124 Swiss Lawmakers Condemn Beijing’s Transnational Repression of Falun Gong

A group of 124 elected officials across Switzerland has signed a declaration condemning the Chinese regime’s persecution of Falun Gong and warning that the campaign has spread beyond China’s borders, according to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit documenting the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.

The signatories include three members of Switzerland’s Council of States, 11 members of the National Council, and more than 100 cantonal and municipal lawmakers from seven cantons.

“We, the undersigned parliamentarians, strongly condemn the cruel and violent repression of Falun Gong by the Chinese regime, which has raged for more than 26 years in China and is now extending outside China,” the declaration reads.

It calls on Swiss authorities to uphold constitutionally protected freedoms of belief and expression, take all necessary measures to protect Falun Gong practitioners in Switzerland, and demand that the Chinese regime end the persecution immediately.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. First introduced to the public in China in 1992, the practice quickly spread by word of mouth to reach an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners by 1999.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), fearing that Falun Gong’s popularity threatened the regime’s power, launched a brutal campaign on July 20, 1999, to eradicate the practice. Since then, untold numbers of practitioners have suffered arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture, and even death by forced organ harvesting.

Repression Extends Beyond China

The declaration says the Chinese regime has sought to “demonize and dehumanize” Falun Gong practitioners while subjecting them inside China to various kinds of abuses.

It also cites the 2019 judgment of the London-based China Tribunal on forced organ harvesting.

The independent people’s tribunal concluded that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners had been “one—and probably the main—source” of organs.

The declaration states that the persecution is no longer confined to China. It cites reports of threats, physical assaults, surveillance, censorship, and intensified propaganda targeting practitioners abroad.

Those concerns place Falun Gong practitioners within a wider pattern of the CCP’s transnational repression already documented in Switzerland.

A Swiss government-commissioned study, commonly known as the Weber report, examined pressure directed at Tibetan and Uyghur communities in the country.

The researchers documented surveillance at public events, intimidation, pressure exerted through relatives in China, suspected refugee espionage, and efforts to cultivate informants inside diaspora communities.

The Swiss declaration cites it as evidence that Beijing-linked repression already operates on Swiss soil.

Lawmakers Demand Protection

The signatories represent Switzerland’s federal, cantonal, and municipal levels of government.

Their declaration assigns responsibility to both the Swiss government and Beijing through three demands.

It calls on Swiss authorities to enforce the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Federal Constitution—particularly freedom of belief and expression—and to take all necessary measures to protect Falun Gong practitioners in Switzerland.

The signatories also urge Switzerland to confront the Chinese government directly and press Beijing to “immediately halt this inhuman and unjust persecution.”