timely and truthful tool to expose the persecution.
        Finally, I make the above assertion based on my personal
    experience. When the doctors released me, an immobile skeleton in a
    wheelchair, to my parents and brothers in October 2009, they said I
    would likely die. For this reason the 610 Office and other public
    security personnel didn't bother my home. But I resumed my cultivation
    in Falun Dafa, studying the teachings, reflecting on matters of my
    spirit, and practicing the Falun Gong exercises. In two months time I
    could walk around my house. In three months time I could perform
    strengthening exercises outdoors. I stand here before you today, three
    years later, almost completely healed with no visible trace of the
    depraved state the persecution left me in. This is a testament to the
    power and wonder of this spiritual practice. It also perhaps helps you
    understand how I could withstand 8 years of hell and persevere in my
    faith.
        For a person of faith, his conscience, more than the physical body,
    is his life. This persecution has managed to take away physical bodies
    but it has not managed to shake the conscience of the people. I believe
    we are now seeing the people of China wake up to the facts of this
    persecution, to the facts of the Communist Party's wickedness and,
    soon, to a day when our conscience is free.
        I thank you and the great nation you represent immensely for your
    efforts to bring justice to China.
                                     ______

                        Prepared Statement of Sarah Cook

                               december 18, 2012
        Good morning Chairman Smith, Co-Chairman Brown, members of the
    commission, ladies and gentleman in the audience. Thank you for
    convening this hearing and for inviting me to participate. I have been
    asked to address the origins of the Communist Party's campaign against
    Falun Gong and in my brief time, I will do my best to cover this
    complex topic.
        Today, Chinese citizens who practice Falun Gong live under constant
    threat of abduction and torture. The name of the practice, its founder
    Mr. Li Hongzhi, and a wide assortment of homonyms are among the most
    censored terms on the Chinese Internet. Any mention in state-run media
    or by Chinese diplomats is inevitably couched in demonizing labels.
        But this was not always the case. Throughout the early and mid-
    1990s, Falun Gong, its practitioners, and its founder were often the
    subjects of awards, positive media coverage, and government support.
    From 1992 to 1994, Mr. Li toured the country giving lectures and
    seminars to introduce the practice under the auspices of the state-run
    qigong association.\1\ State media reports from that period laud the
    benefits of Falun Gong practice and show Falun Gong practitioners
    receiving ``healthy citizen awards.'' In an occurrence almost
    unimaginable today, Mr. Li gave a lecture at the Chinese embassy in
    Paris in 1995, at the government's invitation.\2\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China, Oxford
    University Press, 2008.
        \2\ Benjamin Penny, ``The Religion of Falun Gong,'' (University of
    Chicago Press, 2012.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        As word spread, Chinese from every strata of society--doctors,
    farmers, workers, soldiers, some of them Communist Party members--began
    taking up the practice. Sites of daily exercise groups in Beijing, for
    instance, included professors from the prestigious Tsinghua University
    or employees of state media like Xinhua or China Central Television.
    Though students of Falun Gong would gather in groups to practice its
    meditative exercises, many saw the discipline as a personal rather than
    collective endeavor to enhance their health, mental well being, and
    spiritual wisdom. There were no signs of a political agenda or even
    criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as one sees in Falun
    Gong literature after the persecution began. By 1999, according to
    government sources, Western media reports, and Falun Gong witnesses,
    tens of millions of people were practicing.\3\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \3\ Seth Faison, ``In Beijing: A Roar of Silent Protestors,'' New
    York Times, April 27, 1999; Joseph Kahn, ``Notoriety Now for Movement's
    Leader,'' New York Times, April 27, 1999; Renee Schoff, ``Growing group
    poses a dilemma for China,'' Associated Press, April 26, 1999.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              so what went wrong?
        The answer lies in a combination of ideological fears,
    institutional factors, and an individual leader's fateful decision.
        Falun Gong is a spiritual practice whose key features are qigong
    exercises and teachings reminiscent of Buddhist and Taoist traditions
    that have been an essential dimension of Chinese culture for thousands
    of years. It inevitably encourages ways of thinking outside the
    boundaries of Party doctrines. Yet for decades, the Party has
    systematically sought to suppress independent thought, be it in the
    form of religious faith or political expression. It displays a low
    tolerance for groups or individuals who place any authority, spiritual
    or otherwise, above their allegiance to the Party. For persecuted
    Tibetans, this authority is the Dalai Lama; for persecuted human rights
    lawyers, it is the law; for persecuted Falun Gong adherents, it is the
    dedication to spiritual teachings centered on the values of
    truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
        Falun Gong's emphasis on these three values as part of its theistic
    worldview appears to have especially attracted the Party's ire. The
    concepts seemed to conflict with Marxism and other ideas that have been
    a source of legitimacy for the CCP's authoritarian rule--like
    materialism, political struggle, and nationalism.\4\ The spread of
    Falun Gong began to be seen as a fundamental challenge to the Party's
    authority. Xinhua hinted at this in one of its articles in 1999 after
    the ban: ``In fact, the so-called `truth, kindness and tolerance'
    principle preached by Li Hongzhi has nothing in common with the
    socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve.''
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \4\ Vivienne Shue. ``Legitimacy Crisis in China?.'' In Peter Hays
    Gries and Stanley Rosen (eds.), State and Society in 21st-century
    China. Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation. New York: RoutledgeCurzon,
    2004.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Perhaps even more than free thinking, the Communist Party feels
    threatened by independent civil society entities and collective
    organization.\5\ As the popularity of qigong practices, and among them
    Falun Gong, grew in the mid-1990s, the Party attempted to insert itself
    into their activities and bring them under its control. In 1996, after
    the state-run qigong association with which Falun Gong was linked
    instructed the establishment of Party branches among its followers and
    wished to profit from Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi parted ways with the
    association.\6\ He intended for Falun Gong to be a personal practice
    without formal membership and shared free of charge. As it continued to
    spread in society, Falun Gong's spiritual independence was coupled with
    a loosely knit network of meditation practice sites and ``assistance
    centers'' sprinkled throughout the country.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \5\ King, Gary, Pan, Jennifer, and Roberts, Molly. In Press. How
    Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective
    Expression. American Political Science Review, July 2012 http://
    gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-allows-government-
    criticism-silences-collective-expression.
        \6\ Noah Porter, ``Falun Gong in the United States: An Ethnographic
    Study,'' 2003.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        From 1996 to 1999, many in the government and the party held
    favorable views of Falun Gong and publicly cited its benefits for
    health and even social stability.\7\ But as Falun Gong's popularity and
    independence from Party control grew, several top cadres began viewing
    it as a threat. This translated into repression that showed first signs
    in 1996. The publication of Falun Gong books by state printing presses
    was banned shortly after their being listed as bestsellers. Attempts to
    register under various government organizations were denied. Sporadic
    articles began appearing in state-run news outlets smearing Falun Gong.
    Security agents began monitoring practitioners and occasionally
    dispersing outdoor meditation sessions.\8\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \7\ `An opiate of the masses?,'' U.S. News and World Report,
    February 22, 1999.
        \8\ David Palmer. ``Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in
    China.'' New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        In April 1999, the escalating harassment culminated in several
    dozen practitioners being beaten and arrested in Tianjin. Those calling
    for their release were told that the orders had come from Beijing. On
    April 25, over 10,000 adherents gathered quietly outside the national
    petitions office in Beijing, adjacent to the Zhongnanhai government
    compound, asking for an end to abuses and recognition of their right to
    practice.
        Some observers have pointed to this incident as taking Party
    leaders by surprise and triggering the suppression that followed.\9\
    Such an interpretation is flawed, however, when one considers that it
    was escalating harassment led by central officials--including then-
    security tsar Luo Gan--that sparked the appeal in the first place.\10\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \9\ Human Rights Watch, ``Dangerous Meditation: China's Campaign
    Against Falungong,'' January 2002, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/
    2002/china/.
        \10\ James Tong, ``Revenge of the Forbidden City,'' Oxford
    University Press (2009). In his account of the April 25 appeal, Ethan
    Gutmann takes his analysis a step further, concluding that it had been
    a set-up to create an excuse for a crackdown. Ethan Gutmann, An
    Occurrence on Fuyou Street, National Review 13 July 2009.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Rather, the event was pivotal because of how individual Party
    leaders responded to it. Premier Zhu Rongji took an appeasing stance
    toward Falun Gong.\11\ He was prepared to resolve the grievances. He
