The U.S. State Department on Jan. 21 condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for sentencing 11 Falun Gong practitioners to prison terms as long as eight years for exercising their religious beliefs. The Jan. 14 sentences were handed down just weeks ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The State Department is calling on Beijing to “immediately end its depraved abuse and mistreatment of Falun Gong practitioners, release those imprisoned due to their beliefs, and address the whereabouts of missing practitioners,” a department official told The Epoch Times in an email. “Since 1999, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has sought to eradicate Falun Gong, a spiritual practice originating in China, and its peaceful practitioners and human rights defenders who have fought for their right to practice their beliefs.” At the beginning of the regime’s persecution in 1999, an estimated 70 to 100 million Chinese people were practicing Falun …