As Xi and Trump Meet, Falun Dafa Practitioners Appeal to Bring a Former President to Justice

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While President Trump is going to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 6-7, Falun Gong practitioners and supporters will gather near the White House to ask President Trump to urge President Xi to end the 18-year long persecution of Falun Gong and to bring the architect of the persecution—former Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin—to justice.

Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline which consists of moral teachings, meditation, and qigong exercises based upon the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Initially supported by the Chinese government for its health benefits and moral teachings, Falun Gong's popularity rose to 70 million practitioners by early 1999 and outnumbered the Communist Party membership. Its revival of traditional values was perceived by some communist hardliners as a threat to the Party's ideology. In July 1999, former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin single-handedly launched an intensive, nationwide campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, reflecting the Party's long-standing intolerance of independent, civil society groups.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained extra-legally in labor camps, detention centers, black jails and prisons, where torture and abuse are routine and death often occurs. According to Freedom House, the U.S. State Department and Congressional-Executive Commission on China reports, Falun Gong practitioners constitute the largest group of prisoners of conscience in China.

Last June, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed H.Res.343, a resolution that condemned the Chinese Communist regime for harvesting the organs of living Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience. A recent February 2017 Freedom House report "found credible evidence suggesting that beginning in the early 2000s, Falun Gong detainees were killed for their organs on a large scale."

President Xi inherited this persecution from his earlier predecessor. Amid his anti-corruption campaigns, President Xi sacked several key perpetrators of the persecution, though ostensibly on corruption charges. While they were steps in the right direction, the persecution still continues. In 2015, 200,000 Chinese filed legal complaints charging former President Jiang Zemin with crimes against humanity. We hope President Xi can follow the will of the people to bring Jiang Zemin to justice and end this 18-year brutal persecution.  President Trump can play a key role in helping to bring that to fruition.

Victims of the persecution will be available for on-site interviews.

Sponsor and source of information: Falun Dafa Association of Washington, DC.

TIME: Tuesday, April 4, 11:30 am to 2:00 pm
LOCATION: 17th Street NW between Penn Ave. and G St. NW

SOURCE Falun Dafa Association of Washington, DC