Dear Reader,

As families gather this Thanksgiving, we’d like to share some good news:Mr. Hua, a father and UN refugee, has been reunited with his wife and daughter after ten years apart. He survived years of persecution in China for his faith in Falun Gong, but now he is finally free. This week marks his first Thanksgiving in America with his family. 

In addition, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing last week featuring a powerful written statement by Danielle Wang and Cynthia Sun.

Also in this issue:

• An elderly Liaoning father died last month after a seven-year prison sentence.

• A summit in Brussels of the International Parliamentarian Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) forced organ harvesting.

• A new surge of impersonations and threats in early November brings the full tally to 198.

We close with exclusive footage of five male Chinese plainclothes police officers harassing and seizing an elderly mother in Shanxi province. An inside source shared the doorbell video footage with the Falun Dafa Information Center, which we translated and edited for documentation. The images are a microcosm of the persecution in China, highlighting the overwhelming number of personnel that the regime’s security forces invest in detaining harmless Falun Gong practitioners.

FEATURE STORY

What’s new?

After 10 years apart, Mr. Hua will celebrate his first Thanksgiving this week after reuniting with his wife and daughter in the United States. Around the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he was sent to a re-education labor camp in Shandong for his faith in Falun Gong. Between “brainwashing” sessions, Mr. Hua was forced into manual labor, including straightening thousands of diodes—small components used in modern electronics—each day. Public reports on his years of imprisonment detail severe mistreatment and pressure to renounce his beliefs, including being pinned down by prison guard and shocked with eight electric batons.

Mr. Hua managed to flee China in 2014 but remained separated from his family.His daughter later initiated a lengthy effort to help her father move safely from a third country, where he had lived as an UN-recognized refugee while awaiting a lawful pathway to reunification. Within the past year, he arrived in the United States and is now living with his wife and daughter. 

Why does it matter?

This reunion is a rare reminder of the difference that civil society and government support can make for Falun Gong practitioners, separated by the persecution and displacement. Mr. Hua’s case also underscores how persecution tied to faith can fracture families for years, a heartbreaking situation that many Falun Gong families know all too well.

What else do you need to know?

Mr. Hua has expressed deep gratitude for the support he received and is focused on rebuilding his life—starting with learning English so he can thank those who helped him personally. To help rescue more families out of China, please visit our Family Rescue page here. Any advocacy or help from readers like you have previously proven to alleviate mistreatment in custody, especially writing letters to or calling Chinese prisons.

PERSECUTION IN CHINA

On Oct. 21, Mr. Men Yulin, an elderly father from Yi County, Liaoning Province died four days after being released from a seven-year prison sentence due to his practice of Falun Gong. According to several sources, Mr. Men was severely emaciated, disoriented, and unable to recognize his own children upon his release on Oct. 17. Bitter Winter, an online religious freedom magazine, and Weiquanwang, a website aggregating grassroots accounts of human rights abuses in China, have also reported on his death.

His death is the fourth Falun Gong-related death at Shenyang City First Prison over the past three years, alongside those of Mr. Yan Xuguang, Mr. Liu Dianyuan, and Mr. Di Yongchi. All three endured prolonged prison terms, denial of medical care, and severe abuse, underscoring a persistent pattern of mistreatment at the facility.

The prison’s current warden and CCP secretary, Cong Chunsheng, has been identified by a New York-based nongovernmental organization that documents perpetrators of the persecution of Falun Gong as a key figure responsible for torture and forced “transformation.” Since assuming his post in 2022, Cong has overseen harsh measures including isolation, physical abuse, and psychological coercion aimed at compelling practitioners to abandon their beliefs.

NEWS

Earlier this month, at the fifth annual Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) Summit in Brussels, lawmakers from 28 countries announced a coordinated effort to defend fundamental human rights and counter the PRC’s escalating authoritarianism. A key outcome was the Statement of Legislative Intent on Forced Organ Harvesting and Trafficking, which condemned credible evidence of state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China and committed countries to stronger laws, including criminalizing transplant tourism without verified consent, imposing targeted sanctions, mandating reporting by medical professionals, establishing national transplant registries, and restricting cooperation with implicated institutions.

The summit also featured a panel with leading experts—including Sir Geoffrey Nice KC—who examined allegations of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and the global responsibility to address it. Sir Geoffrey was the chair of the China Tribunal which concluded in 2019 that “Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply.”

TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION

Between Oct. 31 and Nov. 11, Falun Gong practitioners, Shen Yun Performing Arts, and their supporters in Taiwan and the United States were hit by a new surge of threats and impersonation incidents. The campaign included bomb and shooting threats, extortion attempts, hacking claims, and identity forgeries—many delivered through online contact forms using falsified personal details.

For example, on Nov. 3, a message impersonating the editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times website and the email address of Canadian-based Chinese dissident Sheng Xue claimed explosives had been planted and demanded the cancellation of all Shen Yun performances in Taiwan. The message, sent through the Shen Yun Taiwan ticketing service’s web chat, stated:

“We have planted a large amount of explosives…immediately cancel next month’s Shen Yun performance, permanently terminate your cooperation with Shen Yun, and issue a statement. If we do not see a statement within 24 hours, I will detonate the explosives.”

These incidents bring the total number of anonymous death threats targeting or impersonating Falun Gong since March 2024 to 198. While no actual violence occurred, the threats reflect continued attempts to intimidate and discredit Falun Gong. All incidents have been reported to law enforcement and are under investigation.

This month marks the 21th anniversary of the publication of an editorial series, the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party. The Falun Dafa Information Center published an article last November to answer some critical questions about the series.

Published in 2004, the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party is a seminal editorial series that exposes the CCP’s century-long history of violence, deception, and destruction of traditional Chinese culture. Twenty years later, it continues to circulate widely inside China despite intense censorship, triggering a massive grassroots movement known as Tuidang (“quit the Party”). Since 2005, over 430 million Chinese have used the global Tuidang website or hotlines to publicly renounce their past oaths to the CCP and its youth organizations, often under aliases due to persecution risks. Participants range from farmers to intellectuals and even former officials.

Falun Gong practitioners have played a central role in distributing the Nine Commentaries, viewing the effort as a moral and spiritual awakening rather than political activism. In 2024, local CCP agencies across multiple provinces issued fresh warnings and urged citizens to report anyone sharing the series, underscoring the regime’s persistent fear of its message. The Nine Commentaries and the Tuidang movement remain powerful symbols of ideological dissent and hope for a non-violent transformation of China.

Doorbell footage from Datong, Shanxi province—exclusively obtained by the Falun Dafa Information Center from a credible source—captures the moment when Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Chen Zhongli, 63, was seized on Sept. 5, in what her family describes as a targeted operation. As the image above shows, five plainclothes police, reportedly from Gusheng Police Station, came to her home to detain her. Hours later, police forcibly entered her home and confiscated Falun Gong books and personal items.

Ms. Chen was then held at Chenzhuang Detention Center, where an internal source told the family she was beaten for several days by cellmates under a guard’s instruction, pressured to watch propaganda, and denied basic necessities. Authorities approved her formal arrest on Sept. 23 and have allegedly threatened to detain her relatives if she refused to “confess.” Despite her congenital heart condition, Ms. Chen has faced intimidation, deprivation, and ongoing pressure in custody. The Center has preserved the exclusive footage and detailed account as her family urgently appeals for attention to her case.