Suppression of Faith Has Backfired on CCP: Researcher

NEW YORK—Decades of campaigns aimed at suppressing faith have not served the goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and instead turned a large group of Chinese civilians into grassroots activists, according to a human rights researcher. “Up to today, what stands out in a lot of ways is the futility of the CCP’s efforts to repress religious believers,” Sarah Cook, a longtime China analyst, said in a webinar on April 25. One case in point is Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, a meditation discipline centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. On April 25, 1999, around 10,000 Falun Gong adherents stood near Beijing’s leadership headquarters, Zhongnanhai, petitioning for the right to exercise their belief without fear....