One way the Chinese regime has maintained control over the COVID-19 narrative is by imprisoning more people who practice Falun Gong, a nonprofit director told a religious freedom summit on Thursday.

China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared war on China’s independent journalists, doctors, and citizen journalists during the pandemic, including Chinese who practice Falun Gong due to the increased risk they pose to the regime for whistleblowing.

Thousands more practitioners were harassed by Chinese officials and police, and hundreds more practitioners were sentenced in each of the past two years, compared to numbers in 2019, according to data presented during a panel at the International Religious Freedom Summit on June 30.

Levi Browde, executive director of New York-based nonprofit organization Falun Dafa Information Center, explained during the panel that the CCP chose to escalate its persecution against Falun Gong because of the sheer size of the spiritual group—tens of millions of practitioners in China—that is already subject to the Chinese regime’s methods of information control and disinformation.

“That is why during the pandemic, Falun Gong incarcerations actually went up, because Falun Gong is no longer just a persecuted minority. It’s also a whistleblower,” Browde said.

He added: “And they [Beijing] know if they’re hiding something about the virus in Wuhan, or other places, Falun Gong is the first one they need to keep quiet, because they’re the ones...

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