US Ambassador to China Calls for Release of Detained Falun Gong Practitioners

US Ambassador to China Calls for Release of Detained Falun Gong Practitioners

‘The United States will continue to speak out in support of freedom of religion and belief in China,’ said Nicholas Burns.U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns has urged the Chinese communist regime to release Falun Gong practitioners, who have been brutally targeted for their spiritual beliefs over the past 25 years.

The ambassador made the statement on July 22, shortly after the State Department called for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) long-running persecution campaign against the faith group. The regime’s suppression of the group has resulted in a large number of practitioners being arrested, imprisoned, or even killed for their organs.
Mr. Burns urged the regime to release all detained Falun Gong practitioners and others imprisoned in China for their beliefs.The United States will continue to speak out in support of freedom of religion and belief in China. We call on the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to release all those imprisoned for their beliefs, including Falun Gong practitioners,” Mr. Burns said in a statement on social media platform X.
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing commemorated the 25th anniversary of the start of the persecutory campaign.

“We solemnly mark 25 years today since the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began a campaign of repression against practitioners of Falun Gong,” the embassy said in a July 23 statement on X.v After more than two decades, the persecution of Falun Gong remains a top priority for the CCP’s police, prosecutors, and judges in more than a dozen provinces across the country, according to an analysis of official documents by the Falun Dafa Information Center.
In the first six months of this year, courts in China sentenced 218 people to prison or other punishment for practicing Falun Gong, according to data collected by Minghui, a U.S.-based website tracking the persecution of the faith group. Given the difficulty of obtaining related information from China, Minghui believes the actual number is much higher.
Detained practitioners are vulnerable to becoming the victims of the state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting, an independent people’s tribunal in London confirmed. The China Tribunal concluded in 2019 that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” with Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs. The ongoing practice supplies the country’s lucrative transplant industry.
The CCP’s bloody suppression of the faith group has drawn condemnation from U.S. officials and leaders of rights advocacy groups.