    met with several of the petitioners' representatives. The practitioners
    in Tianjin were released and those in Beijing went home.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \11\ Zong Hairen, Zhu Rongji zai 1999 (Zhu Rongji in 1999) (Carle
    Place, N.Y.: Mirror Books, 2001).
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        But then-Party Secretary Jiang Zemin overruled Zhu's conciliatory
    approach, calling Falun Gong a serious challenge to the regime's
    authority, ``something unprecedented in the country since its founding
    50 years ago.'' \12\ In a circular dated June 7, Jiang issued his
    fateful order to ``disintegrate'' Falun Gong.\13\ Indeed, several
    experts have attributed the campaign to Jiang's personal jealousy
    deriving from the sincere enthusiasm Falun Gong inspired at a time when
    he perceived his own standing in the eyes of the Chinese public as
    weak.\14\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \12\ Jiang reportedly made at a high-level meeting in April 1999,
    extracted from the book ``Zhu Rongji in 1999,'' cited in excerpts
    published in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, September 18, 2001.
        \13\ ``Comrade Jiang Zemin's speech at the meeting of the Political
    Bureau of the CCCCP regarding speeding up dealing with and settling the
    problem of `Falun Gong','' June 7, 1999. http://beijingspring.com/bj2/
    2001/60/2003727210907.htm
        \14\ Willy Wo-Lap Lam, ``China's sect suppression carries a high
    price,'' CNN, Feb 9 2001.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Whatever the specific events of the late 1990s, however, the
    repression of Falun Gong in China cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Rather,
    it is one episode within the Communist Party's long history of
    arbitrarily suppressing the basic rights of Chinese citizens, including
    via political campaigns launched against perceived ``enemies.'' The
    party's tactics have become more subtle and sophisticated in recent
    decades. But the underlying principle and institutional dynamic remains
    the same: the decision of what is approved or forbidden is made
    arbitrarily by Party leaders and the institutions--like an independent
    judiciary--that might curb their excesses are kept within the Party's
    realm of influence. This is the case with the daily censorship
    directives issued by the propaganda department and applies equally to
    spiritual movements.
        Thus, once Jiang made the decision and asserted his will over other
    members of the Politburo Standing Committee, there was little to stop
    what came next. Over the following months, Jiang and leaders like Luo
    began making preparations for a campaign to wipe out Falun Gong.
    Lacking legal authority and fearing the popularity of Falun Gong even
    among members of the security forces, Jiang created a special Party
    leadership group and related extralegal, plainclothes security force to
    lead the fight. Established on June 10, 1999, it came to be known as
    the 6-10 Office.\15\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \15\ Sarah Cook and Leeshai Lemish, ``The 6-10 Office: Policing the
    Chinese Spirit,'' China Brief, Jamestown Foundation, September 16,
    2011: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx--
    ttnews%5Btt--news%5D=38411&cHash=2dff246d80ffd78112de97e280ce9725.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        In July 1999, a full-scale campaign reminiscent of the Cultural
    Revolution was launched. The full weight of the CCP's repressive
    apparatus was turned on Falun Gong. Demonizing propaganda flooded the
    airwaves. Thousands of people were rounded up. Millions were forced to
    sign pledges to stop practicing.
        Zhao Ming, a former Falun Gong prisoner of conscience and the
    subject of international rescue campaigns, explained the dynamics as:
    ``the Party's machinery of persecution was there--Jiang pushed the
    button.'' \16\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \16\ Leeshai Lemish, ``Why is Falun Gong Banned?'' The New
    Statesman, August 19, 2008, http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-
    faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-party-chinese.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        One more point deserves clarification. The CCP and Chinese
    officials typically assert that Falun Gong needed to banned because it
    is an ``evil cult'' that was having a nefarious influence on society.
    The claims have not held up to scrutiny when investigated in China, nor
    when one considers Falun Gong's spread in other parts of the world,
    including democratic Taiwan. As importantly, in the context of the
    current discussion, it was only several months after Jiang initiated
    the campaign that a resolution was passed punishing involvement with
    ``heretical organizations'' and that the Party's propaganda apparatus
    zeroed in on a slightly manipulated English translation of the Chinese
    term xiejiao to claim that Falun Gong was an ``evil cult.'' \17\
    Unfortunately, today, media reports about Falun Gong often erroneously
    state that ``Falun Gong was banned as an `evil cult','' with little
    further explanation. In fact, the label came later and as noted above,
    the reasons behind it had little to do with anything ``evil'' about
    Falun Gong. By using this incomplete reference, media inadvertently
    repeat the Party line and may plant the thought in readers' minds that
    a repressive campaign that has turned millions of lives upside down
    might be justified.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \17\ Amnesty International, ``China: The crackdown on Falun Gong
    and other so-called `heretical organizations,' '' 23 March 2000.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     a decision with long-term consequences
        When Jiang ordered that Falun Gong be targeted, he had not
    anticipated that its practitioners would not relent easily. Though some
    renounced the practice under pressure, many resumed upon release or
    withstood ``transformation'' even in the face of torture. Over time,
    the Party escalated its tactics, enhancing the sophistication of its
    propaganda and encouraging the use of violence.\18\ Freedom House's
    publications--alongside those of Amnesty International, the United
    Nations Rapporteurs, and the CECC itself--have recorded the ongoing
    rights abuses suffered by those who practice Falun Gong in China. These
    include large-scale detentions, widespread surveillance, extreme
    torture, deaths in custody, and the sentencing of practitioners to long
    prison terms following unfair trials or to ``reeducation through
    labor'' camps by bureaucratic fiat. The abuses continue 13 years and
    two leadership changes after Jiang's initial decision, pointing to an
    entrenchment of the repression.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \18\ John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan. ``Torture is Breaking Falun
    Gong.'' Washington Post, 5 August 2001.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The result is that the Party now finds itself trapped. If it backs
    down, it would have to admit to a mistake that ruined millions of lives
    and tore apart families. If it stays the course, then with each day
    that passes, another Falun Gong practitioner is abducted, another judge
    imprisons an innocent person, another police officer learns he can
    torture with impunity. The effect on the rule of law and the Party's
    legitimacy is corrosive.
        Meanwhile, so long as the campaign continues, it not only affects
    Falun Gong practitioners and their families. The tactics and strategies
    developed to suppress one group in China can be quickly and easily
    applied to others. From vague legal provisions, to ``black jails,'' to
    certain torture and ``transformation'' methods, human rights lawyers
    and others have remarked on how elements first used against Falun Gong
    practitioners have since been applied to other victim groups, including
    the lawyers themselves.\19\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \19\ Gao Zhisheng, ``Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark
    Mafia,'' translated and published by Human Rights in China, February 8,
    2009, http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/PressReleases/2009.02.08--Gao--
    Zhisheng--account--ENG.pdf; Teng Biao, ``A Hole to Bury You,'' Wall
    Street Journal, December 28, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/
    SB10001424052970203731004576045152244293970.html
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Similarly, the entities created to target Falun Gong can be
    expanded or used as models. The 610 Office's operations have long
    stretched beyond its core task of wiping out Falun Gong. Since 2003,
    their targets have also included 28 other small spiritual groups and
    qigong organizations.\20\ The Economist reported in June that a few
    members of blind activist Chen Guangcheng's entourage of secret police
    were from the 610 Office.\21\ Meanwhile, the agency may be serving as a
    model for the Party's broader ``stability maintenance''
    initiatives.\22\
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \20\ Hao's testimony before the European Parliament.
        \21\ ``Guarding the Guardians,'' The Economist, June 30, 2012,
    http://www.economist.com/node/21557760.
        \22\ Cook and Lemish.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The intractable nature of the CCP's campaign against Falun Gong
    presents unique challenges for advocates, policymakers, and victims.
    Tools available when dealing with other large-scale human rights
    violations in China are not feasible. The openness and occasional
    compromise that Chinese officials display when dealing with workers'
    rights, discrimination against Hepatitis B patients, or even the one-
    child policy, are non-existent when it comes to Falun Gong. But in
    their interactions with regimes such as the CCP's, democratic
    governments must not let the authoritarians dictate the agenda. It is
    precisely because victims of the Falun Gong campaign have so few
    avenues of recourse within the system that international solidarity,
    exposure of abuses, and pressure on their behalf are even more vital.
    For these reason, since 1999, Freedom House has consistently tracked
    the campaign in its publications, called for the release of illegally
    detained practitioners, and participated in annual rallies calling for
    an end to abuses against them.
        In this context, we would offer the following recommendations to
    members of Congress and the Obama administration:

