The LaRouche Movement’s Attack on Falun Gong

The LaRouche Movement Repeats Communist Propaganda, Betrays Classical Values

The LaRouche movement, which is known for its Schiller Institute, recently published a defamatory article about Falun Gong in its Executive Intelligence Report.  The LaRouche Campaign claims to support “the Promethean spirit of creativity embodied by the greatest classical composers and artists.” However, as demonstrated below, the LaRouche movement has directly violated the classical principles of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

by Albert Roman

I was surprised that the Executive Intelligence Review would actually carry an article containing so much misinformation. The article wouldn’t pass muster in any professional news publication. The editor’s desk would reject it because it’s loaded with unsubstantiated statements.

Nearly every argument Stan Ezrol makes can be easily refuted.

Stan’s first line claims Falun Gong is a “pillar of the neocon/Military Industrial Complex Trojan Horse sabotage of the Trump Presidency.” Stan’s claiming, without evidence, that Falun Gong is attempting to sabotage the Trump presidency. Falun Gong has been persecuted since 1999, and Falun Gong practitioners have asked each president—Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump—to speak out against it. President Clinton spoke out against the persecution in late 1999; President Bush expressed concern about Beijing’s “harsh and unjust persecution” of Falun Gong in May 2001; the Obama administration in June 2011 added to the online U.S. non-immigrant visa application Form DS-160 a question if applicants have been directly involved in the coercive transplantation of human organs or bodily tissue.

Informing President Trump about the persecution of Falun Gong has been no different than what practitioners of Falun Gong had been doing the prior 17 years. Furthermore, it didn’t sabotage any presidency. Clinton moved forward with helping China become part of the WTO, communist leader Jiang Zemin practically begged to visit George W. Bush in his ranch in 2002, and Obama left office in 2017 receiving compliments from Xi Jinping over the development of the two nations’ relationship.

Stan’s argument is based on the fallacy that anything perceived to be an impediment to Trump and Xi’s relationship is bad. Stan, as well as Lyndon LaRouche when he was alive, want nothing more than to see a tight Putin-Trump-Xi relationship that will help facilitate LaRouche’s grand idea that’s now known as the One Belt One Road project (OBOR). The OBOR project is an amazing and ambitious endeavor, but it doesn’t justify ignoring the communist regime’s persecution of the Chinese people.

The CCP has a seven-decade-long history of persecuting and terrorizing its people. Examples include the campaigns against intellectuals (1957-1959), landlords (1947-1952), religions (1951-1953), so-called counter-revolutionaries (1950-1953), the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989), the persecution of Falun Gong (1999-present), and over a dozen others, including the mistreatment of Tibetans and ethnic Uighur populations that continue to take place. It’s estimated that tens of millions of Chinese died unnatural deaths during communist rule. Stan, EIR, and the Schiller Institute should consider that.

There should not be over one million ethnic Uighur in re-education camps despite Christine Bierre’s claim that it’s justified. They have been detained without due process, and they have been charged with harboring “extremist thoughts.” Some who have left the re-education camps claim they were tortured. Does EIR think this is acceptable? Is it acceptable to forcefully “re-educate” a large group of people because it’s assumed that they have “extremist thoughts”?

I lived in China 20 years ago, and I experienced with my own eyes the effects of communist rule on the people. It was nothing like Christine Bierre’s beautiful guided tour. One afternoon I was riding my bike home in the city of Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, and I saw what looked like a rickshaw carrier who lay unconscious in the middle of the road. One couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

I quickly stopped, checked to see if he was alive, then he gained consciousness, and I helped him to the side of the road to rest.

As I proceeded home, I wondered why nobody else stopped to check on this man. The road was crowded with people biking along. I realized they didn’t want to get involved in another person’s problems. Furthermore, they didn’t want to get in trouble, so they chose to do nothing.

This was a life-changing experience for me. It was clear that living under the terror of the communist regime had stripped people of their humanity. They didn’t dare help somebody, and they wouldn’t dare stand up for justice.

This realization was accurate. Although Chinese people had become numb to their apathetic behavior, the entire nation received a shock October 13, 2011 when a two-year-old girl named Yue Wang was run over by two cars while she played outside her parent’s shop. Neither car stopped to help her. Worse yet, 18 people walked past her as she lay on the ground suffering. This was all captured on closed-circuit television. Finally, a female trash digger saw the child and helped her.

