Letters from the Chinese Consulate Defaming #falungong #shenyun #standwithshenyun #stopccptransnationalrepression #falundafa

Shortly after the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, started its persecution of Falun Gong in China in 1999, American elected officials at all levels in San Diego County began receiving letters from the Chinese Embassy in Los Angeles warning them about the, quote, dangers of Falun Gong. I have practiced Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa myself, for over 20 years, with excellent results to my health, and am approaching my 78th birthday. Falun Gong is very good and it's free. Anyone can learn it. It consists of gentle exercises and meditation and teaches truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. We should be kind to everyone and always think of others first before doing or saying anything. Back to the CCP's letters. I have obtained copies of a few of these letters over the years and want to share their content in light of the CCP's increased transnational overseas repression of Falun Gong in the last few years. The first is a letter dated December 27, 2000, and signed by Lan Lijun, Consul General, People's Republic of China, Los Angeles, and is addressed to Randy Vopel, Mayor of the City of Santee in San Diego County. I will read a few excerpts and leave out the worst slander and defamation. Dear Mayor, First of all, please accept my personal greetings to you for the holiday season. I just arrived less than two weeks ago to take up my post as the new Consul General of the People's Republic of China in Los Angeles. The purpose that I am writing to you today is to discuss with you a matter which is of great importance and grave concern to the Chinese government and its relations with the United States. You may have learned that on July 22, 1999, China banned the Research Society of Falun Dafa and the Falun Gong Organization. According to investigation, Falun Gong has not been registered according to law and had been engaged in illegal activities advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardizing social stability, thus being deemed an illegal cult organization. Dan follows a long paragraph about how Falun Gong is anti-science and anti-human, and after practicing it, quote, many people have lost their appetites. Some appeared to be disorganized in words and behavior, and some became paranoid. Still others found themselves suffering from hallucinations, end of quote. It further claimed a number of people jumped into rivers or off buildings or killed themselves in other ways. Some even cruelly injured or killed their relatives and friends. Up to now, about 1,500 cases of death have been reported as the result of practicing Falun Gong, end quote. All of this is, of course, not true. All lies. It then continues on to warn the mayor of Santee about people in the United States also practicing Falun Gong and of the consequences of jeopardizing social stability. It is our hope that your city, by proceeding from the overall friendly relations between China and United States, and by taking your citizens' interests into consideration, will earnestly consider the request from the Chinese side that no recognition and support in any form should be given to the Falun Gong. Your understanding of and cooperation in this important issue is highly appreciated. The Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Los Angeles would like to establish and develop friendly relations with your city, and I hope such relations would be beneficial for the promotion of the relationship between China and the United States as a whole, end quote. He goes on for a couple more sentences about friendships before signing his name. I have already posted a video with Mayor Vopel's reply. You can watch it by clicking the link in the description below. In summary, Mr. Vopel gave the CCP's consul a lesson in civics and human rights and told him, Your letter personally chilled me to the bones. I was shocked that a communist nation would go to this amount of trouble to suppress what is routinely accepted in this country. Request denied. And he goes on, I will have a favorable mayor's proclamation for the Falun Gong out as soon as possible. Undeterred by this rebuff, however, the Chinese consulate kept sending out similar letters for many years. On July 22, 2007, Congresswoman Susan Davis sent us a congratulatory letter saying, I am honored to have this opportunity to greet you as the Falun Dafa of San Diego come together for a week of celebration and education. I regret that I cannot be in San Diego and will not be able to enjoy this very special event. I commend the Falun Dafa for its commitment to peaceful resistance against persecution. As a member of Congress, I am committed to protecting the rights of religious freedom. Please note that your efforts are making a difference and are appreciated by the community. Two days later, her office received an unsigned letter from the consulate general. It started out, Dear Sir, Madam, We are writing to draw your attention to the Falun Gong issue, which is of grave concern to us. To our regret, we have noticed from the media that Congresswoman Susan Davis participated in the so-called Falun Dafa Week held in Balboa Park and sent a congratulation letter to Falun Gong. We would like to share with you some of the facts and our views of Falun Gong. It then went through two paragraphs of defaming Falun Gong before reminding her about the importance of friendly relations and cooperation between China and San Diego County. A third letter, dated December 17, 2007, was to Donna Frye, a San Diego City Council member. At that time, artists among Falun Gong practitioners in America had already put together a New Year's dance and music show of Shen Yun performing arts. It showcased the beauty of traditional Chinese culture. It was hosted by NTD-TV and performed live in several cities, including Escondido, a town in San Diego County, under the name Chinese New Year Spectacular. The letter said in part, We are writing to express our serious concern over the recently reported performance, Chinese New Year Spectacular, to be held by Nuteng Dynasty Television in TDTV on January 15, 2008, at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido. The Nuteng Dynasty Television is a politically motivated organization backed by the Falun Gong. The Falun Gong seriously harms the society and violates human rights. Though outlawed by the government in July 1999, it is still trying to deceive people around the world. Furthermore, it has become a political organization which has been heavily engaged in all sorts of anti-China and China-U.S. relationship activities. Its ulterior motive is to defame China's image in the international community and undermine the development of China-U.S. relations. We hope you could make sure no congratulations, no recognition letters, no attendance, or no support in any form be given. Your understanding and cooperation on this issue is highly appreciated. This letter was also unsigned. So why has the CCP gone to so much trouble to write so many letters for so many years to every single elected official in San Diego County and, most likely, in the entire United States? The CCP fears the consequences of their actions and that they are going to be held accountable by the international community. The discrimination, the persecution, the torture, murder, and