             1. Meet with former Falun Gong prisoners of conscience or the
            family of imprisoned practitioners residing in the United
            States: It is difficult and dangerous for U.S. officials to
            meet such individuals inside China. But as is evident from some
            of the witnesses testifying here today, there is a sporadic
            stream of Falun Gong practitioners coming from China with
            first-hand information on what is happening inside and outside
            of detention facilities. U.S. diplomats preparing for their
            departure to China or officials participating in human rights
            discussions with their Chinese counterparts should periodically
            meet with such individuals.
             2. Continue to lobby for the release of individual prisoners
            of conscience: Former prisoners of conscience whom I have
            interviewed and who were the subject of international appeal
            campaigns--including Falun Gong practitioners--have repeatedly
            testified to the noticeably less harsh treatment they received
            compared to their fellow, more internationally anonymous,
            detainees.
             3. Support initiatives to independently research the dynamics
            of the campaign: Central to the ability to advocate on behalf
            of individuals and to gauge the full scale of abuses targeting
            groups like Falun Gong is the capacity to verify individual
            cases of religious prisoners and thoroughly investigate deaths
            in custody, including allegations of forced organ removals.
            Despite the sensitivity of the issue and difficulty in
            obtaining information about Falun Gong prisoners, there are
            avenues for doing so. Increased support, including funding, for
            groups taking the initiative to conduct such research could
            translate into real protection for members of this persecuted
            minority.
             4. Take proactive measures to ensure that American companies,
            citizens, and institutions are not deliberately or
            inadvertently enabling or condoning abuses: Over the past year,
            reports have emerged of incidents that point to the pitfalls of
            engaging in close economic, educational, and medical
            relationships with China at a time when the CCP is carrying out
            a campaign like the one against Falun Gong. These have ranged
            from a U.S. company allegedly supplying surveillance
            capabilities to Chinese security agencies, to discriminatory
            policies regarding teachers assigned to Confucius Institutes,
            to concerns that medical journals are accepting papers with
            data drawn from abusive organ transplant policies. Measures
            could be taken to improve accountability in these sectors that
            involve U.S. citizens and institutions.
             5. Remain vigilant in the face of Chinese official pressure to
            self-censor outside of China: Although this is not the focus of
            today's discussion, pressure to self-censor beyond China's
            borders is a daily reality for government officials,
            journalists, and event organizers when it comes to Falun Gong--
            similar to Tibetans, Uighurs, and other victim groups whose
            persecution the regime is sensitive about. It is critical that
            those of us outside China resist such pressures and remain
            vigilant in protecting the right to free expression for all,
            including those whose voices are systematically silenced within
            China.

                                     * * *

                                     ______

                    Prepared Statement of Jianchao Xu, M.D.

                               december 18, 2012
        Honorable Chairman Christopher Smith, members of Congress, and
    distinguished panelists. Thank you for your invitation to this hearing
    today. It is my honor and privilege to testify here before you in
    Congress.
        My name is Jianchao Xu. As a kidney specialist, I am an attending
    Staff Physician at the James J. Peters Veteran Administration Hospital
    in New York. I am also an adjunct Assistant Professor in Medicine at
    Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In addition, I serve as the Medical
    Director for the non-profit organization Doctors Against Forced Organ
    Harvesting (DAFOH), which is comprised of medical professionals from
    around the world who investigate the practice of illegal or unethical
    harvesting or transplantation of organs.
        The most powerful witness we could have here today would be a
    victim whose organ was illegally harvested. But as we all know, such
    victims will never have such a chance after their vital organs are
    removed from their bodies. Their chairs here will remain empty. After
    the victims, the next best witness would be a doctor who has removed
    organs from living prisoners of conscience and is now willing to step
    forward to tell the world about his or her first-hand knowledge of this
    crime against humanity. In lieu of their presence, I stand before you
    to submit my own findings and knowledge on the matter.
        Organ transplants are life-saving procedures, and organ donation--
    which we often call ``the gift of life''--make this possible.
    Unfortunately, demand for organs greatly exceeds supply in every
    country. And as people live longer, as medical science and technology
    continues to advance, the demand will only grow with more patients
    steadily becoming eligible for organ transplant and more qualified
    doctors and transplant centers becoming available.
        A shortage of organ supply opens a door for illegal organ
    trafficking, organ tourism, and forced organ harvesting. The medical
    community has known about unethical organ transplant in China since the
    1990s. At a Congressional hearing in 2001, first-hand and direct
    evidence of unethical organ transplant practices in China surfaced. Dr.
    Wang Guoqi, a Chinese Medical Doctor, testified to the House of
    Representatives subcommittee on human rights, stating ``My work
    required me to remove the skin and corneas from the corpses of over one
    hundred executed prisoners, and on a couple of occasions, victims of
    intentionally botched executions . . . It is with deep regret and
    remorse that I stand here today testifying against the practices of
    organ and tissue sales from death row prisoners.''
        Dr. Wang described coordinated procedures that he said government
    officials and Chinese doctors developed to extract organs from inmates
    immediately after their executions so that they could be transplanted,
    in some cases before the prisoners' hearts stopped beating. Dr. Wang
    became tormented by the practice after he followed orders to remove the
    skin of a still-living prisoner in October 1995. The incident prompted
    him to alert the international community to the inhuman practice of
    organ harvesting in China.
        According to Wang's testimony, prisoners received blood tests in
    prison to determine their compatibility with interested donors. On
    execution day, he said, the prisoners who were to become organ donors
    were the first to die--thus, the prisoners' own blood and tissue types
    dictated how they were executed.
        As a nephrologist, I take care of patients whose lives depend on
    hemodialysis treatment three times a week. Each dialysis treatment
    typically lasts 3.5 hours. So, including the travel time, these people
    are basically devoting three days every week to hemodialysis treatment.
    Think of the burden on their lives, and now think about the fact that
    if they receive a kidney transplant, their lives immediately improve in
    every way. However, due to the limited source of kidney donations, only
    fraction of my patients can ever receive a transplant, and for those
    that do, the usual waiting time is more than three years. When I first
    learned that patients in China can receive kidney and other organ
    transplants within just days or weeks, I was appalled because I know
    exactly what process it takes to receive a kidney transplant.
        As a potential kidney organ recipient, the patient must contact a
    transplant center and ask for a transplant evaluation. A team of
    doctors can then provide an evaluation and determine if the patient is
    definitely eligible for a kidney transplant. After all of that, if the
    patient is lucky enough to be deemed a suitable candidate for
    transplantation, the patient will be put on the waiting list, where
    they wait--as I said--for an average of more than three years. The key
    to a successful transplant operation is to have the closest possible
    blood and tissue match. That is one of the reasons why the waiting time
    is so long--simply finding the right match takes years.
        Yet many Chinese hospitals have openly advertised that the waiting
    time for kidneys and even livers does not exceed one month; sometimes
    it's just a matter of a few days. Thus the question we face is: why can
    a patient in China find a match so quickly? One possibility is that the
    patient just gets a kidney that does not closely match patient's blood
    and tissue type, but if that were the case, the rejection rate of
    transplant patients in China would be alarmingly high. Since we do not
    see a trend of increased organ rejection in China, the mismatched
    transplant theory is not likely. The second possibility is that there
    is large number of living organ donors representing all possible blood
    and tissue types; when a patient walks into the hospital, the doctors
    only need to determine the patient's blood and tissue types, then they
    simply match the patient with one of the cataloged organ donors who
    will be killed on demand.
        If that process sounds too terrifying to believe or too coldly
    efficient to think possible, I'd like to present to you findings reaped
    from multiple investigations, systematic analysis of official medical
    reports in China, as well as prisoners' personal experiences. Together,
    I think you'll find that they prove the practice of illegal organ
    harvesting in China, especially from Falun Gong practitioners, is an
    expansive and ongoing operation supported and endorsed by the central
    Party leadership.
        Just looking at the numbers, it is obvious that something is wrong.
    There are vastly more transplants in China every year than there are
    identifiable sources of organs. For cultural reasons, Chinese people
    are reluctant to donate their organs after death. At least 98% of the
    organs for transplants come from someone other than family donors. In
    the case of kidneys, for example, only 227 out of 40,393 transplants
    (less than 0.6%)--done between 1971 and 2001 in China came from family
    donors. There is no organized, effective system of organ donation yet
    formed in China. The government of China has openly admitted to using
    the organs of executed prisoners. According to Amnesty International's
    reports, the average number of officially recorded executed prisoners
    between 1995 and 1999 was 1680 per year. The average between 2000 and
    2005 was 1616 per year. The average number for the periods before and
    after Falun Gong persecution began is the same. Even if we are to
    assume that every single execution results in an organ transplant,
    there is still not enough to account for the increase in transplants
    that came about after 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began.
        According to public reports, prior to 1999, there had been a total
    of approximately 30,000 transplants in China's history, with 18,500 of
    those cases in the six-year period during 1994 to 1999. Dr. Bingyi Shi,
    vice-chair of the China Medical Organ Transplant Association, stated
    that there were about 90,000 transplants as of 2005, which means that
    there were 60,000 transplants in the six-year period of 2000 to 2005.
        Where do the increased organ donors come from? The identified
    sources of organ transplants, consenting family donors and the brain
    dead, have always been small fraction of the donor pool. For example,
    in 2005, living-related kidney transplant consists of 0.5% of total
    transplants national wide. There is no indication of a significant
    increase in either of these categories in recent years. It is
    reasonable to assume that the identified sources of organ transplants
    which produced 18,500 organ transplants in the six-year period 1994 to
    1999 produced the same number of organs for transplants in the next six
    year period 2000 to 2005 because there has been no recorded change in
    the donation system or the overall willingness of the population to
    participate. Without a significant change in the donation process, the
    source of 41,500 transplants from 2000 to 2005 is unexplained. Where do
    the organs come from for these extra transplants? The allegation of
    organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners provides an answer.
        Because of China's lack of transparency, the precise statistics are
    impossible to obtain. However, independent lines of investigation using
    different methodologies from each other have reached the same
    conclusion: Organs are being harvested from living prisoners.
        Even if we use the China Deputy Minister, Wang Jiefu's own data
    there are approximately 30,500 unexplained sources of organs from 1997-
    2007.\1\
        Another method of calculating the mysterious source of organ is
    from Mr. Ethan Gutmann, an adjunct Fellow of the Foundation for Defense
    of Democracies. He painstakingly interviewed victims who were
    imprisoned in China's prison and labor camps. As detailed in his
    chapter in the book ``State Organs'', his estimate is that 65,000 Falun
    Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs.\3\
        Gutmann found that Falun Gong practitioners detained in prisons and
    labor camps were often singled out to receive medical exams aimed at
    assessing the health of their vital organs, and that afterwards, some
    would disappear.
        It is also important to note that even though most of the
    statistics we are working from only go up to the middle or end of the
    last decade, we have every reason to believe that organ harvesting is
    ongoing in China. According to a report from NTDTV, a patient this year
    traveled from Taiwan to Mainland China's Tianjin First Central Hospital
    and received concurrent liver and kidney transplantations. It only took
    one month to find a matching liver and kidney, whereas he had been
    waiting for years in Taiwan. During his hospitalization, he was told
    that some transplant tourists had received matching donor organs within
    one week of initial evaluation there. The patient stated that, ``There
    were other foreign patients [at the Tianjin First Central Hospital],
    but I didn't ask where they were from. I know there is a special
    guarded international patient ward on the hospital's10th floor. I guess
    the patients inside have special backgrounds.''
        As a medical doctor, I struggle to understand why this is happening
    at this order of magnitude. I could not comprehend that fellow doctors,
    members of a noble profession, people granted special status in our
    society, could use their knowledge and skills to kill another human
    being.
                           what has been done so far
        The practice of harvesting organs from executed and living
    prisoners in China has seen distinct opposition from the medical
    community and other professions. Aside from medical organizations and
    associations like Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), The
    Transplant Society (TTS) and World Medical Association (WMA), many
    individual doctors have started to oppose the unethical organ
    harvesting practices in China. Our collective effort to expose the
    illegal organ harvesting in China has generated results.
        The work of DAFOH is an exemplary resource for those from both
    medical and non-medical backgrounds to learn more about the unethical
    procedures in China. Since its inception a few years ago, DAFOH
    enlisted a host of well-respected doctors around the world to speak out
    against illegal organ harvesting in China. Our collective efforts also
    contributed to several publications in medical journals, including a
    letter in the prestigious Journal of American Medical Association in
    2011 (JAMA).\4\
        DAFOH's mission is to raise awareness and to call for an end to the
    unethical organ harvesting practices. DAFOH has co-hosted or organized
    forums and participated in panel discussions, including a panel
    discussion in the U.S. Capitol. There are many colleagues who share the
    same wish as us. Upon requesting a statement from TTS in early 2012,
    President-Elect Dr. Francis Delmonico replied: ``TTS is opposed to the
    use of organs from executed prisoners, and through the efforts of the
    Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, TTS opposes the presentation
    of reports from China at international congresses and the publication
    of papers from China in the medical literature that involves the use of
    organs from executed prisoners.''
        In November 2011, Chinese medical professionals published an
    article in the respected British medical journal Lancet, entitled ``A
    pilot programme of organ donation after cardiac death in China.'' \5\
    The article can be characterized as an acknowledgement of China's
    unethical transplant. Of note, the lead author is Dr. Jiefu Huang,
    China's deputy minister of Health, making the article almost an
    official public policy statement rather than a scientific research.
        In Europe, a DAFOH petition drive to call upon UNHRC to lead an
    international investigation in China has generated 160,000+ signatures.
    Among the signers were more than 200 parliamentarians in Europe,
    including EU parliament's Vice President.
        Bob Doris, member of the Scottish parliament released a statement
    against organ harvesting on November 5.
        Michael Prue, member of Ontario's Legislation Assembly, has also
    spoken up against the forced organ harvesting.\6\
        The President of the Taiwanese Medical association has publicly
    condemned unethical organ harvesting in a November 2012 statement.
        Taiwan's Legislative Yuan made the following resolution on November
    22, 2012:

