“State Organs” Film Screening at Philadelphia City Institute Library on 3/29/2025

I was almost mentally and physically collapsed at that time. Also, I was isolated for almost a whole year. I was kept in a small cell, only seven other inmates there. I was not allowed to talk to other persons. They have a book. They record every movement I made, every word I said, every day. They record that kind of a book to the guard. It's really a very high psychological and physical pressure towards me, definitely. You know, I'm from a very top university in China. I was a Ph.D. student at that time. Over 30 of my schoolmates were sentenced to long-term imprisonment. The longest, that girl was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Eventually, she died, unfortunately. My story is just a tip of an iceberg. This kind of persecution, in a very large scale, is penetrated into every part of China, every corner of China, unfortunately. Over the last 26 years, from July 1999 until today, until right now, it's still going on. Definitely, forced over-harvesting is one of the most severe persecution forms. Even the guard, they would not care about my health. Otherwise, they would not treat me that badly. I was blood tested. They measured my vitals and also drew a big tube of blood from me. Since I was here right now, I'm not forced over-harvesting, but there's a risk there, definitely. I'm lucky enough, I can flee out of China to come to this free land. I can practice here freely. But many of my fellow practitioners are still in China. They're still experiencing the tribulation, the torture, even the forced over-harvesting. It's still going on. Anyway, thank you very much for coming here. When I just landed in Chicago International Airport, I really felt this fresh air, free land, free country. I can practice my belief freely here. Some friend asked me to accept an interview from a TV station to tell my persecution story. But immediately, I felt the fear, because my family is still in China. As a survivor of persecution, we are here. We can still feel the fear, because the CCP still controls mainland China. Our family, our friends are still there. Yes, so there's definitely this kind of thing still going on. But I feel I have a mission to speak out. I attended such events for many times. I speak out my personal story. I think this is the best way to expose the evil. They sentenced me to five years, originally, from end of 2000 to end of 2005. After that, they had to release me. They sent two police to send me back to my school in Beijing. Another point is my resident ID is registered in Beijing, but I was persecuted in Guangdong, pretty far away. I guess their system is not well-coordinated. Well, I got my passport eventually. I was pretty worried about my passport, but I got my passport in Beijing. So, eventually, I came to this country. Yeah, I just want to mention the thing to the question about the attacks. There was an attack in Atlanta where they broke into the apartment house, beat up the person, and stole their computers, etc. So, the same with Mr. Chen Fred. They broke in and tried to instill the fear. So, they're pretty much present in the United States. There are spies. There are recent reports of the police stations in the United States that belong to the Chinese Communist Party. Exactly. That was a recent report. There was also an attack in Flushing, New York. Direct attacks. Those people were arrested, and actually, some of them were convicted. There was a Falun Gong stand, and they hired thugs through the Chinese consulate. They tried to attack them and smear their campaign and different things. So, yes, it's happening. It's happening, especially in a population where there is direct or indirect ties to something called the United Front, which is a Chinese Communist Party organization that focuses on persecution and targeting the Falun Gong community overseas. So, the transnational repression, as we described, against Falun Gong from the Chinese Communist Party got intensified since last year. There was an order from the highest of the Chinese Communist Party trying to destroy Falun Gong overseas, outside of China. They started to use media and lawfare to defame Falun Gong and trying to get Falun Gong to disappear outside of China as the whistleblower for this persecution. Some of you may have read it. I don't know. But the New York Times has published nine articles, 12 articles in series, one after the other, since last year, defaming Falun Gong, defaming this beautiful performance, Shen Yun. It's all orchestrated. And then they filed a lawsuit. One person who used to be a dancer with Shen Yun, who left Shen Yun and then went back to Taiwan and got married to a Chinese man and started a dance group with an association, a Chinese dance group. Not only her, but there's an orchestrated effort where people left Shen Yun or got grumpy about whatever that reason is and started this lawsuit against Shen Yun. So this orchestrated effort, you can see that, is happening. So we really need to help. So it was in 2022 where Xi Jinping, he's the head of the CCP, he actually held a meeting. This is a huge issue in China to suppress Falun Gong and ideally eliminate it around the world. He said, you know, we really failed in our efforts to squash this practice, we have to do better. And one of the things he said was we have to really use international media to do this. Any questions? Yeah. Oh, that's the North Korea? Yeah. They are all, you know, part of the communist kind of camp, right? So the ideology is very similar. That's how they did, you know, treat their people. You know, very similar, you know, in a sense. It's very unfortunate. Maybe I'll have Dr. Russo to comment on that. I don't know that I have a good answer as