This wasn’t the first time pro-CCP individuals have tried to interfere with their demonstrations.
Passersby often see Falun Gong practitioners in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles peacefully protesting against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) human rights abuses. They’re routinely ignored by consulate personnel, but in a recent incident, a consulate employee sought to interfere with their demonstration.
The practitioners of Falun Gong regularly demonstrate there, raising banners and meditating. The banners tell the truth about the spiritual practice that the Chinese regime has persecuted since 1999: that Falun Gong teaches truth, compassion, and tolerance.
The banners reveal the untold numbers of practitioners who have been subjected to wrongful detention, torture, brainwashing, forced labor, and death by forced live organ harvesting. They also counter the propaganda that the Chinese regime spreads about the practice.
On the morning of Sept. 4, a consulate employee pulled down one of these banners with information debunking one of the CCP’s oldest propaganda narratives and attempted to bring it into the consulate building with him.
Liu Chuanyu told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that she and a fellow Falun Gong practitioner followed the employee quickly in an attempt to retrieve the banner. The employee hurried to the consulate gate, banging on it to be let in, and dropped the banner in the process.
Liu said another practitioner retrieved the banner after the male consulate employee dropped it. Liu took a photo of that man as he retreated into an elevator and repeatedly hit the elevator buttons.
The practitioners called the police, and Liu said Los Angeles Police Department officers arrived at the scene and entered the Chinese Consulate to investigate. They did not locate the individual, but told the practitioners that the consulate staff confirmed they knew the man.
Liu said the police relayed that they instructed consulate staff not to touch Falun Gong practitioners’ belongings and to keep their distance, as a repeat event would be a criminal offense.
Falun Gong practitioner Lan Meifang told The Epoch Times that this wasn’t the first time pro-CCP individuals have tried to interfere with their demonstrations.
“They sprayed water on the banners, smeared feces on the iron railings used to hold the banners, and even cut down several large trees to prevent us from hanging the banners,” Lan said.
A practitioner surnamed Yang, who had been detained by the CCP while in China, said that the banner the consulate employee tried to steal debunked the “Tiananmen self-immolation hoax,” a lie the regime still tries to push as it seeks to discredit Falun Gong.
“Practitioners in China risk their lives to tell the truth to people. Now that I’m in a free environment overseas, I have to make the most of it,” said Yang, who declined to provide a full name out of fear of reprisal from Chinese authorities.
There have been other cases of harassment of Falun Gong practitioners at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles.
For example, on June 9, in a video reviewed by The Epoch Times, a woman began yelling in Mandarin at the practitioners and was seen moving as if to strike someone.
“As a Chinese, how can you treat the Chinese Communist Party like this?” the masked woman can be heard shouting.
On Sept. 7, days after the banner incident, another Chinese woman harassed Falun Gong practitioners at the Santa Monica Pier, a busy tourist destination.
A Falun Gong practitioner was passing out flyers with information about the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses when the pro-CCP woman grabbed them out of her hand and threw them to the ground, according to screenshots of a video posted by the Falun Dafa Information Center.
These incidents are part of a pattern of the CCP’s transnational repression—an export of its harassment of Falun Gong and influence operations to try to sway American public opinion in Beijing’s favor.
Efforts by Falun Gong practitioners in China, combined with overseas reporting, have allowed many Chinese to understand that the practice is peaceful rather than believe the regime’s propaganda. This includes the more than 452 million people who have declared that they have quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
But some Chinese, as in the Sept. 7 incident, have sided with the CCP.
Last year, whistleblowers revealed that CCP leader Xi Jinping ordered agencies to focus their efforts on changing public opinion on Falun Gong in the United States. Internal meeting notes showed that Chinese officials feared they may be targeted for sanctions if the United States openly stood with Falun Gong.
Several U.S. officials, policymakers, and human rights advocates have publicly condemned the CCP’s persecution and transnational repression of Falun Gong and the Falun Gong practitioner-founded Shen Yun Performing Arts.
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