              The 2011 annual human rights report of the U.S. State
            Department released on May 24, 2012 for the first time
            mentioned organ transplants in China, and overseas, the media
            and human rights groups continued to report on organ harvesting
            of Falun Gong practitioners and Uighurs. According to the
            statistics of Taiwan's Department of Health from 2000 to 2011,
            up to 1,754 Taiwan citizens received organ transplants overseas
            with 86% of those being conducted in China. And from 2005 to
            2011, the National Health Insurance payments for postoperative
            anti-rejection drugs rose to $7,734,540,000 NTD. But because
            the Department of Health has no law to require organ transplant
            recipients abroad who return home and receive anti-rejection
            drugs by the health insurance subsidies to register the
            transplant hospitals and physicians, it may allow the
            recipients of organs of unknown origin to become accomplices of
            organ harvesting while still enjoying the benefits of health
            insurance and anti-rejection drugs. This is a significant
            oversight. Therefore, within three months, the Department of
            Health shall require major medical institutions and physicians
            to register the transplant country and hospital information
            (including surgeons) of those who have received organ
            transplants in a foreign country while they apply for post-
            operative health insurance payments after returning home. It is
            reasonable for foreign organ transplant information to be
            transparent to gain health insurance benefits.'' While this is
            a very welcoming change, we hope the Taiwan government can
            further tighten their restriction on organ tourism.

