(Minghui.org) The U.S. Department of State published the “2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” on April 22, 2024. It continues to condemn the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party and the forced organ harvesting crime that targets the practitioners as a specific source.
The report noted that the communist regime continued to use “administrative detention to intimidate political and religious advocates,” with forms including “compulsory drug rehabilitation treatment,” “custody and training,” and “‘legal education’ centers for political activists and religious and spiritual adherents, particularly Falun Gong practitioners.”
“Human rights organizations estimated thousands of political prisoners (not counting persons held in Xinjiang) remained incarcerated, most in prisons and some in administrative detention,” said the report.
Notable political prisoners listed in the reported included Falun Gong practitioner Zhou Deyong, writer Yang Maodong (pen name Guo Feixiong), activists Wang Bingzhang, Chen Jianfang and Huang Qi, human rights lawyer and activist Gao Zhisheng and many others.
The report also cited the case of Falun Gong practitioners He Binggang and his fiancée Zhang Yibo, who were sentenced to 6 and 5 years in prison, respectively, by a court in Shanghai in June 2023, for circumventing the government’s internet censorship using software called Ogate. He lost the ability to walk as a result of abuse during the current and previous detentions.
In addition to the arbitrary detention and wrongful sentencing of Falun Gong practitioners, the report also condemned the forced organ harvesting crimes from Falun Gong practitioners and Muslim detainees in Xinjiang. According to a report by the Epoch Times in August 2023, “a doctor agreed to go on the record to recount forced organ harvesting that occurred in 1994 in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, and a conversation in 2002 that revealed Falun Gong practitioners were a specific organ source.”
Screenshot of Secretary Blinken at the press release for the “2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices”
At the press release for the 2023 human rights report, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken emphasized the fundamental idea of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
He remarked that “Standing up for freedom and human rights is simply the right thing to do. But defending and promoting these inalienable and universal rights is also profoundly in our national interest. Countries that respect human rights are more likely to be peaceful, prosperous, and stable.”
“The United States will continue to raise our deep concerns directly with the governments responsible. … we have a clearer picture of human rights conditions as they are, as well as a renewed determination to strengthen them for the future,” said Secretary Blinken.
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