(also commonly known as “Falun Dafa”) is an ancient Chinese spiritual discipline in the Buddhist tradition. Pronounced ‘Fah-loon Gong,’ it consists of moral teachings, a meditation, and four gentle exercises that are a truly unique and highly effective way to improve your health and energy levels. At the core of Falun Gong are the values of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance (or in Chinese, Zhen 真 Shan 善 Ren 忍). Falun Dafa teaches that these are the most fundamental qualities of the universe, and takes them to be a guide for daily life and practice.
In the words of Falun Gong’s founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, “assimilation to the highest qualities of the universe-Zhen 真 Shan 善 Ren 忍 -is the foundation of practice. Practice is guided by these supreme qualities, and based on the very laws which underlie the development of the cosmos.” By 1999, Falun Gong had grown to become the largest and fastest growing practice of the sort in Chinese if not world history. In just seven years since its 1992 introduction to the public, an estimated 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong.
Today Falun Gong is practiced in more than 80 countries around the world, with clubs and associations existing in a range of cities, companies, universities, and other settings.
On June 17, a China Tribunal announced its finding that China’s Communist regime has for two decades practiced systematic, forced organ removal from prisoners of conscience, mainly Falun Gong practitioners and Muslims.
The independent, London-based panel of international legal and medical experts was led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who also headed the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
After unwilling donors are executed, the tribunal found, their organs are sold to Chinese citizens or foreign “transplant tourists.” Before 2015, China, whose Confucian value system considers it important to keep the body intact after death, had no voluntary organ-transplant system. Yet hospitals perform some 60,000 to 90,000 transplant surgeries each year.
Chinese hospitals promise that they can deliver hearts, livers, kidneys and corneas of matching blood type and size in two weeks. The surgeries can be scheduled in advance, which suggests hospitals know exactly when the “donors” are going to die. By contrast, America has a highly developed voluntary organ-donation system, and recipients typically have to wait hundreds of days.
According to human-rights researchers, Chinese prison authorities regularly subject detained Falun Gong practitioners to medical exams to determine the health of their organs (even as they routinely torture these same prisoners). Detained Uighur Muslims report similar medical examinations.
The tribunal also heard from Chinese medical personnel who have defected from the regime. They warned Western governments and medical practitioners of this ongoing atrocity.
