‘[The ceremony is] an insult to Americans of Chinese heritage who fled that persecuted system … for freedom,’ state Sen. Doug Mastriano said.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, has voiced strong concern over the Chinese Communist Party’s growing campaign of transnational repression and criticized a Chinese flag-raising ceremony to be held in front of Philadelphia City Hall later in September.
During a visit to the Magnolia Women’s Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 13, Mastriano said the repression campaign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has extended beyond China’s borders.
“At the first level in China itself, we watch them with a very repressive attitude toward Christians, Falun Gong, and other groups like Muslims,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”The communist system is, you worship the government and not God.
“Now we see the second level, where communist China is oppressing people outside of their country—that’s a big problem.
“If there are covert agencies acting as legal agencies or secret police, they need to be removed immediately from my country.”
His concerns align with findings from rights groups such as Freedom House and Safeguard Defenders, as well as mediareports on tactics overseas, including so-called police stations, that Chinese authorities use to monitor and intimidate Chinese diaspora communities.
In 2023, the U.S. Justice Department charged two men in New York City for allegedly operating such a station, confirming that Beijing sought to track dissidents and pressure them into silence.
The CCP’s tactics have also targeted Falun Gong practitioners abroad. Reports show that Chinese consulates have pressured local officials to cancel Falun Gong-related events and that individuals have received harassing phone calls or threats after speaking publicly about the group’s persecution in China, which began in 1999 and continues to this day.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. First introduced to the public in China in 1992, the practice quickly spread by word of mouth to reach an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners by 1999, when the CCP’s top leadership launched a brutal campaign to eradicate the practice. Since then, untold numbers of practitioners have suffered arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture, and even death by forced organ harvesting.
By Frank Liang
