[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 146 (Thursday, September 12, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S5469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               FALUN GONG

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, throughout my years in the Senate, I have 
met with people from around the world who have been persecuted by their 
own governments, but the stories I have heard from survivors and family 
members of the victims of China's efforts to silence and eliminate 
religious minorities continue to shock me. The Chinese Government 
systematically brutalizes millions of people, including Tibetan 
Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners.
  Those who practice Falun Gong use meditation and are guided by a 
philosophy of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, but because the 
Chinese Communist Party fears any organized religion or association it 
cannot control, it views this revival of traditional Chinese religion 
as a threat to its survival.
  Falun Gong practitioners recently marked the 20th anniversary of the 
beginning of China's campaign of brutality against their community. On 
July 20, 1999, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in 
their homes in the middle of the night. Over the following week, as 
many as 50,000 Falun Gong were reportedly detained. In the years since 
that initial crackdown, the Chinese Government has relentlessly 
continued its repression of Falun Gong.
  Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, interred at reeducation 
camps, beaten, sleep-deprived, starved, sexually assaulted, 
electrocuted, force-fed, shackled, and had their limbs slowly broken, 
until they have renounced their beliefs and practices. They have been 
ordered to participate in propaganda vilifying their own community. 
They have had their organs harvested against their will. They have been 
murdered. We will probably never know how many innocent people have 
been the victims of these atrocities, since the Chinese Government 
denies to the outside world that it is happening, while justifying it 
to their own citizens.
  The Chinese Government should immediately cease its arbitrary 
detention and brutalization of Falun Gong practitioners and other 
religious and ethnic minorities. It should release political prisoners 
from reeducation centers, decriminalize religious and spiritual 
practices, and allow international human rights groups and journalists 
to interview survivors. It should commit to ending the use of torture, 
organ harvesting of prisoners, and propaganda against minorities.
  The plight of these people in China, the horrors of torture and 
murder by the government, can seem very far away from Washington, DC, 
and very far away from my State of Vermont. Yet Vermonters travel to 
Washington to meet with me and my staff, urging Congress to take action 
on behalf of Falun Gong. Vermonters are persistent people who rightly 
refuse to let us forget about Falun Gong and the other victims of 
China's repression. It is all too easy to ignore crimes against 
humanity on the other side of the globe, when the victims are people we 
will never meet, but Vermonters demand that we pay attention. The Falun 
Gong deserve to be remembered, and they deserve the international 
community's collective action.

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