City Council Votes Down Motion to Support Persecuted Faith Group Group

A city council in Sydney’s multicultural western suburbs has declined to support a motion to recognise World Falun Dafa Day, an annual celebration commemorating the spread of the popular meditation practice that has assisted millions.

Cumberland City Councillors Paul Garrard, Steve Christou, and Helen Hughes presented the motion of urgency in support of Falun Dafa on May 1, to have it passed before World Falun Dafa Day, celebrated annually on May 13.

Mr. Garrard and Mr. Christou said the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China has been ongoing for 25 years, including illegal detention, torture, and organ harvesting (pdf).

“They have been denied their rights and liberties and been subjected to illegal organ harvesting whereas many members of their community have been kidnapped and been illegally imprisoned,” Mr. Christou said.

However, it was ultimately rejected by the majority Labor council chamber.

Mr. Garrard was disappointed that adherents had been “ignored and disregarded” by a council that promoted diversity.

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“Clearly, the self-improvement displayed and practised by Falun Dafa through truth, compassion, and forbearance, was not on display at the council meeting last night,” Mr. Garrard added.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Mayor Lisa Lake for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

The vote comes after fellow Sydney local authority, the Blacktown City Council, backed a similar motion.

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, was a widely popular spiritual practice in the 1990s, and spread via word of mouth due to its health benefits. Official estimates at the time placed the number of adherents at about 70-100 million—about one in every 13 Chinese people.

However, in 1999 that suddenly changed with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—perceiving the faith group’s popularity as a threat—launching a nationwide persecution campaign against the practice.

At the same time, Beijing-linked media outlets produced hundreds of hours of propaganda to defame the practice, while CCP officials pressured, and encouraged, overseas institutions and governments to toe the party line.

The EU passed a resolution in January condemning the persecution and called for an investigation into CCP’s violent suppression campaign.

The association has previously outlined extensive concerns that the documentary “severely misrepresented” its beliefs and practices, and would have a harmful impact on the Falun Gong community in Australia, many of whom are refugees.

“We believe ABC failed to set out different sides of the issue fairly and proportionally, and neglected to seek comment or rebuttals from the Falun Gong community itself,” they said in a letter to ABC’s managing director, David Anderson.

“International legal experts have concluded that crimes against humanity have taken place against Falun Gong in China, along with the acts enumerated in the genocide convention.

“They have spent the last two decades as targets of a massive propaganda campaign, orchestrated by the [Chinese] Communist Party that aims to vilify and dehumanise them, and present them as undeserving of sympathy.

Victorian MP David Limbrick previously highlighted this issue in the state parliament in March, saying it was outrageous that Australian taxpayer money was being used to produce material for religious persecution by the CCP.

The day after the documentary was broadcast, it was translated and published on a CCP-backed website tasked with spreading disinformation about the practice.

He noted that after making a formal complaint to the ABC about the documentary, he found himself being labelled a “traitor” to Australia on a CCP website.