Eleven years ago this week, the Chinese Communist Party launched a campaign to eradicate Falun Gong—a peaceful and popular spiritual practice embraced by tens of millions of Chinese citizens. But the practitioners of Falun Gong are not the only victims, and the lives destroyed and lost are not the only costs.
It is my belief that the Chinese Communist Party has never had a legal basis for its eleven-year persecution of Falun Gong, because the Chinese government never officially banned Falun Gong. I won’t delve into the subject of the current Chinese government’s legitimacy itself since its inception in 1949 for now, but even according to the Chinese government’s own laws, the persecution by the CCP and Jiang Zemin’s gang is illegal.
In practice, the government organs that have tried to charge Falun Gong practitioners at the behest of the “610 Office” have never been able to legitimately accuse them of an actual crime. Even according to the Chinese Communist Party’s own laws, the persecution of Falun Gong is illegal.
In summary, the persecution initiated against Falun Gong on July 1999 was initiated by CCP leader Jiang Zemin’s letters, speeches, directives, followed by a series of CCP-issued documents. These were the driving force behind this political, persecutory movement, accompanied by the overwhelming slander and smear campaign by the CCP propaganda machine. This persecution is not a case of a legitimate government enforcing its laws. Of course, a government has no right to persecute its people this way, or it would be, in the process of doing so, removing its own legitimacy. The responsibility for the continuation of this persecution after Jiang stepped down, however, falls squarely on the shoulders of the current CCP leadership.
I estimate that Falun Gong comprises between 15 to 20% of the Laogai system. That’s about half a million to a million Falun Gong in detention on average, representing the largest Chinese Security action since the Maoist period.