        In addition to political leaders and other organizations, we have
    also seen individual citizens from different countries starting
    grassroots movements against organ harvesting.
        DAFOH petition in US: within 4 weeks, 30,000+ signatures collected
        DAFOH petition in Europe: 160,000+ signatures collected
        DAFOH petition in Australia: 30,000 signatures collected
        Additionally, an independent signature drive among Taiwanese
    doctors generated 2,000+ signatures to call for further investigations.
        Within the international medical community there have also been
    strong steps. At the July 2010 biennial World Transplant Congress
    meeting of TTS in Vancouver over 30 abstracts were submitted from China
    and considered for acceptance; the data for the research came from
    several hundred transplants where the donor source was deemed likely to
    be executed prisoners. This occurred despite the fact that a standard
    ethics filter mechanism was in place, and the TTS ethics policy
    regarding organs from executed prisoners had been published and was
    well known. Fortunately the failure of the ethics filter to prevent
    acceptance of these abstracts was recognized, and authors were
    specifically required to state, in the text of their abstracts, as a
    condition of acceptance, that no data from studies using executed donor
    organs were included. As a result, most abstracts were withdrawn.
        Recent actions taken by the editorial board of the American Journal
    of Transplantation are very encouraging. Starting in May 2011, changes
    have been made to the instructions to authors submitting manuscripts to
    these journals. The instructions now include the following statement:
    ``The American Journal of Transplantation (AJT) will not accept
    manuscripts whose data derives from transplants involving organs
    obtained from executed prisoners . . .''
        Similarly, a firm stance was undertaken by one the most respected
    clinical journals in the world: the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
    In its January issue of 2012,an editorial statement was made as
    follows: ``The practice of transplanting organs from executed prisoners
    in China appears to be widespread. We vigorously condemn this practice
    and, effective immediately, will not consider manuscripts on human
    organ transplantation for publication unless appropriate non-coerced
    consent of the donor is provided and substantiated.''
        The statement continues, ``This disparity in the supply of organs
    is a particular problem in China, where rapid expansion of the capacity
    to perform transplants has not been accompanied by the development of a
    system for recovering organs from those who die in hospitals while on
    life support, as is international practice. There is almost no
    systematic recovery of voluntarily donated cadaver organs. No regional
    or national system exists for soliciting consent to donate organs in
    advance from those who die or their relatives after death.
    Unfortunately, the evidence is clear that some physicians in China, in
    an effort to perform more transplants, are engaged in a practice that
    violates basic standards of medical ethics and human rights, namely the
    use of organs from executed prisoners.''
        ``Using organs from executed prisoners violates basic human rights.
    It violates core ethical precepts of transplant medicine and medical
    ethics. Worse still, some of those who are killed may be prisoners
    whose `crimes' involve no more than holding certain political or
    spiritual beliefs.''
        ``. . . the international biomedical community, including
    especially journal editors and editorial boards, must not be complicit
    with the practice of killing on demand to obtain organs from executed
    prisoners. We are not naive. We recognize that a boycott by this
    journal and its peers is unlikely, by itself, to bring an end to this
    practice. But we do hope that our actions will bring attention to this
    outrage and, in doing so, encourage China to develop policy options for
    obtaining organs consistent with international standards, conventions,
    and ethics.''
        We have seen progress, but more need to be done.
                                what can we do?
    To the medical community:
        As medical doctors, we will continue to inform and advise the
    professional transplant community to implement policies to dissuade
    organ harvesting. This includes advocating for international and
    national professional medical societies and journals to not accept
    abstracts, publications, or presentations from Chinese transplant
    centers unless the authors clearly indicate that the data presented is
    in accordance with the most recent Chinese government regulations
    regarding transplant tourism and that executed prisoners were not the
    source of organs.
        Membership of international professional societies by Chinese
    transplant professionals must be conditioned by acceptance of ethics
    policies that specifically express the unacceptability of executed
    prisoners as a source of organs.
        Memberships of Chinese doctors should be suspended if they fail to
    comply with the ethical standards of medical associations.
        Training of Chinese transplant professionals by the international
    community must be conditioned on commitments that trainees will not
    engage, directly or indirectly, in the use of organs from executed
    prisoners.
        Pharmaceutical companies must ensure that no executed prisoners are
    the source of organs used in their studies and that Chinese government
    regulations regarding transplant tourism are adhered to rigorously.
    To society and our government:
        I urge the United States government and anyone with any knowledge
    of organ harvesting to publicly release all evidence they have with
    regard to China's use of prisoners as a source of organ donation. I
    believe that a well-informed citizen will stop going to China for
    transplants if they know clearly that someone will be killed for his or
    her organ transplant. Likely this is the most effective and least
    expensive way to decrease demand for organs in China.
        Together with my other two colleagues, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director
    of medical ethics with New York University's Langone Medical Center and
    Dr. Centurion, a practicing physician in California, we have launched a
    petition on the White House website urging President Obama to speak out
    and help stop this gruesome practice on December 2, 2012. Within 2
    weeks, we have collected over 10,000 signatures. People can visit
    www.organpetition.org to learn more.
        I ask Congress to adopt legislative changes, to prohibit patients
    going abroad to receive illegal organ transplants, or at the very
    least, congress could require the patients to register their operations
    with the Department of Public Health. Their respective transplant
    information must include the name of the transplant center, the
    attending physician, and most importantly, the source of organ
    donation.
        I urge Congress to adopt legislative changes to limit health care
    insurance coverage for those who receive organs from unknown sources.
    It has been well documented that the medical outcomes of such
    transplants are much poorer with unusually high mortality and morbidity
    rates, and the economic burden is being shifted to the United States
    for the post-operative care for these patients.
        All countries should strengthen their laws against the crime of
    trafficking in organs. The laws should require doctors to report to the
    authorities of their country any evidence suggesting that a patient has
    obtained an organ from a trafficked person abroad, defined to include
    persons in detention abroad.
        Until the Chinese law on organ transplants is effectively
    implemented, foreign governments should not issue visas to doctors from
    China seeking to travel abroad for the purpose of training in organ or
    bodily tissue transplantation. Any doctor in China known to be involved
    in trafficking in the organs of prisoners should be barred entry by all
    foreign countries.
        Until the international community is satisfied that the new Chinese
    law on organ transplants is effectively implemented, foreign funding
    agencies, medical organizations, and individual health professionals
    should not participate in any Government of China-sponsored organ
    transplant research or meetings. Foreign companies that currently
    provide goods and services to China's organ transplant programs should
    cease and desist immediately until the government of China can
    demonstrate that their law on organ transplants is effective.
                               concluding remarks
        I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the CECC and
    especially the honorable Chairman Smith; you have been a true champion
    in advocating for Falun Gong and Human rights, and particularly the wok
    you have done to expose organ harvesting, such as by spearheading in
    the bipartisan dear colleague letter expressing concern about China's
    forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, particularly from
    Falun Gong detainees, and asking the Department of State to share any
    information they have received about unethical organ harvesting in
    China, including anything that Wang Lijun, a Chinese police chief who
    met with consular officials in China, might have divulged to U.S.
    consular officials. Wang is believed to have been intimately involved
    in organ harvesting; he has received an award for ``innovation'' in
    organ harvesting, and also, as a police chief, he directly oversaw the
    persecution of Falun Gong with his jurisdiction, which included
    hospitals. Thus, Mr. Wang information may hold to key to unlock the
    mystery of organ harvesting in China. Revealing this information may
    put an end to the horrific crime against humanity.
                                   references
        1. Huang Jiefu et al. Government policy and organ transplantation
    in China. Lancet. 372: 1937 (2008).
        2. Arthur L. Caplan, Howard A. Rockman, and Laurence A. Turka,
    Editorial position on publishing articles on human organ
    transplantation. J Clin Invest. January 3; 122(1): 2 (2012).
        3. Torsten Trey. State Organs--transplant abuse in China (2012).
        4. Torsten Trey, Abraham A Halpern, and Maria A Fiatarone MA Singh.
    Organ transplantation and regulation in China. JAMA 306 (17): 1863-4
    (2011).
        5. Huang Jiefu, et al, A pilot programme of organ donation after
    cardiac death in China. the Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9818, p 862-865
    (2012).
        6. http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2012/12/5/136529.html
                                     ______

                    Prepared Statement of Charles Lee, M.D.

