70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners in 1999
This is the number of people practising Falun Gong in China before July 1999. This number originates from the Chinese authorities and was cited on multiple occasions by Western media outlets such as the New York Times and Associated Press prior to the ban in July 1999. Shortly after the launch of the persecution, the Chinese regime shrank the estimate dramatically to 2 million as a means of downplaying the scale of the human rights violations.
450,000-1 million held in labour camps
The estimated number of Falun Gong practitioners held illegally in labour camps, prison camps, and other long-term detention facilities at any given time, as calculated by independent researcher and author Ethan Gutmann (see here and here for a detailed analysis).
551998 solemn declarations
The number of personal declarations posted to an overseas Falun Gong website in which practitioners inside China who were forced under torture to renounce their faith publicly retracted the denunciation and announced their intent to resume practising. (see recent samples here).
87,000 documented cases of torture
The number of reports of torture against Falun Gong adherents to emerge from China since 1999.
40,000-65,000 killed for organs as estimated in 2006
The number of Falun Gong practioners estimated killed in order to extract their vital organs, to fuel a booming organ transplantation business in China. These estimates are drawn from two separate, independent reports: one report from David Kilgour (former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific) and David Matas (renowned human rights lawyer); and the other report from author, investigative journalist, and China specialist, Ethan Gutmann. Read Bloody Harvest by Kilgour and Matas or The Slaughter by Gutmann.
8,037 illegal arrests in preparation for the Beijing Olympics
The number of practitioners arrested in the six months leading up to the Beijing Olympics. Some were killed within days or weeks of arrest, while hundreds of others were subsequently arbitrarily sentenced to labour camps or prisons.
4574 documented deaths by torture
The number of Falun Gong pracitioners documented to have died as a result of torture in police custody or other forms of persecution since July 1999, according to Falun Gong sources and Amnesty International. Amnesty describes the actual death toll to be surely higher, given the extreme difficulty in discovering and verifying information in China related to wrongful deaths. (Amnesty International study of cases of death by torture).
