China’s Persecution of Falun Gong Is Genocide

Last year, both the Trump and Biden administrations determined that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging genocide against Uyghurs and other mostly ethnic Muslim communities in Xinjiang. This is a human-rights watershed, given that this atrocity is ongoing and authored by a powerful, sitting government that vehemently denies and covers up the charge. With this precedent and using similar sources of evidence, a second CCP genocide — one against the spiritual meditation group Falun Gong — is long overdue for recognition.

Shocking reports of 1 million Uyghurs in indoctrination camps (officially called “vocational training centers”) are highlighted by the media. Systematic torture, rape, and forced labor are also reported. Egregious though these are, the Uyghur genocide designation pivoted on other atrocities. As Secretary of State Pompeo explained last January in the Wall Street Journal, evidence showing forced medical procedures to stop Uyghur births was “key” to State Department’s genocide determination. A 2020 Jamestown Foundation study of Chinese data by scholar Adrian Zenz revealed a disparate plummeting of the Uyghurs’ population-growth rate, corroborating testimony that the CCP forced many Uyghur women to undergo abortions, sterilizations, and IUD procedures. Last month, a U.K.-based Uyghur Tribunal of independent experts reaffirmed Pompeo’s reasoning in its own genocide judgment, under U.N. Genocide Convention criteria requiring intentional, physical destruction of all or part of a group.

About the Author

Nina Shea

Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and author of the new report “Ten Persecuted Catholic Bishops in China”

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Last year, both the Trump and Biden administrations determined that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging genocide against Uyghurs and other mostly ethnic Muslim communities in Xinjiang. This is a human-rights watershed, given that this atrocity is ongoing and authored by a powerful, sitting government that vehemently denies and covers up the charge. With this precedent and using similar sources of evidence, a second CCP genocide — one against the spiritual meditation group Falun Gong — is long overdue for recognition.

Shocking reports of 1 million Uyghurs in indoctrination camps (officially called “vocational training centers”) are highlighted by the media. Systematic torture, rape, and forced labor are also reported. Egregious though these are, the Uyghur genocide designation pivoted on other atrocities. As Secretary of State Pompeo explained last January in the Wall Street Journal, evidence showing forced medical procedures to stop Uyghur births was “key” to State Department’s genocide determination. A 2020 Jamestown Foundation study of Chinese data by scholar Adrian Zenz revealed a disparate plummeting of the Uyghurs’ population-growth rate, corroborating testimony that the CCP forced many Uyghur women to undergo abortions, sterilizations, and IUD procedures. Last month, a U.K.-based Uyghur Tribunal of independent experts reaffirmed Pompeo’s reasoning in its own genocide judgment, under U.N. Genocide Convention criteria requiring intentional, physical destruction of all or part of a group.