Falun Gong Practitioners Call for End to Persecution During Xi Visit

WASHINGTON D.C. — On Sept. 24, more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners gathered at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington as U.S. President Donald Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping, urging the administration to raise human rights, religious persecution, and forced organ harvesting during the talks.

The rally, held between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, drew lawmakers, former U.S. officials, religious freedom advocates, researchers, and survivors of persecution.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) told the crowd that support for Falun Gong practitioners and religious freedom remains bipartisan in Congress. “This is not the first time I have stood up, and I am proud to stand with the Falun Gong community against the CCP’s systematic repression of Falun Gong and its horrific human rights abuses,” Ryan said.

On Sept. 24, 2026, numerous U.S. lawmakers, human rights leaders, and representatives from non-governmental organizations held a rally with more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners to call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. Pictured: U.S. Representative Pat Ryan (D-NY) speaking at the rally. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

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Ryan, a cosponsor of the Falun Gong Protection Act, pointed to legislation already passed by the House. H.R. 1540 would impose sanctions on individuals involved in forced organ harvesting in China, while the broader Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, H.R. 1503, passed the House 406-1 in May 2025. Both measures await further Senate action.

On Sept. 24, 2026, numerous U.S. lawmakers, human rights leaders, and representatives of non-governmental organizations held a rally with more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners, calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

Raising awareness

Speakers focused on the heinous practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, particularly Falun Gong practitioners, as they are targeted and killed for their organs.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. Despite being peaceful in nature, the CCP launched a brutal campaign to eradicate the practice in July 1999 after seeing its rapid rise in popularity as a threat to its authoritarian regime. Since then, thousands of practitioners have perished at the hands of Chinese police, with many today still undergoing routine monitoring, arbitrary travel bans, and arrests.

On Sept. 24, 2026, Jan Jekielek, author of Killed to Order and host of American Thought Leaders, speaks at the rally in Washington D.C. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

Jan Jekielek, host of American Thought Leaders and author of Killed to Order, urged U.S. leaders to make human rights part of negotiations with Beijing. “I implore our top leadership to use the leverage of human rights. It is a powerful tool that we have in our hands and have so far neglected,” he said.

Jekielek argued that the Chinese transplant system has relied on a large pool of prisoners whose blood types, tissue compatibility, and organ condition were recorded in advance, leaving them “ready to be ‘killed to order’” for wealthy or well-connected recipients.

On Sept. 24, 2026, numerous U.S. lawmakers, human rights leaders, and representatives of non-governmental organizations held a rally with more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners, calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

Chinese authorities have repeatedly denied killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs and say China ended the use of organs from executed prisoners in 2015. But at the same time, independent researchers, lawmakers, and human rights advocates have continued to question the transparency and sourcing of China’s transplant system.

Forced labor and abuse

Huang Kui, a former Tsinghua University doctoral student now living in Philadelphia, described years of detention after he began practicing Falun Gong.

He said prisoners were forced to work as long as 18 hours a day making plastic flowers, Christmas lights, toys, packaging, and other goods that were then shipped and sold in other countries. “Our sweat, tears, blood, and even pus from broken blisters all seeped into those nuts,” Huang said, recalling being forced to pry open pistachio shells with metal pliers.

On Sept. 24, 2026, senior engineer Huang Kui recounted the persecution he suffered in a CCP labor camp for practicing Falun Gong. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

He also described suffering from electric shocks, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, and forced blood testing for organ matching while he was otherwise healthy. “I could very well have become a victim of forced organ harvesting,” Huang said.

According to Minghui, A U.S.-based website that tracks and documents the persecution of Falun Gong, over 4,365 practitioners have since died as a result of torture and abuse at the hands of Chinese authorities. However, based on first-hand accounts from those living under perpetual harassment by the Party’s various security organizations, the practice’s adherents speculate the real number of deaths to be in the hundreds of thousands. The persecution has continued unbated for over two decades.

Calls for Trump to raise religious freedom

Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, urged Trump to raise the persecution of religious believers directly with Xi. “We hope President Trump will raise these issues today, and we ask him to raise these issues today with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping,” Shea said.

On Sept. 24, 2026, numervous U.S. lawmakers, human rights leaders, and representatives from non-governmental organizations held a rally with more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners to call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. Pictured: Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, spoke at the rally. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

David Trimble, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, likewise called for the persecution to end. “Today, just as we have stood with others who have been persecuted, we stand with Falun Gong,” Trimble said. “We call on Xi Jinping to stop this persecution immediately.”

On Sept. 24, 2026, numervous U.S. lawmakers, human rights leaders, and representatives from non-governmental organizations held a rally with more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners, calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. Pictured: David Trimble, President of the Religious Freedom Institute, speaking at the rally. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

He added, “The whole world should cry out and demand that forced organ harvesting stop — stop immediately. We should end it, and we should end it now.”

Pressure builds in Washington

The rally took place as lawmakers and advocacy groups sought to prevent human rights issues from being overshadowed by trade, technology, Taiwan, and other major items on the Trump-Xi agenda.

On Sept. 24, 2026, numerous U.S. lawmakers, human rights leaders, and representatives from non-governmental organizations held a rally with more than 300 Falun Gong practitioners to call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong. Pictured: Robert Destro, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and a law professor at the Catholic University of America, speaking at the rally. (Image: Wen Shengyuan/The Epoch Times)

The Falun Gong Protection Act and related Senate legislation reflect growing congressional attention to allegations of forced organ harvesting. A Senate counterpart, S.4009, has also advanced through the legislative process but had not reached a final floor vote as of the summit.

For rally participants, the message was that economic and security negotiations should not displace human rights. As former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Destro put it while looking at banners bearing Falun Gong’s principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.”