                               december 18, 2012
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the distinguished members from the U.S.
    House and Senate, as well as executive branches of the government, for
    giving me the opportunity to testify today.
                 1. falun gong and the benefits of the practice
        Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient meditation
    system that consists of five meditative exercises and the principles of
    ``Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance,'' which all practitioners are
    supposed to assimilate themselves to.
        The practice has an ancient lineage, yet it was only made public on
    a large scale in 1992. After that, it spread in China like wild fire.
    It is free and easy to practice; there is no formal membership and no
    places of worship. Those of us who practice Falun Gong find that it
    brings significant health benefits, reduced stress, and that its moral
    principles bring harmony to interpersonal relationships, our
    workplaces, and wider communities. At the end of 1998, Chinese
    government sources estimated that 70 to 100 million people were
    practicing it in China.
                  2. the persecution on falun gong by the ccp
        In the 1990s, the government of China enthusiastically promoted
    Falun Gong on the basis that it improved public health and helped
    reduce healthcare costs. Yet the rapid growth of the practice, coupled
    with the fact that it had a spiritual philosophy rooted in traditional
    Chinese beliefs, caused some Communist Party leaders to view Falun Gong
    as a threat to their monopoly on moral authority. Moreover, Falun
    Gong's values of ``Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance'' stood in sharp
    contrast to the corruption and violence of the Communist Party.
        In July 1999, the Communist Party started the campaign to eradicate
    Falun Gong and promote the supremacy of Party's leadership and loyalty
    to the party.
        The Party has always tried to control every facet of life in China.
    It has done this partly through force and coercion, and creating an
    environment of fear where nobody dares to speak out. Secondly, it has
    systematically indoctrinated the whole country, destroyed traditional
    religions and value systems, and exercised complete control over all
    the media and information outlets. These are the same techniques it
    uses to persecute Falun Gong.
        This persecution is one of the greatest tragedies happening in the
    world today. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have
    been detained extralegally in this persecution. In many labor camps and
    detention centers, former prisoners report that Falun Gong
    practitioners are the majority of detainees.
        Central party authorities have sanctioned the use of systematic
    torture against Falun Gong practitioners. In the labor camps,
    authorities are told to use any measures necessary to force Falun Gong
    practitioners to recant their beliefs, and are told that they will not
    be punished if Falun Gong practitioners die in custody. Authorities at
    all levels of government are given economic incentives and penalties
    that are tied to their success in cracking down on Falun Gong. Former
    prisoners, many of whom are not themselves Falun Gong practitioners,
    regularly report that Falun Gong detainees are singled out for
    mistreatment in prisons and labor camps; in a 2006 UN Special
    Rapporteur report, two-thirds of reported torture cases in China were
    against Falun Gong practitioners. The torture methods include sexual
    assault, beatings, shocks with electric batons, violent force-feedings
    with feces and salt solutions.
             3. the cruelties of the persecution and the death toll
        So far, 3,627 reports of deaths have been documented and confirmed
    by Falun Gong practitioners. However, the true death toll should be
    much higher. An untold number of Falun Gong practitioners have
    disappeared amidst persecution in the last 13 years.
        More gruesome still, China's massive organ transplant industry has
    been supplied by organs taken from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.
    Canadian investigators David Matas and David Kilgour have estimated
    that between 2000 and 2005, more than 40,000 Falun Gong practitioners
    may have been killed and their organs sold to supply China's organ
    transplant industry. Researcher Ethan Gutmann says that about 65,000
    were likely killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008. The actual
    number of deaths can be many times more, because the CCP has always
    been manipulating numbers to mislead people or simply tell the blatant
    lies in order to cover up the atrocity. And much of the data collected
    by the researchers were from the official figures. There have been also
    many underground organ transplantation operations as well.
        There is also evidence that Falun Gong practitioners' bodies have
    been sold to plastination companies, which put them on display in body
    exhibits.\1\ Human beings have been turned into commodities and been
    used to maximize profits. These atrocities recall the Nazis' medical
    experiments and their use of human hair as pillow stuffing, and skin as
    lampshades. As Chairman Smith wrote, the possibility of mass organ
    harvesting from Falun Gong ``pushes us into a horrific beyond, a beyond
    that challenges our language, making `barbaric' too calm a word, too
    leached of horror.''
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ For information on the body exhibits, see http://
    www.zhuichaguoji.org/en/sites/zhuichaguoji.org.en/files/record/2012/11/
    236-plastination-report--english2--report.pdf
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        The volume of Falun Gong practitioners was so high that the party
    actually built new labor camps just to contain them. In March 2006, a
    retired military doctor revealed that there were 36 such large
    concentration camps in the country. He claimed that one camp, 672-S in
    Jilin Province, held more than 120,000 Falun Gong practitioners.
        It is estimated that there are 300 million transient population in
    China. These include the migrating city workers from the countryside,
    tens of millions of appellants who constantly appeal to the governments
    for their injustices, and millions of unyielding Falun Gong
    practitioners who have lost their jobs, schools, and families, and left
    their hometown to escape the persecution. In the past decade, many of
    them disappeared/vaporized and nobody can trace them down. (We have
    many practitioners in the U.S. with their practicing family members
    cannot be located or found.)
        Tens of millions of Falun Gong practitioners had recovered from
    their illnesses (including terminal diseases) and benefited from an
    improved health. The persecution on Falun Gong in the past 13 years has
    forced many of them giving up the practices, and in consequence, facing
    with deteriorated health and eventually died. My mother was one of
    them.
        The total deaths caused by the persecution should have reached
    several millions, if all types of death are included. What is outlined
    here is only part of the clues on this heinous crimes in human history.
    It is extremely important for governments and people, both in the West
    and the East, to know/find-out the scale and severity of the largely-
    undisclosed persecution. Much more efforts are needed to stop this
    crime against humanity and to fully investigate and lay down the
    framework for the long-overdue justice to be served.
               4. peaceful resistance by falun gong practitioners
        Even though we have faced such severe persecution, there is not a
    single case in which a Falun Gong practitioner used violence against
    the perpetrators. Instead, we have resisted persecution by peacefully
    informing Chinese people about the true situation, debunking the
    propaganda that the Chinese government has produced against us.
        One way we have done this is through underground ``material sites''
    all across China, where practitioners can use proxy services to bypass
    the censorship firewall, download and share reports of persecution, and
    create informational literature and DVDs telling the truth about Falun
    Gong and the persecution. Courageous practitioners then distribute this
    information at great personal risk. There are estimated to be about
    200,000 such material sites in China today, and between 20 and 40
    million practitioners.
        Overseas practitioners have also developed various media outlets
    and circumvention software to bring information in and out of China
    uncensored.
                              5. my own experience
        In 2002 and 2003, I also sought to resist the persecution by
    breaking through the veil of censorship in China. I traveled to China
    with the goal of tapping into state television broadcasts to show
    videos about the true situation of Falun Gong and the persecution.
    However, I was abducted in January 2003, and sentenced in a show trial
    to three years in Nanjing prison.
        Even though I was an American citizen, the prison guards still did
    everything possible to brainwash and intimidate me. In addition to the
    physical torture and forced slave labor, the brainwashing sessions
    lasted for all three years. They forced me to watch TV programs
    defaming Falun Gong and praising the Communist Party. Very often, they
    cut off all my information sources for weeks on end, not even letting
    me talk with anybody. After these periods of isolation, they would
    subject me to intensive brainwashing sessions in the hopes that my
    resistance would be reduced. If I weren't an American citizen whose
    case was internationally known, the treatment I experienced would have
    been much worse.
        I thank the strong support from friends around the world,
    especially the US Congress, that allowed me to come back to this
    country with my body intact and my will unbroken.
                         6. awakening of chinese people
        While I was imprisoned, I would wonder to myself how it was that
    people could so readily abuse and torture their own compatriots. I
    wondered to myself how they'd allowed themselves to be deceived, and
    how they came to be so full of hatred.
        The book titled ``Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party''
    published in November 2004 by the Epochtimes has given the answer and
    led to a truly historical awakening of Chinese People.
        In the past 60 plus years, the party distorted the Chinese people's
    sense of right and wrong. It taught them to view each other as enemies,
    and to struggle against each other. The party's ideology is so
    pervasive that people are even unaware of their inability to think
    independently. What's more, from a young age, Chinese people are taught
    that the party and the country are the same concept, so whenever
    someone criticizes the party, they feel that it's an attack on the
    nation of China and on themselves as Chinese.
        If there is to be freedom and lasting peace in China, it will only
    come after the Chinese people take a principled stand and reject the
    culture of violence and deceit promoted by the Communist Party. This is
    beginning to happen already. In the last several years, tens of
    millions of Chinese people have renounced their membership in the
    Communist Party, Youth League, and Communist Young Pioneers. They are
    making the choice to live according to their own conscience--not the
    will of the party--and are refusing to participate in further
    violations of human rights. The process of renouncing the party (known
    in Chinese as ``Tuidang'') is thus a deeply spiritual, personal, and
    moral process, and a matter of reconnecting with traditional Chinese
    values of human heartedness and compassion. To date, 129 million
    renunciation statements have been received from people taking this
    important step.
        As more and more people's consciences are freed from the CCP's
    control, the broader social and political environment is changing. The
    CCP is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Chinese
    people, a process that will ultimately lead to the CCP's
    disintegration. Today, Chinese people are becoming unafraid of
    suppressions and crackdowns by the CCP regime, and more and more people
    are taking a public stand to support Falun Gong and oppose the
    persecution.
        I would like to conclude my testimony by thanking the leadership of
    Congressman Smith and Congressman Andrews, along with 106 members of
    Congress from 33 states, for their bipartisan Dear Colleague letter to
    Secretary Clinton, expressing serious concern over China's forced organ
    harvesting from prisoners of conscience (particularly from Falun Gong
    detainees) and asking the Department of State to release all
    information about unethical organ harvesting in China, including what
    Wang Lijun might have shared with U.S. diplomats while seeking his
    asylum at U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu. To my knowledge, the
    Department of State has not yet responded to the Dear Colleague letter.
        We believe that the United States as a world leader in protecting
    human rights has a moral obligation to speak out and help bring an end
    to this horrific crime against humanity. We also believe that by doing
    this, the US will protect itself from being further deceived and harmed
    by the CCP regime.
        Thank you.
                                    *  *  *

                                     ______

                      Prepared Statement of James W. Tong

                               december 18, 2012
        My testimony will focus on three issues.\1\ First, how serious is
    the Falun Gong as a law enforcement problem for the Chinese government
    in recent years? Second, what kind of activities does the Falun Gong
    community engage in inside China in the same period? Third, how does
    the Falun Gong community inside China communicate with each other and
    with the global Falun Gong community? I will begin, however, with the
    birthday celebration of the Falun Gong this year.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ For data source of the testimony below, see James Tong,
    ``Banding after the Ban: the Underground Falungong in China, 1999-
    2011,'' Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 21, no. 78 (November,
    2012), pp. 1045-1062, where much of the contents of the testimony are
    drawn from.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        On May 13, 2012, the Falun Gong celebrated its 20th anniversary.
    Its head office was overwhelmed by well wishes and greetings. There
    were new proclamations of a Falun Gong Day in Baltimore, Charlotte,
    Denver and Milwaukee, a Falun Gong week from Detroit and a Falun Gong
    month from Edmonton. But what is interesting were unique computer-
    generated greeting cards and hand-drawn paintings, many with classic
    Chinese poems, sent by 2,788 practitioners from all seven
    administrative regions in China, in addition to those of more than a
    dozen occupational groups from steel-workers to law-enforcement inside
    China. What is just as note-worthy is the absence of reports of acts of
    overt defiance. There was no report of protest rallies in Beijing , or
    of Falun Gong groups staging collective meditation exercises in
    provincial capitals, or of unfurling Falun Gong banners in public
    places. The celebration of the Falun Gong as a congregational festival
    and not an act of political defiance leads us to the three issues
    referred to earlier.
       i. gradual reduction of the temporal-spatial scope of falun gong
                                    defiance
        First, there has been a gradual but steady reduction of reported
    Falun Gong defiance in the past twelve years. The overall trend was a
    precipitous decline of such activities from 2000-2002, a sharp rebound
    in 2003, then a steady decline from 2004 thereafter. The trend can be
    observed from three official sources. Table-1 presents references to
    the Falun Gong in the annual report of the Chief Procurator, the
    equivalent of the U.S. Attorney-General. Every year, the top law-
    enforcement official of China delivered a report to the National
    People's Congress. The report reviews the main law-enforcement tasks of
    the nation in the preceding year, addresses major law and order issues
    facing the country, and states the priority procuratorial tasks in the
    year ahead. As shown in Table-1, the Falun Gong was named as a notable
    law-enforcement problem from 1999 to 2003, but was dropped from the
    annual report from 2004 through 2011. At least at the national level,
    the Falun Gong appears to remain a public security risk in the first
    five years after the government ban in 1999, but declines in relative
    importance from 2004 on.

