Since its inception in 2006, Shen Yun Performing Arts has been a target of interference by the Chinese regime.
Earlier this year, Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre received a disturbing email just as it was about to host a performance by a New York-based company on a global tour. “We have prepared Molotov cocktails and guns,” claimed the sender, whose name was in Chinese characters.
The sender of the March 30 email went on to say that “we will enter as spectators on Shen Yun’s performance day,” referring to Shen Yun Performing Arts, adding that if the performance went ahead, “we will suddenly pull out our guns and shoot at the actors and throw Molotov cocktails towards the stage,” targeting anyone who tries to interfere.
The performances proceeded without incident from April 9 to April 13, making the email just one of the more than 140 false threats received in the past year by venues hosting Shen Yun around the world. Nevertheless, the threat prompted heightened security measures at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, including canine searches before each show.
This year alone, theatres hosting Shen Yun received violent threats in three Canadian provinces, including in the cities of Vancouver, Montreal, and Mississauga and Kitchener in Ontario; and faced interference attempts in Calgary.
For Shen Yun, the source of these attacks appears clear. Since its inception in 2006, the classical Chinese dance company has seen firsthand how the Beijing regime has tried to prevent its performances through a multitude of measures, ranging from diplomatic pressure to disinformation campaigns.
Shen Yun’s stated aim is to portray traditional Chinese culture through dance and music, under the tagline of “China before communism.” Shen Yun’s artists find their inspiration from the “spiritual discipline known as Falun Dafa,” according to the company’s website. Also known as Falun Gong, Falun Dafa is a spiritual discipline that combines meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
The group has been severely persecuted in China for more than 25 years, with reports of torture, forced labour, killings, and live forced organ harvesting. The persecution campaign began in 1999 under then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin, who saw the practice’s growing popularity and spiritual tenets as being at odds with the Party’s atheist stance.
