Several weeks ago, in mid-July, I was standing in Dam square in Amsterdam. It’s a renowned centre of activism and multiculturalism in the area; on that day, I was sat listening to a busker playing a Turkish clarinet and watching stands that ranged all the way from an online summit on Iran to a single person holding up a sign against systemic racism as an eclectic mix of people of all ethnicities and nationalities passed through. As I took in the scene, I was approached by a Chinese man who, in broken English, explained to me that he was collecting signatures for a petition over the CCP’s treatment of the Falun Dafa movement. As he explained his story to me, I was struck by the striking similarities between his situation and ones I have seen across social media and even in history class; specifically, the recent persecution of the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang. Their plight has been reported since 2018 and is gaining a resurgence across the news and social media, but relentlessly continues all the same. It dawned on me then that we have seen their exact story before with Falun Dafa, and if authoritarianism continues to exist unchallenged, we will doubtless see it again.
Let’s start at the beginning; specifically, the mid-1990s, where a new form of spiritual practice, known as Falun Dafa or Falun Gong, is taking hold of China. Its founder, Li Hongzi, promotes a set of meditations and spiritual exercises designed to bring his followers the values of “truthfulness, compassion, [and] forbearance” which are central to the movement. It is, ultimately, about peace and self-discovery**(see edit at end); however, as it grows, China’s Communist Party, the CCP, seeks to control it, initially by attempting to establish Party branches within Falun Gong groups. When the groups refuse this, the CCP bans the publication of Falun Gong books in July 1996. Still, the movement grows; by 1999, some estimates pin 70 million people as practicing it, 18% of the population. Then, in July, the crackdowns begin; within a week of the CCP beginning nationwide arrests, some 50,000 Falun Gong practitioners are detained by the authorities. Hongzi flees for the US. Those who are captured are sent to secret concentration camps, where they are tortured, beaten, and forced to renounce their beliefs, calling Falun Gong an “evil cult” and expressing utter loyalty to the CCP. For those that succumb to the abuse, there are reports of their organs being harvested by the government. One practitioner, James Ouyang, tells the Washington Post in 2001 that he was abused by police for nine days straight before he denounced the movement and was allowed to leave. The West, shocked, condemns China’s actions to no avail; the systematic abuse carries on regardless.
2. The first 4.25 protest against Falun Gong Persecution. Beijing, 4th April, 1999.
3. A lawyer is arrested for defending the rights of Falun Gong practitioners. Shandong Province, 2nd July, 2009.
Sound familiar? It should. The exact same strategy is being used today against the Uighurs. The Uighurs are an 11-million-strong ethnic population from Xinjiang in Northwest China who bear close links to central Asian nations and, majoratively, practice Islam. In the past, the Uighurs have intermittently expressed wishes for independence from a China which is different to them ethnically, religiously, and ideologically; nonetheless, separatist rumblings have been silent for years. Since 2018, there have been reports of many Uighurs mysteriously vanishing, reportedly having been sent to hastily built and rapidly expanded “re-education” camps, where, the CCP asserts, they are merely trained in artistry, poetry and music. Family members from outside of China claim that they have had no contact with these relatives, some of whom have apparently disappeared off the face of the earth. Though China studiously denies any maltreatment in these camps, stories relayed anonymously by survivors, terrified for their lives, show that through systematic torture, pressuring and brainwashing, inmates are forced to curse religion and renounce the Qur’an while singing songs praising the CCP, and chants of “Long Live Xi Jinping!”. Yet again, reports have escaped of the organ harvesting of those who die. Despite constant coverage since 2018 and international condemnation, Communist Party denial remains intact while these prison camps continue to expand. The relentless campaign to remove Islam from China shows no signs of slowing down; and, what is more, its development shows profound resemblance to what happened to the Falun Gong movement in the 1990s.