        Table-1: Reference to Falun Gong as a Law-Enforcement Problem in the Annual Chief Procuracy Report to the
                                          National People's Congress, 1999-2011
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      1999     2000     2001     2002     2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008    2009    2010    2011
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         X        X        X        X        X        -        -        -        -        -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Source: Zhongguo jiancha nianjian, annual issues from 2000 to 2010, and news.xinhuanet.com/politics/./c--
      111672904.htm, access on April, 2012.
    Note: Since the procuracy report of a given year provides law-enforcement data of the preceding year, data in
      the table refers to the law-enforcement calendar year and not the year when the report is delivered.

        At the next administrative level, provincial procuracy reports
    offer a similar view of the issue. Similar to its central government
    counterpart, the provincial procuracy report is also an annual ritual
    delivered to the provincial legislature, covering the same subject
    scope and written in the same format. As shown in Table-2, provincial
    trends largely mirror the national trend, where the Falun Gong was
    depicted as a major law-enforcement problem from 1999-2003, but faded
    out in significance thereafter.

       Table-2: Reference to Falun Gong as Local Enforcement Problem in the Annual Procuracy Report to Provincial
                                              People's Congress, 1999-2011
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Province   1999    2000    2001    2002    2003    2004    2005    2006    2007    2008    2009    2010    2011
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beijing       X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tianjin       X       X       X       X       -       -       X       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hebei         X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Shanxi        X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Neimongg      X       X       -       -       X       -       -       X       -       -       -       -       -
     u
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Liaoning      X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Jilin         X       X       -       -       X       X       X       X       X       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Heilongj      X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -      NA       -       -
     iang
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Shanghai      X       X       X       -       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Jiangsu       -       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Zhejiang      X       X       X       -       X       X       X       -       X       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anhui         X       X       X       X       X       -       -       -       X       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fujian        X       X       X       -       X       X       -       -       -       X       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Jiangxi       X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Shandong      X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -      NA       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Henan         X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -      NA      NA       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hubei         X       X       X       -       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hunan         X       -       -       X       -       -       -       -       X       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Guangdon      X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
     g
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Guangxi       X       X       X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hainan        X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Sichuan       X       X       X       -       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Guizhou       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -      NA       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yunnan        X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Xizhang       X       -       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Shaanxi       X       X       X       -       X       X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Gansu         X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       X       -       -       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Qinghai       X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -       -       -      NA      NA       -
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ningxia       X       X       X       -       -       X       X       X       -      NA      NA      NA      NA
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Xinjiang      X       -       -       X       -       -       -       -      NA      NA      NA      NA
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chongqin      X       X       X       -       X       X       X       X       -       -       -       -       -
     g
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Total        29      28      21       4      12       7       6       5       4       2       0       0       0
     no. of
     Provinc
     ial
     reports
     with
     ref. to
     FLG
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Source: See source note on Table-1. Full Chinese texts of provincial procuracy reports for 2009-2011 are
      obtained from internet searches. ``NA'' denotes provinces where the latter has not yielded any such documents
      for given years using the subject keyword and searching for the websites of the Provincial Government, the
      Provincial Legislature and the Provincial Procuracy.

        A similar pattern on the decline of the Falun Gong threat can also
    be seen in the number of articles on the Falun Gong published in the
    Renmin ribao, the major national newspaper in China and the official
    organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. These
    are articles that either refer to the Falun Gong in the title or name
    the Falun Gong in the text. Table-3 presents the monthly total of such
    articles from July, 1999 through December, 2011. It can be seen that
    except for 2000, the annual aggregates have been on a monotonic
    decline, registering 609, 325, 534, 198, 54, 17 from 1999 through 2004,
    and in the single digits thereafter. Monthly totals also show a similar
    pattern. In 1999, they range from 41 (October) to 196 (August), 10 to
    63 in 2000, 6 to 66 in 2001, 1 to 28 in 2002, 2 to 9 in 2003, 1 to 4 in
    2004, and 1 to 2 in 2005 through 2011. Data from both the annual
    central and provincial procuracy reports, as well as Renmin ribao
    articles then, point to a sharp reduction of both sets of indexes since
    2003, followed by a steady decline thereafter, with a hard-core remnant
    that had survived and continued to defy official suppression efforts
    through at least 2008. In combination, they show that the Falun Gong
    has been emasculated in China but not eradicated.

                                   Table-3: Articles on Falun Gong in RMRB, 1999-2011
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            Jan    Feb    Mar    Apr    May    June   July   Aug    Sep    Oct    Nov    Dec   Total
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    1999                                                               170    196    125     41    104     73    609
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2000                      52     25     63     38     23     34     25     10     14     10     10     21    325
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2001                      59     66     20     46     25     28     34      6     15     10     12     23    534
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2002                      20     11     22     24     26     10     25      7     28     17      1      7     98
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2003                       5      2      9      2      5      2      2      4      4      3      5      3     54
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2004                       4      1      1      3      1             2      2                    1      2     17
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2005                       2      1      1                    2      1                           2             9
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2006                       1             2             2                                                1      6
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2007                                                                                             1             1
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2008                                                                                             1      1      2
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2009                       1                                                              1             2      4
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2010                                     1             1                                                       2
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2011                       1      1             1             1                    1                           5
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Grand Total                                                                                                 1767
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Source: Renmin ribao, 1946-2011, CD-ROM edition.

