In response to the abrupt onset of a brutal persecution, Falun Gong practitioners began creating materials to combat state-run media's character assassination.
Slowly, this grew into a more sophisticated network of in-home print shops consisting of 20-40 million people. Find out more about this civil disobedience movement in Ep. 3 of Falun Gong Bulletin.
Be the first to read breaking news updates from one of the largest civil disobedience movements in the world. Subscribe to the FalunInfo newsletter today: https://faluninfo.net/subscribe
Changing the hearts and minds through peaceful means is something that Falun Gong practitioners
have been doing for decades in China. And what's interesting is how this kind of started,
because it's actually the largest information network, sort of independent journalist network
by number in China, getting information to the Chinese people and also getting information out
of China, such as about COVID and other things we can talk about. So it's a very important
movement. This network inside China, Falun Gong practitioners, happened very organically.
So essentially what happened is, in the beginning, 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in 1999,
one out of every 13 people. Government's promoting it overnight, kind of totally reversed,
right? Brutal persecution that starts with massive propaganda campaigns. So one day they're
promoting the practice, saying it's good for out. The next day they're saying it's evil.
These people are evil. They're doing all this stuff. So obviously when you're caught in that,
what do you do, right? You're like, well, that's not true. I practice Falun Gong. My mom practices
Falun Gong. And it's a good thing. And how do you tell people? Because the second you go outside,
or the second you try to do anything, go appeal in Tiananmen Square, you're thrown in a van,
and you're getting these long prison terms, and you're not heard from again.
And so Falun Gong practitioners kind of organically started figuring out,
okay, well, I'm going to make a sticker or a banner. And I'm going to go and I'm going to
place that in my town. So people can see Falun Dafa is good. That sort of organically grew.
And it could be a really old practitioner or young practitioner. They started at home,
like on a home printer, printing out flyers, like on a piece of paper like this. And then in the
dead of night, going around to their neighborhood and kind of dropping it on doorsteps and letting
them know, this is how we're going to debunk the propaganda against Falun Gong. They're lying to
you. This is not true, right. But then over the years, what's interesting is that the type of
material that Falun Gong practitioners have disseminated in China has kind of grown and
the kind of the network become a little bit more sophisticated. Today in China, Freedom House says
there's about 20 to 40 million active Falun Gong practitioners participating in this kind of
network within China to let their fellow citizens know the truth. And there's about 200,000,
estimates about 200,000 of these material production sites. So somebody might have a
few printers at home and they're kind of producing for many, maybe a few practitioners. So this is
obviously at risk of Falun Gong practitioners own lives because the CCP wants to know where these
sites are and they'll raid them and then they'll arrest people and
often brutal torture more so for the people that are running these sites.
