By Chen Jing, Vision Times
At a major policy forum in the U.S. capital, former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback called on the White House to take a historic step: Invite Falun Gong founder Mr. Li Hongzhi to meet with senior officials in an effort to advance America’s commitment to faith, religious freedom, and universal values.
Speaking on Oct. 28, 2025, at the “China Forum” hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), Brownback declared that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has waged a losing war against the pillars of faith and freedom. “The CCP is at war with faith — and it’s a war they are destined to lose,” he said.
‘At war with faith’
Brownback said the Chinese regime’s atheistic ideology inherently views all independent belief systems as threats. “The CCP isn’t persecuting just one group — it’s persecuting everyone who believes,” he said.
He outlined how Beijing has long suppressed Christians, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and especially Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), a peaceful meditation discipline founded in China by Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992 that’s rooted in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. By 1999, Falun Gong’s popularity — estimated at 70 to 100 million practitioners — had exceeded the number of CCP members, sparking fear among Party leadership and prompting then-leader Jiang Zemin to launch a brutal campaign to suppress and eradicate the practice from China’s borders.
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Since then, thousands of practitioners have perished at the hands of Chinese police through torture, forced labor, and imprisonment, according to extensive human rights reports. Many have been detained in secret facilities, where survivors have described heinous abuse, including electric shocks, beatings, and psychological abuse aimed at forcing them to renounce their beliefs. The persecution has continued unabated for over two decades now.
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“The CCP regarded Falun Gong as a group it could not control and decided to eliminate it,” Brownback said. He cited extensive reports of torture, rape, beatings, and large-scale forced organ harvesting, quoting Canadian human-rights lawyer David Matas, who called it “an evil never before seen on this planet.”
Systematic atrocities, ‘genocidal policies’
Brownback referenced specific cases documented by Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that documents the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners both in China and abroad, including:
- Zhang Fengxia, a 52-year-old practitioner from Daqing, Heilongjiang, was arrested in August 2025 and died just seven days later in custody at the hands of Chinese authorities.
- Men Yulin from Jinzhou, Liaoning, died four days after release from a seven-year prison sentence.
- Wang Shimin from Shanxi Province was left paralyzed by torture and remains bedridden due to the severe abuse she underwent while in custody.
Brownback also recalled the infamous 2000 Masanjia Labor Camp atrocity, where 18 female Falun Gong practitioners were stripped naked and thrown into male cells under the supervision of Politburo (China’s top ruling body) member Luo Gan. “No regime in history has slaughtered its own believers on such a scale,” he said, adding, “The CCP’s killing of its people surpasses that of any other government.”
A national security imperative
Brownback argued that religious freedom is not just a “human-rights issue,” but a national-security one.
“To the CCP, religious freedom is an existential threat; to us, it’s the foundation of our nation,” he said.
Without faith, he warned, morality and civilization collapse. “If America compromises on religious freedom, the free world itself will crumble,” he cautioned.
He also urged Washington to treat the defense of belief as a strategic pillar of U.S. foreign policy, not a symbolic gesture. “Religious freedom represents our values and poses the greatest challenge to communist totalitarianism,” he added.
Brownback noted that “Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, resides in the United States. White House officials should meet with him and publicly affirm that Falun Gong practitioners deserve religious freedom — and that they deserve it now.”
He said such a meeting would be “the most powerful symbolic act for religious liberty in U.S. history.”
“If you want to see the real China, look at Falun Gong,” Brownback noted. “They’re simply returning to traditional culture and moral belief — the root of China’s civilization.”
A global movement
As the U.S. Religious Freedom Ambassador under President Donald Trump, Brownback spearheaded sanctions against Chinese officials such as Chen Quanguo, the former Xinjiang regional Party chief, an action that led Beijing to blacklist him permanently.
“It’s one of the greatest honors of my public life,” he joked.
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Now, he sees the invitation to Mr. Li Hongzhi as both a political signal and a spiritual turning point: “The free world must reclaim faith to resist atheistic totalitarianism,” he said.
Brownback concluded that America, founded on the principle of religious freedom, must again raise that banner against the CCP’s campaign of cultural erasure and moral destruction. “Inviting Mr. Li Hongzhi to the White House isn’t just diplomacy; it’s a moral test,” he said. “It would show that the free world stands shoulder to shoulder with truth, compassion, and forbearance.”
As he ended his address, Brownback repeated the conviction that defined his career: “The CCP is fighting against faith — and it will lose. Because the power of faith comes from the freedom of the human heart.”