organ harvesting of innocent Chinese people who practice truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance as part of their spiritual beliefs. This is why they make up all the lies about Falun Gong. They did not expect that Falun Gong would spread to other countries where there is freedom of belief and freedom of speech. The CCP calls Falun Gong evil and uses many bad words. But I would say the CCP is the evil one. They lie and deceive people, control people, hurt people for money, and kill people at will. According to historic reports, 80 million Chinese have died of unnatural causes under the CCP's reign of terror during the numerous violent campaigns to eliminate various groups in society labeled as class enemies. Falun Gong is just the opposite. It is peaceful and beneficial to society. It teaches people to be good, truthful, kind, and tolerant. And the Chinese people loved Falun Gong and flocked to it in droves when it was introduced in China in 1992 by a young Qigong master by the name of Li Hongzhi. Falun Gong is a mind-body practice to improve health and attain spiritual wisdom with deep Practices like this, including martial arts, have been a vital part of Chinese culture for 5,000 years but were only taught in private. Master Li brought it out to the public. Falun Gong consists of slow-moving exercises, meditation, and self-improvement, and is very effective in balancing the body's energy, resulting in improved health. Many Chinese people reported great health benefits, and by the end of the decade, about 70 million people in China practiced Falun Gong, including many high-ranking members of the And it was ultimately Falun Gong's popularity that Jiang Zemin, the head of the CCP at the time, could not stand. Falun Gong was outside of the CCP's control. It had become too popular, and its principles were not compatible with the CCP's class struggle theory, so he decided it had to be banned and wiped out. On July 20, 1999, the persecution of Falun Gong began. Jiang's orders were to use any means, ruin their reputation, take away their livelihood, destroy them physically. Grace Li, who used to be a judge in Dalian City, fled China after experiencing the brutal persecution firsthand. She shared her story during several seminars on organ harvesting in China at a number of universities in San Diego between 2011 and 2017. Ms. Li said she and her father started practicing Falun Gong in 1994 and became very healthy through the practice. Her father was a retired court prosecutor and had previously suffered from several serious health issues, including heart disease. After the persecution in 2001, her father was locked up in a labor camp for 16 months without any trial and forced to do slave labor, at the end of which he suffered a stroke and became paralyzed. She herself also encountered severe pressure from her workplace to stop practicing Falun Gong and was also sent to a labor camp without a trial in 2002. There she had to work 16 to 17 hours every day. After 30 months, she was transferred to the notorious Masanjia Labor Camp, known for its brutal torture of Falun Gong practitioners. Her term was also extended by 10 more months. In order to force her to give up practicing Falun Gong, she was deprived of sleep for three days and three nights. She said she also witnessed a lot of torture there. Quote, one practitioner insisted on doing the Falun Gong meditation. They taped her entire body in that position with her legs in double lotus for two weeks until she was almost paralyzed. Some practitioners also had their blood tested, she said. At the time, she didn't know why and only learned later that Falun Gong practitioners were being killed for their organs. After being released, she was fired from her job and her husband, a surgeon, was forced to divorce her because she wouldn't sign a statement denouncing Falun Gong. Ms. Li said, I think it is very sad that just for wanting to be good people, following truth, compassion, tolerance, so many people in China have died. Also present at two of the seminars was County Supervisor Joel Anderson, who was a state senator from San Diego at the time. Mr. Anderson had initiated a resolution, SJR10, to condemn the persecution of Falun Gong in China. However, the resolution was stopped from being voted on after the Chinese consulate in San Francisco sent out a letter to members of the California Senate warning them not to sabotage the friendship and sustainable development between California and China. It also said the resolution would hurt the Chinese people, to which Ms. Li responded, I would say the opposite is true. The Chinese people have long suffered under the brutal Communist Party's dictatorship. The Chinese regime threatens people to force them to give up their moral principles and comply with the Communist Party state. This is a typical Communist ideological transformation method. Ms. Li commended Senator Anderson for his support of Falun Gong practitioners and the principles they stand for, adding that she hoped the members of the California Senate will have a change of heart and vote to pass the resolution. History will remember you and thank you, she added. The CCP's transnational repression of Falun Gong and Shen Yun has steadily intensified over the years, but so has the awareness of the problem and the actions taken by the U.S. government. Shen Yun has grown in size, talent, and splendor. It now has eight performance groups that simultaneously tour to some 150 cities around the world, performing to one million audience members at the most prestigious theaters each season. As I mentioned earlier, Shen Yun was founded by Falun Gong practitioners in the United States to revive China's traditional culture that was destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party, CCP. Some of Shen Yun's artists escaped from China due to persecution. Shen Yun's tagline is China Before Communism. The performances not only present amazing dance, fantastic stories and backdrops, and wonderful music, they also depict one or two episodes of the persecution of Falun Gong. This fills the audience members with a great sense of beauty, inspiration, and hope. Hope for humanity and what China could be. The CCP has perceived Shen Yun's global success and Falun Gong practitioners' relentless peaceful perseverance in exposing the persecution as a big problem. It has ramped up its transnational repression of Falun Gong and Shen Yun in the United States and other countries, and went from letter writing to spying, slashing Shen Yun tour bus tires, bomb threats to theaters that host Shen Yun shows. Tactics also includes the spread of massive amounts of disinformation on social media and traditional media, as well as frivolous lawsuits and lawfare against Shen Yun. All in an effort to defeat Falun Gong worldwide, as the CCP admitted in a recently leaked secret document. U.S. agencies are investigating and have publicly condemned the CCP's transnational repression and illegal activities on American soil. Some culprits have already been identified and sentenced. Thankfully, this year, a stop organ harvesting bill and the Falun Gong Protection Act have been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. And Shen Yun will continue on. In San Diego in 2025, Shen Yun received more government proclamations than ever before. Way to go. We love Shen Yun. It's an American company, and it's here to stay.