The video was uploaded to the Internet, and it caused reverberations throughout Chinese society. The incident demanded that Chinese society reflect on its members’ apathy and fear of seeking justice.

Stan seems to feel that Falun Gong practitioners don’t want President Trump to befriend Putin and Xi, but that’s inaccurate.

Falun Gong practitioners do not care whether or not President Trump creates an alliance between Putin and Xi; they simply want the communist regime in China to stop torturing and murdering them.

Stan and his colleagues at EIR and the Schiller Institute should realize that if the persecution of Falun Gong never began in July 1999, there would be no need for Falun Gong practitioners to protest. They should also understand that six out of seven of the Politburo Standing Committee members at the time were against the idea of persecuting Falun Gong. If the persecution never happened, Falun Gong practitioners would not have complained about the government; and they would not have formed media companies like The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty Television.

Stan then wrongly labels Falun Gong a cult. He should consider the fact that this group is undergoing persecution in communist China as we speak, and the Chinese Communist Party has tried to justify it by labeling Falun Gong that way. It’s not a cult because it doesn’t fit the characteristics of one.

In a cult, people are coerced to join, and they can’t leave; they are isolated from society; they are required to pay money to someone; they resort to violence; and they do immoral things. That doesn’t exist with Falun Gong. It can’t exist because there’s no membership. Even if you talk to people who formerly practiced Falun Gong, they don’t say that they were forced to practice. Furthermore, those who practice live and work and play within society. They have typical family relationships. The practice is free; it can be learned online for free.

The only difference is that Falun Gong practitioners do meditation and qigong exercises, read their own teachings, and try hard to live moral lives. You can’t fault them for that, and by calling them a cult, you’re faulting them. You’re essentially creating apathy towards this group of people, and that’s exactly what the Chinese Communist Party wants people to do. It wants to justify the persecution of tens of millions of its citizens.

Stan then mentions how Secretary of State Pompeo’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom finds the Chinese Communist Party guilty of “intense persecution” of Falun Gong.

It doesn’t seem as though Stan has done sufficient research. There are well over one hundred thousand cases documenting persecution of Falun Gong practitioners since July 1999. Former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Novak, stated that two-thirds of all cases submitted to his department were related to Falun Gong. He visited Chinese prisons in late November 2005, and he concluded that torture was widespread, and that half of the prisoners were Falun Gong practitioners.

Have you heard of Gao Zhisheng? The Chinese Communist Party’s Minister of Justice named him one of China’s top ten lawyers in 2001. Gao’s a Christian, and he began to provide his services to other Christians as well as farmers. He also began advocating for Falun Gong practitioners in 2005. He wrote three open letters to the Chinese government to “stop the barbaric persecution” of Falun Gong.

The Chinese Communist Party then revoked Gao’s license to practice law and began following him and harassing his family. His wife and two children escaped to Thailand and now live in Northern California. Since 2005, Gao has been abducted multiple times. He was also tortured by the police who abducted him. He later recounted that they give him “the Falun Gong treatment,” that is, not just severe torture, but grotesque, perverted torture. He alleged that officers stripped him and impaled his genitals with toothpicks. Is this acceptable to Stan or EIR or to Helga LaRouche? Why do you unabashedly defend the Chinese Communist Party?

Think about this for a moment. This is a renowned lawyer, a Christian, who has been tortured to this extent for defending Falun Gong practitioners. Gao is not the only lawyer who has stood up for Falun Gong and been punished.

It’s shameful that Stan would intentionally not research this topic sufficiently and then misinform his community.

Stan then refers to The Epoch Times newspaper as “fake news.” While so many other media companies harbor extreme animus towards President Trump, so much so that they’d like to see America fall just to make him look bad, The Epoch Times reports on Trump fairly. Trump cares for the wellbeing of Americans more than most people think.

Stan claims that Falun Gong is “backed by the network of nation destroyers responsible for never-ending wars.” Who is backing Falun Gong exactly, and how exactly are they backing Falun Gong? He doesn’t know. The truth is that Falun Gong is backed by no outside forces. In the past 20 years of persecution, no governments or organizations have backed Falun Gong beyond government representatives worldwide and United Nations representatives issuing resolutions condemning the persecution of Falun Gong.

The LaRouche Youth Movement members got paid, most likely a meager stipend, but that’s more than any Falun Gong practitioners receive because they are volunteers. Falun Gong volunteers started The Epoch Times from scratch. For many years they struggled to exist as a business. If they were backed by any government or organization, then they wouldn’t have struggled to survive so many years. Some full-time employees were paid based on sales from advertisements, and others simply had full-time jobs elsewhere and helped out when they could.

