July 20

In 1998, the Chinese government estimated that between 70 and 100 million people in China were practicing Falun Gong. It was the most popular practice of its kind in Chinese history. But the leader of the Communist Party wanted it gone. In the early hours of July 20, 1999, Public Security Bureaus carried out an organized operation to arrest the volunteer coordinators of Falun Gong practice sites throughout China. This was ordered by then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. He declared that Falun Gong should be eliminated within three months. When his campaign failed to stop Falun Gong, he simply cracked down harder. Jiang Zemin implemented a strategy to eradicate Falun Gong practitioners by “ruining their reputations, crushing them financially, and eliminating them physically”. He also declared that “beating them to death counts as suicide”. From 1999 to the present, the Falun Gong website Minghui.org has verified at least 4,000 cases of Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted to death. But some estimates suggest the true number of practitioners killed is actually several hundred thousand. In response to 18 years of brutal repression, Falun Gong practitioners inside and outside China have been unyielding in their efforts to expose the persecution through peaceful activities.