          ii. new forms of organized underground falun gong activities
        If the Falun Gong has not been engaging in overt acts of defiance
    inside China in recent years, what has it been doing? There are two
    main forms of organized Falun Gong activities. Both meet in
    unstructured small groups or in larger assemblies.
    Small Study groups and Fa Conferences
        In the Fa Study Group, small cells of two or more engage in common
    spiritual cultivation, at fixed or irregular intervals, usually in a
    private residence like Christian house fellowships, about once or twice
    a week. There is no formal structure, and no fixed meeting schedule,
    format, size, and organization. Fa Conferences are larger gatherings of
    Falun Gong practitioners, generally meeting also in private homes, of
    around 10 people. At least some were convened on major Falun Gong
    anniversaries, such as April 25th when the Falun Gong staged their
    historic protest rally in Beijing's Zhongnanhai, or on May 13, the
    foundation day of the congregation, or on July 20th, the date
    commemorated by many Falun Gong groups as the anniversary of the ban on
    the Falun Gong.
        A detailed report shows one Fa conference had a make-shift altar
    set up with a Falun Gong plaque placed at its center, on top of a Falun
    Gong table-cloth, beneath two Buddhist or Li Hongzhi portraits. A
    candle stand was placed in the middle of the altar in front of the
    plaque, itself flanked by a plate of fruits or buns as tributary
    articles, surrounded by silk floral arrangements on each side of the
    altar. Practitioners sat on the floor with their legs crossed in a
    standard Falun Gong exercise posture.
        The congregation was called to order at 8 a.m. The meeting
    consisted of four segments each punctuated by ten-minute meditation
    sessions on the hour where practitioners were called on to join the
    universal Falun Gong congregation to send forth righteous thoughts. In
    the first session, two short videos were played, the first on
    ``Remembrance', where photographs of Falun Gong practitioners who
    reportedly died in official custody were shown on the screen. This was
    followed by another short video on ``The Flying Revolving Wheel'' on
    developments in the Falun Gong. The second session was the main part of
    the conference where practitioners discussed the recent articles of Li
    Hongzhi, who instructed all practitioners to perform the three tasks of
    Studying the Falun Method, Sending forth Righteous Thoughts, and
    Clarifying the Truth. Before the discussion of the third task, a
    musical video entitled ``Coming for You'' was played. It was about 36
    European Falun Gong practitioners who went to Beijing on November 20,
    2001 and displayed a Falun Gong banner in the Tiananmen Square.
    Returning to Europe, they composed the title song and formed a ``Coming
    for You European Choir'' made up of over 80 singers from 13 European
    nations that performed in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong,
    singing separately in Mandarin, Swede, French, Italian and in four
    voice parts. In the Fa Conference, both the musical CD, as well as the
    commemorative video elicited strong emotions from sobbing participants.
    As the last item of the conference, the host mentioned two specific
    projects to which participants were called on to contribute their
    efforts. The first was to collect documentary evidence for official
    persecution, including the Indictment, Sentencing, and Ruling
    Statements, Detention Notices, Summons to appear in labor reform
    institutions, as well as official receipts for fines and Falun Gong
    material confiscated by the authorities, which would be sent to Falun
    Gong media organizations overseas for documenting official repression.
    The second was to locate and assist the orphans of Falun Gong
    practitioners who perished in official custody. The conference
    adjourned at noon.
    Propagation Activities to Clarify the Truth
        The second set of organized activities was ``Clarifying the
    Truth'', a direct instruction from Li Hongzhi to his adherents that all
    should do their part in letting the public know about the true Falun
    Gong doctrine and practice, and the plight practitioners suffer under
    the repressive regime, repeated in many of his written messages and
    public speeches. These are done both in passive and active ways, and
    both in their work units and residence as well as outside their place
    of employment and domicile.
        Passive ways of Clarifying the Truth entail drop-and-run tactics of
    leaving Falun Gong materials in target sites--at the door of houses in
    rural villages, or in buses, shopping malls, restaurants, post offices,
    public phone booths, benches in public parks, bicycle shopping baskets,
    the door handle of autos, and outside shop windows. Some left leaflets
    on bus depot, underground walkways, trains, electric wire poles,
    telephone booths, and street walls. Additional drop-off points included
    postal boxes, milk delivery containers, newspaper holders outside
    doors, shelves in supermarkets, suit pockets on racks of clothing
    stores.
        These non-invasive tactics contrast with the more interactive
    methods of other bolder practitioners who engaged their targets,
    including speaking to the elderly in nursing homes, talking to store
    cashiers, peasants waiting in fields for the harvester to arrive. Not
    all acts of clarifying the truth were, however, done by lone operators.
    Some travelled in groups on bicycles or in two cars, bringing food and
    water for their own consumption to distant mountain communities. Along
    the way, they put up Falun Gong posters on electric wire poles, trees,
    and hung Falun Gong banners, traveling over 100 li (50 km. or 31 miles)
    one-way, speaking to villagers as well as residents of forest lands and
    dropped off pamphlets to rural households, putting up posters in every
    house.
            iii. communicating with the global falun gong community
        Thanks to the internet, the underground cellular Falun Gong
    community is connected with each other and with the universal Falun
    Gong congregation in the diaspora, which has organizations in 114
    countries and regions in the world, including groups in 45 of the 50
    states in the U.S. Falun Gong practitioners inside China can thus tap
    into the vast resources of its universal community. On one end of this
    cyber link is the elaborate Falun Gong telecommunications network
    composed of two news agencies, three television stations, two radio
    stations, a newspaper, and the worldwide web Minghui.org with global
    electronic footprint. On the other are the ``Material Centers''
    established by the underground Falun Gong community inside China that
    reproduce Falun Gong global communications, create local content, and
    distribute these to other local Falun Gong practitioners.
    The Falun Gong Cyber Community
        Falun Gong practitioners in China can get their daily bread from
    the Minghui.org website, which publishes around 40 daily news items on
    developments relating to the Falun Gong in China. In addition to
    information on the Falun Gong survivors in China, what practitioners in
    China may find particularly useful are up-to-date intelligence, like
    when some public security bureau was planning a systematic inspection
    of computers, that some taxicab operators in the city were government
    agents, or some cities were installing electronic surveillance systems
    in the residential compound or in street walls.
        The Minghui.org website offers a whole spectrum of technical
    consulting on how to set up a Material Center, produce and distribute
    Falun Gong materials. In its section on Technical Reference, it lists
    informational entries on 11 topics including appropriate equipment and
    production processes for manufacturing CD's, DVD's, video-tapes, stick-
    on posters and banners; text and graphics editing; software debugging
    as well as computer and photocopier trouble-shooting. It suggests ways
    to position the household satellite dish at different times of the day
    in China to get the best reception for television programs broadcast by
    the Falun Gong New Dynasty Station in the U.S. It warns against the
    most recent mail interception techniques of public security agents
    embedded in Chinese post offices, suggests ways to prevent electronic
    locating and eaves dropping by the authorities, and to circulate Falun
    Gong slogans widely by writing those slogans on currency bills.
        In a special section entitled how to evade network blocking, the
    Minghui.org website publishes 67 entries ranging from the best anti-
    virus and data management software available in China, techniques to
    save documents and data when surfing in internet cafes, the latest
    technology by law-enforcement to erect firewalls and how to bypass
    these obstructions. To minimize the pernicious effects of official
    hacking and worming, it suggests that practitioners in the mainland
    should set up three email addresses, one for correspondence and the
    other two for storage, where Falun Gong documents and graphic data
    would be saved as attachments. To bypass official surveillance efforts,
    it offers step-by-step instructions on how to apply for free overseas
    email addresses, attaching the actual English-language electronic
    application form, highlighting the key entries that are to be filled,
    translating the terms in Chinese, and providing samples of responses in
    English.
    Material Centers
        To rebuild the communications system within China, a network of
    Material Centers was established by Falun Gong survivors to link Falun
    Gong practitioners inside China with each other as well as with its
    international media hub in the U.S. The ``Home Material Centers'' are
    operated by members of a single family in their own residence. The
    standard equipments are a computer, printer, photocopier, and CD-
    burners. The operations of the Material Centers involved three basic
    tasks. First, the master copy from the international Minghui.org
    website are downloaded, from which relevant items to produce a local
    edition of newsletter and posters are selected. Second, multiple copies
    of the local printed or electronic file are then made by photocopiers
    or CD burners, stapled and/or packaged for dissemination. Third, these
    end products are then distributed to fill local orders from other Falun
    Gong groups, or to their target locations in urban housing blocks or
    rural villages.
        One report from Northeast China describes a large material centers
    that was equipped with a state-of-the-art photocopier, a high-volume,
    multifunctional machine capable of printing 100 pages per minute. The
    output in a busy day was 4-5 boxes of print-outs, or 40,000-50,000
    sheets. Orders for printed products were placed by other Falun Gong
    groups in the city or surrounding urban places, in amounts of two to
    three thousand sheets per order, or one or two boxes (10-20,000
    sheets). To replenish paper supply, the Material Center periodically
    purchased a truck-load of paper that was around 80 boxes. In the three-
    year lifetime of the Center, it moved and operated in three locations,
    produced Falun Gong materials printed on over 1,000 boxes of paper,
    burnt over tens of thousands of CD's, plus a large volume of posters,
    Falun Gong exercise tapes, video, and CD's.
                                   conclusion
        On the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Falun Gong, one
    may well ponder why the authoritarian regime was able to emasculate but
    not eradicate what its top leader considered to be the most serious
    domestic political threat since the 1989 Democracy Movement. Has the
    regime that once crushed demonstrating students with tanks become
    mellow, second-guessing itself about the expected utility of nipping
    another domestic challenger? Is it a case of calculated inaction, where
    the price of the pyrrhic victory was considered too costly for China's
    newfound international status? Or is it rather that the Anti-Falun Gong
    Campaign had a limited objective in the first place, including only the
    liquidation of its national and provincial leadership, decimation of
    its organizational structure, purge of Falun Gong adherents who were
    inside the Communist Party, sanction for its collective actions that
    breached the law, but excluding grassroots practitioners who do
    breathing exercises and read Falun Gong mantra in the solitude of their
    homes, or even gather for piety and not for protest? And since the
    regime has delegated law-enforcement authority relating to the Falun
    Gong to local governments, should explanations for regional variations
    in repressive efficacy be sought not at the central but at the local
    levels, which differ significantly in their willingness and ability to
    deal with the outlawed sect? Or is it the case that China does not fall
    exception to the general rule that few governments can exterminate
    well-entrenched and committed ideologues, determined insurgents and
    underground churches, especially one that has metathesized and
    nourished by daily and easy international contact with a well-
    established global community that enjoys international protection?
    Whatever the case, both the Falun Gong and the Chinese government have
    reasons to prefer the status-quo than the relentless campaign that
    suppressed the congregation in July, 1999. For Beijing, it gained
    social stability which it needs for economic development at home and a
    positive international image abroad. For the Falun Gong, it has
    survived the mortal wound inflicted by the Chinese government in a
    ruthless suppression, lived through its darkest night and rebuilt the
    movement for a better tomorrow.
                                     ______

                                     ______