The Epoch Times is not Falun Gong. It’s a newspaper company established by Falun Gong practitioners. There’s a difference. It now is supported by subscriptions.

Stan then claims that George Soros is a “patron” of Falun Gong. How could he make such an outlandish statement? Can he substantiate it? If you were to ask 99.9 percent of Falun Gong practitioners about George Soros, they wouldn’t know him from Lyndon LaRouche. The tenth of a percent who do know him might describe Soros as the person behind the organizations attempting to weaken America. That’s, at least, how it appears from the factual reporting done by The Epoch Times.

Stan also claims Falun Gong receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracies, but that’s not true. Mark Palmer, a former ambassador and co-founder for the NED, supported Falun Gong in efforts to raise awareness about the persecution, which is wholly a positive act, but no funding comes from NED. I contacted the founder of Friends of Falun Gong, Alan Adler, and he confirmed that the organization currently does not receive funds from National Endowment for Democracy, and it never has received funds from the organization. I’d like to know where Stan found any information related to his claim. Why did he resort to making this up?

Stan claims that “neocon warmongers” are supporting Falun Gong. Who are these “neocon warmongers”? Is he referring to Steve Bannon, who is actually skeptical of military intervention in in the Middle East, Venezuela, and North Korea? Steve Bannon is critical of the Chinese regime expanding its territorial claim in the South China Sea, and he is rightfully concerned about Huawei being legally bound, according the Chinese Communist Party law, to provide information to the government if it’s requested, but does he want war with China? Has he suggested that? He has not.

Who are the others Stan refers to as “neocon warmongers”? Is he referring to Secretary Pompeo or Vice President Pence? I don’t think they are proposing war with China. They are, however, genuinely concerned with human rights and religious rights problems in China. Their concern is valid. China has a Constitution, Articles 35 and 36 of which grant Chinese people freedom of speech, press, assembly, and belief. Furthermore, China is a signatory to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. Also, China ratified the UN Convention against Torture. If the Chinese Communist Party has promised the international community that it would abide by these standards, then it’s valid for other nations to express concern when China is falling far short.

This is where LaRouche and his Schiller Institute have a far different view. In 2003 or 2004, I attended a “Cadre School” in Santa Barbara, and I asked Lyndon via telephone what he thought about the persecution of Falun Gong. As I listened to his answer, I realized that he knew very little about the topic. His answer was basically that nations should not interfere with the “internal affairs” of China.

If that were true, then the Chinese government should not act as though it has a functioning Constitution, and its International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the UN Convention Against Torture, mean nothing. I traveled to China in February 2002, and I brought a Chinese version of its Constitution to show the government. The police officer with whom I spoke said without shame, “This is not OUR Constitution. We don’t follow it!”

Perhaps Stan is claiming that the “neocon warmongers” are Senior Trade Advisor Peter Navarro and Treasurer Mnuchin. They have said nothing about war with China. They are, however, tired of the large trade deficit with China, China’s intellectual property theft, and its currency manipulation, which has contributed to nearly 60,000 factories leaving the U.S. for China. Navarro and Mnuchin, like President Trump, truly care about America and Americans’ livelihood.

Stan incorrectly lumps Falun Gong, The Epoch Times, and Shen Yun together as though they are one entity, which they are not. He notes Shen Yun’s revenue and assets, and conflates them with Falun Gong. Shen Yun’s assets are for the sole purpose of maintaining and growing Shen Yun. Shen Yun is a nonprofit organization, and its financial statements are available to the public.

Stan then says that Falun Gong’s assets increased in 2019 as operations on behalf of the “coup” have increased. First of all, Stan is referring to Shen Yun Performing Arts, not Falun Gong. Shen Yun’s assets increased because it performed more shows. More performances means more theatergoers paying for tickets and, therefore, more revenue. Why does Stan try to implicate Falun Gong in the “coup” attempt?

Does Stan realize that The Epoch Times’ reporters spent a year-and-a-half putting the pieces together to help the general public understand what is now known as “Spygate” and the Russian collision hoax? President Trump appreciates The Epoch Times’ reporting because it reports on him and his issues fairly. The Epoch Times reports fairly on him precisely because it isn’t controlled by any interest group.

Stan then appears to copy/paste the Chinese Embassy’s lies about Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi. Every other sentence is a lie. The Chinese Embassy claims Li “created plots” to disrupt society, besiege an attack media companies, which disrupted public order.

