Falun Gong Marks 27 Years of Persecution With Manhattan Parade

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A Parade Through Chinatown

Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners walked through the narrow streets of Manhattan's Chinatown on Sunday, July 19, carrying large banners and playing calm, meditative music. The parade wound past shops and restaurants, drawing crowds of tourists and shoppers who paused to film the procession.

The timing coincided with the World Cup Final, held the same afternoon at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Soccer fans in team jerseys mixed with the crowd of onlookers watching the march pass by.

Participants performed the discipline's slow-moving exercises as they walked, a visual demonstration meant to show onlookers what the practice actually looks like — a direct answer, organizers say, to decades of state propaganda in China portraying it as dangerous.

What Falun Gong Is — and Why Beijing Banned It

Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) is a spiritual discipline combining slow physical exercises with meditation, rooted in Buddhist tradition. Its teachings center on three principles: truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

The practice spread rapidly in China during the 1990s, reportedly attracting tens of millions of followers. That popularity is widely seen as the reason the Communist Party turned against it: a movement operating outside Party control, with no political ambitions but a large and devoted following, was treated as a threat to the Party's authority.

On July 20, 1999, the Party launched a nationwide crackdown, ordering mass arrests of practitioners. That date marks the start of a persecution campaign that has continued, in various forms, for 27 years.

Ongoing Arrests and Deaths in Custody

The persecution has not stopped. Minghui.org, a website that documents the treatment of practitioners inside China through direct reports from the country, recorded 787 practitioners arrested or harassed for their faith in March and April of this year alone.

For all of 2025, Minghui documented 124 practitioners it says died as a result of persecution, along with 4,803 further arrests or incidents of harassment. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent, bipartisan federal body, cited similar findings in its 2026 annual report, noting that Falun Gong practitioners continued to die in custody in 2025 and that China maintains broader efforts to surveil and pressure religious minorities living abroad.

Practitioners interviewed at the parade described how the persecution reaches beyond prison walls — affecting education, employment, and family relationships for those whose relatives have been influenced by state messaging against the practice.

The Organ Harvesting Allegations

Among the most serious accusations against Beijing is the claim that detained Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs, which are then sold into China's transplant industry.

In 2019, the China Tribunal — an independent panel of legal and medical experts based in London — concluded after an extended public inquiry that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China "on a significant scale," with Falun Gong practitioners serving as a principal source of organs. The tribunal's senior counsel later urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to open a formal investigation.

Two years later, a group of United Nations human rights experts, including several UN Special Rapporteurs, said they were "extremely alarmed" by credible reports that detained Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other religious minorities were being forced to undergo blood tests and organ examinations without consent, with results stored in a database used to match organs for transplant. Beijing has consistently denied the allegations, saying its organ transplant system relies on voluntary donations.

Washington's Response

China has been designated a "Country of Particular Concern" for religious freedom violations by the U.S. State Department continuously since 1999 — a designation that has persisted across administrations of both parties, including under the current one, reflecting a rare point of bipartisan agreement in an otherwise divided Washington.

Congress has also kept up pressure. The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China has held hearings this year specifically addressing organ trafficking in China, and lawmakers from both parties have repeatedly introduced legislation aimed at barring entry to U.S. soil for individuals involved in coercive organ transplantation abroad.

What Comes Next

Organizers say the Manhattan parade was followed by further events marking the anniversary, including a candlelight vigil outside the Chinese Consulate in New York on the evening of July 20 — the actual anniversary date — to honor practitioners who have died over the past 27 years.

Advocates say their central goal remains simple: to keep the issue visible internationally, in the hope that sustained attention from governments, human rights bodies, and the public will eventually force change inside China. Twenty-seven years on, they say, that work is far from finished.

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Sources

1. OHCHR (UN Human Rights Office) – "China: UN human rights experts alarmed by 'organ harvesting' allegations": https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-un-human-rights-experts-alarmed-organ-harvesting-allegations
2. USCIRF 2026 Annual Report – China chapter: https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2026-03/USCIRF%202026%20Annual%20Report%20China.pdf
3. Al Jazeera – "UN urged to investigate 'forced' organ harvesting in China": https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/9/25/un-urged-to-investigate-forced-organ-harvesting-in-china
4. Minghui.org (primary source for practitioner persecution statistics): https://en.minghui.org/
5. Vision Times – "See You in Chinatown on July 19!": https://www.visiontimes.com/2026/07/19/see-you-in-chinatown-on-july-19-new-york-falun-gong-holds-grand-parade-marking-the-27th-anniversary-of-the-anti-persecution-campaign.html
6. Congress.gov – Congressional-Executive Commission on China, hearings/reports: https://www.congress.gov/committee/congressional-executive-commission-on-china/jcpk00

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