Reports of 782 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested or Harassed in January and February 2022

The first two months of 2022 met reports of 423 Falun Gong practitioners arrested and another 359 harassed for their faith.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has continued to be persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China since 1999.  Countless practitioners have been arrested, harassed, sentenced, and tortured for upholding their faith.  Unfortunately, due to strict information censorship imposed by the CCP regime, aggregating facts and reporting incidents remain a challenge.

The 423 reported arrest cases include: 9 incidents from 2020, 143 reports in 2021, 187 arrests in January 2022, and 84 in February 2022.  Thirty practitioners had a total of approximately $95,000 USD confiscated from them when the police ransacked their homes. In the most severe case, about $33,000 USD was taken from one practitioner and in another, $23,600 USD was extorted by authorities. The third largest sum of money extorted from one practitioner was approximately $10,100 USD.

Out of the 423 arrest cases, three resulted in practitioner deaths, including two women and one man, who each passed away within a month of their arrests.

Weeks ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022, authorities arrested and harassed practitioners in Beijing and Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province.  These two of three cities were to host snow and ice sports under the pretext of preventing practitioners from speaking out about Falun Gong during the games.

For the 359 harassment cases, 1 occurred in 2020, 167 reports happened in 2021, 133 were from January 2022, and 58 in February 2022. Among the targeted, a staggering 261 practitioners (73%) had their homes arbitrarily ransacked by police, 124 (16%) were elderly citizens 60 years and older, and 174 Falun Gong adherents (41%) were released at the time of this writing.

The 782 practitioners hailed from a total of 27 provinces and municipalities.  Hebei topped the list with 102 total persecution cases, followed by Shandong (94) and Sichuan (82).  Thirteen regions had incidents between 10 to 70 each. The last 11 provinces had single-digit cases.

Based on an original report from Minghui.org: Reported in Jan/Feb 2022: 782 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested or Harassed for Their Faith