Falun Gong

Falun Gong (Simplified: 法轮功; Traditional: 法輪功; Hanyu pinyin: Fălúngōng), also known as Falun Dafa (Simplified: 法轮大法; Traditional: 法輪大法; pinyin: Fǎlún Dàfǎ) is a modern Chinese "system of mind and body cultivation", founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. The teachings of Li stress high moral standards, respect for human life, and spiritual development specifically focusing on Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance (真，善，忍).

Since 1999, the communist government of the People's Republic of China has taken a harsh stance towards followers of Li, imprisoning many. Allegations of torture have been made by former prisoners.

In 2006, reports have been made that compulsory organ harvesting has been performed on Falun Gong Practitioners. In 2012, Wang Lijun, the Head of the Chongqing Public Security Agency, deflected to the US consulate in Chongqing, and handed the relative files to the US.

610 Office

The 610 Office is the main organization created to eliminate Falun Gong. It is nominally subordinate to the Political and Legal Affairs Committee. The Political and Legal Affairs Committee purview was expanded after the 610 Office was incorporated into it.

With a structure extending from top to bottom throughout the Party, government, and military, it has the power to command all police and judicial organs. This organization is akin to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Cultural Revolution Group, and is dedicated to carrying out the systematic eradication of the practice of Falun Gong. It is an ad hoc agency at the highest levels endowed with extraordinary and extralegal power.

The 610 Office derives its name from the date of its founding, June 10th, 1999. After that date, almost every Party branch, from the province to the county to the district level, established its own 610 Office. The source of the 610 Office’s ability to operate extralegally and with impunity is not drawn from the State. Neither the People's Congress nor the State Council has authorized its actions. Rather, approval and support for its deeds comes from the CCP. Each 610 Office takes orders from the 610 Office one level above it, going up to the Central Committee 610 Office. The local 610 Offices also take orders from the leadership team of the CCP Committee at its same organizational level.

It later changed its name to the Central Leading Group on Dealing with Heretical Religions or Office of Maintaining Stability.

Official data of the annual reported expenditures of 13 local 610 Offices in various counties and districts across nine provinces in 2014 and 2015 are available online. The total expenditure for these branches, covering a population of some 14 million, was 8.9 million yuan ($1.37 million). If that per capita investment is applied to China’s total population of 1.37 billion, the estimated annual budget for all 610 Offices nationwide is 879 million yuan ($135 million). This represents only one part of the party-state apparatus involved in the suppression of Falun Gong.

Various forms of economic incentives and exploitation have given individuals within the party-state apparatus a financial interest in repression. They include:

• Opportunistic extortion, bribe taking, or theft of property by local police
• Officially sanctioned bonuses or financial demerits for security personnel, rewards for residents who report Falun Gong activities, and fines imposed on adherents by the courts
• Systematic forced labor by detained Falun Gong adherents, a phenomenon that continues at prisons and transitional detention centers even after the abolition of Reeducation Through Labor camps

The ultimate form of financial exploitation has been reported: the killing of Falun Gong detainees and the extraction of their organs to be sold at high prices to Chinese patients and foreign “transplant tourists” as part of a multibillion-dollar industry.

External links

• Epoch Times Commentaries on the Communist Party - Part 5, On the Collusion of Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong, The Epoch Times, Dec 18, 2004.