For as many as 100 million Chinese, the year 1999 was a watershed moment in their lives.
That year, a massive nationwide persecution began under the orders of Jiang Zemin, then the Chinese Communist Party boss, a campaign that indiscriminately targeted adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong.
Jiang, described by some rights advocates as one of the worst tyrants in history, died on the last day of November, but the sweeping elimination effort that he unleashed has not stopped.
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Over the past 23 years, millions of Falun Gong adherents have been held in labor camps, mental asylums, drug rehabilitation centers, unofficial black jails, or other detention facilities. The vilification, torture, and organized killing through forced organ harvesting arising from the persecution have led to an untold number of deaths. Those who survived are left with injuries, and financial and psychological harms suffered from the ongoing abuses….