to why they would really do that, except that this gives them access to the Chinese market. Right? So years ago, it was back in 2001, I think, shortly after the persecution started, the New York Times had been banned in China. And the chief editor met with the head of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, at that time, and he's the one who orchestrated the persecution of Falun Gong. We found out a few years ago, he actually called for forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners. So this chief editor met with him. They had a very successful meeting, apparently. After that, the New York Times started doing negative articles on Falun Gong, and they got themselves back into the Chinese market. ...forced organ harvesting, and she was about to report on it, and got shut down by her editor. And she gave her testimonial in 2019 for the Chinese China Tribunal in London about this incident. She was literally shut down about this article. And then they started doing that. And by the way, unfortunately, New York Times is not the only story. During the Holocaust, with the Nazi Germany, New York Times wanted to stay in business. So it's not the only time they took business over this. And then there is another example here. Sorry, I was going through the pages, because I want to mention it. So I just want to say, there are many good reporters in New York Times and everywhere else. So it's not the people necessarily. Let me just open it up. So this is the example of the former New York Times reporter. Her name was... Her name is Didi Kristen Tatlo. So she testified at the 2019 China Tribunal that happened. So this was her testimony. The use of prisoners of conscience for organ transplant has taken place. It is a common knowledge, at least among some medical specialists, because he personally experienced it, being a reporter in China. And then the December 2014 ban on using death row prisoner organs may not be effective or even real. And then she quotes that, it was my impression, the New York Times, my employer at the time, was not pleased that I was pursuing these stories. And after initially tolerating my efforts, made it impossible for me to continue. So she had to leave. I just want to give a few more details. So what happened was, she was based out of Beijing, and she had a lunch meeting with four other people. At least two of them were transplant surgeons. She overheard them talking. They didn't realize that she spoke fluent Mandarin. And they were speaking about using prisoners of conscience. And she went back to her editor, and she said, this is a story I want to tell. And he said, you can't. And I saw the story she wrote. It was a watered-down version of executed prisoners being used for organs. As a United States citizen, would I be subject to persecution? Say I belong to Falun Gong as a United States citizen. Would they take me? Good question. We're here. We're speaking the truth. Many, many years. This is still a safe land for truth. For freedom. For free expression of your, you know. Right? So far, right? Well, I'm just saying. That's why it's very, very important for us to cherish this. Not to be giving in to anything that's creating a fear. Creating something that's trying to push you, let go of your freedom of expression. Freedom to say who you are, and this is my face. Practice faith. So, you're asking a very good question. We need to be really clear-headed to safeguard the freedom and rights that we have. Because it's very, very important. Like, for the world's people. Not only for us. Luchansky, because we're just going to, you know. Yeah. So, Alex Luchansky is a board member for Greater Philadelphia Falun Dafa Association. He is also a son, grandson of a Holocaust victim. William Wong, a victim of persecution of Falun Gong. Dr. Jessica Russo, Mental Health Advisor for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting. And Alex Chen, maybe you want to introduce him. I'm a medical doctor, MD, PhD, and I've been providing speech in the UK, part of the European Union. And also give some meeting with some European, United Nations Human Rights Committee about this case. So, for several years. You know, I just wanted to provide a note of hope. You know, you guys are wonderful being here. You're so essential, because you're getting this information. You can talk to people. Bad things happen in silence, right? When things are being suppressed. And so, while the media is being coerced, they want the Chinese market, they're not being truthful about what's happening. All you guys get to hear the truth, and then you talk to other people. And you may be involved in organizations, or wherever you might work, or live. And you can let people know, we are happy to go wherever, and do these kinds of presentations, film screenings, lectures. That's what's so important, when people know what's going on, bad things are less likely to happen. It's only in the dark, you know, when there's a real risk. Yes, so the evidence of their being victims of this goes back to 2014. And they certainly are. What's so important about the Falun Gong Protection Act is it protects the primary victim group. It's kind of like in the Holocaust, right? Jews were the largest group, but they weren't the only group. In this case, it started with Falun Gong. So China had been using executed prisoners for forced organ harvesting, or for organ harvesting, for many, many years. They actually changed one of their laws in 1984 to allow the use of prisoners for organs. But it wasn't until the persecution of Falun Gong started that they developed this mass system throughout the country, millions of people. And it's because of the silence over Falun Gong that they then went to the Uyghurs, to Bedouins, house Christians. And I