Here is what happened. A factually inaccurate article was written in a magazine about Falun Gong, so a handful of Falun Gong practitioners went to the editor in Tianjin, China to clarify it. The magazine called police to the building, and police began to arrest and even beat some of the practitioners. When practitioners asked to whom they could appeal, the police told them to appeal to the official Appeal’s Office in Beijing near Zhongnanhai. This occurred in April 1999.

Word spread within the Falun Gong community that police told them to go to the Appeals Office, so by April 25, 10,000 practitioners lined the sidewalks near Zhongnanhai. Premier Zhu Rongji walked out of Zhongnanhai and said, “You are free to practice Falun Gong. Why are you here?” He asked for four practitioners to come and talk to him in his office. During the meeting, Premier Zhu assured practitioners that the government would not interfere with them and would give them a peaceful environment to practice. The silent crowd of 10,000 then walked away. You can see video footage of that day. There was no social disorder. The Chinese Embassy changed the story by claiming practitioners “besieged” Zhongnanhai. Why would Stan and the Schiller Institute blindly believe the lies of the Chinese Communist Party, a group that has a long history of lying?

Next, Stan makes false statements, one after the other, about the teachings of Falun Gong. He claims that Li rejects science. Li never rejects science. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be Falun Gong practitioners working at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, molecular biology researchers at Caltech, PhDs in computer sciences and electrical engineering, or university professors at the doctorate and post-doctorate levels who practice Falun Gong.

This leads to another false statement Stan makes when he claims that the primary teachings of Falun Gong, Zhuan Falun, never mention humans’ creative capacities. Li does discuss this in a section on the origin of human inspiration.

It appears that Stan only read the first four paragraphs of Zhuan Falun (because he directly references them in his article), and then he arbitrarily selected a few other sections to read. I mention this because I strongly believe that any rational person who reads Zhuan Falun cover-to-cover will understand the theme throughout: People should strive to live according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and they should try to rid themselves of their addictions and unhealthy attachments.

Stan claims that Li asserts that Falun Gong is the only path to success, but that’s untrue. Li clearly states that if others want to practice another orthodox qigong system, then he approves of it. Also, in his audio lectures, he clearly states that orthodox practices of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism are righteous paths.

Stan lies yet again when he states the Li insists that nobody learn another practice or science until they master his practice. Li clearly states multiple times that he doesn’t insist on anybody practicing his system. People practice if they choose. He says that whichever practice one chooses, be it Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Christianity, or Judaism, one should stick with it and focus only on that belief system.

He claims The Epoch Times is trying to stop President Trump from forming an alliance with China, Russia, and India. The Epoch Times wrote an article recently about Trump’s positive meeting with India’s Modi. There is no indication of Stan’s claim. Stan believes that The Epoch Times’ championing news on China’s crime of forced organ harvesting is inhibiting a close U.S.-China relationship.

Firstly, Stan should realize that Trump’s views on China being a currency manipulator and an unfair competitor in global economics are decades old.

Secondly, Stan should consider reading the entire report on forced organ harvesting before dismissing the allegations. If Stan were to read Bloody Harvest (organharvestinvestigation.net), he would know that doctors and hospital staff members in 16 provinces throughout China admitted via recorded phone calls that their supply of organs comes from Falun Gong practitioners. He would know about a former hospital worker from Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital who fled China in early 2006 and revealed her husband’s confession about forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

It’s common knowledge in the transplant community that China offers transplants of vital organs in days or weeks. This is not possible unless China has a readily available supply of organs from living people who have already been tested for their blood and tissue. Furthermore, China does not have an effective donor system. The United States, Canada, Europe, and Taiwan have effective donor systems, yet it still takes months and years to obtain a vital organ.

The total number of transplants that take place in China per year, according to official data, is 10,000. However, if you were to research transplant hospitals’ websites online and see the number of transplants performed each year, just by looking at a handful of large hospitals, you’d reach the 10,000 mark. But China has hundreds of transplant hospitals.

Also, China’s former Deputy Minister of Health, Huang Jiefu, said this in March 2006: “For a hospital to pass the evaluation to become a class 3A hospital (top level in quality as well as academic research), it must have completed a fixed target of more than five organ transplants. Organ transplantation has become a resource for competition among hospitals to reach the standard and for the branding” … “At present, the country has too many, not too few, hospitals carrying out kidney, liver, heart, and other types of transplants.”

