The threats come a day after a large-scale parade and rally in New York’s Flushing neighborhood.
NEW YORK CITY—Several New York libraries on April 20 received threats targeting a parade organized by Falun Gong practitioners.
Multiple Queens Public Library branches received bomb threat emails on the night of April 20 demanding that they stop a Falun Gong parade.
The threats came a day after Falun Gong practitioners held a thousands-strong parade in the neighborhood calling for an end to the persecution of their faith in China. The April 19 rally also commemorated a peaceful gathering of Falun Gong practitioners 26 years ago in Beijing that is now known among them as the April 25 appeal.
Global Tuidang Center, an organizer of the Saturday parade, received a similar email around the same time. The sender claimed they will drive into the parade participants while sending another group of assailants to Dragon Springs, which is home to the headquarters of Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York-based arts group the Chinese regime has tried for years to disrupt using political and economic pressure, according to a copy of the email The Epoch Times reviewed.
The email apparently mistakenly assumed that there would be a parade on April 25, the actual anniversary of the 1999 rally.
Parade organizers said they believed that the scale of the Saturday event might have caught the sender’s attention, prompting them to action.
Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for Queens Public Library, told The Epoch Times the library learned about the threats on Monday and evacuated the library building in Flushing, a neighborhood known for its large ethnic Chinese population. She said they were “grateful to our staff members for remaining professional and calm throughout the incident.”
The library’s Main Street branch was the end point of the Falun Gong parade, while a few other branches not on the April 19 parade route also received threats.
Police cars and an ambulance arrived at the site on the morning of April 21 and temporarily blocked off roads for investigation. They eventually determined the library safe, and opened it to the public shortly before noon, after a roughly two-hour delay.
It was the second round of such threats targeting Falun Gong parades in about half a year, after intimidators emailed The Epoch Times in Chinese in September 2024, taking credit for assaults on multiple Falun Gong practitioners walking in a parade in Brooklyn’s Chinatown.
Cybersecurity experts who recently assessed similar emailed threats told The Epoch Times they believe they came from the Chinese regime or its operatives. Sources familiar with the police investigation told The Epoch Times the IP address of the emails to the libraries is in China.
Flushing councilwoman Sandra Ung, whose office kept in contact with the 109th Precinct police and Queens Public Library officials throughout Monday morning, thanked the law enforcement for their swift response.
“There is no place in our city for threats of violence, especially those meant to stifle free speech or intimidate individuals for exercising their right to peacefully assemble,” Flushing councilwoman Sandra Ung told The Epoch Times. She noted that “Flushing is one of the most diverse communities in the country, and that diversity is our strength.”
“No one should be made to feel unsafe or unwelcome for celebrating their cultural, spiritual, or political identity,” she said, adding that she hopes all residents remain vigilant and report any suspicious or threatening behavior to the proper authorities.
Martha Flores-Vazquez, a New York State Assembly district leader for Flushing, said the case heightens the importance of protecting this diaspora.
“It’s a scare tactic, but we need to take it seriously and protect our good citizens of New York City,” she told The Epoch Times. “I think that it’s horrible that they’ve gone this far, and that we need to do everything possible through the use of intelligence to capture and make an example of who it is that is behaving this way, because it’s detrimental to the world.”
The threat email parallels a recent intimidation campaign targeting Shen Yun, which also draws attention to the abuses against Falun Gong in China in its performances.
The classical Chinese dance company, in the past year, has seen dozens of violent email threats targeting itself, hosting venues, as well as supportive lawmakers and U.S. government agencies. The emails variously threatened bomb detonation, arson, and other forms of violence, prompting several theaters in the United States and other countries to call in police and canine units. All have turned out to be fake.
Taiwanese authorities recently traced some of the emails to China and directed their suspicions at a research facility under blacklisted Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has significant ties with the Chinese military.
The faith group Falun Gong teaches living in accordance with the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, along with meditation exercises. Around 70 million to 100 million people took up the practice in China by 1999. The Chinese regime, seeing its popularity among the people as a threat, launched a systematic campaign to eliminate Falun Gong, putting any Chinese who refused to renounce the faith in jail, labor camps, and psychiatric facilities. Falun Gong practitioners also face threats of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting.
On April 25, 1999, about 10,000 people turned out to appeal for their freedom of belief in front of China’s equivalent of the White House, the Zhongnanhai compound. The event was orderly, and officials initially affirmed their request. However, just three months later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its persecution; Chinese state media began describing the gathering as a “siege.”
Flores-Vazquez attended the April 19 parade and spoke at the rally that followed, telling the audience they “stand together.” She stayed for hours at the evening vigil, like the attendees there, held a lotus flower in remembrance of the people killed in China for their belief.
The Chinese Communist Party has “done the worst,” she said. She added the email intimidation campaign “really has to be taken seriously.”
“A higher level of government has to get involved,” she said.
Stopping the parades would suit the regime’s goals, because such events help expose the regime’s misdeeds, said Michael Yu, one of the event organizers.
“Evil is always afraid of light,” he told The Epoch Times.
The FBI told The Epoch Times in a statement that the agency can neither confirm nor deny conducting specific investigations, and referred to the NYPD.
The New York Police Department didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
Linda Lin contributed to this report.