Since the late 1990s, Falun Gong practitioners in China have weathered a storm of harsh reprisals that stretch from relentless propaganda campaigns to chilling acts of physical brutality. State media painted adherents as “evil cultists,” mobilizing public opinion and framing the movement as a threat to social stability. Behind closed doors, it went much deeper.

Security forces have routinely subjected practitioners to arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention. In pre-trial “black jails” or so-called “transformation through education” centers, sleep deprivation, shackling, and electric shocks became all too common. Torture methods reportedly ranged from beating and forced standing for hours on end to invasive medical procedures—compulsory blood tests, humiliation, even allegations of forced organ harvesting highlighted by independent investigators in 2006 and revisited by the UN Special Rapporteur.

The machinery of repression spun into forced labor too. Known as “re-education through labor,” these camps pushed detained practitioners into manufacturing goods—sometimes for export—under grueling conditions and without legal recourse. Whatever financial stability families once had often went down the drain; jobs were lost, children bullied at school, mortgages left unpaid.

Surveillance has reached sky-high levels. Neighborhood committees, facial-recognition cameras and online filters make it near impossible for practitioners to gather quietly or share experiences. Smartphones under constant watch, messaging apps blocked—it’s a modern version of “big brother,” only with the steady hum of AI algorithms instead of Orwellian telescreens.

International watchdogs like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the UN Committee Against Torture have repeatedly called out these abuses. The U.S. Department of State still lists China as a “Country of Particular Concern” for religious freedom, while the 2023 report by the Commission on International Religious Freedom painted a grim picture of ongoing persecution.

Even as global attention shifts from one crisis to the next, the struggle of Falun Gong adherents remains a stark reminder of what happens when moral meditation runs head-long into political power. Trust in facts and solidarity can still chip away at the toughest walls—one voice at a time.