Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners and human rights advocates gathered in Washington D.C. on Sept. 24 as Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. Demonstrators called for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in Communist China and urged Washington to keep religious freedom at the forefront of its engagement with Beijing.
More than 300 Falun Gong practitioners joined the morning rally at the U.S. Navy Memorial Plaza, several blocks from the White House, according to NTD’s coverage of the demonstration. Speakers included Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, Hudson Institute Center for Religious Freedom Director Nina Shea and Religious Freedom Institute President David Trimble.
The demonstration took place as Trump and Xi began talks covering trade, technology, artificial intelligence and other issues. But speakers at the rally argued that economic and strategic concerns should not push religious freedom and human rights into the background.
“[Religious freedom] stands as an anchor to stability, as an anchor of international relations, and as an anchor of national security,” Trimble said at the rally, according to The Epoch Times.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that combines meditation and exercises with teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance. It was publicly introduced in China in 1992.
For the best of our weekly content！
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Check your email to complete sign up
In July 1999, Chinese communist authorities officially banned Falun Gong and launched a nationwide campaign against the practice. U.S. government reports from the period documented mass detentions and a nationwide propaganda campaign, while more recent State Department reports continue to document arrests and harassment of Falun Gong practitioners.
Falun Gong families appeal for detained relatives in China
For some of those taking part, the demonstration centered on relatives currently imprisoned or detained in China.
Maryland accountant Alisa Zhou told The Epoch Times that her mother, Wang Youmei, was one of 17 Falun Gong practitioners arrested in Wuhan in April. Wang remains detained at the Wuhan No. 1 Detention Center. Zhou told the publication that her mother’s detention “doesn’t have any grounds” because faith is “not a crime.”
Zhou said pressure from U.S. lawmakers and the State Department had already helped bring movement in her mother’s case. Wang was eventually allowed to meet with an attorney, and prosecutors later returned the case to local police, citing insufficient evidence, according to The Epoch Times. Zhou said she believes the increased international attention played a role in those developments.
Ahead of Xi’s visit, the Falun Dafa Information Center called on Trump to raise the cases of Wang Youmei, Tong Shuying and Zhou Deyong directly with Xi and seek their release. All three have relatives living in the United States. The organization also asked the administration to address alleged transnational repression targeting Falun Gong practitioners inside the United States.
Another practitioner at the rally, Zhou You, told The Epoch Times about his father, Zhou Deyong, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence in China. Zhou said his family is generally able to speak with his father only once a month and that his father has lost almost all of his teeth, making it difficult for him to eat.
Zhou argued that his father’s treatment reflected a broader failure by Chinese authorities to uphold their own laws, raising doubts about Beijing’s willingness to abide by international commitments.
“If the CCP cannot obey its own law, how do you expect it to obey the international law?” Zhou said.
Religious freedom raised ahead of Trump-Xi talks
Concerns about religious persecution had also been raised in Washington in the days leading up to the summit.
On Sept. 18, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) urged Trump to directly address what it described as China’s “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of freedom of religion or belief during his meeting with Xi.
USCIRF said Chinese communist authorities have targeted a number of religious communities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetan Buddhists, independent Protestant Christians and Catholics. A separate Sept. 14 statement from the commission called on Trump to continue pressing for the release of prisoners detained over their religious beliefs.
Ryan also raised allegations of forced organ harvesting during his remarks at the rally. He criticized the ceremonial reception given to Xi while people with connections to his congressional district have alleged severe abuses against family members and other practitioners in China.
In 2019, an independent tribunal chaired by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice concluded after public hearings that forced organ harvesting had occurred in China “on a significant scale” and that Falun Gong practitioners had probably been a principal source of organs. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied accusations that it has harvested organs from prisoners of conscience. The tribunal’s findings were cited again in The Epoch Times’ coverage of Thursday’s rally.
Demonstrations continue across Washington
The Falun Gong gathering was one part of a broader series of demonstrations surrounding Xi’s visit.
The Associated Press (AP) reported that protests continued almost nonstop around the White House on Thursday, with demonstrators representing Tibetan, Hong Kong, Uyghur, Chinese democracy and other causes. By later in the day, several hundred people had gathered near the White House, where chants carried across Lafayette Park toward the North Portico as guests arrived for the state dinner.
Pro-Beijing demonstrators were also present. The Associated Press reported that around 200 supporters of Xi gathered outside the hotel where he was staying, waving Communist Chinese and American flags and chanting, “Welcome, welcome, a warm welcome.”
Similar pro-Xi welcoming demonstrations in the United States have previously been shown to involve coordination and financial support from Chinese diplomatic officials and state-linked diaspora organizations.
A 2024 Washington Post investigation into demonstrations surrounding Xi’s 2023 visit to San Francisco found that the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles paid for some supporters’ hotels and meals, while Chinese diplomats and organizations with ties to Beijing helped coordinate groups that turned out to welcome Xi.
One confrontation during the day drew additional attention. Falun Gong practitioner Xin Qin said she was knocked to the ground and injured during an encounter with pro-Beijing demonstrators near the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters.
According to The Epoch Times’ report on the incident, Qin said several people struck or bit her after she attempted to photograph demonstrators, leaving her with injuries to her hand, shoulder and legs. She was later taken to a hospital. Authorities have opened an investigation.
The confrontation, however, was a relatively small part of a day in which Falun Gong practitioners largely focused on calling attention to people still detained in China.
For families such as Zhou’s, Xi’s presence in Washington provided a rare opportunity to put those cases before U.S. officials at the same time the two countries’ leaders were meeting face to face.
Original article
Comments