Chinese Regime Targets Millions in New “Transformation” Campaign

The Chinese regime has started a new campaign to target people who practice Falun Gong, according to a U.S.-based human rights group. The Falun Dafa Information Center monitors the Chinese regime’s ongoing persecution of the spiritual group. It recently released documents showing that the regime wants to “transform” millions of Falun Gong practitioners in brainwashing centers, forcing them to give up their beliefs.

Levi Browde is the Executive Director of the Center. He says this 3-year campaign began in May and is cause for great concern.

[Levi Browde, Executive Director, Falun Dafa Information Center]:
“We are already starting to see heightened numbers of Falun Gong practitioners being towed away to brainwashing centers, not just in Beijing, but in a lot of cities in China from the enactment of this campaign.”

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on meditation and moral teachings. In the late 1990s, Chinese authorities estimated that between 70 and 100 million Chinese were practicing Falun Gong. In 1999, the Communist regime banned the practice, vowing to “eradicate” it.

The Falun Dafa Information Center says this latest campaign against Falun Gong is nationwide. It provided 7 notices issued online by local authorities around China. The documents all carry the same title. This one from Xinglong Township in south-western Sichuan Province says the Communist Party Central is determined to eradicate Falun Gong through a battle to “educate and transform” practitioners.

“Transformation through re-education” has always been central to the Chinese regime’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The U.S. Congress’s Congressional-Executive Commission on China described the process in their 2008 Annual Report. They called it “ideological reprograming”, using “physical and psychological coercion” to force practitioners to renounce their belief in Falun Gong.

[Levi Browde, Executive Director, Falun Dafa Information Center]:
“And then of course they also have a very violent component which consists of outright torture, sleep deprivation, using of various forms of psychopathic drugs. It’s very scary stuff.”

This notice from the Communist Party Committee of Laodian Township in central Henan Province says the campaign’s target is to “transform” 75% of Falun Gong practitioners by the end of 2012.

The Falun Dafa Information Center estimates there are between 20 – 40-million active Falun Gong practitioners inside China today. The Xinglong Township document estimates the cost of transforming one practitioner at more than US $6,000 (45,000 RMB). This makes this latest campaign a huge undertaking, costing billions.

The psychiatric abuse of Falun Gong practitioners has been documented by international rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the World Psychiatric Association.

Foto: NTDTV