Falun Gong Bulletin Ep 01 Highlight: 2022 CECC Report

The CCC is the Congressional Executive Commission on China. This year they released their annual report, November 14th, and it detailed really, really important points that will affect the Falun Gong community and abroad. There's three major points in this report that I really wanted to highlight. The first is a judicial loophole called Article 300. This is part of the PRC criminal law that has persecuted nearly all Falun Gong practitioners this year. Got it. So you say loophole because there's something about it that's unlawful or it's not really part of the law. Is that what you mean? Yeah. So actually, the persecution of Falun Gong is unconstitutional. Article 300 is the only loophole that judicial courts use to actually sentence Falun Gong practitioners. In China's constitution itself, it protects religious freedom, which is ironic because Falun Gong is considered a religious group. It's one of the largest spiritual groups in China, and yet they're using a criminal law to sentence these people to prison for years on end. Got it. So tell us more about how the CECC has pointed out that this is a loophole. The CCC basically said that this year, nearly all practitioners have been sentenced under Article 300, and then years past, they have as well. So for the past 23 years, this article has been responsible for imprisoning thousands of Falun Gong practitioners against the constitution, which actually bans discrimination and says, quote, citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief. This is Article 36 of the Chinese constitution. Part two is evidence on forced organ harvesting. In the report, the CCC cited the American Journal of Transplantation and said it was highly likely that transplant surgeons in China had participated in the execution of prisoners by organ transplant and continue to cite sources of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. Right. And the execution, we should cover that. And they said, they also said, to be specific, they said this was as recent as 2015 that we have evidence for, so as recent as, you know, just five, seven years ago. Yeah. But the execution part is important because what it essentially means is that Falun Gong practitioners and some other prisoners of conscience are illegally jailed. Then while they're alive, their organs are harvested by the state, and they are killed as a result of their organs being harvested, meaning they're executed for their organs being harvested is essentially what the CEC is saying, that highly likely they participated in this execution process. Exactly. And because of this evidence, I wanted to go to the third part of the report, which is where they recommend that number one, administration should use existing laws to hold accountable these Chinese officials who are participating in forced organ harvesting and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The way that they can do that is through the Meninsky Act. It was passed in 2012. Basically, Chinese officials would be, their visas would be banned and their assets in America would be frozen. And so this would affect the officials beyond their sphere of control inside China because the US administration can't really control what's going on inside mainland China. But since there's a lot of assets and you're able to force them to not be able to come abroad or to pursue business transactions here, that way it'll actually affect these people directly. And so that's number one. Number two is the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. And this also condemns the CCP officials involved in the persecution of Falun Gong. So these are the two main recommendations for the US administration. I think there was another one that they mentioned. Yeah. So this one, in trade agreements, the CCC recommends that the US administration brings up religious freedom in the negotiation process. This one's a bit complex because right now human rights aren't really taken into account when it comes to trade agreements, like multilateral bilateral trade agreements with China. But going forward, the CCC sees that this is actually beyond human rights and actually affects every sector of society. And we're trading with a criminal state, so we should actually bring up this issue as it's really, really important to the integrity of businesses, of the market. Yeah, it's really important. I think the CCC mentions Falun Gong 32 times, which is a lot in the annual report. Clearly, this is still a huge issue going on in China. We know that, but for our viewers. And I think we should touch on a couple of the recommendations CCC makes. So the first one is actually not something new. It's something that the State Department of the past few administrations have used to sanction Chinese officials. And it really matters. It really matters because it affects their ability to own property in the West. It affects their ability to send their kids to school in the West, which, as we know, is a huge impetus for Chinese officials to send their kids to some of the Ivy League schools in the West. It affects their ability to do that. The number one reason that this is very effective is it actually affects on the ground actions in China. Because when those officials know word gets out that your name is on a list, a government list, and organizations like Falun Dafa Information Center and others collect those names from firsthand accounts within China, send those to the government, when they know that, that, hey, this torture I'm doing, this black jail or whatever is actually going to get out, then they're much less likely to do it. We know that from firsthand experience. And the second thing is that over the past many decades, China has used behind closed doors policy on forbidden topics, whether it be Falun Gong, Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong. So their posture, especially around Falun Gong being the big third rail issue, is, okay, we'll talk to you about human rights, but only behind closed doors. So don't do that openly at the G20 summit. Don't do it openly when we meet. That's totally off limits. And most administrations have followed that because the idea was, oh, we'll do it behind closed doors. But it actually doesn't work at all. And China has no intention of doing anything about human rights. Of course, we just talked about state-sponsored organ harvesting. They're responsible for that. They have no impetus to change. The reality is that they just want you to do that so there's no public pressure on them. And they can kind of have this facade that nothing's really happening. And so those are two recommendations I think we definitely agree with. And I didn't know if there was more on what's going to happen in the future. Yeah. So in the future, next year, 2023 and 2024, the CCC is calling for the release of practitioners, of Falun Gong practitioners, especially the citizen journalist Xu Na and Zhou Deyong, both practitioners that are highlighted on Falun Dafa Information Center's website. They're prisoners of conscience that have been persecuted before. Zhou Deyong especially has family in Florida. His son is a student in Florida and his wife works there. His release especially has been called on by Florida lawmakers. And so these two cases especially, but also for other practitioners that are wrongfully detained, wrongfully sentenced, if these recommendations are really implemented, it would mean that high-ranking officials, like you said, would actually be held accountable for what they've been doing for the past 23 years. Just an increased awareness about this issue would really bring these crimes to light.