Harassed for seeking truth: Pro-CCP aggression targets peaceful Falun Gong protesters at LA Chinese Consulate

Every day outside the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, a small group of Falun Gong practitioners quietly gathers.

Their banners flutter in the California breeze, bearing messages of truth, compassion, and tolerance—principles at the heart of their spiritual practice.

They meditate, hand out leaflets, and call attention to the brutal persecution their fellow practitioners face in China. It is a scene of calm persistence, a peaceful display of conscience against a powerful regime’s brutality.

Yet even in the United States—on American soil and under the supposed shield of free expression—the long arm of Beijing seems determined to silence them.

On September 4, a Chinese consulate employee allegedly tore down one of the practitioners’ banners and tried to carry it into the consulate compound, an act that turned a quiet protest into a confrontation over the CCP’s reach and disregard for democratic norms.

According to witnesses, the incident unfolded swiftly. Liu Chuanyu, one of the practitioners, said she saw the male employee pull down a banner debunking one of Beijing’s oldest propaganda lies—the fabricated “Tiananmen self-immolation” incident used by the regime to vilify Falun Gong.

As Liu and another practitioner followed the man to retrieve the banner, he hurried toward the consulate gate, banging on it to be let inside. In the scuffle, he dropped the banner. Another practitioner picked it up before the man slipped into an elevator and retreated from view.

When police arrived, the practitioners reported the incident. Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department entered the consulate but were unable to locate the man.

According to Liu, police confirmed that the staff admitted to knowing him and issued a clear warning: consulate employees must not touch Falun Gong practitioners or their belongings, and any future interference could constitute a criminal offence.

This was not an isolated event. Falun Gong practitioners in Los Angeles say they have faced years of harassment, intimidation, and vandalism from individuals aligned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Practitioner Lan Meifang described repeated acts of sabotage—banners defaced, water sprayed on displays, and even faeces smeared on railings. In one instance, large trees were cut down to obstruct their ability to hang banners.

“They’ve done everything they can to silence us,” Lan said. “But we are only telling the truth about what’s happening in China.”

For practitioners like Lan and Liu, the protest outside the Chinese Consulate is not merely symbolic—it is a lifeline of truth against a decades-long campaign of deceit and violence.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation practice rooted in moral principles and traditional Chinese qigong.

Since the CCP launched a campaign to eradicate the practice in 1999, millions have been subjected to detention, torture, and brainwashing.

Numerous reports, including investigations by independent organisations and government agencies, have documented forced labour, sexual abuse, and the regime’s most horrifying practice—forced live organ harvesting from imprisoned practitioners.

Despite this record of brutality, Beijing continues to export its persecution beyond China’s borders.

The September 4 incident at the Los Angeles consulate reflects what human rights experts describe as part of the CCP’s “transnational repression”—a coordinated effort to intimidate dissidents, suppress critical voices, and manipulate public perception in democratic societies.

Just three days after the consulate incident, on September 7, another episode of harassment occurred—this time at Santa Monica Pier, one of Los Angeles’s busiest tourist spots.

A woman, identified by witnesses as Chinese, confronted Falun Gong practitioners distributing flyers about human rights abuses in China.

Video evidence reviewed by the Falun Dafa Information Centre shows the woman grabbing the flyers and throwing them to the ground while yelling in Mandarin.

Her words echoed the same propaganda language that Chinese state media has used for years to justify persecution: “As a Chinese, how can you treat the Chinese Communist Party like this?”

Such scenes are increasingly familiar to Falun Gong practitioners abroad. In June, a woman was recorded shouting threats at the protesters outside the consulate and moving as if to strike them.

These confrontations reveal a troubling pattern—ordinary individuals, influenced by the CCP’s relentless indoctrination, carrying the regime’s hostility into the diaspora.

The propaganda that fuels this hostility has deep roots. In China, state media continues to portray Falun Gong as dangerous and “anti-China,” recycling fabrications like the “self-immolation” hoax staged in Tiananmen Square in 2001.

The banner targeted in the recent consulate incident reportedly challenged this very lie, exposing how it was orchestrated to turn public opinion against the practice.

For those who lived through the persecution, such as the practitioner surnamed Yang—once detained in China for his beliefs—the fight against misinformation is deeply personal.

“Practitioners in China risk their lives to tell the truth,” Yang said. “Now that I’m in a free environment overseas, I have to make the most of it.”

But freedom abroad is fragile when the Chinese regime’s shadow stretches this far. Reports and whistleblower accounts have revealed how CCP leader Xi Jinping personally directed efforts to reshape global opinion about Falun Gong, particularly in the United States.

Leaked meeting notes from 2024 indicated that Chinese agencies were instructed to intensify propaganda efforts and “influence Western media narratives,” fearing U.S. sanctions over human rights abuses.

The harassment in Los Angeles fits squarely into this broader strategy—one that merges censorship, intimidation, and disinformation into a seamless web of control.

The CCP’s aim is not merely to suppress dissenting voices but to erase the very memory of its crimes. By attacking Falun Gong practitioners even outside China, the regime seeks to extend its authoritarian model into democratic spaces, testing how far it can manipulate the boundaries of tolerance and law.

Despite U.S. constitutional protections for peaceful assembly, the Chinese consulate’s behaviour—and that of its supporters—reflects contempt for such freedoms.

The regime’s operatives, sheltered by diplomatic immunity, exploit open societies to advance repression while hiding behind the very rights they deny their own citizens.

The Los Angeles incident is not an anomaly—it is part of a continuum that includes Chinese police “service centres” abroad, cyber intimidation of dissidents, and orchestrated smear campaigns on social media.

In the face of this, the Falun Gong practitioners’ protests outside the consulate stand as a quiet act of resistance—a reminder of how authoritarian power seeks to suppress truth even across oceans.

Their banners, simple and unadorned, challenge decades of lies that have cost countless lives. Each act of harassment they endure on American soil underscores how far Beijing’s intolerance has metastasised.

Outside that building on West Third Street in Los Angeles, the contrast could not be sharper. On one side of the gate stands a regime haunted by its own crimes, desperate to erase witnesses to its brutality.

On the other stands a handful of people who refuse to forget—people who continue to meditate, to hold their banners, and to speak of compassion in the face of cruelty.

Their protest, small and easily overlooked by passing cars, carries a weight far greater than the space it occupies.

It is a confrontation not just between protesters and a foreign consulate, but between conscience and coercion, between truth and the machinery of a state that fears it.