How could China’s former deputy minister of health say that there are too many organ transplants taking place if China has no effective donor system? Please look up endtransplantabuse.org to read about its meticulous study using mainly publicly available data from China’s transplant hospitals.

There are two instances in his article when Stan states that The Epoch Times supports President Trump. The truth is that The Epoch Times reports fairly on Trump; it doesn’t hate Trump, like the majority of the left-leaning media organizations. Then Stan attempts to rationalize his statement by making an irrational claim: “The Falun Gong’s support for Trump has the same purpose as their patron George Soros’s opposition to him. They both are committed to defending British-Wall Street finance against the potential coalition of great nations that can defeat it.”

Why would The Epoch Times (Stan wrongly calls the media company Falun Gong) support Trump because it is committed to “defending British-Wall Street finance…” What does that mean? Stan, EIR, and the Schiller Institute have what one might call a “LaRouche lexicon” that most people don’t understand because it doesn’t make sense. Stan and the Schiller Institute have heard it countless times, but others are bewildered by it. The Epoch Times is noteworthy for its exposure of the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes, but that does not equate to supporting “British-Wall Street finance.”

If Stan believes The Epoch Times is supporting “British-Wall Street finance,” should not Britain and Wall Street be supporting Falun Gong? Who in Britain besides sympathetic members of the public, human rights lawyers, human rights advocates, and concerned MPs have supported Falun Gong? It’s the same situation in the U.S.

I have a family friend who owns an asset management company. I told him about the organ harvesting crimes in China in 2008 and gave him a detailed proposal that requested a small budget to create a documentary film about it. Although he was sympathetic to this cause, he told me he needed to pass because he had just signed a multi-billion dollar deal with the Chinese government in the business of leasing airplanes.

My family friend’s lack of action is similar to big businesses’ (Wall Street’s) inaction, too.

It’s shocking that Stan and the Schiller Institute not only dismiss concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights abuses, but also fervently try to justify the communist regime’s actions. The LaRouche Movement has become a Chinese Communist Party apologist.

In my opinion, what the world is witnessing now with the spread of the corona virus is the Chinese Communist Party’s final days. Why? Top officials have postponed the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference due to worries over the virus; however, officials have been urging factories to open up and for people to return to work since mid-February.

Chinese people are realizing more than ever that the leadership cares more about its power than the lives of its citizens. This will result in ever more resentment, and people will continue to ignore orders from the government.

While the LaRouche Movement has spent much time and effort befriending the murderous Chinese Communist Party, The Epoch Times has won the hearts of Chinese people. Although the publication is blocked in China, some are able to circumvent China’s Internet censorship and read The Epoch Times. They even reach out to The Epoch Times when family members have been killed and no other Chinese language media company dares to even investigate.

I sincerely recommend that the entire apparatus of the LaRouche Movement stop its pursuit of the Chinese Communist Party leaders and instead focus on a U.S.-Russia-India alliance and supporting human rights in China, which would give birth to a stronger and more stable China. The railway around the world has a better chance of succeeding with governments that truly serve as representatives of its citizens.

Yes, the Chinese Communist Party has made headway in its OBOR initiative, but it has done this through forced technology transfer.

The communist regime in China managed to force key technology transfer from four high-speed rail companies: Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries, France’s Alstom, Germany’s Siemens, and Canada’s Bombardier. It promised market access to these companies, which was never realized. Then Chinese rail companies learned and assimilated the key technology, and with massive state-funded backing, they were able to go outside China to compete with the companies that shared their technology. Western rail companies were shocked to later see that China was applying for high speed rail patents abroad.

An honorary chairman for the Central Japan Railway Company, Yoshiyuki Kasai, later said that technology transfer to China was a huge mistake.

Stan Ezrol’s article has so many flaws, inaccuracies, and outright lies that it will hurt the credibility of Executive Intelligence Review as well as the Schiller Institute, and it will damage LaRouche’s reputation and legacy.

If the LaRouche Movement focuses on winning the hearts of the Chinese people rather than the Chinese Communist Party, then a U.S.-Russia-India-China alliance would be a wonderful thing. Your movement must not ignore genocides, persecutions, and other human rights abuses. The LaRouche Movement knows what it’s like to be discriminated against. Please try to imagine being put in jail and tortured for your beliefs. That has a name, and it’s called persecution. Wouldn’t you want the good people of the world fighting on your behalf for your freedom?