First of all, why? Why go to such extremes, even against international pressure, to crush what are mostly peaceful religious movements? The answer is, to put it simply, because the CCP are scared. Authoritarian regimes thrive on a sort of fanaticism; much like religions do, they aim to invade and control the daily lives of their followers, and need their utter devotion to effectively function. Religion, in any form, poses a direct threat to this aim; it has the potential to replace this devotion to the ruling party with another, rival one, freeing those who follow it from the direct control of the regime, and even uniting them against it. We’ve seen it all before; Adolf Hitler himself spent years embroiled in a bitter fight with the Catholic Church, which refused to come under his control. No matter how hard he tried, whether through replacing priests or trying to swap pictures of Jesus for those of him in churches, he was emphatically rebuffed; and leaders of the Church, ever-popular amongst the people, were untouchable even to the SS lest they risk an all-out rebellion. Hitler failed to defeat religion, and the Church led resistance against him throughout the war, undermining his grip over the people.
The CCP refuses to make the same mistake; it wants its local headquarters to be its people’s Church, and Chairman Xi Jinping to be their God. If Falun Gong, or Islam, or whatever comes next, no matter how peaceful it is, stands in the way of that by setting forward an ulterior ideology, of course the Chinese government will stop at nothing to take it down—it wants the people’s devotion to itself, and it alone. And why shouldn’t they stamp it out; after all, they got away with it last time. Post-1999, the once-surging Falun Gong movement melted into the shadows, its memory erased from the Chinese people’s minds, and its followers banished, with little left to do but try to drum up support in places such as Dam Square for a cause that is long lost. If nothing changes, we are cursing the Uighurs to the same fate.
But finally, will anything change? Can it? The depressing and slightly morbid answer is, unfortunately, probably not. Recently, I have seen waves of support across Instagram for the Uighurs; stories seem awash with thousands of posts indicating the grim reality of the concentration camps and organ harvesting. Our politicians aren’t unaware, either; Dominic Raab, Marco Rubio and a whole host of others have officially condemned China’s actions. All of this seems impressive; however, do China care about Instagram stories, or foreign “condemnation”, or tiny petitions signed by tourists in a square in Amsterdam? No. Not at all. Western social media is banned in China, after all, and China’s historic hatred of foreign intervention in its affairs has only further hardened it against listening to any recommendations the West might make to it on how it chooses to treat its people. In an epitomising example of this in late July, the Chinese ambassador to the UK blatantly denied all misconduct even when faced with tapes of prison camps on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show; he, like the government he serves, cares precious little for what we think, so long as we keep buying their exports and using their products. If we really wanted to try to stop any of this, we would have to engage with China in a unified and direct way, and hit them where it hurts. I’m talking trade embargoes, or even further. A situation like this could even offer opportunity for an alliance between the defenders of human rights in the West and Islamic countries in the East to fight this injustice, together; if enough countries banded up, we could send out a threat that China simply couldn’t afford to ignore. But in a world fraught with xenophobia, mutual distrust and outright war between the West and Muslim nations, could such an unlikely unification ever be pulled off? And is Boris Johnson, or Donald Trump, really going to put their compromised political status and their already-crippled economies on the line in a war against China over a group of persecuted Muslims, half the world away? Perhaps, taking action would only serve to divide us just as much as our lack of it defines us.
We failed to properly react to Falun Gong 20 years ago. Today, the Uighur crisis is showing us that we clearly haven’t learnt our lesson. And mark my words: if we don’t learn it this time, the next will play out the exact same way. The harsh reality is that as long as authoritarian regimes like the CCP continue to exist, systematic killings like that of the Uighurs will occur. And with the way things are, none of that is showing signs of changing anytime soon.
EDIT
Since writing this, a few people have engaged in conversation with me about Falun Gong propaganda and cultism; after doing a bit of research, it’s come to my attention that these pretty heavily and unfairly influenced my writing process and resources used for this article. I knew that Li Hongzi had gone progressively more insane over the years, but had no idea about the blatant extremism of the movement, which has more or less evolved into a cult. This, of course, doesn’t at all excuse the CCP’s abuse of Falun Gong, which remains abhorrent; however, the movement’s treatment equally doesn’t venerate it from all criticism, which it undoubtedly deserves. Below are some resources on the darker side of Falun Gong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JaPzJKycxc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAwsU6YIDHQ&t=23s
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-qanon-impending-judgment-day-behind-facebook-fueled-rise-epoch-n1044121
References
I read a lot for this one, and there’s a lot of information out there on it. Nonetheless, here are the resources that helped me the most in writing this piece:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-48700786
(The BBC has done a lot of reporting on the abuse of the Uighurs, and so I highly recommend looking at their content if you’d like to learn more.)
Alex Baxter 