Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners rallied outside Ontario’s legislative building this week to mark 26 years since a large-scale appeal in Beijing, where thousands of adherents called for the freedom to practise their faith. The peaceful demonstration was soon followed by a widespread suppression of Falun Gong in China that continues today.
The Toronto rally was held on April 24, one day before the 26th anniversary of the April 25 “peaceful appeal” by Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing in 1999, when more than 10,000 adherents from across China assembled outside the appeals office to call for the release of 45 practitioners who had been arbitrarily detained by police in the eastern city of Tianjin.
They also called on the communist regime to lift a ban on Falun Gong books and to allow adherents a safe environment to practise their faith after incidents of authorities raiding practice sites, forcibly dispersing groups, and entering civilian residences without consent.
The demonstration was one of the largest China had seen in recent history, along with that of the Tiananmen Square student protest a decade earlier.
More than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gather on Fuyou Street in Beijing on April 25, 1999. Courtesy of Minghui.org
Han Yong, a Falun Gong practitioner who spoke at the Toronto rally, said he was a university student in China when he joined thousands of others in the 1999 appeal.
“At that time, there were no slogans, no banners, and no clamour. We just waited quietly, hoping to give feedback on the real situation of Falun Gong through the channel of appeals,” Yong said.
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Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that combines meditative movements with moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. After its introduction in China in 1992, an estimated 70 million to 100 million people had taken up the practice by 1999.
Seeing the thousands of practitioners gathered outside the appeals office on April 25, 1999, senior officials agreed to hold talks with practitioners. By nightfall, the detained practitioners in Tianjin were released.
“We all felt very relieved,” Yong said, recalling the scene 26 years ago.
“When we left, we all consciously cleaned up the garbage and debris around us, and even the cigarette butts thrown on the ground by the police were cleaned up, because every Falun Gong practitioner follows the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and require themselves to be a good person, a better person, and that he or she not cause trouble for others,” he added.
Falun Gong practitioners practice meditative exercises outside Ontario’s legislative building in Toronto on April 24, 2025. Jerry Zhang/The Epoch Times
Three months later, Jiang officially launched a systemic and far-reaching campaign against Falun Gong practitioners, directing officials to “defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.” Since then, practitioners in China have been subjected to severe persecution, with reports of arbitrary detention, torture, forced labour, physical and sexual abuse, and forced organ harvesting.
Amnesty International, a global human rights NGO, began sounding the alarm over the persecution of Falun Gong in China soon after it began.
“Since the ban on Falun Gong, tens of thousands of its followers have been arbitrarily detained by police, some of them repeatedly for short periods, and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs,” Amnesty wrote in a March 23, 2000, report.
“Some of those detained have been charged with crimes and sentenced after unfair trials, while others have been sent to labour camps without trial. New arrests and detentions continue to be reported every day.”
Although banned in China, Falun Gong is practised in more than 100 countries worldwide. For over two decades, practitioners in China and abroad have worked to raise awareness about the persecution, which is largely censored by China’s state-run media.
At the rally in Toronto, independent commentator Lai Jianping, formerly a lawyer in China, commended Falun Gong practitioners for standing up against Beijing’s authoritarian rule.
“We know that Falun Gong has made significant contributions to the cause of freedom and democracy in China over the past 20 years,” he said.
Canada Condemns Human Rights Abuses Against Falun Gong
Last December, the Canadian government sanctioned eight senior Chinese officials it said were involved in “grave human rights violations,” noting the measures were in response to the Beijing-led oppression of ethnic and religious minorities such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, and practitioners of Falun Gong.
“Canada is deeply concerned by the human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet and against those who practise Falun Gong,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly in a Dec. 10, 2024, news release by Global Affairs Canada.
“We call on the Chinese government to put an end to this systematic campaign of repression and uphold its international human rights obligations.”
Falun Gong practitioner Han Yong speaks at a rally outside Ontario’s legislative building in Toronto on April 24, 2025. Jerry Zhang/The Epoch Times
Falun Gong practitioners have also been targeted by foreign interference and transnational repression in Canada.
In a report presented last summer to Canada’s foreign interference commission—which ultimately identified China as “the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions”—Falun Gong representatives detailed instances of “harassment, surveillance, and sabotage” by pro-Beijing individuals and entities.
Those included letters to Canadian officials to discourage them from supporting the meditative practice, physical and verbal abuse against practitioners in Canada, and intimidation of practitioners’ relatives in China.
“Falun Gong practitioners still hope, with the goodness of their hearts, that those in power [in China] can understand the people’s voices, that they can give the people the most basic human right—the right to believe,” Yong said at the rally.
