The State Department has called on Beijing to end its eradication campaign against Falun Gong ahead of July 20, the date that marked the start of the persecution in 1999.
“For over 26 years, the CCP has waged a campaign of repression against practitioners of Falun Gong and their families,” a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
“We again call on the CCP to end its campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.”
An estimated 70 million to 100 million people practiced Falun Gong in China by the late 1990s, with many crediting the practice’s values and meditative exercises with helping them become better, healthier people.
The regime, initially supportive, took the practice’s popularity as a threat to its power. On July 20, 1999, it launched a national persecution, using forced labor, torture, and other forms of torment to force practitioners to give up the faith.
To date, Minghui.org, a clearinghouse for information on the persecution of Falun Gong, has verified thousands of deaths based on first-hand information. The true death toll is hard to verify, and likely much higher, given the lack of transparency in China.
Additionally, an unknown number of people have been killed for their organs to fuel the regime’s lucrative transplant industry, according to independent investigations. A 2019 independent tribunal in London found that Falun Gong practitioners were the primary source of organs.
The House of Representatives has passed two bills this year to push for an end to the abuses: the Falun Gong Protection Act and the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act. Five states have enacted laws to discourage residents from obtaining organ transplants in China.
Both federal bills are awaiting action in the Senate.
“You need to get a vote on it,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD, about the legislation.
He said it’s “despicable” that organ harvesting is happening.
Scott highlighted the recent death under mysterious circumstances of a Chinese medical student who had collected a large trove of materials to support the allegation that organ harvesting was being carried out at the hospital where he worked.
“We’ve got to tell the Chinese government that we’re not going to stand for this,” Scott said.
<p><span>Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a meeting at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur on July 11, 2025. </span><span class="post_caption_credit"><span>Mandel Ngan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></p>
Now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been outspoken about the regime’s abuses targeting Falun Gong, was the chief sponsor of the Falun Gong Protection Act as a senator in the previous Congress.
“Communist China has been able to get away with a campaign of widespread evil,” Rubio said in 2024. “The U.S. will not tolerate these practices.”
In May, Rubio said the State Department would help “in any way we can” to get the anti-forced organ harvesting bill across the finish line, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) described forced organ harvesting as being “beyond human comprehension.”
“This is worse than anything I’ve ever heard of,” he told The Epoch Times on July 15. “To have people in prison—objectors, prisoners of conscience, political prisoners—and this regime has got their blood types, their tissue types, and somebody orders an organ, and they go in there and force that person to give up an organ, and he loses his life.
“It is beyond anything I can even imagine. And it’s a billions and billions of dollar operation.”
Repression on US Soil
Repression targeting Falun Gong practitioners in other countries, most notably in the United States, has escalated recently, driven by a 2022 instruction from Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping, whistleblowers have said.
Key parts of the new strategy spearheaded by China’s Ministry of State Security, a regime body that conducts foreign intelligence and subversive activities, involve spreading disinformation about Falun Gong using social media and Western media outlets. Another tactic is to weaponize the legal system against Falun Gong and related entities in the United States as well as instigating theU.S. government to launch investigations.
In one high-profile case, two Chinese agents were sentenced for trying to bribe an IRS official to revoke the tax-exempt status of Shen Yun Performing Arts, a classical Chinese dance and music company founded by Falun Gong practitioners to showcase “China before communism.”
That plot was foiled by undercover FBI agents.
<p><span></span><span class="post_caption_credit"><span>Illustration by The Epoch Times, The Epoch Times, X/screenshots Via The Epoch Times, Falun Dafa Information Center, Courtesy Of Shen Yun Security, Courtesy Of Global Service Center For Quitting The CCP, Getty Images, Shutterstock, Public Domain</span></span></p>
(Click here to see enlarged image of the infographic above.)
The Falun Gong community at large has also been targeted by more than 140 threats since 2024. Those have included threats of physical assault, bombings, and other forms of violence aimed at disrupting activities that draw awareness to the regime’s persecution.
Earlier this year, a bomb threat forced an evacuation at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Shen Yun’s opening day, prompting condemnation from the White House.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who previously chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said such aggression is inherent to the regime’s nature.
“They hate Falun Gong. They hate the people that talk about what was China like before [communist rule],” he told NTD.
The regime’s efforts to export repression makes it all the more important for the West to understand the Falun Gong issue, said Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center.
“The Falun Gong issue is no longer just about stopping terrible human rights abuses in China. It is also a test case for how Western democracies can maintain their sovereignty and national security in the face of the CCP’s relentless and increasingly sophisticated transnational repression,” he said in a statement.
Ahead of a Falun Gong rally in Washington on July 17, Rep. Johnny Olszewski (D-Md.) said he’s thankful for anyone “taking the time to call out and peacefully stand up against” the abuses the regime is perpetrating.
“It’s both the right thing to do from a human rights perspective” and for “ensuring American interest in the long term,” he told NTD.
<p><span>Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, listens during a press conference about the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act passed by the House, on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 7, 2025. </span><span class="post_caption_credit"><span>Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times</span></span></p>
Lawmakers are increasingly looking to trade as a potential weapon to address Beijing’s human rights violations.
“Everything should be about human rights,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told NTD.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) agreed, calling trade “the greatest weapon we have with an export economy like China.”
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Smith told The Epoch Times.
If, because of human rights, Chinese exports aren’t finding markets in the United States, the regime will be forced to change, he said.