don't know if you had that map, or if you showed that. Oh, oh, oh, yes. Okay, so you see there's a huge difference here, right? So Falun Gong is around the whole country. It's the Han Chinese. The other groups are in select areas. The Uyghurs make up about 12 million, or about maybe 2 million. There could be less now in Xinjiang. So this is the area you keep reading about, where they have the concentration camps, and they use them for forced organ harvesting. Tibetans, 6 to 7 million. Hong Kong, 8 million. Falun Gong, 70 to 100 million people. That is a third of the U.S. That's the whole East Coast. Huge number. And we can see how the CCP is responding to Falun Gong, how significant this is, because they're so threatened. They're trying to do everything they can to squash this group. That's not true for the other groups. They're putting in so much money around the world to squash this group, to completely exterminate them. So they need a lot of protection. Yeah, I think there are a couple of different things here. So maybe, yeah, I want to kind of address it in a different way. Think about it this way. In the United States, we still have freedoms, and this is why we're doing that, right? So that we can raise awareness. We can, like, you can call your senators and your congressmen, ask them to co-sponsor Falun Gong Protection Act. That will stop. Once it's signed, right, the laws will still apply. People will be, their visas will be frozen. The assets will be taken of the perpetrators. There will be awareness that we stopped training doctors who come here to Philadelphia and other areas, Pittsburgh, to train and go back murder people for organs, right? Like, we need to stop that cooperation. Now there, the murder comes directly from the state. It's controlled from the state. And it's a system, communist system. It's like a machine. So I just wanted to kind of emphasize that. It's not the people, it's the system. In the United States, thanks God, we still have laws and we still have certain things that stopping this atrocity and it cannot happen yet here. But in China, it's already happening. This is why if we expose it, we can help to stop it. And I want to also address back to what you mentioned about Uyghurs, group very important. In fact, there was recently, a couple of years ago, passed the law. It was a special declaration that persecution of Uyghurs is a genocide. It was passed by both administrations, Republican, Democrat, both presidents, passed it fully into law. Falun Gong doesn't have that declaration yet as a genocide. And this is why this is another important reason why to do that. And the third one is, you know what is Potemkin Village, where it used to be communists creating this kind of, hey, you can come to us, visit, it's beautiful here, and invite people. They look great, they come back, they report and lie about it. They staged that for Xinjiang, where it happened with the Uyghurs. You cannot stage it for the whole China with 100 million people. That's another reason. It's an important factor to expose. But that will benefit Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and everybody. So we care about everyone. And everyone who can be victims, that should stop. It doesn't matter Falun Gong or not. It's just Falun Gong happened to be the largest groups and most important right now to expose. And hopefully that will also propagate on all the others. The other thing is the Falun Gong Protection Act will protect the medical system in this country. Because as was mentioned just a moment ago, we are very involved with China when it comes to transplant. So we have a lot of transplant centers, especially in this area. I'm on faculty with Jefferson. We have a transplant center. A lot of these transplant centers, they train Chinese physicians who will likely go back and commit these murders. So we want to be able to protect these institutions. And then we have patients who are lured by China's short wait time. So we want to protect them too. Because right now, of course, they're dying. If they know they can get a guaranteed organ, they're going to go to get that organ. And then we have pharmaceutical companies that are providing materials for this. And medical supply companies. So we've got a lot of people, a lot of organizations and companies who are supporting this, and we don't want that. We don't want to be any part of this. If we get this evil of forced organ harvesting this scale exposed, make it a household issue, then the Chinese Communist Party will collapse. This is just my prediction. So we need to really get this word, this awareness, to as much as widely possible. In fact, for the Uyghurs issue, it's probably getting more attention because it's with that particular ethnic group. And for the Falun Gong issue, because it's widespread in China, it's a cold genocide. It's happening slow. It's happening in big numbers for a very, very long time. It is the attention that we need to really focus on because it's representing the heartland of China. Exactly. So people are definitely not in the public park anymore. However, people didn't give in. People are practicing. People are putting the banners out. In fact, a friend of mine just went back to China, and he said, you know, in my small village, I saw this big Logan painted on the pool in the field. It says, Falun Dafa is good. So people are doing their part. As I said, even still today, there are around 20 million people practicing in China. Okay, we have to stop, but thanks so much for coming. You are, I guess, the seeds, more seeds, or planting, to get people involved and talk about the issue. And if you have anything, you can find a space for us to do film screening. I'm actually representing the Rotary Club of Ending Forest Organ Harvest Day.