New York—The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution Tuesday urging the Chinese Communist Party to end its decade-long campaign against Falun Gong and expressing solidarity with victims of persecution in China.
- Falun Gong Silent Protest in Washington, DC in May 2006
House Resolution 605 (full text) recognizes, “the continued persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China on the 11th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party campaign to suppress the Falun Gong spiritual movement and [calls] for an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners.”
“The passage and specific wording of this resolution is especially significant for it demonstrates that the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China is as urgent today as it ever was,” says Levi Browde, Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. “As it recognizes, the reality remains that millions of innocent people in China who practice Falun Gong are at constant risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and death.”
“The resolution’s content also highlights that attaining genuine freedom and human rights protection for all Chinese people is predicated on ending the persecution of Falun Gong. For how can a civil, healthy society develop when tens of millions are targeted in such a fashion?”
The resolution’s text provides a detailed timeline tracking events from the origins of the violent persecution through to the widespread arrests and deaths of Falun Gong practitioners that accompanied the 2008 Olympic games.
The resolution also cites estimates that tens of millions continue to practice Falun Gong inside China, while challenging the Party’s anti-Falun Gong propaganda.
It calls “upon the Government of the People’s Republic of China to immediately cease and desist from its campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners, to immediately abolish the 6-10 office, an extrajudicial security apparatus given the mandate to ‘eradicate’ Falun Gong, and to immediately release Falun Gong practitioners, detained solely for their beliefs, from prisons and re-education through labor camps.”
It also calls upon the President of the United States and Members of Congress to mark the 11th anniversary of the launch of the persecution, which will take place in July 2010.
House Resolution 605 is the fourth congressional resolution passed since 1999 specifically highlighting the plight of Falun Gong practitioners.
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