I’m not very informed on modern China and there’s a ton of sources accusing China of killing and even harvesting organs from Uyghurs and Falun Gong believers.
Is there any truth to those claims or is it all ?
Falun Gong is the Chinese equivalent of Scientology. Shen Yun, the dance show, and the Epoch Times are both arms of the church.
It’s absolutely in their interests to make up anything smearing a government that doesn’t tolerate their shit.
What western media doesn’t talk about is that cult got banned in China after publicity dousing children with gasoline and lighting them on fire. When they crossed the line into literal death cult killing kids, the Chinese government had to act because the outrage from the general public demanded it.
It’s ironic that the US and a lot of western media claim they are wrongly persecuted when the US federal government would have sent in the ATF and FBI with armored personnel carriers to kill all their leaders (what the US does in such situations) had they pulled the same shit in the US.
With the situation in Xinjiang it was a similar line crossed when the US backed islamist groups started slaughtering elementary school children and people at places of worship, many of whom were muslim. They even started killing local Islamic religious leaders. The public demanded something be done. So ofc steps were taken to improve economic conditions, improve infrastructure, increase security, bring those responsible to justice, and identify disaffected young men who could be put through what in the west is called “diversion programs” but elsewhere gets labeled “reeducation”. The real irony is within a few years the Chinese government turned the situation around with communities in the region having mostly positive opinions on the outcome while in the US school children and people at places of worship being slaughtered is something people just accept a normal part of life nothing can be done about.
And then for a number of members doing public self-immolation, with one of the people in the biggest incident also setting her daughter on fire (the kid survived).
But I think even before that there were problems with FG members committing suicide believing they would go to heaven or whatever.
Imagining a world where the West had the balls to ban Scientology and other cults
If you were to list the top ten cults in the United States by harm done, Scientology wouldn’t make the top ten. It would mostly be Protestant churches who will do another Waco if forced which honestly isn’t something anyone should want.
Scientology is bad, but they have one thing going for it that most cults don’t. Sexual abuse is not common, like obviously it happens but probably to a lesser extent than the Church. Scientology is much more focused on exploiting the labor of its practitioners and covering up the occasional death caused by lack of medical care than getting horny. Like legitimately the reason why Scientology still exists is that it is not a sex cult.
I just named Scientology because it’s a safe, obvious example that everyone agrees on
