In today’s China, any Falun Gong practitioner can be picked off the street, say, on the way to the supermarket, and be imprisoned for years without legal procedure. This has happened to hundreds of thousands of people who practise Falun Gong. In July 1999, Jiang Zemin, then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, launched his persecution campaign against Falun Gong. He gave the threefold order: "destroy their reputation, bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically" and set into motion the entire Chinese state machinery to execute the persecution of Falun Gong.

Destruction of reputation

The first step in the persecution was a mass anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign in the Chinese media, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. In addition, 6-10 Offices were established in all layers of society to implement the persecution. With the destruction of Falun Gong's reputation and 6-10 Offices present everywhere in schools and work units, Falun Gong practitioners were fired one after the other and students were expelled from schools and universities if they practised Falun Gong.

Financial prosecution

Family members of Falun Gong practitioners have also been intimidated, fired or expelled from school if someone in the family practises Falun Gong. To save family from persecution and to relieve them of the mental stress caused by the police, Falun Gong practitioners are often forced to leave their homes. Countless Falun Gong practitioners are isolated from family or friends and live in great poverty or have become homeless.

Physical devastation

Physical exhaustion and elimination of Falun Gong practitioners is taking place on a large scale through forced labour and torture. Between 200,000 and 2 million Falun Gong practitioners have been illegally arrested and are held in the gigantic system of Chinese prisons and labour camps. Under harsh conditions they are forced to work up to 20 hours per day. Those who refuse are beaten, tortured or subjected to starvation. Different forms of torture are applied including physical torture, brainwashing, psychiatric torture where Falun Gong practitioners are injected with dangerous drug, and sexual assault and rape, which in particular, frequently happens in women's labour camps.

Since the start of the persecution in July 1999 until the present, 4574 cases of killed Falun Gong practitioners and 87,000 cases of torture have been documented. Tens of thousands of deaths remain unreported. An independent report by David Kilgour (former Canadian Secretary of State) and David Matas (a human rights lawyer renowned for his work related to the Holocaust) determines that organs are being harvested from Falun Gong practitioners on a mass scale. The report concludes that between 1999 and 2006, an estimated 40,000-65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs. Recent analyses show that this organ harvesting is still taking places and that possibly millions have been killed.