Falun Gong and Organ Harvesting - Background

Background

Falun Gong is a form of qigong practice popularized in China in the 1990s, and by 1999, some estimates placed the number of practitioners into the tens of millions. Following a large-scale demonstration complaining of the repression of a previous manifestation, in July 1999 the Communist Party leadership banned the practice and initiated a campaign to suppress the group, and created the 6-10 Office to oversee and coordinate the elimination of Falun Gong.

The suppression that followed was characterised by what Amnesty International called a "massive propaganda campaign," and the detention and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Falun Gong adherents. Authorities reportedly sanctioned the use of torture and other high-pressure tactics in order to pursue the coercive “reeducation” of Falun Gong adherents, sometimes resulting in deaths. Former detainees reported that in some labor camps, Falun Gong practitioners comprised the majority population, and were singled out for abuse. Due to limited access to victims and labor camp facilities, however, many specific reports of abuses are difficult to independently corroborate.